“Because this could be my last chance to be a normal girl, even if it is in Gatlin. Because you’re my only friend here. Because if I tell you, you won’t believe me. Or worse, you will.” She opened her eyes, and looked into mine. “Either way, you’re never going to want to talk to me again.”
There was a rap on the window, and we both jumped. A flashlight shone through the fogged-in glass. I dropped my hand and rolled down the window, swearing under my breath.
“Kids get lost on your way home?” Fatty. He was grinning like he’d stumbled across two doughnuts on the side of the road.
“No, sir. We’re on our way home right now.”
“This isn’t your car, Mr. Wate.”
“No, sir.”
He shined his flashlight over at Lena, lingering for a long time. “Then move on, and get home. Don’t want to keep Amma waitin’.”
“Yes, sir.” I turned the key in the ignition. When I looked in the rearview mirror, I could see his girlfriend, Amanda, in the front seat of his police cruiser, giggling.
I slammed the car door. I could see Lena through the driver’s window now, as she idled in front of my house. “See you tomorrow.”
“Sure.”
But I knew we wouldn’t see each other tomorrow. I knew if she drove down my street that was it. It was a path, just like the fork in the road leading to Ravenwood or to Gatlin. You had to pick one. If she didn’t pick this one, now, the hearse would keep on going the other way at the fork, passing me by. Just as it had the morning I first saw it.
If she didn’t pick me.
You couldn’t take two roads. And once you were on one, there was no going back. I heard the motor grind into drive, but kept walking up to my door. The hearse pulled away.
She didn’t pick me.
I was lying on my bed, facing the window. The moonlight was streaming in, which was annoying, because it kept me from falling asleep when all I wanted was for this day to end.
Ethan. The voice was so soft I almost couldn’t hear it.
I looked at the window. It was locked, I had made sure of it.
Ethan. Come on.
I closed my eyes. The latch on my window rattled.
Let me in.
The wooden shutters banged open. I would say it was the wind, but of course there wasn’t even a breeze. I climbed out of bed and looked outside.
Lena was standing on my front lawn in her pajamas. The neighbors would have a field day, and Amma would have a heart attack. “You come down or I’m coming up.”
A heart attack, and then a stroke.
We sat out on the front step. I was in my jeans, because I didn’t sleep in pajamas, and if Amma had walked out and found me with a girl in my boxers, I would’ve been buried under the back lawn by morning.
Lena leaned back against the step, looking up at the white paint peeling off the porch. “I almost turned around at the end of your street, but I was too scared to do it.” In the moonlight, I could see her pajamas were green and purple and sort of Chinese.
“Then by the time I got home, I was too scared not to do it.” She was picking at the nail polish on her bare feet, which was how I knew she had something to say. “I don’t really know how to do this. I’ve never had to say it before, so I don’t know how it will all come out.”
I rubbed my messy hair with one hand. “Whatever it is, you can tell me. I know what it’s like to have a crazy family.”
“You think you know crazy. You have no idea.”
She took a deep breath. Whatever she was about to say, it was hard for her. I could see her struggling to find the words. “The people in my family, and me, we have powers. We can do things that regular people can’t do. We’re born that way, we can’t help it. We are what we are.”
It took me a second to understand what she was talking about, or at least what I thought she was talking about.
Magic.
Where was Amma when I needed her?
I was afraid to ask, but I had to know. “And what, exactly, are you?” It sounded so crazy that I almost couldn’t say the words.
“Casters,” she said quietly.
“Casters?”
She nodded.
“Like, spell casters?”
She nodded again.
I stared at her. Maybe she was crazy. “Like, witches?”
“Ethan. Don’t be ridiculous.”
I exhaled, momentarily relieved. Of course, I was an idiot. What was I thinking?
“That’s such a stupid word, really. It’s like saying jocks. Or geeks. It’s just a dumb stereotype.”
My stomach lurched. Part of me wanted to bolt up the steps, lock the door, and hide in my bed. But then another part of me, a bigger part, wanted to stay. Because hadn’t a part of me known all along? I may not have known what she was, but I had known there was something about her, something bigger than just that junky necklace and those old Chucks. What was I expecting, from someone who could bring on a downpour? Who could talk to me without even being in the room? Who could control the way the clouds floated in the sky? Who could fling open the shutters to my room from my front yard?
“Can you come up with a better name?”
“There’s not one word that describes all the people in my family. Is there one word that describes everyone in yours?”
I wanted to break the tension, to pretend she was just like any other girl. To convince myself that this could be okay. “Yeah. Lunatics.”
“We’re Casters. That’s the broadest definition. We all have powers. We’re gifted, just like some families are smart, and others are rich, or beautiful, or athletic.”
I knew what the next question was, but I didn’t want to ask it. I already knew she could break a window just by thinking about it. I didn’t know if I was ready to find out what else she could shatter.
Anyway, it was starting to feel like we were talking about just another crazy Southern family, like the Sisters. The Ravenwoods had been around as long as any family in Gatlin. Why should they be any less crazy? Or at least that’s what I tried to tell myself.
Lena took the silence as a bad sign. “I knew I shouldn’t have said anything. I told you to leave me alone. Now you probably think I’m a freak.”
“I think you’re talented.”
“You think my house is weird. You already admitted that.”
“So you redecorated, a lot.” I was trying to hold it together. I was trying to keep her smiling. I knew what it must have cost her to tell me the truth. I couldn’t run out on her now. I turned around and pointed to the lit study above the azalea bushes, hidden behind thick wooden shutters. “Look. See that window over there? That’s my dad’s study. He works all night and sleeps all day. Since my mom died, he hasn’t left the house. He won’t even show me what he’s writing.”
“That’s so romantic,” she said quietly.
“No, it’s crazy. But nobody talks about it, because there’s nobody left to talk to. Except Amma, who hides magic charms in my room and screams at me for bringing old jewelry into the house.”
I could tell she was almost smiling. “Maybe you are a freak.”
“I’m a freak, you’re a freak. Your house makes rooms disappear, my house makes people disappear. Your shut-in uncle is nuts and my shut-in dad is a lunatic, so I don’t know what you think makes us so different.”
Lena smiled, relieved. “I’m trying to find a way to see that as a compliment.”
“It is.” I looked at her smiling in the moonlight, a real smile. There was something about the way she looked just at that moment. I imagined leaning in a little farther and kissing her. I pushed myself away, up one step higher than she was.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just tired.” But I wasn’t.
We stayed like that, just talking on the steps, for hours. I lay on the step above; she lay on the step below. We watched the dark night sky, then the dark morning sky, until we could hear the birds.
By the time the he
arse finally pulled away, the sun was starting to rise. I watched Boo Radley lope slowly home after it. At the rate he was going, it would be sunset before that dog got home. Sometimes I wondered why he bothered.
Stupid dog.
I put my hand on the brass doorknob of my own door, but I almost couldn’t bring myself to open it. Everything was upside down, and nothing inside could change that. My mind was scrambled, all stirred up like a big frying pan of Amma’s eggs, the way my insides had felt like for days now.
T. I. M. O. R. O. U. S. That’s what Amma would call me. Eight across, as in another name for a coward. I was scared. I’d told Lena it was no big deal that she and her family—were what? Witches? Casters? And not the ten and two kind my dad had taught me about.
Yeah, no big deal.
I was a big liar. I bet even that stupid dog could sense that.
9.24
The Last Three Rows
You know that expression, “It hit me like a ton of bricks”? It’s true. The minute she turned the car around and ended up on my doorstep in her purple pajamas, that’s how I felt about Lena.
I knew it was coming. I just didn’t know it would feel like this.
Since then, there were two places I wanted to be: with Lena, or alone, so I could try to hammer it all out in my mind. I didn’t have the words for what we were. She wasn’t my girlfriend; we weren’t even dating. Up until last week, she wouldn’t even admit we were friends. I had no idea how she felt about me, and it wasn’t like I could send Savannah over to find out. I didn’t want to risk whatever we had, whatever it was. So why did I think about her every second? Why was I so much happier the minute I saw her? I felt like maybe I knew the answer, but how could I be sure? I didn’t know, and I didn’t have any way to find out.
Guys don’t talk about stuff like that. We just lie under the pile of bricks.
“So what are you writing?”
She closed the spiral notebook she seemed to carry around everywhere. The basketball team had no practice on Wednesdays, so Lena and I were sitting in the garden at Greenbrier, which I’d sort of come to think of as our special place, though that’s not something I would ever admit, not even to her. It was where we found the locket. It was a place we could hang out without everyone staring and whispering. We were supposed to be studying, but Lena was writing in her notebook, and I’d read the same paragraph about the internal structure of atoms nine times now. Our shoulders were touching, but we were facing different directions. I was sprawled in the fading sun; she sat under the growing shadow of a moss-covered oak. “Nothing special. I’m just writing.”
“It’s okay, you don’t have to tell me.” I tried not to sound disappointed.
“It’s just… it’s stupid.”
“So tell me anyway.”
For a minute she didn’t say anything, scribbling on the rubber rim of her shoe with her black pen. “I just write poems sometimes. I’ve been doing it since I was a kid. I know it’s weird.”
“I don’t think it’s weird. My mom was a writer. My dad’s a writer.” I could feel her smiling, even though I wasn’t looking at her. “Okay, that’s a bad example, because my dad is really weird, but you can’t blame that on the writing.”
I waited to see if she was going to just hand me the notebook and ask me to read one. No such luck. “Maybe I can read one sometime.”
“Doubtful.” I heard the notebook open again and her pen moving across the page. I stared at my chemistry book, rehearsing the phrase I’d gone over a hundred times in my head. We were alone. The sun was slipping away; she was writing poetry. If I was going to do it, now was the time.
“So, do you want to, you know, hang out?” I tried to sound casual.
“Isn’t that what we’re doing?”
I chewed on the end of an old plastic spoon I had found in my backpack, probably from a pudding cup. “Yeah. No. I mean, do you want to, I don’t know, go somewhere?”
“Now?” She took a bite out of an open granola bar, and swung her legs around so she was next to me, holding it out toward me. I shook my head.
“Not now. Friday, or something. We could see a movie.” I stuck the spoon in my chemistry book, closing it.
“That’s gross.” She made a face, and turned the page.
“What do you mean?” I could feel my face turning red.
I was only talking about a movie.
You idiot.
She pointed at my dirty spoon bookmark. “I meant that.”
I smiled, relieved. “Yeah. Bad habit I picked up from my mom.”
“She had a thing for cutlery?”
“No, books. She would have maybe twenty going at a time, lying all over our house—on the kitchen table, by her bed, the bathroom, our car, her bags, a little stack at the edge of each stair. And she’d use anything she could find for a bookmark. My missing sock, an apple core, her reading glasses, another book, a fork.”
“A dirty old spoon?”
“Exactly.”
“Bet that drove Amma crazy.”
“It drove her nuts. No, wait for it—she was—” I dug deep. “P. E. R. T. U. R. B. E. D.”
“Nine down?” She laughed.
“Probably.”
“This was my mom’s.” She held out one of the charms suspended from the long silver chain she never seemed to take off. It was a tiny gold bird. “It’s a raven.”
“For Ravenwood?”
“No. Ravens are the most powerful birds in the Caster world. Legend has it that they can draw energy into themselves and release it in other forms. Sometimes they’re even feared because of their power.” I watched as she let go of the raven and it fell back into place between a disc with strange writing etched into it and a black glass bead.
“You’ve got a lot of charms.”
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and looked down at the necklace. “They aren’t really charms, just things that mean something to me.” She held out the tab of the soda can. “This is from the first can of orange soda I ever drank, sitting on the porch of our house in Savannah. My gramma bought it for me when I came home from school crying because no one put anything in my valentine shoebox at school.”
“That’s cute.”
“If by cute you mean tragic.”
“I mean, that you kept it.”
“I keep everything.”
“What’s this one?” I pointed to the black bead.
“My Aunt Twyla gave it to me. They’re made from these rocks in a really remote area of Barbados. She said it would bring me luck.”
“It’s a cool necklace.” I could see how much it meant to her, the way she held each thing on it so carefully.
“I know it just looks like a bunch of junk. But I’ve never lived anywhere very long. I’ve never had the same house, or the same room for more than a few years, and sometimes I feel like the little pieces of me on this chain are all I have.”
I sighed and pulled a blade of grass. “Wish I’d lived in one of those places.”
“But you have roots here. A best friend you’ve had your whole life, a house with a bedroom that’s always been yours. You probably even have one of those doorjambs with your height written on it.” I did.
You do, don’t you?
I nudged her with my shoulder. “I can measure you on my doorjamb if you want. You can be immortalized for all time at Wate’s Landing.” She smiled into her notebook and pushed her shoulder against mine. From the corner of my eye, I could see the afternoon sunlight hitting one side of her face, a single page of her notebook, the curling edge of her black hair, the tip of one black Converse.
About the movies. Friday works.
Then she slid her granola bar into the middle of her notebook, and closed it.
The toes of our ratty black sneakers touched.
The more I thought about Friday night, the more nervous I got. It wasn’t a date, not officially—I knew that. But that was part of the problem. I wanted it to be. What do you do when you realize you
might have feelings for a girl who will barely admit to being your friend? A girl whose uncle kicked you out of their house, and who isn’t all that welcome in yours, either? A girl who almost everyone you know hates? A girl who shares your dreams, but maybe not your feelings?
I had no idea, which is why I didn’t do anything. But it didn’t stop me from thinking about Lena, and almost driving by her house on Thursday night—if her house wasn’t outside of town, if I had my own car. If her uncle wasn’t Macon Ravenwood. Those were the “ifs” that kept me from making a fool of myself.
Every day was like a day out of someone else’s life. Nothing had ever happened to me, and now everything was happening to me—and by everything, I really meant Lena. An hour was both faster and slower. I felt like I had sucked the air out of a giant balloon, like my brain wasn’t getting enough oxygen. Clouds were more interesting, the lunchroom less disgusting, music sounded better, the same old jokes were funnier, and Jackson went from being a clump of grayish-green industrial buildings to a map of times and places where I might run into her. I found myself smiling for no reason, keeping my earphones in and replaying our conversations in my head, just so I could listen to them again. I had seen this kind of thing before.
I had just never felt it.
By Friday night, I had been in a great mood all day, which meant I’d done worse than everyone in class, and better than everyone at practice. I had to put all that energy somewhere. Even Coach noticed, and kept me late to talk. “Keep it up, Wate, an’ you just might get yourself scouted next year.”
Link gave me a ride to Summerville after practice. The guys were planning on catching a movie, too, which I probably should have considered since the Cineplex only had one screen. But it was too late for that, and I was past the point of caring.
When we pulled up in the Beater, Lena was standing outside in the darkness, in front of the brightly lit theater. She was wearing a purple T-shirt, with a skinny black dress over it that made you remember how much of a girl she was, and trashed black boots that made you forget.