Beautiful Darkness

  “Lemme show ya how it’s done, ladies. Stand back. You don’t wanna get hurt.”

  The girls giggled as Link gave it his best shot. The little meter climbed up, measuring Link’s strength and his chances of hooking up at the same time. It passed a REAL WUSS and WIMPY and headed toward the bell at the top, A REAL STUD. But it didn’t quite make it, stopping about halfway, at CHICKEN LITTLE. The girls rolled their eyes and headed for the Ring Toss.

  “This thing’s rigged. Everyone knows that,” Link shouted after them, dropping the mallet in the dirt. He was probably right, but it didn’t matter. Everything in Gatlin was rigged. Why would the carnival games be any different?

  “Hey, you got any money?” Link pretended to dig around in his pockets, like he might actually have more than a dime.

  I handed him a five, shaking my head. “You need a job, man.”

  “I’ve got a job. I’m a drummer.”

  “That’s not a job. It’s not called a job unless you get paid.”

  Link scanned the crowd, looking for girls or funnel cake. It was hard to tell which, since he responded equally to both. “We’re tryin’ to line up a gig.”

  “Are the Holy Rollers playing at the fair?”

  “This lame scene? Nah.” He kicked the ground.

  “They wouldn’t book you?”

  “They said we sucked. But people thought Led Zeppelin sucked, too.”

  As we walked through the fair, it was hard not to notice that the rides seemed to get a little smaller and the games a little shabbier every year. A pathetic-looking clown dragged a cluster of balloons past us.

  Link stopped, hitting me on the arm. “Check it out. Six o’clock. Third Degree Burns.” As far as Link was concerned, a girl couldn’t get hotter than that.

  He was pointing at a blond who was headed in our direction, smiling. It was Liv.

  “Link—” I tried to tell him, but he was on a mission.

  “As my mom would say, the Good Lord has good taste, hallelujah amen.”

  “Ethan!” She waved at us.

  Link looked at me. “Are you kiddin’ me? You’ve already got Lena. That’s just wrong.”

  “I don’t have Liv, and these days I don’t even know if I have Lena. Be cool.” I smiled at Liv, until I noticed she was wearing a faded Led Zeppelin T-shirt.

  Link saw it at the same time I did. “The perfect girl.”

  “Hey, Liv. This is Link.” I elbowed him, hoping he’d close his mouth. “Liv is Marian’s summer research assistant. She works with me at the library.” Liv held out her hand.

  Link stood there gawking. “Wow.” The thing about Link was, he never embarrassed himself, just me.

  “She’s an exchange student from England.”

  “Holy wow.”

  I looked at Liv and shrugged. “I told you.”

  Link broke out his biggest smile for Liv. “Ethan didn’t tell me he was workin’ with a hot babe a cosmic proportions.”

  Liv looked at me, pretending to be surprised. “You didn’t? I find that rather tragic.” She laughed and linked her arms through ours. “Come on, boys. Explain to me exactly how it is you make this strange cotton into candy.”

  “I can’t give away national secrets, ma’am.”

  “I can.” Link squeezed her arm with his.

  “Tell me everything.”

  “Tunnel of Love or the Kissing Booth?” Link grinned even wider.

  Liv tilted her head. “Hmm. That’s a tough one. I’m going to go with… the Ferris Wheel.”

  That’s when I caught sight of the familiar black hair and the scent of lemons and rosemary in the breeze.

  Nothing else was familiar. Lena was a few yards away, standing behind the ticket booth in what had to be Ridley’s clothes. Her black tank rode up on her stomach, and her black skirt was about five inches too short. There was a long streak of blue in her hair, twisting down from where it parted around her face, and down her back. But that wasn’t what shocked me most. Lena, the girl who never put anything on her face but sunscreen, was covered in makeup. Some guys liked girls with crap all over their faces, but I wasn’t one of them. Lena’s black-rimmed eyes were especially disturbing.

  Surrounded by cutoff denim and dust and straw and sweat and red and white plastic checkered tablecloths, she looked even more out of place. Her old boots were the only thing I recognized. And her charm necklace, dangling like a lifeline back to the real Lena. She wasn’t the kind of girl who wore stuff like that. At least, she didn’t used to be.

  The lowlifes were checking her out, three guys deep. I had to resist the urge to punch all of them in the face.

  I dropped Liv’s arm. “I’ll meet you guys over there.”

  Link couldn’t believe his luck. “No problem, man.”

  “We can wait,” Liv offered.

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll catch up with you.” I hadn’t expected to see Lena here, and I didn’t know what to say without sounding even more whipped than Link already thought I was. As if there’s something you can say to sound cool after your girlfriend takes off with another guy.

  “Ethan, I’ve been looking for you.” Lena walked toward me, and she sounded like herself, her old self—the Lena I remembered from a few months ago. The one I was desperately in love with, the one who loved me back. Even if she looked like Ridley. She stood on her tiptoes to push my hair out of my face, her fingers dragging slowly down my jawline.

  “That’s funny, because the last time I saw you, you were ditching me.” I tried to sound casual, but I just sounded angry.

  “I wasn’t ditching you, exactly.” She was defensive.

  “No, you were throwing trees at me and jumping on the back of a bike with some other guy.”

  “I wasn’t throwing trees.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

  She shrugged. “More like branches.”

  But I could tell I had gotten to her. She twisted the tiny paper-clip star I had given her, until I thought it was going to snap off of her necklace. “I’m sorry, Ethan. I don’t know what’s going on with me.” Her voice was soft, honest. “Sometimes I feel like everything is closing in, and I can’t take it. I wasn’t ditching you at the lake. I was ditching me.”

  “You sure about that?”

  She looked back up at me, a tear sliding down her cheek. She wiped it away, her fingers balled in frustration. She opened her fist and put her hand on my chest, resting it over my heart.

  It’s not you. I love you.

  “I love you.” She said it out loud this time and the words hung in the air between us, so much more public than when we Kelted. My chest tightened when she said it, and my breath caught in my throat. I tried to think of something sarcastic to say, but I couldn’t think about anything except how beautiful she was and how much I loved her, too.

  But I wasn’t letting her off that easy this time. I broke the truce. “What’s going on, L? If you love me so much, what’s the deal with John Breed?”

  She looked away without saying a word.

  Answer me.

  “It’s not like that, Ethan. John’s just a friend of Ridley’s. There’s nothing going on between us.”

  “How long has nothing been going on? Since you took that picture of him in the graveyard?”

  “It wasn’t a picture of him. It was his bike. I was meeting Ridley, and he happened to be there.” I noticed she ignored the question.

  “Since when have you been hanging out with Ridley? Did you forget the part where she separated us so your mother could get you alone and try to convince you to go over to the Dark side? Or when Ridley almost killed my father?”

  Lena pulled her arm away from me, and I could feel her withdrawing again, moving back into that place I couldn’t reach. “Ridley warned me you wouldn’t understand. You’re a Mortal. You don’t know anything about me, not the real me. That’s why I didn’t tell you.” I felt a sudden breeze as the storm clouds rolled in like a warning.

  “How do you know w
hether I would understand or not? You haven’t told me anything. Maybe if you gave me the chance instead of sneaking around behind my back—”

  “What do you want me to tell you? That I have no idea what’s going on with me? That something’s changing, something I don’t understand? That I feel like a freak, and Ridley’s the only one who can help me figure it out?”

  I could hear everything she was saying, but she was right. I didn’t understand. “Are you listening to yourself? You think Ridley’s trying to help you, that you can trust her? She’s a Dark Caster, L. Look at yourself! You think this is you? The things you’re feeling, she’s probably causing them.”

  I waited for the downpour, but instead the clouds parted. Lena moved closer and put her hands on my chest again, staring up at me, pleading. “Ethan, she’s changed. She doesn’t want to be Dark. It ruined her life when she Turned. She lost everyone, including herself. Ridley says going Dark changes the way you feel about people. You can sense the feelings you had, the things you loved, but Rid says the feelings are distant. Almost like they belong to someone else.”

  “But you said it wasn’t something she could control.”

  “I was wrong. Look at Uncle Macon. He knew how to control it, and Ridley’s learning, too.”

  “Ridley is not Macon.”

  Heat lightning flashed across the sky. “You don’t know anything.”

  “That’s right. I’m a stupid Mortal. I don’t know anything about your supersecret Caster world and skanky Caster cousin, or Caster Boy and his Harley.”

  Lena snapped. “Ridley and I were like sisters, and I can’t turn my back on her. I told you, I need her right now. And she needs me.”

  I didn’t say anything. Lena was so frustrated, I was surprised the Ferris Wheel hadn’t come loose and rolled away. I could see the lights from the Tilt-A-Whirl, spinning in the corner of my eye, churning and dizzying. It was the way I felt when I let myself get lost in Lena’s eyes. Sometimes love feels that way, and you find your way to a truce when you don’t really want to.

  Sometimes the truce finds you.

  She reached up and laced her fingers behind my neck, pulling me into her. I found her lips, and we were all over each other as if we were afraid we might never have the chance to touch again. This time, when her mouth tugged at my bottom lip, biting gently into my skin, there was no blood. Just urgency. I turned, pushing her against the rough wooden wall behind the ticket booth. Her breath was ragged, echoing in my ear even louder than my own. I raked my hands through her curls, guiding her mouth to mine. The pressure in my chest started to build, the shortness of breath, the sound of the air as I tried to fill my lungs. The fire.

  Lena felt it, too. She pushed away from me, and I bent over trying to catch my breath.

  “Are you okay?”

  I took a deep breath and stood up again. “Yeah, I’m all right. For a Mortal.”

  She smiled a real smile and reached for my hand. I noticed she had drawn crazy-looking designs on her palm in Sharpie. The black curls and spirals swirled from her palm around her wrist and up the base of her arm. The pattern looked like the henna the fortune-teller wore, in the tent that smelled like bad incense at the other edge of the fairgrounds.

  “What is that?” I held her wrist, but she pulled it away. Remembering Ridley and her tattoo, I hoped it was Sharpie.

  It is.

  “Maybe we should get you something to drink.” She led me around the side of the booth, and I let her. I couldn’t stay mad, not if there was a possibility the wall between us was finally coming down. When we kissed a minute ago, that’s what I felt. It was the opposite of the kiss on the lake, a kiss that had taken my breath away for different reasons. I might never know what that kiss was. But I knew this kiss, and I knew it was all I had—a chance.

  Which lasted two seconds.

  Because then I saw Liv, carrying two cotton candies in one hand and waving at me with the other, and I knew the wall was about to go back up, maybe for good. “Ethan, come on. I have your cotton candy. We’re going to miss the Ferris Wheel!”

  Lena dropped my hand. I knew how it must have looked—a tall blond, with long legs and two cotton candies and an expectant smile. I was doomed before Liv even got to the word we.

  That’s Liv, Marian’s research assistant. She works with me at the library.

  Do you work at the Dar-ee Keen together, too? And the fair?

  Another flash of heat lightning tore across the sky.

  It isn’t like that, L.

  Liv handed me the cotton candy and smiled at Lena, holding out her hand.

  A blond? Lena looked at me. Seriously?

  “Lena, right? I’m Liv.”

  Ah, the accent. That explains everything.

  “Hi, Liv.” Lena pronounced her name like it was an inside joke between us. She didn’t touch Liv’s hand.

  If Liv noticed the slight, she ignored it, letting her hand drop. “Finally! I’ve been trying to get Ethan to introduce us properly, since it seems he and I are chained together for the summer.”

  Clearly.

  Lena wouldn’t look at me, and Liv wouldn’t stop looking at her.

  “Liv, this really isn’t a good—” I couldn’t stop it. They were two trains colliding in painfully slow motion.

  “Don’t be silly,” Lena interrupted, looking at Liv carefully, as if she was the Sybil in her family and she could read Liv’s face. “So nice to meet you.”

  He’s all yours. Take the whole town while you’re at it.

  It took Liv about two seconds to realize she’d walked into something, but she tried to fill the silence all the same. “Ethan and I talk about you all the time. He says you play the viola.”

  Lena stiffened.

  Ethan and I. There was nothing mean about the way Liv said it, but the words themselves were enough. I knew what they meant to Lena. Ethan and the Mortal girl, the girl who was everything Lena couldn’t be.

  “I’ve gotta go.” Lena turned around before I could catch her arm.

  Lena—

  Ridley was right. It was only a matter of time before another new girl came to town.

  I wondered what else Ridley had been telling her.

  What are you talking about? We’re just friends, L.

  We were just friends once, too.

  Lena took off, pushing her way through the sweaty crowd, causing a chain reaction of chaos as she went. Her ripple effect seemed endless. I couldn’t see it perfectly, but somewhere between us a clown fumbled as the balloon character in his hands popped, a child cried as a snow cone dropped, and a woman screamed as a popcorn machine began to smoke and catch fire. Even in the slippery blur of heat and arms and noise, Lena affected everything in her wake, a pull as powerful as the moon to the tides, or the planets to the sun. I was caught in her orbit, even as she pulled away from mine.

  I took a step, and Liv put her hand on my arm. Her eyes narrowed as if she was analyzing the situation, or registering it for the first time. “I’m sorry, Ethan. I didn’t mean to interrupt. I mean, if I was interrupting, you know. Something.” I knew she wanted me to tell her what happened without having to ask. I didn’t say anything, which I guess was my answer.

  The thing is, I didn’t take another step. I let Lena go.

  Link walked toward us, fighting his way through the crowd, carrying three Cokes and his own cotton candy. “Man, the line at the drink booth is brutal.” Link handed Liv a Coke. “What’d I miss? Was that Lena?”

  “She left,” Liv said quickly, as if things were that simple.

  I wished they were.

  “Whatever. Forget the Ferris Wheel. We’d better get over to the main tent. They’re gonna announce the winners a the pie-bakin’ contest any minute, and Amma will tan your hide if you aren’t there to watch her moment a glory.”

  “Apple pie?” Liv brightened.

  “Yep. And you eat it wearin’ Levi’s, with a napkin tucked into your shirt up here. Drinkin’ a Coke and drivin’ a Chevy, while si
nging ‘American Pie.’ ” I listened to Link ramble and Liv’s easy laugh as they walked ahead of me. They didn’t have nightmares. They weren’t haunted. They weren’t even worried.

  Link was right. We couldn’t miss Amma’s moment of glory. I sure wasn’t winning any ribbons today. The truth was, I didn’t need to bring the mallet down on the old, rigged carnival scale to know what it would say. Link might be CHICKEN LITTLE, but I felt lower than A REAL WUSS. I could pound away all I wanted, but the answer would always be the same. No matter what I did lately, I was caught somewhere between LOSER and ZERO, and it was starting to feel like Lena was holding the hammer. I finally understood why Link wrote all those songs about getting dumped.

  6.15

  Tunnel of Love

  If it gets any hotter in here, people are goin’ to start droppin’ like flies. Flies are gonna start droppin’ like flies.” Link wiped his sweaty forehead with his sweaty hand, which sprayed liquid Link on those of us lucky to be standing next to him.

  “Thanks for that.” Liv wiped her face with one hand and pulled her damp shirt away from her body with the other. She looked miserable. The Southern Crusty tent was packed, and the finalists were already standing on the makeshift wooden stage. I tried to see over the row of enormous women in front of us, but it was like standing in the Jackson cafeteria line on cookie day.

  “I can barely see the stage.” Liv stood on her toes. “Is something supposed to be happening? Did we miss it?”

  “Hold on.” Link tried to edge between the smaller of the two enormous women in front of us. “Yeah, we can’t get any closer. I give up.”

  “There’s Amma.” I pointed. “She’s won first place almost every year.”

  “Amma Treadeau,” Liv said.