Beautiful Creatures(14)

She spoke first. “Thanks, I guess.”

“For not running you down?”

She smiled. “Yeah, that. And the ride.”

I stared at her smiling at me, almost like we were friends, which was impossible. I started to feel claustrophobic, like I had to get out of there. “It was nothing. I mean, it’s cool. Don’t worry about it.” I flipped up the hood of my basketball sweatshirt, the way Emory did when one of the girls he’d blown off tried to talk to him in the hall.

She looked at me, shaking her head, and tossed the sleeping bag at me, a little too hard. The smile was gone. “Whatever. I’ll see you around.” She turned her back on me, slipped through the gates and ran up the steep, muddy drive toward the house. I slammed the door.

The sleeping bag lay on the seat. I picked it up to throw it into the back. It still had the moldy campfire smell, but now it also smelled faintly of lemons and rosemary. I closed my eyes. When I opened them, she was already halfway up the driveway.

I rolled down my window. “She has a glass eye.”

Lena looked back at me. “What?”

I shouted, the rain dripping down the inside of the car door. “Mrs. English. You have to sit on her other side, or she’ll make you talk.”

She smiled as the rain rolled down her face. “Maybe I like to talk.” She turned back to Ravenwood and ran up the steps to the veranda.

I shifted the car into reverse and drove back down to the fork in the road, so I could turn the way I usually turned, and take the road I had taken my whole life. Until today. I saw something shining from the crack in the seat. A silver button.

I shoved it into my pocket, and wondered what I’d dream about tonight.

9.12

Broken Glass

Nothing.

It was a long, dreamless sleep, the first I’d had in a long time.

When I woke up, the window was closed. No mud in my bed, no mysterious songs on my iPod. I checked twice. Even my shower just smelled like soap.

I lay in my bed, looking up at my blue ceiling, thinking about green eyes and black hair. Old Man Ravenwood’s niece. Lena Duchannes, it rhymes with rain.

How far off could a guy be?

When Link pulled up, I was waiting at the curb. I climbed in and my sneakers sank into the wet carpet, which made the Beater smell even worse than usual. Link shook his head.

“I’m sorry, man. I’ll try to dry it out after school.”

“Whatever. Just do me a favor and get off the crazy train, or everyone’ll be talkin’ about you instead a Old Man Ravenwood’s niece.”

For a second, I considered keeping it to myself, but I had to tell someone. “I saw her.”

“Who?”

“Lena Duchannes.”

He looked blank.

“Old Man Ravenwood’s niece.”

By the time we pulled up in the parking lot, I had told Link the whole story. Well, maybe not the whole story. Even best friends have their limits. And I can’t say that he believed all of it, but then again, who would? I was still having a hard time believing it myself. But even if he wasn’t clear on the details, as we walked up to join the guys, he was clear about one thing. Damage control.

“It’s not like anything happened. You drove her home.”

“Nothing happened? Were you even listening? I’ve been dreaming about her for months and she turns out to be—”

Link cut me off. “You didn’t hook up or anything. You didn’t go in the Haunted Mansion, right? And you never saw, you know… him?” Even Link couldn’t bring himself to say his name. It was one thing to hang out with a beautiful girl, in any situation. It was another thing to hang out with Old Man Ravenwood.

I shook my head. “No, but—”

“I know, I know. You’re screwed up. I’m just sayin’, keep it to yourself, dude. All this is on a strictly need-to-know basis. As in, nobody else needs to know.” I knew that was going to be hard. I didn’t know it was going to be impossible.

When I pushed open the door to English, I was still thinking about everything—about her, the nothing that had happened. Lena Duchannes.

Maybe it was the way she wore that crazy necklace with all the junk on it, as if every single thing she touched could matter or did matter to her. Maybe it was the way she wore those beat-up sneakers whether she was wearing jeans or a dress, like she could take off running, any minute. When I looked at her, I was farther away from Gatlin than I’d ever been. Maybe it was that.

I guess when I started thinking, I stopped walking, and I felt someone bump into me. Only it wasn’t a steamroller this time, more like a tsunami. We collided, hard. The second we touched, the ceiling light shorted out over us, and a shower of sparks rained down on our heads.

I ducked. She didn’t.

“Are you trying to kill me for the second time in two days, Ethan?” The room went dead quiet.

“What?” I could barely get the word out.

“I said, are you trying to kill me again?”

“I didn’t know you were there.”

“That’s what you said last night.”

Last night. The two little words that could forever change your life at Jackson. Even though there were plenty of lights still working, you would’ve thought there was a spotlight on us, to go with our live audience. I could feel my face going red.