Ethan took her cold hands in his, rough with cuts. “I understand if you can’t marry me now. I don’t have any money and now I don’t have any honor.”
“I don’t care if you have any money, Ethan Carter Wate. You are the most honorable man I’ve ever known. And I don’t care if my daddy thinks our differences are too great to overcome. He’s wrong. You’re home now and we’re gonna get married.”
Genevieve clung to him, afraid he might disappear into thin air if she let go. The smell brought her back to the moment. The rancid smell of lemons burning, of their lives burning. “We have to head for the river. That’s where Mamma would go. She’d head south toward Aunt Julianne’s place.” But Ethan never had time to answer. Someone was coming. Branches were cracking like someone was thrashing through the brush.
“Get behind me,” Ethan ordered, pushing Genevieve behind him with one arm and grabbing his rifle with the other. The brush parted and Ivy, Greenbrier’s cook, stumbled into view. She was still in her nightgown, black with smoke. She screamed at the sight of the uniform, too frightened to notice it was gray, not blue.
“Ivy, are you all right?” Genevieve rushed forward to catch the old woman, who was already starting to fall.
“Miss Genevieve, what in the world are you doin’ out here?”
“I was tryin’ to get to Greenbrier. To warn y’all.”
“It’s too late for that, child, and it wouldn’t a done no good. Those Blue Birds broke down the doors and walked right into the house, like it was their own. They gave the place the once-over to see what they wanted to take, and then they just started settin’ fires.” It was almost impossible to understand her. She was hysterical, and every few seconds she was wracked with a fit of coughing, choking on both the smoke and her tears.
“In all my life I never seen the likes a devils like that. Burnin’ a house with women in it. Every one a them will have to answer to God Almighty Himself in the hereafter.” Ivy’s voice faltered.
It took a moment for Ivy’s words to register.
“What do you mean, burnin’ a house with women in it?”
“I’m so sorry, child.”
Genevieve felt her legs buckle beneath her. She knelt in the mud, the rain running down her face, mixing with her tears. Her mother, her sister, Greenbrier—they were all gone.
Genevieve looked up at the sky.
“God’s the one who’s goin’ to have to answer to me.”
It pulled us out as fast as it had sucked us in. I was staring at the preacher again, and Lena was gone. I could feel her slip away.
Lena?
She didn’t answer. I sat in the church in a cold sweat, sandwiched between Aunt Mercy and Aunt Grace, who were fishing in their purses for change for the collection basket.
Burning a house with women in it, a house lined with lemon trees. A house where I’d bet Genevieve had lost her locket. A locket engraved with the day Lena was born, but over a hundred years before. No wonder Lena didn’t want to see the visions. I was starting to agree with her.
There were no coincidences.
9.14
The Real Boo Radley
Sunday night, I reread The Catcher in the Rye until I felt tired enough to fall asleep. Only I never got tired enough. And I couldn’t read, because reading didn’t feel the same. I couldn’t disappear into the character of Holden Caulfield, because I couldn’t get lost in the story, not the way you need to be, to become somebody else.
I wasn’t alone in my head. It was full of lockets, and fires, and voices. People I didn’t know, and visions I didn’t understand.
And something else. I put the book down and slid my hands behind my head.
Lena? You’re there, aren’t you?
I stared up at the blue ceiling.
It’s no use. I know you’re there. Here. Whatever.
I waited, until I heard it. Her voice, unfolding like a tiny, bright memory in the darkest, furthest corner of my mind.
No. Not exactly.
You are. You have been, all night.
Ethan, I’m sleeping. I mean, I was.
I smiled to myself.
No you weren’t. You were listening.
I was not.
Just admit it, you were.
Guys. You think everything is about you. Maybe I just like that book.
Can you just drop in whenever you want, now?
There was a long pause.
Not usually, but tonight it just sort of happened. I still don’t understand how it works.
Maybe we can ask someone.
Like who?
I don’t know. Guess we’ll have to figure it out on our own. Just like everything else.
Another pause. I tried not to wonder if the “we” spooked her, in case she could hear me. Maybe it was that, or maybe it was the other thing; she didn’t want me to find out anything, if it had to do with her.
Don’t try.
I smiled, and felt my eyes closing. I could barely keep them open.
I’m trying.
I turned out the light.
Good night, Lena.
Good night, Ethan.
I hoped she couldn’t read all my thoughts.
Basketball. I was definitely going to have to spend more time thinking about basketball. And as I thought about the playbook in my mind, I felt my eyes closing, myself sinking, losing control….
Drowning.
I was drowning.
Thrashing in the green water, waves crashing over my head. My feet kicked for the muddy bottom of a river, maybe the Santee, but there was nothing. I could see some kind of light, skimming the river, but I couldn’t get to the surface.
I was going down.
“It’s my birthday, Ethan. It’s happening.”
I reached out. She grabbed at my hand, and I twisted to catch it, but she drifted away, and I couldn’t hold on anymore. I tried to scream as I watched her pale little hand drift down toward the darkness, but my mouth filled with water and I couldn’t make a sound. I could feel myself choking. I was starting to black out.
“I tried to warn you. You have to let me go!”
I sat up in bed. My T-shirt was soaking wet. My pillow was wet. My hair was wet. And my room was sticky and humid. I guessed I’d left the window open again.
“Ethan Wate! Are you listenin’ to me? You better get yourself down here yesterday, or you won’t be havin’ breakfast again this week.”
I was in my seat just as three eggs over-easy slid onto my plate of biscuits and gravy. “Good morning, Amma.”
She turned her back to me without so much as a look. “Now you know there’s nothin’ good about it. Don’t spit down my back and tell me it’s rainin’.” She was still aggravated with me, but I wasn’t sure if it was because I had walked out of class or brought the locket home. Probably both. I couldn’t blame her, though; I didn’t usually get in trouble at school. This was all new territory.
“Amma, I’m sorry about leaving class on Friday. It’s not gonna happen again. Everything’ll be back to normal.”
Her face softened, just a little, and she sat down across from me. “Don’t think so. We all make our choices, and those choices have consequences. I expect you’ll have some hell to pay for yours when you get to school. Maybe you’ll start listenin’ to me now. Stay away from that Lena Duchannes, and that house.”
It wasn’t like Amma to side with everyone else in town, considering that was usually the wrong side of things. I could tell she was worried by the way she kept stirring her coffee, long after the milk had disappeared. Amma always worried about me and I loved her for it, but something felt different since I showed her the locket. I walked around the table and gave her a hug. She smelled like pencil lead and Red Hots, like always.
She shook her head, muttering, “Don’t want to hear about any green eyes and black hair. It’s fixin’ to come up a bad cloud today, so you be careful.”
Amma wasn’t just going dark. Today she was going pitch-black. I could feel
it coming up a bad cloud, myself.
Link pulled up in the Beater blasting some terrible tunes, as usual. He turned down the music when I slid into the seat, which was always a bad sign.
“We got trubs.”
“I know.”
“Jackson’s got itself a regular lynch mob this mornin’.”
“What’d you hear?”
“Been goin’ on since Friday night. I heard my mom talkin’, and I tried to call you. Where were you, anyway?”
“I was pretending to bury a hexed locket over at Greenbrier, so Amma would let me back in the house.”
Link laughed. He was used to talk about hexes and charms and the evil eye, where Amma was concerned. “At least she’s not makin’ you wear that stinkin’ bag a onion mess around your neck. That was nasty.”
“It was garlic. For my mom’s funeral.”
“It was nasty.”
The thing about Link was, we’d been friends since the day he gave me that Twinkie on the bus, and after that he didn’t care much what I said or did. Even back then, you knew who your friends were. That’s what Gatlin was like. Everything had already happened, ten years ago. For our parents, everything had already happened twenty or thirty years ago. And for the town itself, it seemed like nothing had happened for more than a hundred years. Nothing of consequence, that is.
I had a feeling that was all about to change.
My mom would have said it was time. If there was one thing my mom liked, it was change. Unlike Link’s mom. Mrs. Lincoln was a rage-aholic, on a mission, with a network—a dangerous combination. When we were in the eighth grade, Mrs. Lincoln ripped the cable box out of the wall because she found Link watching a Harry Potter movie, a series she had campaigned to ban from the Gatlin County Library because she thought it promoted witchcraft. Luckily, Link managed to sneak over to Earl Petty’s house to watch MTV, or Who Shot Lincoln would never have become Jackson High’s premier—and by premier, I mean only—rock band.
I never understood Mrs. Lincoln. When my mom was alive, she would roll her eyes and say, “Link may be your best friend, but don’t expect me to join the DAR and start wearing a hoop skirt for reenactments.” Then we’d both crack up, imagining my mom, who walked miles of muddy battlefields looking for old shell casings, who cut her own hair with garden scissors, as a member of the DAR, organizing bake sales and telling everyone how to decorate their houses.
Mrs. Lincoln was easy to picture in the DAR. She was the Recording Secretary, and even I knew that. She was on the Board with Savannah Snow’s and Emily Asher’s mothers, while my mom spent most of her time holed up in the library looking at microfiche.
Had spent.
Link was still talking and soon I’d heard enough to start listening. “My mom, Emily’s mom, Savannah’s… they’ve been burnin’ up the phone lines, last couple a nights. Overheard my mom talkin’ about the window breakin’ in English and how she heard Old Man Ravenwood’s niece had blood on her hands.”
He swerved around the corner, without even taking a breath. “And about how your girlfriend just got outta a mental institution in Virginia, and how she’s an orphan, and has bi-schizo-manic somethin’.”
“She’s not my girlfriend. We’re just friends,” I said automatically.
“Shut up. You’re so whipped I should buy you a saddle.” Which he would’ve said about any girl I talked to, talked about, or even looked at in the hall.
“She’s not. Nothing’s happened. We just hang out.”
“You’re so full a crap, you could pass for a toilet. You like her, Wate. Admit it.” Link wasn’t big on subtleties, and I don’t think he could imagine hanging out with a girl for any reason other than maybe she played lead guitar, except for the obvious ones.
“I’m not saying I don’t like her. We’re just friends.” Which was the truth, actually, whether or not I wanted it to be. But that was a different question. Either way, I must have smiled a little. Wrong move.
Link pretended to vomit into his lap and swerved, narrowly missing a truck. But he was just messing around. Link didn’t care who I liked, as long as it gave him something to hassle me about. “Well? Is it true? Did she?”
“Did she what?”
“You know. Fall outta the crazy tree and hit every branch on the way down?”
“A window broke, that’s all that happened. It’s not a mystery.”
“Mrs. Asher’s sayin’ she punched it out, or threw somethin’ at it.”
“That’s funny, seeing how Mrs. Asher isn’t in my English class, last time I checked.”
“Yeah well, my mom isn’t either, but she told me she was comin’ by school today.”
“Great. Save her a seat at our lunch table.”
“Maybe she’s done this at all her schools, and that’s why she was in some kinda institution.” Link was serious, which meant he’d overheard a whole lot of something since the window incident.
For a second, I remembered what Lena had said about her life. Complicated. Maybe this was one of those complications, or just one of the twenty-six thousand other things she couldn’t talk about. What if all the Emily Ashers of the world were right? What if I had taken the wrong side, after all?
“Be careful, man. Could be she’s got her own place over in Nutsville.”
“If you really believe that, you’re an idiot.”
We pulled into the school parking lot without speaking. I was annoyed, even though I knew Link was just trying to look out for me. But I couldn’t help it. Everything felt different today. I got out and slammed the car door.
Link called after me. “I’m worried about you, dude. You’ve been actin’ crazy.”
“What, are you and me a couple now? Maybe you should spend a little more time worrying about why you can’t even get a girl to talk to you, crazy or not.”
He got out of the car and looked up at the administration building. “Either way, maybe you better tell your ‘friend,’ whatever that means, to be careful today. Look.”
Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Asher were talking to Principal Harper on the front steps. Emily was huddled next to her mother, trying to look pathetic. Mrs. Lincoln was lecturing Principal Harper, who was nodding as if he was memorizing every word. Principal Harper may have been the one running Jackson High, but he knew who ran the town. He was looking at two of them.
When Link’s mom finished, Emily dove into a particularly animated version of the window-shattering incident. Mrs. Lincoln reached out and put her hand on Emily’s shoulder, sympathetic. Principal Harper just shook his head.
It was a bad cloud day, all right.
Lena was sitting in the hearse, writing in her beat-up notebook. The engine was idling. I knocked on the window and she jumped. She looked back toward the administration building. She had seen the mothers, too.
I motioned for her to open the door, but she shook her head. I walked around to the passenger side. The doors were locked, but she wasn’t going to get rid of me that easily. I sat down on the hood of her car and dropped my backpack on the gravel next to me. I wasn’t going anywhere.
What are you doing?
Waiting.
It’s gonna be a long wait.
I’ve got time.
She stared at me through the windshield. I heard the doors unlock. “Did anyone ever tell you that you’re crazy?” She walked around to where I was sitting on the hood, her arms folded, like Amma ready to scold.
“Not as crazy as you, I hear.”
She had her hair tied back with a silky black scarf that had conspicuously bright pink cherry blossoms scattered across it. I could imagine her staring at herself in the mirror, feeling like she was going to her own funeral, and tying it on to cheer herself up. A long black, I don’t know, a cross between a T-shirt and a dress, hung over her jeans and black Converse. She frowned and looked over at the administration building. The mothers were probably sitting in Principal Harper’s office right now.
“Can you hear them?”
She shook h
er head. “It’s not like I can read people’s minds, Ethan.”
“You can read mine.”
“Not really.”
“What about last night?”
“I told you, I don’t know why it happens. We just seem to—connect.” Even the word seemed hard for her to say this morning. She wouldn’t look me in the eye. “It’s never been like this with anyone before.”
I wanted to tell her I knew how she felt. I wanted to tell her when we were together like that in our minds, even if our bodies were a million miles away, I felt closer to her than I’d ever felt to anyone.
I couldn’t. I couldn’t even think it. I thought about the basketball playbook, the cafeteria menu, the green pea-soup-colored hallway I was about to walk down. Anything else. Instead, I cocked my head to the side. “Yeah. Girls say that to me all the time.” Idiot. The more nervous I got, the worse my jokes were.
She smiled, a wobbly, crooked smile. “Don’t try to cheer me up. It’s not going to work.” But it was.
I looked back at the front steps. “If you want to know what they’re saying, I can tell you.”
She looked at me, skeptically.
“How?”
“This is Gatlin. There’s nothing even close to a secret here.”
“How bad is it?” She looked away. “Do they think I’m crazy?”
“Pretty much.”
“A danger to the school?”
“Probably. We don’t take kindly to strangers around here. And it doesn’t get much stranger than Macon Ravenwood, no offense.” I smiled at her.
The first bell rang. She grabbed my sleeve, anxious. “Last night. I had a dream. Did you—”
I nodded. She didn’t have to say it. I knew she had been there in the dream with me. “Even had wet hair.”
“Me, too.” She held out her arm. There was a mark on her wrist, where I had tried to hold on. Before she had sunk down into the darkness. I hoped she hadn’t seen that part. Judging from her face, I was pretty sure she had. “I’m sorry, Lena.”
“It’s not your fault.”