Other Side of Beautiful (A Beautifully Disturbed #1) by Sarah Zolton Arthur Read Free Book Online Page A

and Callum follow that, and then Sabrina chose to go by herself the last week of the month.
    We gather in the littlest conference room off the second floor of the library. Benton, Collin, Sabrina, Errol, and, yes, even Tim and Callum surround me with their manila folders, thick from critiqued work just like mine, sitting on the oval table in front of us. We look less like writers and more like board members of some internet startup.
    “Well,” Benton starts, “this is a piece I began over break. It’s getting close. I finally picked a title, call it Little Girl Lost.” All of us here are well aware that when Benton says ‘getting close’ it means better than anything we could come up with and should probably consider switching majors, or maybe consider truck driving school.
     
    “ She sits on the rusted park swing, black, cracked vinyl pinches the bottoms of her thighs as she sways just enough to strain the chain links against the metal post—squeak squawk, squeak squawk—cutting the silence.
    “She sits on the sand, knees pulled up to her chest looking out past the water shimmering with gold dust from the setting sun, out past the horizon to another place or another time or another someplace she’s missing in the here and now. The wind delicately stipples goose pimples up her arms and the high tide laps October chilled waves against her pink, painted toenails.
    “She sits in a little café tucked into a back corner table with her nose pressed purposefully into the pages of a book while sipping intermittently, nursing a cup of strong black coffee. Fooling no one, her eyes betray her, darting from the page she’s spent the last half hour reading every time someone calls out, ‘hey’ or ‘hi.’
    “Only the day changes…”
     
    Benton Hayes, everybody. Benton Hayes. The man is human, so somewhere within his piece, theoretically, I should be able to find something to critique. But like everyone else sitting here dumbfounded, nothing comes to mind. What I wouldn’t give to have someone listen to my work and respond with the same starry eyes the rest of the group watched on his with. Each one of us waits to take a turn to talk, but when listening to a piece from the caliber of writer like Benton, we have more questions than opinions.
    “How did you come up with this one?” He speaks first after probably a full minute. But after hearing Benton’s powerful words, Errol asks what I’m sure we are all thinking.
    Benton, his dimple showing, looks at us with what I can only describe as dreamy eyes, as if in a trance. He laughs then, shaking his head before answering. “It’s inspired by someone near and dear to me.”
    “Don’t suppose you’d divulge who?” Sabrina asks.
    “Not here.”
    Collin gets a greedy look on his face and asks, “Someone from your past, maybe?” The problem with having a best friend is they know too much about you. Kelly’s set me up before too. Not one of us here believes that Collin doesn’t know who the piece was written about.
    Our beliefs compound when Benton returns Collin’s greedy look with a hard glare of his own, answering back, “present and hopefully future.”
    “Well couldn’t you just—” Sabrina tries to get him to open up to us, but he cuts her off.
    “Okay, Dinninger, guess that leaves you.” He clears his throat, and just when group is starting to get good. I want to know who Benton harbors those feelings for just as much as the rest of our table, yet at the same time, I feel thankful he wouldn’t reveal the name, because that would be one more thing for me to obsess over.
    “Okay, well…I’ve been working on it for a while now. Editing and cutting. I’m really proud of how it’s shaped up.
     
    “ He held on with his fingers digging a firm grip into my sides so I could see out over the edge, getting a better look at the fishes swirling and swaying off the underside of the boat. The water so clear I saw straight to the bottom. But dad said