Beautiful Creatures(16)

Harper Lee never lived in Gatlin.

I looked around, stifling a laugh. Emily looked at me like I was nuts.

Lena raised her hand. “I think it means you have to give people a chance. Before you automatically skip to the hating part. Don’t you think so, Emily?” She looked at Emily and smiled.

“You little freak,” Emily hissed under her breath.

You have no idea.

I stared more closely at Lena. She had given up on the notebook; now she was writing on her hand in black ink. I didn’t have to see it to know what it was. Another number. 151. I wondered what it meant, and why it couldn’t go in the notebook. I buried my head back in Silver Surfer.

“Let’s talk about Boo Radley. What would lead you to believe he is leaving gifts for the Finch children?”

“He’s just like Old Man Ravenwood. He’s probably tryin’ to lure those kids into his house so he can kill them,” Emily whispered, loud enough for Lena to hear, but quiet enough to keep Mrs. English from hearing. “Then he can put their bodies in his hearse and take them out to the middle a nowhere and bury them.”

Shut up.

I heard the voice in my head again, and something else. It was a creaking sound. Faint.

“And he has that crazy name like Boo Radley. What is it again?”

“You’re right, it’s that creepy Bible name nobody uses anymore.”

I stiffened. I knew they were talking about Old Man Ravenwood, but they were also talking about Lena. “Emily, why don’t you give it a rest,” I shot back.

She narrowed her eyes. “He’s a freak. They all are and everyone knows it.”

I said shut up.

The creaking was getting louder and started to sound more like splintering. I looked around. What was that noise? Even weirder, it didn’t seem like anyone else heard it—like the voice.

Lena was staring straight ahead, but her jaw was clenched and she was unnaturally focused on one point in the front of the room, like she couldn’t see anything but that spot. The room felt like it was getting smaller, closing in.

I heard Lena’s chair drag across the floor again. She got out of her seat, heading toward the bookcase under the window, on the side of the room. Most likely pretending to sharpen her pencil so she could escape the inescapable, Jackson’s judge and jury. The sharpener began to grind.

“Melchizedek, that’s it.”

Stop it.

I could still hear the grinding.

“My grandmamma says that’s an evil name.”

Stop it stop it stop it.

“Suits him, too.”

ENOUGH!

Now the voice was so loud, I grabbed my ears. The grinding stopped. Glass went flying, splintering into the air, as the window shattered out of nowhere—the window right across from our row in the classroom, right next to where Lena stood, sharpening her pencil. Right next to Charlotte, Eden, Emily, and me. They screamed and dove out of their seats. That’s when I realized what that creaking sound had been. Pressure. Tiny cracks in the glass, spreading out like fingers, until the window collapsed inward like it had been pulled by a thread.

It was chaos. The girls were screaming. Everyone in the class was scrambling out of their seats. Even I jumped.

“Don’t panic. Is everyone all right?” Mrs. English said, trying to regain control.

I turned toward the pencil sharpener. I wanted to make sure Lena was okay. She wasn’t. She was standing by the broken window, surrounded by glass, looking panic-stricken. Her face was even paler than usual, her eyes even bigger and greener. Like last night in the rain. But they looked different. They looked frightened. She didn’t seem so brave anymore.

She held out her hands. One was cut and bleeding. Red drops splattered on the linoleum floor.

I didn’t mean it—

Did she shatter the glass? Or had the glass shattered and cut her?

“Lena—”

She bolted out of the room, before I could ask her if she was all right.

“Did you see that? She broke the window! She hit it with somethin’ when she walked over there!”

“She punched clean through the glass. I saw it with my own eyes!”

“Then how come she’s not gushin’ blood?”

“What are you, CSI? She tried to kill us.”

“I’m callin’ my daddy right now. She’s crazy, just like her uncle!”

They sounded like a pack of angry alley cats, shouting over each other. Mrs. English tried to restore order, but that was asking the impossible. “Everyone calm down. There’s no reason to panic. Accidents happen. It was probably nothing that can’t be explained by an old window and the wind.”

But no one believed it could be explained by an old window and the wind. More like an old man’s niece and a lightning storm. The green-eyed storm that just rolled into town. Hurricane Lena.

One thing was for sure. The weather had changed, all right. Gatlin had never seen a storm like this.

And she probably didn’t even know it was raining.

9.12

Greenbrier

D on’t.

I could hear her voice in my head. At least I thought I could.

It’s not worth it, Ethan.

It was.

That’s when I pushed back my chair and ran down the hallway after her. I knew what I’d done. I had taken sides. I was in a different kind of trouble now, but I didn’t care.