To Love A Beast

The Party

We learned a lot about Dani St.Clair during the rest of the week. The group loved her. Amongst the five of us we had plenty of questions, and she was happy to answer every single one of them. We learnt that she had two older brothers, James and Ryder; the first in his early twenties and the second just a year older than us. She lived in a big house in the suburbs with them and her mother and father, who was a doctor. Along with them also lived their cousin and Ryder's best friend, Alex. They were New Yorkers born and raised, but had been living in Italy for the past three years visiting family. We all felt it, but Fletcher was the first to voice his surprise at learning of Dani's Italian heritage.

"I guess, you sort of look Italian, now that I think about it." He pondered at lunch one day, examining Dani's face closely.

"You can sort of hear an accent in some of the words you speak too." Ash agreed.

When I asked about her brothers best friend, Dani lost some of her usual energy, her body slouching slightly and her eyes pained. It made me instantly regret asking the question, but she insisted that it was okay and explained to us Alex's situation. Alex grew up next door to the St. Clair's. Their friendship had always been set in stone seeing as their parents were close friends. When Dani was fourteen and the boys were fifteen, Alex's parents were in a fatal car crash, and he's lived with Dani's family ever since. My heart clenched at hearing about how Alex coped with the death of his parents. I couldn't possibly imagine what he must have gone through.

"It was hard for him, but for us too." Dani stared off into space as she retold this terrible story. "Michael and Katie were like, my second parents. They were our family, and losing them like that... you can never get over it. They were the only family Alex had; he would've been chucked into care if my Mum and Dad hadn't adopted him. He probably would've been moved to another state, sad and alone, and we'd never see him again. I'd already considered Alex my brother, so when my parents asked us about adoption, we all jumped at the idea." By the end of her speech, Dani's eyes had misted over and her lips had started to tremble, so I quickly let it go, making a silent promise to myself never to talk about this with her again.

The weekend was coming up fast, meaning that the dreaded party was getting closer too. I barely had time to blink before the time was upon us. It was Friday night and Ashley and Dani had planned to come over to mine to get ready. The damn party started at seven, and the boys were supposed to meet us at my house at half six so we could go together. In all truthfulness I think that they were all trying to limit my alone time as much as possible so that I wouldn't talk myself out of going. I didn't even know the guy hosting it, for gods sake. It was something like Brayden, Brian, or maybe Brandon. Ash had told me plenty of times but I couldn't bring myself to care enough to remember. All week the girls and I had been planning what costumes we would wear and I wasn't exactly helping matters by automatically hating every idea that came out of their mouths. But to be fair, some of the options given were just plain terrible. I got the traditional Halloween ideas first:

"What about a cat?"

"No."

"A devil?"

"No."

"A zombie?"

"Oh, god no."

Then there came the less Halloween-ish, more ridiculous ideas:

"Pumpkin?"

"You calling me fat?"

"How about an angel?"

"Ha. More like a bird in those wings."

"Oh! You could be a bumblebee!"

"What? That's not even remotely related to Halloween! You might as well paint my skin blue and call me a smurf for all the relativity it has."