Free Beast by Brie Spangler Page A

go whole hog and end up in prison. No doubt.
    My hand squeezes into a fist underneath the table. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if my fuse really lit. I haven’t punched anyone since last year. Some junior. JP had asked me to do it, like he’d done a thousand times, but this time I enjoyed it. Way too much. It’s not my size that scares me. It’s what I’m carrying inside. My secret Hulk is always crouching under the surface, needling me. But I know the tricks to keep it locked up.
    JP doesn’t have control. He’s all id: I want, I want, I want.
    He’d want to beat the shit out of someone and he wouldn’t know when to stop.
    I drop the fantasy. He’ll always be him, and I’ll always be me. He’ll have his face, his genes. All he has to do is hold on a few more years and he’s gone. His dad will pay for college without breaking a sweat. JP can dick around for four years and earn some bullshit degree, smile with his pretty teeth, and he’ll get by forever. Not me.
    But whatever. It’s science. It’s fine.
    Mom reaches out and lays a hand on my shoulder. “You okay, sweetie?”
    “Huh?” I snap to.
    “You look a little down.”
    “I’m okay,” I say. My plate is empty, food eaten on autopilot.
    JP guides half a meatball through thick red sauce, his eyes tracing its trajectory. “It’s been one of those weeks.”
    “Right?” I side with him.
    “You’re not kidding,” Mom agrees. “Can’t believe it’s only Wednesday.”
    “Hump Day is the worst. It’s like all I can do to make it to Friday,” JP says. “And even then, I don’t want to deal with Saturday and Sunday.”
    “You know you’re always welcome here,” Mom says.
    JP nods. “Thanks. It’s just, I don’t know, like my mom’s like even worse these days and it’s like no matter how—”
    My chair shrieks to the side as I get up. “I have a test on Friday. I should go study.” Throb goes the leg as soon as I stand.
    They both stare at me. Mom frowns.
    JP puts on the same face I catch him in all the time at school when he’s talking to the guys at our lunch table. The slightly glazed half smirk. His mask. “Kill that test with fire, Beast,” he says, one pump of his chin to finish off the sentence.
    The two of them pick up where they left off, JP starting to elaborate on the most recent rage his mom was in. She’s a mean drunk. It kicks me out a little faster. I just can’t hear about it, I don’t know why. It’s like I want to be there for him, but I prefer to leave it at that. I got you, we’re friends, moving on. Hearing about JP’s mom issues gives me a mild temptation to go down to the basement and see the trains.
    When my dad first got his diagnosis, he started building a train set. I was a baby at the time, so Mom told me all this later, but it’s still down here. Dusty and lost. As the years went by, my father expanded the table and added tiny mountains and villages. It takes up an entire corner of the basement next to full-length mirrors. Maybe he wanted the fake little trees and tracks to reflect into infinity. A miniature father and son wait at a faded red train station for a locomotive that will never come.
    The whole thing works. All the lights and switches and town houses with doors and windows that open up. He even left behind Christmas bunting for the entire town to get gussied up for the holidays. Mom tried to get me into the trains when I was eight and then again at ten. I never wanted to flick that switch and make them run. They made me deeply sad, but I didn’t know what kind of sad to call it.
    I still don’t.
    I wander into the living room to get my school bag, but my leg hurts so much I have to rest. Mom would’ve filled that frigging prescription if she knew what it felt like to have your bones try to grow inside a cast.
    I’m growing again. I know it. No book or quiz or podcast can save me.
    I think of Jamie. She understands.
    Another cup of coffee sounds so good right now—let’s