Beautiful Creatures(119)

I lay on my stomach on the floor, with my head tucked under the lowest branches of the fat white pine, just as I always had. The blue-green needles scratched my neck as I carefully pushed a string of tiny white lights, one by one, into the circular holes in the back of the broken village. I sat back to take a look, the soft white light turning colors through the painted paper windows of the town. We never found the people, and the tin cars and animals were still gone. The town was empty, but for the first time it didn’t seem deserted, and I didn’t feel alone.

As I sat there, listening to Amma’s pencil scratching, and my dad’s scratchy old holiday record, something caught my eye. It was small and dark, and snagged in a fold, between layers of the cotton snow. It was a star, about the size of a penny, painted silver and gold, and surrounded by a twisted halo made of what looked like a paper clip. It was from the town’s pipe-cleaner Christmas tree, which we hadn’t been able to find in years. My mom had made it in school, as a little girl in Savannah.

I put it in my pocket. I’d give it to Lena next time I saw her, for her charm necklace, for safekeeping.

So it didn’t get lost again. So I didn’t get lost again.

My mom would have liked that. Would like that. Just like she would have liked Lena—or maybe even, did.

Claim yourself.

The answer had been in front of us, all along. It was just locked away with all the books in my father’s study, stuck between the pages of my mother’s cookbook.

Snagged a little in the dusty snow.

1.12

Promise

There was something in the air. Usually, when you heard that, there wasn’t really something in the air.

But the closer it got to Lena’s birthday, the more I had to wonder. When we came back from winter break, the halls had been tagged with spray paint, covering the lockers and walls. Only it wasn’t the usual graffiti; the words didn’t even look like English. You wouldn’t have thought they were words at all, unless you had seen The Book of Moons.

A week later, every window in our English classroom was busted out. Again, it could have been the wind, except there wasn’t even a breeze. How could the wind target a single classroom, anyway?

Now that I wasn’t playing basketball, I had to take P.E. for the rest of the year, by far the worst class at Jackson. After an hour of timed sprints and rope burn from climbing a knotted rope to the gym ceiling, I got back to my locker to find the door open and my papers scattered all over the hall. My backpack was gone. Though Link found it a few hours later, dumped in a trashcan outside the gym, I had learned my lesson. Jackson High was no place for The Book of Moons.

From then on, we kept the Book in my closet. I waited for Amma to discover it, to say something, to cover my room with salt, but she never did. I had pored over the old leather book, with and without Lena, using my mom’s battered Latin dictionary, for the past six weeks. Amma’s oven mitts helped me keep the burns to a minimum. There were hundreds of Casts, and only a few of them were in English.

The rest were written in languages I couldn’t read, and the Caster language we couldn’t hope to decipher. As we grew more familiar with the pages, Lena grew more restless.

“Claim yourself. That doesn’t even mean anything.”

“Of course it does.”

“None of the chapters say anything about it. It’s not in any description of the Claiming in the Book.”

“We just have to keep looking. It’s not like we’re going to read it in the Cliff Notes.” The Book of Moons had to have the answer, if we could just find it. We couldn’t think about anything else, except the fact that a month from now we could lose it all.

At night, we stayed up late talking, from our respective beds, because even now, every night seemed closer to the night that could be our last.

What are you thinking, L?

Do you really want to know?

I always want to know.

Did I? I stared at the creased map on my wall, the thin green line connecting all the places I had read about. There they were, all the cities of my imaginary future, held together with tape and marker and pins. In six months, a lot had changed. There was no thin green line that could lead me to my future anymore. Just a girl.

But now, her voice was small, and I had to strain to hear her.

There’s a part of me that wishes we’d never met.

You’re kidding, right?

She didn’t answer. Not right away.

It just makes everything so much harder. I thought I had a lot to lose before, but now I have you.

I know what you mean.

I knocked the shade off the lamp next to my bed and stared straight into the bulb. If I stared right at it, the brightness would sting my eyes and keep me from crying.

And I could lose you.

That’s not gonna happen, L.

She was quiet. My eyes were temporarily blinded by swirls and streaks of light. I couldn’t even see the blue of my bedroom ceiling, though I was staring right at it.

Promise?

I promise.

It was a promise she knew I might not be able to keep. But I made it anyway because I was going to find a way to make it true.

I burned my hand as I tried to turn out the light.

2.04

The Sandman or Something Like Him

Lena’s birthday was in a week.

Seven days.

One hundred and sixty-eight hours.

Ten thousand and eight seconds.