Beautiful Chaos(84)

The problem with having actual evil in your life is that regular, everyday evil—administrators giving you detention, the textbook evil that makes up most of high school existence—starts to feel less terrifying. Unless it’s your father dating your glass-eyed English teacher.

No matter how you looked at it, Lilian English was evil—the real kind or your everyday variety. Either way, she was eating rubbery chicken with my dad, and I was screwed.




Turns out The Crucible is more about bitches than witches, as Lena would be the first to say. I was glad I waited until the end of the unit to finish reading the play. It made me hate half of Jackson High, and the whole cheer squad, even more than usual.

By the time class started, I was proud that I actually did the reading and knew a few things about John Proctor, the guy who gets completely shafted. What I hadn’t anticipated was costumes—girls in gray dresses and white aprons, and guys in Sunday school shirts with their pants tucked into their socks. I didn’t get the memo, or it was still in my backpack. Lena wasn’t wearing a costume either.

Mrs. English doled out our respective one-eyed glares and five-point deductions, and I tried to ignore the fact that my father was sitting in the back of the room with the school’s fifteen-year-old video camera.

The classroom was rearranged to look like a courtroom. The afflicted girls were on one side—led by Emily Asher. Apparently, their job was to act like phonies and pretend they were possessed. Emily was a natural. They all were. The magistrates were on one side of them and the witness box on the other.

Mrs. English turned her Good-Eye Side on me. “Mr. Wate. Why don’t you start off as John Proctor, and then we’ll switch around later on in the period?” I was the guy who was about to have his life destroyed by a bunch of Emily Ashers. “Lena, you can be our Abigail. We’ll start with the play and then spend the rest of the week on the actual cases the play was based on.”

I went over to my chair in one corner, and Lena went to the other.

Mrs. English waved to my dad. “Let’s start rolling, Mitchell.”

“I’m ready, Lilian.”

Everyone in class turned to look at me.


The reenactment went off without a hitch, which really meant it went on with all the customary hitches. The camera battery died in the first five minutes. The chief magistrate had to use the bathroom. The afflicted girls got caught texting, and the confiscation of their phones was a bigger affliction than the one the Devil was supposed to have brought on them in the first place.

My father didn’t say a word, but I knew he was there. His presence kept me from speaking, moving, or breathing when I could help it. Why was he here? What was he doing hanging out with Mrs. English? There was no rational explanation.

Ethan! You’re supposed to give your defense.

What?

I looked up at the camera. Everyone in the room was staring at me.

Start talking, or I’m going to have to fake an asthma attack, like Link did during the biology final.

“My name is John Proctor.”

I stopped. My name was John.

Just like John at County Care. And John sitting on Ridley’s pink shag carpet. Once again, there was me, and there was John.

What was the universe trying to tell me now?

“Ethan?” Mrs. English sounded annoyed.

I looked back down at my paper. “My name is John Proctor, and these allegations are false.” I didn’t know if it was the right line. I looked back at the camera, but I didn’t see my father standing behind it.

I saw something else. My reflection in the lens started to shift, like a ripple in the lake. Then it slowly came back into focus. For a second, I was staring at myself again.

I watched my image as the corners of my mouth turned up into a lopsided smile.

I felt like someone had punched me.

I couldn’t breathe.

Because I wasn’t smiling.

“What the hell?” My voice was shaking. The afflicted girls started laughing.

Ethan, are you okay?

“Do you have anything else to add to that poignant defense, Mr. Proctor?” Mrs. English was more than annoyed. She thought I was screwing around.

I shuffled through my notes, my hands shaking, and found a quote. “ ‘How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul, leave me my name.’ ”

I could feel her glass eye on me.

Ethan! Say something!

“Leave me my soul. Leave me my name.” It was the wrong line, but something about it felt right.

Something was following me. I didn’t know what it was, or what it wanted.

But I knew who I was.

Ethan Wate—son of Lila Jane Evers Wate and Mitchell Wate. Son of a Keeper and a Mortal, disciple of basketball and chocolate milk, of comic books and novels I hid under my bed. Raised by my parents and Amma and Marian, this whole town and everyone in it, good and bad.

And I loved a girl. Her name was Lena.

The question is, who are you? And what do you want from me?

I didn’t wait for an answer. I had to get out of that room. I pushed my way through the chairs. I couldn’t get to the door fast enough. I slammed against it as hard as I could, and ran down the hall without looking back.

Because I already knew the words. I’d heard them a dozen times, and every time they made less sense.

And every time, they made my stomach turn.