Beautiful Creatures(49)

“You’re wrong, Uncle M. Lena isn’t worth protecting, and she’s certainly not a Natural. You won’t know her fate until her birthday. You think that just because she’s sweet and innocent now, she’ll be Claimed by the Light? That means nothing. Wasn’t I the same a year ago? And from what Short Straw here has been telling me, she’s closer to going Dark than Light. Lightning storms? Terrorizing the high school?”

The wind grew stronger, and Lena was getting angrier. I could see the rage in her eyes. A window shattered, just like in English class. I knew where this was going.

“Shut up! You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Rain came pouring into the dining room. Wind followed, sending glasses and plates crashing to the floor, black liquid staining the floor in long streaks.

No one moved.

Ridley turned back to Macon. “You’ve always given her too much credit. She’s nothing.”

I wanted to break free from Ridley’s hold, to grab her and drag her out of the house myself, but I couldn’t move.

A second window shattered, then another, and another. Glass was breaking everywhere. China, wineglasses, the glass on every picture frame. Furniture was banging against the walls. And the wind, it was like a tornado had been sucked into the room with us. The sound was so loud, I couldn’t hear anything else. The tablecloth blew right off the table, with every candle, platter, and plate still on it, throwing everything against the wall. The room was spinning, I think. Everything was being sucked out into the foyer, toward the front door. Boo Radley screamed, that horrible human scream. Ridley’s grip seemed to loosen around my arm. I blinked hard, trying not to pass out.

And there, standing in the middle of it all, was Lena. She was perfectly still, her hair whipping in the wind around her. What was happening?

I felt my legs buckle. Just as I lost consciousness, I felt the wind, a surge of power that literally ripped my arm out of Ridley’s hand, as she was sucked out of the room, toward the front door. I collapsed to the floor, as I heard Lena’s voice, or thought I did.

“Get the hell away from my boyfriend, witch.”

Boyfriend.

Was that what I was?

I tried to smile. Instead, I blacked out.

10.09

A Crack in the Plaster

When I woke up, I had no idea where I was. I tried to focus on the first few things that came into view.

Words. Phrases handwritten in what looked like carefully scripted Sharpie, right on the ceiling over the bed.

moments bleed together, no span to time

There were hundreds of others, too, written everywhere, parts of sentences, parts of verses, random collections of words. On one closet door was scrawled fate decides. On the other, it said until challenged by the fated. Up and down the door I could see the words desperate relentless

condemned / empowered. The mirror said open your eyes; the windowpanes said and see.

Even the pale white lampshade was scribbled with the words illuminatethedarknessilluminatethedarkness over and over again, in an endlessly repeating pattern.

Lena’s poetry. I was finally getting to read some of it. Even if you ignored the distinctive ink, this room didn’t look like the rest of the house. It was small and cozy, tucked up under the eaves. A ceiling fan swirled slowly above my head, cutting through the phrases. There were stacks of spiral notebooks on every surface, and a stack of books on the nightstand. Poetry books. Plath, Eliot, Bukowski, Frost, Cummings—at least I recognized the names.

I was lying in a small white iron bed, my legs spilling over the edge. This was Lena’s room, and I was lying in her bed. Lena was curled in a chair at the foot of the bed, her head resting on the arm.

I sat up, groggy. “Hey. What happened?”

I was pretty sure I had passed out, but I was fuzzy on the details. The last thing I remembered was the freezing cold moving up my body, my throat closing up, and Lena’s voice. I thought she had said something about me being her boyfriend, but since I was about to pass out at the time and nothing had really happened between us, that was doubtful. Wishful thinking, I guessed.

“Ethan!” She jumped out of the chair and onto the bed next to me, although she seemed careful not to touch me. “Are you okay? Ridley wouldn’t let go of you, and I didn’t know what to do. You looked like you were in so much pain, and I just reacted.”

“You mean that tornado in the middle of your dining room?”

She looked away, miserable. “That’s what happens. I feel things, I get angry or scared and then…

things just happen.”

I reached over and put my hand over hers, feeling the warmth move up my arm. “Things like windows breaking?”

She looked back at me, and I curled my hand around hers until I was holding it in mine. A random crack in the old plaster in the corner behind her seemed to grow, until it curled its way across the ceiling, circled the frosted chandelier, and swirled its way back down. It looked like a heart. A giant, looping, girly heart had just appeared in the cracking plaster of her bedroom ceiling.

“Lena.”

“Yeah?”

“Is your ceiling about to fall in on our heads?”

She turned and looked at the crack. When she saw it, she bit her lip, and her cheeks turned pink. “I don’t think so. It’s just a crack in the plaster.”

“Were you trying to do that?”