Beautiful Chaos(16)

“This is our lucky day.” Link put up his fist, and I tapped his knuckles against mine. I would have gone with freaky.

It was confirmed when I caught a glimpse of Ridley wandering toward the bathroom. I could’ve sworn she had changed into a regular girl, wearing weirdly regular-girl clothes. And finally, when I slid into my seat next to Lena, on what should have been Mrs. English’s Good-Eye Side, I found myself in the Twilight Zone of classroom seating charts.

I was sitting where I always did. It was the room that had changed, or Mrs. English, who spent the whole period grilling students on the wrong side of the room.

“ ‘This is a sharp time, now, a precise time—we live no longer in the dusky afternoon when evil mixed itself with good and befuddled the world.’ ” Mrs. English looked up. “Miss Asher? How dusky a time would Arthur Miller think we live in today?”

Emily stared at her, shocked. “Ma’am? Don’t you mean to be asking—them?” Emily looked over at Abby Porter, Lena, and me, the only people who ever sat on the Good-Eye Side.

“I mean to be asking anyone who expects to pass my class, Miss Asher. Now answer the question.”

Maybe she put her glass eye in the wrong side this morning.

Lena smiled without looking up from her paper.

Maybe.

“Um, I think Arthur Miller would be majorly psyched that we aren’t all so messed up anymore.”

I peeked over my copy of The Crucible. And as Emily stammered to condemn a witch hunt not much different from the one she had all but led herself, that glass eye was staring straight at me.

As if it could not only see me but see right through me.




By the time school let out, things were starting to feel more normal. Ethan-Hating Emily hissed when I walked by, trailed by Eden and Charlotte, third and fourth in command, like the good old days. Ridley figured out that Lena had Cast a Facies Celata on her, Charming her Siren clothes so they appeared to be regular clothes. Now Ridley was back to her old self, black leather and pink stripes—revenge, vendettas, and all. Worse, as soon as the bell rang, she dragged both of us to basketball practice to watch Link’s scrimmage.

This time there was no hanging out in the doorway of the gym. Ridley wasn’t happy until we were sitting front and center. It was painful. Link wasn’t even on the court, and I had to watch my old teammates screwing up plays I used to run. But Lena and Ridley were bickering like sisters, and there was more going on in the stands than on the court. At least, until I saw Link get up from the bench.

“You Cast a Facies on me? Like I was some kind of Mortal?” Ridley was practically shrieking. “Like I wouldn’t know? So now you think I’m not only powerless but stupid?”

“It wasn’t my idea. Gramma told me to do it after she saw what you were wearing at the house.” Lena looked embarrassed.

Ridley’s face was as pink as the streaks in her hair. “It’s a free world. At least, it is outside of Gat-Dung. You can’t use your powers to dress people however you want. Especially not like that.” She shuddered. “I’m not one of Savannah Snow’s Barbie dolls.”

“Rid. You don’t have to be like them. But you don’t have to try so hard to be so different.”

“Same thing,” Ridley snapped.

“It’s not.”

“Look at that herd and tell me why I should care what those people think of me.”

Ridley had a point. As Link moved up and down the court, the eyes of the entire cheer squad were glued to him as if they were one person. Which, basically, they were. I didn’t even watch the court after a while. I already knew Link could probably hit a jumper from the stands, with his superstrength.

Ethan, he’s jumping too high.

By about three feet. Lena was stressing, but I knew Link had been fantasizing about this moment his entire life.

Yep.

And running too fast.

Yep.

Aren’t you going to say something?

Nope.

Nothing was going to stop him. Word had gotten around that Link had kicked up his game over the summer, and it seemed like half the school had shown up at practice to see for themselves. I couldn’t decide if it was further proof of how boring life was in Gatlin, or how bad our new Linkubus was at Mortal camouflage.

Savannah had the cheerleaders up and moving. To be fair, it was their practice, too. But to be fair to the rest of us, we weren’t exactly expecting Savannah’s new routines. From the looks of it, Emily, Eden, and Charlotte weren’t expecting them either. Emily didn’t even get off the bench.

From the sidelines, Savannah was jumping almost as high as Link. “Give me an L!”

“You’re not serious.” Lena almost spit out her soda.

You could hear Savannah across the gym. “Give me an I!”

I shook my head. “Oh, she’s serious. There’s nothing ironic about Savannah Snow.”

“Give me an N!”

“We are never going to hear the end of this.” Lena looked at Ridley. She was chewing gum like Ronnie Weeks slapping on nicotine patches when he quit smoking. The more Savannah jumped, the harder Ridley chewed.

“Give me a K!”

“Give me a break.” Ridley spit out her gum and stuck it underneath the bench. Before we could stop her, she was climbing over the aluminum bleachers, down to the court—superhigh sandals, pink-striped hair, black miniskirt, and all.