Beautiful Creatures (8 page)

How far off could a guy be?

When Link pulled up, I was waiting at the curb. I climbed in and my sneakers sank into the wet carpet, which made the Beater
smell even worse than usual. Link shook his head.

“I’m sorry, man. I’ll try to dry it out after school.”

“Whatever. Just do me a favor and get off the crazy train, or everyone’ll be talkin’ about you instead a Old Man Ravenwood’s
niece.”

For a second, I considered keeping it to myself, but I had to tell someone. “I saw her.”

“Who?”

“Lena Duchannes.”

He looked blank.

“Old Man Ravenwood’s niece.”

By the time we pulled up in the parking lot, I had told Link the whole story. Well, maybe not the whole story. Even best friends
have their limits. And I can’t say that he believed all of it, but then again, who would? I was still having a hard time believing
it myself. But even if he wasn’t clear on the details, as we walked up to join the guys, he was clear about one thing. Damage
control.

“It’s not like anything happened. You drove her home.”

“Nothing happened? Were you even listening? I’ve been dreaming about her for months and she turns out to be—”

Link cut me off. “You didn’t hook up or anything. You didn’t go in the Haunted Mansion, right? And you never saw, you know…
him?” Even Link couldn’t bring himself to say his name. It was one thing to hang out with a beautiful girl, in any situation.
It was another thing to hang out with Old Man Ravenwood.

I shook my head. “No, but—”

“I know, I know. You’re screwed up. I’m just sayin’, keep it to yourself, dude. All this is on a strictly need-to-know basis.
As in, nobody else needs to know.” I knew that was going to be hard. I didn’t know it was going to be impossible.

♦  ♦  ♦

When I pushed open the door to English, I was still thinking about everything—about her, the nothing that had happened. Lena
Duchannes.

Maybe it was the way she wore that crazy necklace with all the junk on it, as if every single thing she touched could matter
or did matter to her. Maybe it was the way she wore those beat-up sneakers whether she was wearing jeans or a dress, like
she could take off running, any minute. When I looked at her, I was farther away from Gatlin than I’d ever been. Maybe it
was that.

I guess when I started thinking, I stopped walking, and I felt someone bump into me. Only it wasn’t a steamroller this time,
more like a tsunami. We collided, hard. The second we touched, the ceiling light shorted out over us, and a shower of sparks
rained down on our heads.

I ducked. She didn’t.

“Are you trying to kill me for the second time in two days, Ethan?” The room went dead quiet.

“What?” I could barely get the word out.

“I said, are you trying to kill me again?”

“I didn’t know you were there.”

“That’s what you said last night.”

Last night.
The two little words that could forever change your life at Jackson. Even though there were plenty of lights still working,
you would’ve thought there was a spotlight on us, to go with our live audience. I could feel my face going red.

“Sorry. I mean—hi,” I mumbled, sounding like an idiot. She looked amused, but kept walking. She slung her book bag on the
same desk she had been sitting at all week, right in front of Mrs. English. Good-Eye Side.

I’d learned my lesson. There was no telling Lena Duchannes where she could or couldn’t sit. No matter what you thought about
the Ravenwoods, you had to give her that. I slid into the seat next to her, smack in the middle of No Man’s Land. Like I had
all week. Only this time she was talking to me, and somehow that made everything different. Not bad-different, just terrifying.

She started to smile, but caught herself. I tried to think of something interesting to say, or at least not stupid. But before
I came up with anything, Emily sat down on the other side of me, with Eden Westerly and Charlotte Chase flanking her on either
side. Six rows closer than usual. Not even sitting on the Good-Eye Side was going to help me today.

Mrs. English looked up from her desk, suspicious.

“Hey, Ethan.” Eden turned back to me, and smiled, like I was in on their little game. “How’s it goin’?”

I wasn’t surprised to see Eden following Emily’s lead. Eden was just another one of the pretty girls who wasn’t quite pretty
enough to be Savannah. Eden was strictly second string, on the cheer squad and in life. Not a base, not a flyer, sometimes
she didn’t even get on the mat. Eden never gave up trying to do something to make that leap, though. Her thing was to be different,
except for, I guess, the part about being different. Nobody was different at Jackson.

“We didn’t want ya to have to sit up here all by yourself.” Charlotte giggled. If Eden was second string, Charlotte was third.
Charlotte was one thing no self-respecting Jackson cheerleader should ever be, a little chunky. She had never quite lost her
baby fat, and even though she was on a perpetual diet she just couldn’t shed those last ten pounds. It wasn’t her fault; she
was always trying. Ate the pie and left the crust. Double the biscuits and half the gravy.

“Can this book get any more borin’?” Emily didn’t even look my way. This was a territorial dispute. She might have dumped
me, but she certainly didn’t want to see Old Man Ravenwood’s niece anywhere near me. “Like I wanna read about a town fulla
people who are completely mental. We’ve got enough a that around here.”

Abby Porter, who usually sat on the Good-Eye Side, sat down next to Lena and gave her a weak smile. Lena smiled back and looked
as if she was going to say something friendly, when Emily shot Abby a look that made it clear that the famed Southern hospitality
did not apply to Lena. Defying Emily Asher was an act of social suicide. Abby pulled out her Student Council folder and buried
her nose in it, avoiding Lena. Message received.

Emily turned to Lena and expertly shot her a look that managed to work its way from the very top of Lena’s un-highlighted
hair, past her un-tanned face, down to the tips of her un-pinked fingernails. Eden and Charlotte swung around in their chairs
to face Emily, as if Lena didn’t exist. The girl freeze-out—today it was negative fifteen.

Lena opened her tattered spiral notebook and started to write. Emily got out her phone and began to text. I looked back down
at my notebook, slipping my Silver Surfer comic between the pages, which was a lot harder to do in the front row.

“All right, ladies and gentleman, since it looks like the rest of the lights will be staying on, you’re out of luck. I hope
everyone did the reading last night.” Mrs. English was scribbling madly on the chalkboard. “Let’s take a minute to discuss
social conflict in a small-town setting.”

♦  ♦  ♦

Someone should have told Mrs. English. Halfway through class, we had more than social conflict in a small-town setting. Emily
was coordinating a full-scale attack.

“Who knows why Atticus is willing to defend Tom Robinson, in the face of small-mindedness and racism?”

“I bet Lena Ravenwood knows,” Eden said, smiling innocently at Mrs. English. Lena looked down into the lines of her notebook,
but didn’t say a word.

“Shut up,” I whispered, a little too loudly. “You know that’s not her name.”

“It may as well be. She’s livin’ with that freak,” Charlotte said.

“Watch what you say. I hear they’re, like, a couple.” Emily was pulling out the big guns.

“That’s enough.” Mrs. English turned her good eye on us, and we all shut up.

Lena shifted her weight; her chair scraped loudly against the floor. I leaned forward in mine, trying to become a wall between
Lena and Emily’s minions like I could physically deflect their comments.

You can’t.

What? I sat up, startled. I looked around, but no one was talking to me; no one was talking at all. I looked at Lena. She
was still half-hidden in her notebook. Great. It wasn’t enough to dream real girls and hear imaginary songs. Now I had to
hear voices, too.

The whole Lena thing was really getting to me. I guess I felt responsible, in a way. Emily, and the rest of them, wouldn’t
hate her so much if it wasn’t for me.

They would.

There it was again, a voice so quiet I could barely hear it. It was like it was coming from the back of my head.

Eden, Charlotte, and Emily kept firing away, and Lena didn’t even blink, like she could just block them out as long as she
kept writing in that notebook of hers.

“Harper Lee seems to be saying that you can’t really get to know someone until you take a walk in his shoes. What do you make
of that? Anyone?”

Harper Lee never lived in Gatlin.

I looked around, stifling a laugh. Emily looked at me like I was nuts.

Lena raised her hand. “I think it means you have to give people a chance. Before you automatically skip to the hating part.
Don’t you think so, Emily?” She looked at Emily and smiled.

“You little freak,” Emily hissed under her breath.

You have no idea.

I stared more closely at Lena. She had given up on the notebook; now she was writing on her hand in black ink. I didn’t have
to see it to know what it was. Another number. 151. I wondered what it meant, and why it couldn’t go in the notebook. I buried
my head back in
Silver Surfer
.

“Let’s talk about Boo Radley. What would lead you to believe he is leaving gifts for the Finch children?”

“He’s just like Old Man Ravenwood. He’s probably tryin’ to lure those kids into his house so he can kill them,” Emily whispered,
loud enough for Lena to hear, but quiet enough to keep Mrs. English from hearing. “Then he can put their bodies in his hearse
and take them out to the middle a nowhere and bury them.”

Shut up.

I heard the voice in my head again, and something else. It was a creaking sound. Faint.

“And he has that crazy name like Boo Radley. What is it again?”

“You’re right, it’s that creepy Bible name nobody uses anymore.”

I stiffened. I knew they were talking about Old Man Ravenwood, but they were also talking about Lena. “Emily, why don’t you
give it a rest,” I shot back.

She narrowed her eyes. “He’s a freak. They all are and everyone knows it.”

I said shut up.

The creaking was getting louder and started to sound more like splintering. I looked around. What was that noise? Even weirder,
it didn’t seem like anyone else heard it—like the voice.

Lena was staring straight ahead, but her jaw was clenched and she was unnaturally focused on one point in the front of the
room, like she couldn’t see anything but that spot. The room felt like it was getting smaller, closing in.

I heard Lena’s chair drag across the floor again. She got out of her seat, heading toward the bookcase under the window, on
the side of the room. Most likely pretending to sharpen her pencil so she could escape the inescapable, Jackson’s judge and
jury. The sharpener began to grind.

“Melchizedek, that’s it.”

Stop it.

I could still hear the grinding.

“My grandmamma says that’s an evil name.”

Stop it stop it stop it.

“Suits him, too.”

ENOUGH!

Now the voice was so loud, I grabbed my ears. The grinding stopped. Glass went flying, splintering into the air, as the window
shattered out of nowhere—the window right across from our row in the classroom, right next to where Lena stood, sharpening
her pencil. Right next to Charlotte, Eden, Emily, and me. They screamed and dove out of their seats. That’s when I realized
what that creaking sound had been. Pressure. Tiny cracks in the glass, spreading out like fingers, until the window collapsed
inward like it had been pulled by a thread.

It was chaos. The girls were screaming. Everyone in the class was scrambling out of their seats. Even I jumped.

“Don’t panic. Is everyone all right?” Mrs. English said, trying to regain control.

I turned toward the pencil sharpener. I wanted to make sure Lena was okay. She wasn’t. She was standing by the broken window,
surrounded by glass, looking panic-stricken. Her face was even paler than usual, her eyes even bigger and greener. Like last
night in the rain. But they looked different. They looked frightened. She didn’t seem so brave anymore.

She held out her hands. One was cut and bleeding. Red drops splattered on the linoleum floor.

I didn’t mean it
—

Did she shatter the glass? Or had the glass shattered and cut her?

“Lena—”

She bolted out of the room, before I could ask her if she was all right.

“Did you see that? She broke the window! She hit it with somethin’ when she walked over there!”

“She punched clean through the glass. I saw it with my own eyes!”

“Then how come she’s not gushin’ blood?”

“What are you, CSI? She tried to kill us.”

“I’m callin’ my daddy right now. She’s crazy, just like her uncle!”

They sounded like a pack of angry alley cats, shouting over each other. Mrs. English tried to restore order, but that was
asking the impossible. “Everyone calm down. There’s no reason to panic. Accidents happen. It was probably nothing that can’t
be explained by an old window and the wind.”

But no one believed it could be explained by an old window and the wind. More like an old man’s niece and a lightning storm.
The green-eyed storm that just rolled into town. Hurricane Lena.

One thing was for sure. The weather had changed, all right. Gatlin had never seen a storm like this.

And she probably didn’t even know it was raining.

9.12