Beautiful Chaos(22)

I wasn’t sure if that’s what this trip was really about. But it didn’t matter. Because when I pulled up to what was left of the house, it was suddenly about something different.

Reality.

“My stars,” Aunt Del whispered.

It was worse than the yellowed photos in my mom’s archive—the ones that captured what was left of the plantations after the Great Burning—black skeletons of enormous homes reduced to nothing but charred framework, as empty and hollow as the towns the Union soldiers left in their wake.

This house, Lena’s old house, was nothing more than a cracked foundation floating in a sea of blackened earth. Nothing had grown back. It was as if the ground itself had been scarred by what happened here.

How could Sarafine have done this to her family?

We didn’t matter to her. This proves it.

Lena dropped my hand and walked toward the rubble.

Let’s go, L. You don’t have to do this.

She looked back at me, green and gold eyes determined.

Yes, I do.

Lena turned to Aunt Del. “I need to see what happened here. Before… this.” She wanted her aunt to use her powers to peel away the layers of the past so Lena could see the house that once stood here—and, more important, see inside it.

Aunt Del looked more nervous than usual, her hair coming loose from her bun as we walked over to Lena. “My powers have been misfiring a bit. I may not be able to find exactly the moment you’re looking for, sweetheart.” What moment was that? The fire? I didn’t know if I could stand to see it—if Lena could. “They may not even work at all.”

I put my hand on the back of Lena’s neck gently. Her skin was hot.

“Can you try?”

Her face pained, Aunt Del looked at the burnt wood scattered around the base of the house. She nodded and held out her hand. The three of us sat on the black ground and joined hands, the heat beating down on us like a fire of its own.

“All right.” Aunt Del stared at the crumbling foundation intently, preparing to use her powers as a Palimpsest to show us the history of what was left of this place.


The air began to shift around us, slowly at first. Just as the world started to spin around me—I saw it for a split second. The shadow that always moved too fast for me to see. The one I felt in English class, the one following me. The one I couldn’t escape. It was watching, as if somehow it could see whatever we saw in the layers of Aunt Del’s perception.

Then a door opened into the past, and I was looking into a bedroom—

The walls are painted a pale, shimmering silver, and strands of white lights hang across the ceiling like stars in a magical sky. A girl with long black curls is standing by the window, staring out at the real sky. I know those curls and that beautiful profile—it’s Lena. But the girl turns, holding a bundle in her arms, and I realize it isn’t Lena. It’s Sarafine, her golden eyes shining. She stares at the baby, whose tiny hands are reaching. Sarafine holds out her finger, and the baby grabs it. She looks down at the baby, smiling. “You are such a special girl, and I will always take care of you—”

The door slams shut.

I waited for another to open, the way the doors always did, opening and closing like a chain reaction. But there was no point. The sky swirled back into view, and for a minute I was seeing double. Both Aunt Dels looked flustered.

“I—I’m sorry. Nothing like this has ever happened before. It doesn’t make sense.” Only it did. Aunt Del’s powers were out of whack, like everyone else’s. Usually, she could stand anywhere and see the pieces of the past, present, and future, like the pages of a flip-book. Now there were pages missing, and she had only caught a single glimpse of the past.

Aunt Del was visibly shaken and looked more confused than ever. I took her arm to help her up. “Don’t worry, Aunt Del. Macon’s going to figure out how to… fix the Order.” Which seemed like the right thing to say, even though it was clear that Gatlin—maybe the whole world—was pretty broken.

Lena looked broken, too. She pushed herself up and walked closer to what was left of the house, as if she could still see the bedroom. Rain pelted down without warning, and heat lightning flashed across the sky. The grasshoppers scattered, and within seconds I was drenched.

L?

Standing there in the rain reminded me of the first night we met, in the middle of Route 9. She looked almost the same, and yet so different.

Am I crazy, or did it look like Sarafine cared about me?

You’re not crazy.

But, Ethan, that’s not possible.

I pushed the wet hair out of my eyes.

Maybe it is.

The rain stopped instantly, from a downpour back to sunshine in the span of a few seconds. It happened all the time now—Lena’s powers fluctuating between extremes she couldn’t control.

“What are you doing?” I jogged to catch up with her.

“I want to see what’s left.” She wasn’t talking about the stones and burnt wood. Lena wanted a feeling to hold on to, proof of the one happy moment she had experienced here.

I followed her to the edge of the foundation, which was more of a wall now. I don’t know if it was my imagination, but the closer we got to the charred remains, the more it smelled like ash. You could see where the steps that led up to the porch had burned away. I was tall enough to see over the side of the wall. There was nothing but a hole filled with cracked concrete, splintered pieces of rotted black wood littering the ground.