Beautiful Creatures(124)

We stared up at the burning cypress. That was five days and counting.

Four days and counting, the storm clouds rolled in, and Lena stayed home sick. The Santee flooded and the roads were washed out north of town. The local news chalked it up to global warming, but I knew better. As I sat in Algebra II, Lena and I argued about the Book, which wasn’t going to help my grade on the pop quiz.

Forget about the Book, Ethan. I’m sick of it. It’s not helping.

We can’t forget about it. It’s your only chance. You heard your uncle. It’s the most powerful book in the Caster world.

It’s also the Book that cursed my whole family.

Don’t give up. The answer has to be somewhere in the Book.

I was losing her, she wouldn’t listen to me, and I was about to fail my third quiz of the semester. Great.

By the way, can you simplify 7x – 2(4x – 6)?

I knew she could. She was already in Trig.

What does that have to do with anything?

Nothing. But I’m failing this quiz.

She sighed.

A Caster girlfriend had some perks.

Three days and counting, the mudslides started and the upper field slid into the gym. The squad wouldn’t be cheering for a while, and the Disciplinary Committee was going to have to find a new place to hold their witch trials. Lena was still not back in school, but she was in my head the whole day.

Her voice grew smaller, until I could barely hear it over the chaos of another day at Jackson High.

I sat alone in the lunchroom. I couldn’t eat. For the first time since I met Lena, I looked at everyone around me and felt a pang of, I don’t know, something. What was it? Jealousy? Their lives were so simple, so easy. Their problems were Mortal-sized, tiny. The way mine used to be. I caught Emily looking at me. Savannah bounced into Emily’s lap, and with Savannah came the familiar snarl. It wasn’t jealousy. I wouldn’t trade Lena for any of this.

I couldn’t imagine going back to such a tiny life.

Two days and counting, Lena wouldn’t even speak to me. Half the roof blew off the DAR headquarters when the high winds hit. The Member Registries Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Asher had spent years compiling, the family trees going back to the May-flower and the Revolution, were destroyed. The Gatlin County patriots would have to prove their blood was better than the rest of ours, all over again.

I drove to Ravenwood on my way to school and banged on the door as hard as I could. Lena wouldn’t come out of the house. When I finally got her to open the door, I could see why.

Ravenwood had changed again. Inside, it looked like a maximum-security prison. The windows had bars and the walls were smooth concrete, except for in the front hallway, where they were orange and padded. Lena was wearing an orange jumpsuit with the numbers 0211, her birthday, stamped on it, her hands covered in writing. She looked kind of cool, actually, her messy black hair falling around her.

She could even make a prison jumpsuit look good.

“What’s going on, L?”

She followed my gaze over her shoulder. “Oh, this? Nothing. It’s a joke.”

“I didn’t know Macon joked.”

She pulled at a loose string on her sleeve. “He doesn’t. It’s my joke.”

“Since when can you control Ravenwood?”

She shrugged. “I just woke up yesterday and this is what it looked like. It must have been on my mind.

The house just listened, I guess.”

“Let’s get out of here. Prison is only making you more depressed.”

“I could be Ridley in two days. It’s pretty depressing.” She shook her head sadly and sat down on the edge of the veranda. I sat down next to her. She didn’t look at me, but instead stared down at her prison-issue white sneakers. I wondered how she knew what prison sneakers looked like.

“Shoelaces. You got that part wrong.”

“What?”

I pointed. “They take away your shoelaces in real prisons.”

“You have to let go, Ethan. It’s over. I can’t stop my birthday from coming, or the curse. I can’t pretend I’m a regular girl anymore. I’m not like Savannah Snow or Emily Asher. I’m a Caster.”

I picked up a handful of pebbles from the bottom step of the veranda and chucked one as far as I could.

I won’t say good-bye, L. I can’t.

She took a pebble from my hand and threw it. Her fingers brushed against mine and I felt the tiny pulse of warmth. I tried to memorize it.

You won’t have a chance to. I’ll be gone, and I won’t even remember I cared about you.

I was stubborn. I couldn’t listen to this. This time, the pebble hit a tree. “Nothing will change the way we feel about each other. That’s the one thing I know for sure.”

“Ethan, I may not even be capable of feeling.”

“I don’t believe that.” I flung the rest of the stones out into the overgrown yard. I don’t know where they landed; they didn’t make a sound. But I stared out that way, as hard as I could, swallowing the lump in my throat.

Lena reached out toward me, then hesitated. She put her hand down without so much as a touch.

“Don’t be mad at me. I didn’t ask for any of this.”

That’s when I snapped. “Maybe not, but what if tomorrow is our last day together? And I could be spending it with you, but instead you’re here, moping around like you’re already Claimed.”