Beautiful Darkness

  “Not unless Delilah’s cooking up something quite a bit hotter than these chili chips.” She waved a fry in the air.

  “Fries.”

  “Exactly.”

  I turned bright red, thinking about how flustered Mrs. Lincoln had looked when we dropped those books off at her door. I didn’t point out to Liv that Delilah’s devotee was the mother of my best friend, and the most ruthlessly righteous woman in town.

  “So, you like the Dar-ee Keen?” I changed the subject.

  “I’m mad about it.” Liv took a bite of her cheeseburger, big enough to put Link to shame. I’d already seen her wolf down more than the average varsity basketball player at lunch. She didn’t seem to care what I thought about her one way or another, which was a relief. Especially since everything I did around Lena lately was wrong.

  “So what would we find in your brown paper package? Church books, romance novels, or both?”

  “I don’t know.” I had more secrets than I knew what to do with, but I wasn’t about to share any of them.

  “Come on. Everyone has secrets.”

  “Not everyone,” I lied.

  “There’s nothing at all beneath your paper?”

  “Nope. Just more paper, I guess.” In a way, I wished it was true.

  “So you’re rather like an onion?”

  “More like a regular old potato.”

  She picked up a fry and examined it. “Ethan Wate is no regular old potato. You, sir, are a french fry.” She popped it into her mouth, smiling.

  I laughed and conceded. “Fine. I’m a french fry. But no brown paper, nothing to tell.”

  Liv stirred her sweet tea with her straw. “That confirms it. You are definitely on the waiting list for Divinely Delicious Delilah.”

  “You caught me.”

  “I can’t promise anything, but I will tell you that I know the librarian. Rather well, it turns out.”

  “So you’ll hook me up?”

  “I will hook you up, dude.” Liv started laughing, and I did, too. She was easy to be around, like I’d known her forever. I was having fun, which, by the time we stopped laughing, turned into feeling guilty. Explain that to me.

  She returned to her fries. “I find all the secrecy sort of romantic, don’t you?” I didn’t know how to answer that, considering how deep the secrets went around here.

  “In my town, the pub is on the same street as the church, and the congregation moves directly from one to the other. Sometimes we even eat Sunday dinner there.”

  I smiled. “Is it divinely delicious?”

  “Nearly. Maybe not quite so hot. But the drinks are not quite so cold.” She pointed at her sweet tea with a fry. “Ice, my friend, is something you find on the ground more often than in your glass.”

  “You have a problem with Gatlin County’s famous sweet tea?”

  “Tea is meant to be hot, sir. From a kettle.”

  I stole a fry and pointed it back at her sweet tea. “Well, ma’am, to a strict Southern Baptist, that is the Devil’s drink.”

  “You mean because it’s cold?”

  “I mean because it’s tea. No caffeine allowed.”

  Liv looked shocked. “No tea? I’ll never understand this country.”

  I stole another fry. “You want to talk about blasphemy? You weren’t there when Millie’s Breakfast ’n’ Biscuits over on Main started serving premade freezer biscuits. My great-aunts, the Sisters, pitched a fit that nearly took down the place. I mean, chairs were flying.”

  “Are they nuns?” Liv stuck an onion ring inside her cheeseburger.

  “Who?”

  “The Sisters.” Another onion ring.

  “No. They’re actual sisters.”

  “I see.” She slapped the bun back down.

  “You don’t, not really.”

  She picked up the burger and took a bite. “Not at all.” We both started laughing again. I didn’t hear Mr. Gentry walk up behind us.

  “Y’all get enough to eat?” he asked, wiping his hands with a rag.

  I nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “How’s that girlfriend a yours?” He asked as if he was hoping I had come to my senses and dumped Lena by now.

  “Um, fine, sir.”

  He nodded, disappointed, and walked back toward the counter. “Say hello to Miss Amma for me.”

  “I take it he doesn’t like your girlfriend?” She said it like a question, but I didn’t know what to say. Was a girl still technically your girlfriend if she drove off with another guy? “I think Professor Ashcroft may have mentioned her.”

  “Lena. My—her name is Lena.” I hoped I didn’t look as uncomfortable as I felt. Liv didn’t seem to notice.

  She took another sip of her tea. “I’ll probably meet her at the library.”

  “I don’t know if she’ll be coming by the library. Things have been weird lately.” I don’t know why I said it. I barely knew Liv. But it felt good to say it out loud, and my insides untwisted a little.

  “I’m sure you’ll work it out. Back home, I fought with my boyfriend all the time.” Her voice was light. She was trying to make me feel better.

  “How long have you guys been together?”

  Liv waved her hand in the air, the weird watch sliding down her wrist. “Oh, we broke up. He was a bit of a prat. I don’t think he liked having a girlfriend who was smarter than he was.”

  I wanted to get off the subject of girlfriends, and ex-girlfriends. “So what’s that thing, anyway?” I nodded at the watch, or whatever it was.

  “This?” She held her wrist over the table so I could see the clunky black watch. It had three dials and a little silver needle that rested on a rectangle with zigzags all over it, sort of like one of those machines that track the strength of earthquakes. “It’s a selenometer.”

  I looked at her blankly.

  “Selene, the Greek goddess of the moon. Metron, or ‘measure’ in Greek.” She smiled. “A little rusty on your Greek etymology?”

  “A little.”

  “It measures the moon’s gravitational pull.” She turned one of the dials, thoughtfully. Numbers appeared under the pointer.

  “Why do you care about the moon’s gravitational pull?”

  “I’m an amateur astronomer. I’m interested in the moon, mostly. It has a tremendous impact on the Earth. You know, the tides and everything. That’s why I made this.”

  I almost spit out my Coke. “You made it? Seriously?”

  “Don’t be so impressed. It wasn’t that difficult.” Liv’s cheeks flushed again. I was embarrassing her. She reached for another fry. “These chips really are brilliant.”

  I tried to imagine Liv sitting in the English version of the Dar-ee Keen, measuring the gravitational pull of the moon over a mountain of fries. It was better than picturing Lena on the back of John Breed’s Harley. “So let’s hear about your Gatlin. The one where they call fries by the wrong name.” I had never been any farther than Savannah. I couldn’t imagine what life would be like in another country.

  “My Gatlin?” The pink spots on her cheeks faded.

  “Where you’re from.”

  “I’m from a town north of London, called Kings Langley.”

  “What?”

  “In Hertfordshire.”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  She took another bite of her burger. “Maybe this will help. It’s where they invented Ovaltine. You know, the drink?” She sighed. “You stir it in milk, and it makes the milk into a chocolate malted?”

  My eyes widened. “You mean chocolate milk? Kind of like Nesquik?”

  “Exactly. It’s amazing stuff, really. You should try it sometime.”

  I laughed into my Coke, which spilled on my faded Atari T-shirt. Ovaltine girl meets Quik boy. I wanted to tell Link, but he would get the wrong idea.

  Even though it had only been a few hours, I had the feeling she was a friend.

  “What do you do when you’re not drinking Ovaltine and making scientific devices, Olivia Du
rand of Kings Langley?”

  She crumpled the paper from her cheeseburger. “Let’s see. Mostly I read books and go to school. I study at a place called Harrow. Not the boys’ school.”

  “Is it?”

  “What?” She scrunched up her nose.

  “Harrowing?” H. A. R. R. O. W. I. N. G. Nine across, as in, gettin’ on in years and can’t take much more a these harrowin’ times, Ethan Wate.

  “You can’t resist a terrible pun, can you?” Liv smiled.

  “And you didn’t answer the question.”

  “No. Not especially harrowing. Not for me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, for starters, I’m a genius.” She was matter-of-fact, as if she’d just said she was blond, or British.

  “So why did you come to Gatlin? We’re not exactly a genius magnet.”

  “Well, I’m part of the AGE, Academically Gifted Exchange, between Duke University and my school. Will you pass the mayo-nnaise?”

  “Mann-aise.” I tried to say it slowly.

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Why would Duke bother to send you to Gatlin? So you could take classes at Summerville Community College?”

  “No, silly. So I could study with my thesis adviser, the renowned Dr. Marian Ashcroft, truly the only one of her kind.”

  “What is your thesis about?”

  “Folklore and mythology, as it relates to community building after the American Civil War.”

  “Around here most people still call it the War Between the States,” I said.

  She laughed, delighted. I was glad someone thought it was funny. To me, it was just embarrassing. “Is it true people in the South sometimes dress up in old Civil War costumes and fight all the battles over again, for fun?”

  I stood up. It was one thing for me to say it, but I didn’t want to hear it from Liv, too. “I think it’s time to get going. We’ve got more books to deliver.”

  Liv nodded, grabbing her fries. “We can’t leave these. We should save them for Lucille.”

  I didn’t mention that Lucille was used to Amma feeding her fried chicken and plates of leftover casserole on her own china plate, as the Sisters had instructed. I couldn’t see Lucille eating greasy fries. Lucille was partic-u-lar, as the Sisters would say. She liked Lena, though.

  As we headed for the door, a car caught my eye through the grease-coated windows. The Fastback was making a three-point turn at the end of the gravel parking lot. Lena made a point of not driving past us.

  Great.

  I stood and watched the car skid onto Dove Street.

  That night, I lay in my bed and stared up at the blue ceiling, my hands folded behind my head. A few months ago, this would’ve been when Lena and I went to bed in our separate rooms together—reading, laughing, talking through our days. I had nearly forgotten how to fall asleep without her.

  I rolled over and checked my old, cracked cell. It hadn’t really been working since Lena’s birthday, but still, it would ring when someone called me. If someone had.

  Not like she’d use the phone.

  Right then, I was back to being the same seven-year-old who had dumped every puzzle in my room into one giant, miserable mess. When I was a kid, my mom sat on the floor and helped me turn the mess into a picture. But I wasn’t a kid anymore, and my mom was gone. I turned the pieces over and over in my mind, but I couldn’t seem to get them sorted out. The girl I was madly in love with was still the girl I was madly in love with. That hadn’t changed. Only now the girl I was madly in love with was keeping secrets from me and barely speaking to me.

  Then there were the visions.

  Abraham Ravenwood, a Blood Incubus who had killed his own brother, knew my name and could see me. I had to figure out how the pieces fit together until I could see something—some kind of pattern. I couldn’t get the puzzle back into the box. It was too late for that. I wished someone could tell me where to put even one piece. Without thinking, I got up and pushed open my bedroom window.

  I leaned out and breathed in the darkness, when I heard Lucille’s distinctive meow. Amma must have forgotten to let her back inside. I was about to call out to tell her I was coming, when I noticed them. Under my window, at the edge of the porch, Lucille Ball and Boo Radley sat side by side in the moonlight.

  Boo thumped his tail, and Lucille meowed in response. They sat like that at the top of the porch steps, thumping and meowing, as if they were carrying on as civilized a conversation as any two townsfolk on a summer night. I don’t know what they were gossiping about, but it must have been big news. As I lay in bed listening to the quiet conversation of Macon’s dog and the Sisters’ cat, I drifted off before they did.

  6.15

  Southern Crusty

  Don’t you lay a finger on a single one a my pies until I ask you to, Ethan Wate.”

  I backed away from Amma, hands in the air. “Just trying to help.”

  She glared at me while she wrapped a sweet potato pie, a two-time winner, in a clean dish towel. The sour cream and raisin pie sat on the kitchen table next to the buttermilk pie, ready for the icebox. The fruit pies were still cooling on the racks, and a dusting of white flour coated every surface in the kitchen.

  “Only two days into summer and you’re already under my feet? You’ll wish you were over at the high school takin’ summer classes if you drop one a my prizewinnin’ pies. You want to help? Stop mopin’ and go pull the car around.”

  Tempers were running about as high as temperatures, and we didn’t say much as we bumped our way out toward the highway in the Volvo. I wasn’t talking, but I can’t say anybody noticed. Today was the single biggest day of Amma’s year. She had won first place in Baked and Fried Fruit Pies and second place in Cream Pies every year at the Gatlin County Fair for as long as I could remember. The only year she didn’t get a ribbon was last year, when we didn’t go because it was only two months after my mom’s accident. Gatlin couldn’t boast the biggest or the oldest fair in the state. The Hampton County Watermelon Festival had us beat by maybe two miles and twenty years, and the prestige of winning the Gatlin Peach Prince and Princess Promenade could hardly compare to the honor of placing in Hampton’s Melon Miss and Master Pageant.

  But as we pulled into the dusty parking lot, Amma’s poker face didn’t fool my dad or me. Today was all about pageants and pies, and if you weren’t balancing a pie wrapped as snugly as someone’s firstborn, you were pushing a kid in curlers holding a baton toward the pavilion. Savannah’s mom was Gatlin’s Peach Pageant organizer, and Savannah was the defending Peach Princess. Mrs. Snow would be overseeing pageants all day. There was no such thing as too young for a crown in our county. The fair’s Best Babies event, where rosy cheeks and diaper dispositions were compared like competing cobblers, drew more spectators than the Demolition Derby did. Last year, the Skipetts’ baby was disqualified for cheating when her rosy cheeks came off on the judges’ hands. The county fair had strict guidelines—no formal wear until two years old, no makeup until six years old, and then only “age-appropriate makeup” until twelve.

  Back when my mom was around, she was always ready to take on Mrs. Snow, and the Peach Pageants were one of her favorite targets. I could still hear her saying, “Age-appropriate makeup? Who are you people? What makeup is age-appropriate for a seven-year-old?” But even my family never missed a county fair, except last year. Now here we were again, carrying pies through the crowds and into the fairgrounds, same as ever.

  “Don’t jostle me, Mitchell. Ethan Wate, keep up. I’m not gonna let Martha Lincoln or any a those women beat me out a that ribbon on account a you two boys.” In Amma’s shorthand, those women were always the same women—Mrs. Lincoln, Mrs. Asher, Mrs. Snow, and the rest of the DAR.

  By the time my hand was stamped, it looked like three or four counties had already beaten us there. Nobody missed the opening day at the fair, which meant a trip to the fairgrounds halfway between Gatlin and Peaksville. And a trip to the fairgrounds meant a disastro
us amount of funnel cake, a day so hot and sticky you could pass out just from standing, and if you were lucky, some making out behind the Future Farmers of America poultry barns. My shot at anything but heat and funnel cake wasn’t looking too good this year.

  My dad and I dutifully followed Amma to the judging tables under an enormous Southern Crusty banner. Pies had a different sponsor every year, and when it couldn’t be Pillsbury or Sara Lee, you ended up with Southern Crusty. Pageants were crowd-pleasers, but Pies was the granddaddy of them all. The same families had been making the same recipes for generations, and every ribbon won was the pride of one great Southern house and the shame of another. Word had it that a few women from town had their sights set on keeping Amma from winning first place this year. Judging by the muttering I’d heard in the kitchen all week long, that would happen when hell froze over and those women were skating on it.

  By the time we had unloaded her precious cargo, Amma was already harassing the judges about table placement. “You can’t put a vinegar after a cherry, and you can’t put a rhubarb between my creams. It’ll take the taste right out a them, unless that’s what you boys are lookin’ to do.”

  “Here it comes,” said my dad, under his breath. As the words came out of his mouth, Amma gave the judges the Look, and they squirmed in their folding chairs.

  My dad glanced over at the exit, and we slunk outside before Amma had a chance to put us to work terrorizing innocent volunteers and intimidating judges. The moment we hit the crowds, we instinctively turned in opposite directions.

  “You going to walk around the fair with that cat?” My dad looked down at Lucille sitting in the dirt next to me.

  “Guess so.”

  He laughed. I still wasn’t used to hearing it again. “Well, don’t get into trouble.”

  “Never do.”

  My dad nodded at me, like he was the dad and I was the son. I nodded back, trying not to think about the last year, when I was the grown-up and he was out of his mind. He walked his way, I walked mine, and we both disappeared into the hot and sweaty masses.

  The fair was packed, and it took me a while to track down Link. But true to form, he was hanging out by the games, trying to flirt with any girl who would look at him, today being a prime opportunity to meet a few who weren’t from Gatlin. He was standing in front of one of those scales you hit with a giant rubber mallet to prove how strong you are, the mallet resting on his shoulder. He was in full drummer mode, in his faded Social Distortion T-shirt, with his drumsticks stuck in the back pocket of his jeans, and his wallet chain hanging below the sticks.