Beauty Read Online Free Page A

dark eyes on my face. Her hair swallowed her up, her tiny frame almost frail looking with it hanging about her shoulders like that. I’d seen her in passing. Floor five…I was almost sure of it. ‘The Witch’ is what June and her friends had started calling the girl when word got around that a dead rabbit had been found in front of her door. Probably a result of fraternity hazing around here, but she’d been the perfect target. She looked the part, always dressed in black and always muttering to herself. I rarely saw her out and about in the dorm, much less on campus. She was a loner. No friends. Just like me, but m isery did not want company right now.
    “I smelled fire…” she whispered, her round dark eyes going from my face to the burning magazine. “Did you need help?”
    Once again her eyes met mine, her thin lips creasing at the corner into a tiny smile. She looked twelve, wrapped in a plush white terry cloth robe, it swallowed her. I shook my head , my mouth opening but no sound coming out at first. A sob was stuck there, and it whined as I swallowed hard, my tongue thick and heavy.
    I’d been sitting here wishing on a star, the moon, genies, birthday cakes, wishing wells … W hatever I could think of that would make what just happened not be true. I’d never had a wish granted in my life. That was the stuff kids believed in. I wasn’t a kid anymore, and Brice Honeycutt had just raped me. Nothing was going to make it better.
    “Unless you’re here to make me skinny, then no…you can’t help,” I answered coldly, dismissing her as I lowered my head once again.
    The fire was closer now. It had spread to the carpet. A few more inches and it would be at the hem of my skirt. Not so horrible a way to die considering what had just happened to me. The door creaked, and I watched the flam e grow a little bigger, the hea t from it warming my calves as it inched a little closer. Black ash floated up from the burned pages of the magazine and I blinked. Black painted finger nails now fanned the blaze, water dousing it from above.
    “Your wish has been granted,” the girl whispered, setting an empty plastic cup beside me, bef ore turning and leaving .
    I thought she’d left already… Where did she get the water from anywa y ?
    My head lifted as the outer door creaked closed behind her, my eyes watching the t endrils of smoke as they curled up from the burnt spot in the carpet . Tiny droplets of wa ter dotted a trail leading from the RA’s master bedroom to the pitiful pile of ash in front of me. That door was locked… How had she gotten in?
    Of course there was a bathroom in there. All the resident advisors bedrooms had their own bath. And a tub… I realized, looking down at the blood that stained my thigh and crotch area of my skirt. If ever there were a better way to die. I heaved myself up from the floor, my eyes closed as I walked stiffly back into my bedroom. I didn’t need to look to see that there was a trail of blood –my blood-stained in a dark streak down the side of my comforter. My normally neat bed looked as if I’d had a nightmare, the fitted sheet pulled from the mattress and hanging to the floor. I couldn’t go near it. Luckily I had more of what I needed hidden in the box between the closet and the desk and I grabbed it quickl y, locking my bedroom door on the way out.
    My roommates would suspect that our living room had been crashed by other drunk students. No one would think t o look for me in the RA’s room. I didn’t bother to knock before I entered , there was no need; it had already been cleaned, checked and locked for next year’s occupant a week ago .
    It was as if the witch had left the door open on purpose…just for me. I already knew what I had to do to ease the overwhelming pain inside me. My heart pounded as my feet carried me towards the dripping sound coming fr om the bathroom. The door creaked as I pushed it with my foot and I froze under the harsh fluorescent