Beastly: Lindy's Diary by Alex Flinn Read Free Book Online Page B

what happens, he will be him, and I will be me. And the world will be the world. Am I using his neediness as an excuse
    not to love him, because I really am icked out by his looks, really don’t want to love a freak? No, that’s not it. I do love him, despite or maybe because of his looks, but I can’t do this. I can’t. I can’t spend my whole childhood saddled with my father, then spend my whole adult life saddled with someone else
    needy. I know it’s not his fault. He just wants someone to be with. It just can’t be me.
    So I love him, but I’ll never tell him.
    I said, “Maybe, one day, we’ll be able to go, to play in the leaves.”
    October 25
    This morning, when I went out to the greenhouse to study, I found a surprise.
    Leaves. Hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of them, brown and yellow and red and orange, in bright
    piles on the concrete floor. Some were so high they almost covered the rosebushes.
    I stood, openmouthed, until I heard footsteps, then turned to see Adrian standing there.
    “How did you do this?” I asked him.
    “It wasn’t easy. I was up half the night, in the street, with a flashlight and a rake, gathering them. I couldn’t even see which ones were pretty. I just took them all. Then, I brought them in here and sorted out the best ones for you.”
    I looked back at them. They were even more vivid than the leaves on the trees.
    “They’re perfect,” I said.
    “You were right before. I don’t want to go outside. I don’t . . . I can’t let people see me. It would be too embarrassing.”
    I said, “You’re not that bad.”
    He shook his head. “I can’t take the chance. What if someone took pictures, posted them online . . . made fun of me? What if everyone came to stare at the freak?” I nodded, understanding. I wanted to say the
    world wasn’t like that, but I knew the world. I lived here too.
    “But I would do anything for you, Lindy, anything else, at least. If you want leaves or flowers or . . .
    diamonds, I’ll get them for you.”
    He seemed so earnest, and it made me sad because I knew I couldn’t make him happy the way he wanted,
    so I changed the subject. I ran through the leaves, then stooped to pick some up and threw them at him.
    Then, I collapsed in one of the piles.
    He followed and lay down next to me, but gently, so as not to hurt me. Adrian is always a gentleman.
    “I think we should take the day off from school,” he said,
    “to play in the leaves.”
    “Like a snow day,” I agreed.
    So we did. We ran and jumped in the piles and threw the leaves at each other (and at Will when he came
    down, suggesting we start with geometry), then raked them all back up and started over again.
    It may have been the most fun I’ve ever had.
    November 29
    It’s November, after Thanksgiving. Christmas season.
    When I was a little girl, when my mother was still alive, Christmas was a lot of fun. We did all the usual corny stuff, baking cookies and skating at Rockefeller Center, got pictures on Santa’s lap.
    Then, she died, suddenly, the day after Thanksgiving.
    Christmas died with her.
    Since then, what I do for Christmas is read.
    When I was little, my sisters used to read me The Night Before Christmas and How the Grinch Stole
    Christmas!
    Then, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, followed by all Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books. I loved reading
    what the Ingalls girls got for Christmas, even if it was only a stick of candy. My favorite was On the
    Banks of Plum Creek, when Laura and her sisters got the presents off the tree at church.
    When I was ten, my teacher gave me Little Women, and two years later, I found Dickens’s A Christmas
    Carol.
    Laura and the March girls and Ebeneezer Scrooge, that’s who I spent Christmas with.
    I asked Adrian if he could get me these books. “We could read them aloud together,” I said, “get in the
    holiday spirit.”
    “That’s all you want to do for Christmas? READ?”
    “I like reading, and we’re stuck in the house