Beautiful Darkness

  Savannah and Emily walked past Link and me, ignoring us. Their short skirts were even shorter than usual, and we could see bikini strings hanging out from under their tank tops. Tie-dye and pink gingham.

  “Check it out. Bikini season.” Link grinned.

  I had almost forgotten. We were only an exam away from an afternoon at the lake. Everyone who was anyone was wearing bathing suits under their clothes today, since summer didn’t officially start until you had taken your first swim off the shores of Lake Moultrie. Kids from Jackson had a place we hung out, up past Moncks Corner, where the lake opened deep and wide into what felt like an ocean when you were swimming in it. Except for all the catfish and the swamp weeds, you could be out to sea. This time last year, I rode to the lake in the back of Emory’s brother’s truck with Emily, Savannah, Link, and half the basketball team. But that was last year.

  “You goin’?”

  “Nah.”

  “I’ve got an extra suit in the Beater, but it’s not as cool as these puppies.” Link pulled up his shirt so I could see his bathing suit, which was bright orange and yellow plaid. About as low-key as Link was.

  “I’ll pass.” He knew why I wasn’t going, but I wouldn’t say it. I had to act like things were okay.

  Like Lena and I were okay.

  Link wasn’t giving up today. “I’m sure Emily’s savin’ you half her towel.” It was a joke, because we both knew she wasn’t. Even the pity parade had moved on, along with the hate campaign. I guess we were such easy targets these days, the sport was gone, like shooting fish in a barrel.

  “Give it a rest.”

  Link stopped walking and put his hand up to stop me. I shoved his hand away before he could start talking. I knew what he was going to say, and as far as I was concerned, the conversation was over before it started.

  “Come on. I know her uncle died. Quit actin’ like you’re both still at the funeral. I know you love her, but…” He didn’t want to say it, even though we were both thinking it. He never brought it up anymore, because he was Link, and he sat at the lunch table with me when nobody else would.

  “Everything’s fine.” It was going to work out. It had to. I didn’t know how to be without her.

  “It’s hard to watch, dude. She’s treatin’ you like—”

  “Like what?” It was a challenge. I could feel my fingers curling into a fist. I was waiting for a reason, any reason. I felt like I was going to explode, that’s how badly I wanted to hit something.

  “The way girls usually treat me.” I think he was waiting for me to hit him. Maybe he even wanted me to, if it would’ve helped. He shrugged.

  I uncurled my fingers. Link was Link, whether or not I felt like kicking his butt sometimes. “Sorry, man.”

  Link laughed a little, taking off down the hall a little faster than usual. “No problem, Psycho.”

  As I walked up the steps toward inevitable doom, I felt a familiar pang of loneliness. Maybe Link was right. I didn’t know how much longer things could go on like this with Lena. Nothing was the same. If Link could see it, maybe it was time to face facts.

  My stomach started to ache, and I grabbed my side, as if I could squeeze out the pain with my hands.

  Where are you, L?

  I slid into my desk just as the bell rang. Lena was sitting in the seat next to mine, on the Good-Eye Side, like she always had. But she didn’t look like herself.

  She was wearing one of those white V-neck undershirts that was too big, and a black skirt, a few inches shorter than she would’ve ever worn three months ago. You could barely see it under the shirt, which was Macon’s. I almost didn’t notice anymore. She also wore his ring, the one he used to twist on his finger when he was thinking, on a chain around her neck. It hung on a new chain, right next to my mother’s ring. The old chain had broken the night of her birthday, lost somewhere in the ash. I had given her my mom’s ring out of love, though I wasn’t sure it felt like that to her now. Whatever the reason, Lena loyally carried our ghosts with her, hers and mine, refusing to take off either one. My lost mother and her lost uncle, caught in circles of gold and platinum and other precious metals, hanging above her charm necklace and hidden in layers of cotton that didn’t belong to her.

  Mrs. English was already passing out the tests, and she didn’t look amused that half the class was wearing a bathing suit or carrying a beach towel. Emily was doing both.

  “Five short answers, ten points each, multiple-choice, twenty-five points, and the essay, twenty-five. Sorry, no Boo Radley this time. We’re covering Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It’s not summer yet, people.” We had been reading To Kill a Mockingbird in the fall. I remembered the first time Lena had shown up for class, carrying her own broken-in copy.

  “Boo Radley’s dead, Mrs. English. Stake through the heart.” I don’t know who said it, one of the girls sitting in the back with Emily, but we all knew she was talking about Macon. The comment was meant for Lena, just like old times. I tensed up as the ripple of laughter died down. I was waiting for the windows to shatter or something, but there wasn’t even a crack. Lena didn’t react. Maybe she wasn’t listening, or she didn’t care what they said anymore.

  “I bet Old Man Ravenwood isn’t even in the town graveyard. That coffin’s probably empty. If there is one.” The voice was loud enough for Mrs. English to direct her eye toward the back of the room.

  “Shut up, Emily,” I hissed.

  This time, Lena turned around and looked right at Emily. That’s all it took—one look. Emily opened her test, like she had any idea what Jekyll and Hyde was about. No one wanted to take on Lena. They just wanted to talk about her. Lena was the new Boo Radley. I wondered what Macon would have had to say about that.

  I was still wondering, when I heard a scream from the back of the room.

  “Fire! Someone help!” Emily was holding her test, and it was burning up in her hand. She dropped the test on the linoleum floor and kept screaming. Mrs. English picked up her sweater off the back of her chair, walked to the back of the room, and swiveled so she could use her good eye. Three good slaps and the fire was out, leaving a charred and smoking test in the charred and smoking spot on the floor.

  “I swear, it was some kinda spot-aneous combustion. It just started burnin’ while I was writin’.”

  Mrs. English picked up a shiny black lighter from the center of Emily’s desk. “Really? pack up your things. You can explain it all to Principal Harper.”

  Emily stormed out the door while Mrs. English marched to the front of the classroom. As she passed me, I noticed the lighter was emblazoned with a silver crescent moon.

  Lena turned back to her own test and started writing. I stared at the baggy white undershirt, her necklace jingling beneath it. Her hair was up, twisted into a weird knot, another new preference she never bothered to explain. I poked her with my pencil. She stopped writing and looked up at me, curving her mouth into a crooked half-smile, which was about the best she could do these days.

  I smiled back at her, but she looked down at her test, as if she would rather consider assonance and consonance than look at me. Like it actually hurt to look at me—or, worse, she just didn’t want to.

  When the bell rang, Jackson High turned into Mardi Gras. Girls peeled off their tank tops and went running through the parking lot in their bikini tops. Lockers were emptied, notebooks dumped into the trash. Talking turned into shouting, then screaming, as sophomores turned into juniors and juniors into seniors. Everyone finally had what they’d been waiting for all year—freedom, and a fresh start.

  Everyone but me.

  Lena and I walked to the parking lot. Her bag swung as she walked, and we brushed against each other. I felt the electricity from months ago, but it was still cold. She stepped to the side, avoiding me.

  “So, how’d you do?” I was trying to make conversation, as if we were total strangers.

  “What?”

  “The English final.”

  “I probably failed it. I didn?
??t really do any of the reading.” It was hard to imagine Lena not doing the reading for class, considering she had answered every question for months when we read To Kill a Mockingbird.

  “Yeah? I aced it. I stole a copy of the test off Mrs. English’s desk last week.” It was a lie. I would have failed before I cheated in the House of Amma. But Lena wasn’t listening anyway. I waved my hand in front of her eyes. “L? Are you listening to me?” I wanted to talk to her about the dream, but first I had to get her to notice I was here.

  “Sorry. I have a lot on my mind.” She looked away. It wasn’t much, but it was more than I’d gotten out of her in weeks.

  “Like what?”

  She hesitated. “Nothing.”

  Nothing good? Or nothing you can talk about here?

  She stopped walking and turned to face me, refusing to let me in. “We’re leaving Gatlin. All of us.”

  “What?” I hadn’t seen this coming. Which must have been what she wanted. She was shutting me out so I couldn’t see inside, where things were happening, where she hid the feelings she didn’t want to share. I kept thinking she just needed time. I didn’t realize it was time away from me.

  “I didn’t want to tell you. It’s only for a few months.”

  “Does it have anything to do with—” The familiar panic in my stomach dropped like a stone.

  “It has nothing to do with her.” Lena looked down. “Gramma and Aunt Del think if I get away from Ravenwood, I might think about it less. About him less.”

  If I get away from you. That’s what I heard.

  “It doesn’t work like that, Lena.”

  “What?”

  “You aren’t going to forget Macon by running away.”

  She tensed at the mention of his name. “Yeah? Is that what your books say? Where am I? Stage five? Six, tops?”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “Here’s a stage for you. Leave it all behind and get away while you still can. When do I get to that one?”

  I stopped walking and looked at her. “Is that what you want?”

  She twisted her charm necklace on the long silver chain, touching the littlest bits of us, the things we had done and seen together. She twisted it so tight, I thought for a minute it would snap. “I don’t know. Part of me wants to leave and never come back, and part of me can’t bear to go because he loved Ravenwood and left it to me.”

  Is that the only reason?

  I waited for her to finish—to say she didn’t want to leave me. But she didn’t.

  I changed the subject. “Maybe that’s why we’re dreaming about that night.”

  “What are you talking about?” I had her attention.

  “The dream we had last night, about your birthday. I mean, it seemed like your birthday except for the part when Sarafine killed me. It seemed so real. I even woke up with this.” I held up my shirt.

  Lena stared at the raised pink scar, creating a jagged line across my abdomen. She looked like she was going to pass out. Her face went pale, her expression panicked. It was the first time I had seen any kind of emotion in her eyes in weeks. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t have a dream last night.” There was something about the way she said it, and the look on her face. She was serious.

  “That’s weird. Usually we both do.” I tried to sound calm, but I could feel my heart starting to pound. We had been having the same dreams since before we met. They were the reason for Macon’s midnight visits to my room—to take the pieces of my dreams he didn’t want Lena to see. Macon had said our connection was so strong that Lena dreamed my dreams. What did it say about our connection if she couldn’t anymore?

  “It was the night of your birthday, and I heard you calling me. But when I got to the top of the crypt, Sarafine was there and she had a knife.”

  Lena looked like she was going to be sick. I probably should have stopped there, but I couldn’t. I had to keep pushing, and I didn’t even know why. “What happened that night, L? You never really told me. Maybe that’s why I’m dreaming about it now.”

  Ethan, I can’t. Don’t make me.

  I couldn’t believe it. There she was back in my mind, Kelting again. I tried to crack open the door, an inch further, and get back into hers.

  We can talk about this. You have to talk to me.

  Whatever Lena was feeling, she shook it off. I felt the door between our minds slam shut. “You know what happened. You fell, trying to climb onto the crypt, and you were knocked out.”

  “But what happened to Sarafine?”

  She tugged on the strap of her bag. “I don’t know. There was fire everywhere, remember?”

  “And she just disappeared?” “I don’t know. I couldn’t see anything, and by the time the fire died down, she was gone.” Lena sounded defensive, as if I was accusing her of something. “Why are you making such a big deal about this? You had a dream, and I didn’t. So what? It’s not like the others. It doesn’t mean anything.” She started to walk away.

  I stepped in front of her and lifted my shirt again. “Then how do you explain this?”

  The jagged outline of the scar was still pink and newly healed. Lena’s eyes were wide, catching the sunlight of the first day of summer. In the sun, her hazel eyes seemed to glint with gold. She didn’t say a word.

  “And the song—it’s changing. I know you hear it, too. Time is high? Are we going to talk about that?” She started backing away from me, which I guess was her answer. But I didn’t care and it didn’t matter, because I couldn’t stop myself. “Something’s happening, isn’t it?”

  She shook her head.

  “What is it? Lena—”

  Before I could say anything else, Link caught up to us, snapping me with his towel. “Looks like nobody’s goin’ to the lake today, except maybe you two.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look at the tires, oh Whipped One. They’re all slashed, every car in the lot, even the Beater.”

  “Every car?” Fatty, Jackson’s truant officer, would be all over this. I calculated the number of cars in the lot. Enough to get the whole mess kicked up to Summerville, maybe even the sheriff’s office. This was out of Fatty’s league.

  “Every car except Lena’s.” Link pointed at the Fastback in the parking lot. I still had trouble getting my head around the idea that it was Lena’s car. The lot was in total chaos. Savannah was on her cell phone. Emily was screaming at Eden Westerly. The basketball team was going nowhere.

  Link bumped his shoulder against Lena’s. “I don’t really blame you for the rest a them, but did you have to get the Beater? I’m a little short on cash for new tires.”

  I looked at her. She was transfixed.

  Lena, did you?

  “It wasn’t me.” Something was wrong. The old Lena would have bitten our heads off for even asking.

  “You think it was Ridley or—” I looked over at Link. I didn’t want to say Sarafine’s name.

  Lena shook her head. “It wasn’t Ridley.” She didn’t sound like herself, or sure of herself. “She’s not the only one who hates Mortals, believe it or not.”

  I looked at her, but it was Link who said the one thing we were both thinking. “How do you know?”

  “I just do.”

  Over the chaos of the parking lot, a motorcycle gunned its engine. A guy in a black T-shirt swerved through the parked cars, blowing exhaust into the faces of angry cheerleaders, and disappeared out onto the road. He was wearing a helmet, so you couldn’t see his face. Just his Harley.

  But my stomach balled itself up, because the motorcycle looked familiar. Where had I seen it before? Nobody at Jackson had a motorcycle. The closest thing was Hank Porter’s ATV, which hadn’t worked since he rolled it after Savannah’s last party. Or so I’d heard, now that I no longer made the guest list.

  Lena stared after the motorcycle as if she had seen a ghost. “Let’s get out of here.” She headed for her car, practically running down the stairs.

  “Where
to?” I tried to catch up to her, Link jogging behind me.

  “Anywhere but here.”

  6.12

  The Lake

  If it wasn’t Ridley, why weren’t your tires slashed?” I pushed again. What happened in the parking lot didn’t make sense, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Or the motorcycle. Why did I recognize it?

  Lena ignored me, looking out at the water. “It’s probably a coincidence.” Neither of us believed in coincidences.

  “Yeah?” I grabbed a handful of sand, brown and gritty. Except for Link, we had the lake to ourselves. Everyone else was probably lined up at the BP trying to buy new tires before Ed ran out.

  In another town, you might have put your shoes back on and called the sand dirt and this part of our lake a swamp, but the murky water of Lake Moultrie was the closest thing Gatlin had to a swimming pool. Everyone hung out on the northern shore because it was on the edge of the woods and a hike from the cars, so you never ran into anyone who wasn’t in high school—especially not your parents.

  I didn’t know why we were here. It was weird to have the lake to ourselves, since the whole school had planned to be here today. I hadn’t believed Lena when she told me she wanted to come. But she did, and we had, and now Link was thrashing around in the water, and we were sharing a dirty towel Link had grabbed out of the back of the Beater before we left.

  Lena turned over next to me. For a minute, it seemed like everything was back to normal and she wanted to be there on my towel. But that only lasted until the silence set in. I could see her pale skin glistening under the thin white undershirt, which was sticking to her in the suffocating heat and humidity of a June South Carolina day. The sound of the cicadas chirping almost drowned out the awkward silence. Almost. Lena’s black skirt was riding low on her hips. I wished we had our bathing suits for the hundredth time. I’d never seen Lena in one. I tried not to think about it.