Beatty & The Beast

SIX: Where the Beauty and the Beast Find Understanding

January 10th

By the time Keefe awoke the next morning, the guilt was hideous.

It had started not too long after he had left Andie's house and steadily grew through the rest of the evening. By the next morning it was all-consuming.

He knew in some ways he was justified for how he acted. Any normal person would've flipped their lid if forced to endure the wrath of Andie Logan, and he knew in theory he shouldn't feel as bad as he did.

However, he had never acted like that before and it frightened him to see that side of himself. He always prided himself in being a level-headed, easy-going guy, not easily ruffled and without much of a temper. Whoever that was yesterday was not the Keefe Beatty he thought he knew, and he didn't like that guy.

The Keefe Beatty he wanted to know would never splash paint into someone's face. That was just awful. He couldn't help but wonder what his mother would say about this. Though he barely remembered her, she always seemed to pop up into his head when he did something he was ashamed of. He always wondered if she was watching him from wherever she was now and feeling disappointed in her youngest son. It only made the shame grow.

As he walked to school he promised himself he would find her and apologize. Whether that made him a submissive push-over or not didn't matter, because he knew it was the right thing to do.

He walked with the WaTSAs, who tried to get information out of him (And why was he apparently the new girl's slave? Why did he go to Whistlebeck's after school the day before?) He wasn't very cooperative, being too preoccupied with guilty thoughts. Enid turned bright red in frustration when she didn't get the answers she wanted, but Keefe barely noticed.

Andie wasn't waiting for him outside Whistlebeck's mansion and Keefe felt the shame deepen. He would have to hunt her down at school then. He hoped upon hopes that she wasn't planning on ditching.

He didn't see her until their shared third period when she stalked in about two seconds before the bell rang. She went straight to her desk, her face covered in hood and hair, and immediately began doodling in her notebook, keeping her face down and covered. She didn't look at him once.

Even when Ms. Penbrooke asked her to put down her hood, she kept her head down, covered in hair and shadows.

Keefe waited impatiently for class to end, knowing he wouldn't be able to talk to her properly until it was over, and spent his anxiety looking over his shoulder at her, willing her to look at him. Instead, she kept to her sketching, feverishly scribbling across the pages the entire time, as if she were releasing some frustrations.

When the bell rang, Keefe was up and running, knowing she would rush out of class the moment she could. Just as he was reaching the end of his row, she was flying past it, pulling her hood up and making kids jump out of her way. They had learned quickly over the last few days.

"Andie!" Keefe jumped through the wake she left, leaving behind thoroughly confused classmates. "Andie, wait!"

He caught her just outside the door, but she refused to look at him or speak to him. She kept walking, jerkily shoving her earbud in her right ear, ignoring him as he kept at her side.

"Come on, please, we need to talk," he said.

"Leave me alone."

With frustration – and just a bit of suicidal bravery – he leapt in front of her and forced her to stop. She looked up at him with one glittering brown eye and he finally saw a bit of her face for the first time that day. It was mostly just a sliver of eye, nose and mouth, but it was untouched by her scars and in it he saw a ghost of the radiant Andréa Donovan.