Beautiful Chaos(59)

Lena sat up so fast my arm went flying. “When? Why didn’t you tell me? What did she say?”

“A few nights ago. I didn’t feel like talking about it.” Especially not after I’d watched Lena’s mother plunge further into Darkness in the vision that same night. But it was more than that. I was coming unglued—talking to my unconscious aunt in my sleep, forgetting things when I was awake—and the impossibly heavy weight of doom lurking in the back of my mind. I didn’t want to admit how bad it was getting—to Lena or to myself.

Lena turned back to the basketball court. Her feelings were hurt. “Well, you’re full of information today.”

I wanted to tell you, L. But it was a lot to take in.

You could have told me like this.

I was trying to sort some things out. I think I’ve been mad at her all this time, like I blamed her for dying. How crazy is that?

Ethan, think about how I acted when I thought Uncle Macon was dead. I went crazy.

It wasn’t your fault.

I’m not saying it was. Why is everything about fault with you? It wasn’t your mom’s fault she died, but a part of you still blames her. It’s normal.

We sat next to each other on the bench without talking. Watching the cheerleaders cheer and the basketball players play below us.

Ethan, why do you think we found each other in our dreams?

I don’t know.

It’s not the way people usually meet.

I guess not. Sometimes I wonder if this is all one of those psychotic coma dreams. Maybe I’m lying in County Care right now.

I almost laughed, but I remembered something.

County Care.

The Eighteenth Moon. I asked my mom about it.

About John Breed?

I nodded.

All she said was something about evil having a lot of faces, and that it wasn’t up to me to judge.

Ah. The judging thing. See? She agrees with me. I knew your mom would like me.

I had one more crazy question.

L, have you ever heard of the Wheel of Fate?

No. What is it?

According to my mom, it’s not a thing. It’s a person.

“What?” I caught Lena off guard, and she stopped Kelting.

“The weird thing is, I keep hearing that phrase—the Wheel of Fate. Aunt Prue mentioned it, too, when I fell asleep in her room. It must have something to do with the Eighteenth Moon, or my mom wouldn’t have brought it up.”

Lena stood up and held out her hand. “Come on.”

I got up after her. “What are you doing?”

“Leaving Ridley to solve her own problems. Let’s go.”

“Where are we going?”

“To solve yours.”





10.09





Good-Eye Side


Apparently Lena believed the answer to my problems was waiting at the Gatlin County Library, because five minutes later we were there. A chain-link fence surrounded the building, which looked more like a construction site than a library now. The missing half of the roof was covered with enormous blue plastic tarps. The doorway was flanked by the carpet that had been ripped up from the concrete floor, destroyed as much by the water as the fire. We stepped over the charred boards and walked inside.

The opposite side of the library was sealed off with heavy plastic. It was the one that had burned. I didn’t want to know what it looked like over there. The side where we were standing was just as depressing. The stacks were gone, replaced by boxes of books that looked like they’d been sorted into piles.

The destroyed. The partly destroyed. The salvageable.

Only the card catalog sat there, untouched. We would never get rid of that thing.

“Aunt Marian! You here?” I wandered past the boxes, expecting to see Marian in her stocking feet, walking around with an open book.

Instead, I saw my dad, sitting on a box behind the card catalog, talking enthusiastically to a woman.

There was no way.

Lena stepped in front of me so they wouldn’t notice me looking like I was going to puke. “Mrs. English! What are you doing here? And Mr. Wate! I didn’t know that you knew our teacher.” She even managed a smile, as if running into them here was a pleasant coincidence.

I couldn’t stop staring.

What the hell is he doing here with her?

If my dad was flustered, it didn’t show. He looked excited—happy, even, which was worse. “Did you know Lilian knows almost as much about the history of this county as your mom did?”

Lilian? My mom?

Mrs. English looked up from the books scattered on the floor around her, and our eyes locked. For a second, her pupils looked slit-shaped, like a cat’s. Even the glass eye that wasn’t real.

L, did you see that?

See what?

But now there was nothing to see—only our English teacher blinking over her glass eye as she watched my father with her good one. Her hair was a graying mess that matched the lumpy gray sweater she was wearing over her shapeless dress. She was the toughest teacher at Jackson, if you ignored the loophole most people chose to exploit—the Bad-Eye Side. I never imagined that she existed outside the classroom. But here she was, existing all over my dad. I felt sick.

My dad was still talking. “She’s helping me with my research for The Eighteenth Moon. My book, remember?” He turned back to Mrs. English, grinning. “They don’t hear a word we say anymore. Half my students are listening to their iPods or talking on their cell phones. They might as well be deaf.”