Beautiful Creatures(60)

Why not now? When it mattered?

“Ethan, wake up. Please wake up.”

I opened my eyes. We were standing in the middle of the field, in exactly the same place we’d been before. I looked over at Lena. Her eyes were shining, about to spill over. “Oh, God.”

I bent down and touched the weeds where we had been standing. A reddish stain marked the plants and the ground around us. “It’s blood.”

“His blood?”

“I think so.”

“You were right. The bracelet was keeping us from seeing the vision. But why would Uncle Macon tell me it was for protection?”

“Maybe it is. That’s just not the only thing it’s for.”

“You don’t have to try to make me feel better.”

“There’s obviously something they don’t want us to find out, and it involves the locket and, I’m willing to bet, Genevieve. We’ve got to find out as much as we can about them both, and we have to do it before your birthday.”

“Why my birthday?”

“Last night, Amma and your uncle were talking. Whatever they don’t want us to know, it has something to do with your birthday.”

Lena took a deep breath, like she was trying to hold it together. “They know I’m going to go Dark.

That’s what this is about.”

“What does that have to do with the locket?”

“I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter. None of it matters. In four months, I’m not going to be me anymore. You saw Ridley. That’s what I’m going to turn into, or worse. If my uncle is right and I am a Natural, then I’ll make Ridley look like a volunteer for the Red Cross.”

I pulled her toward me, wrapping my arms around her like I could protect her from something we both knew I couldn’t. “You can’t think like that. There has to be a way to stop it, if that’s really the truth.”

“You don’t get it. There’s no way to stop it. It just happens.” Her voice was rising. The wind was starting to pick up.

“Okay, maybe you’re right. Maybe it just happens. But we’re going to find a way to make it not happen to you.”

Her eyes were clouding over like the sky. “Can’t we just enjoy the time we have left?” I felt the words for the first time.

The time we have left.

I couldn’t lose her. I wouldn’t. Just the thought of never being able to touch her again made me crazy.

Crazier than losing all my friends. Crazier than being the least popular guy in school. Crazier than having Amma perpetually angry at me. Losing her was the worst thing I could imagine. Like I was falling, but this time I would definitely hit the ground.

I thought about Ethan Carter Wate hitting the ground, the red blood in the field. The wind began to howl. It was time to go. “Don’t talk like that. We’re going to find a way.”

But even as I was saying it, I didn’t know if I believed it.

10.13

Marian the Librarian

It had been three days, and I still couldn’t stop thinking about it. Ethan Carter Wate had been shot, and he was probably dead. I had seen it with my own eyes. Well, technically, everyone from back then was dead by now. But, from one Ethan Wate to another, I was having trouble getting over the death of this particular Confederate soldier. More like, Confederate deserter. My greatgreat-greatgreat-uncle.

I thought about it during Algebra II, while Savannah choked on her equation in front of the class, but Mr. Bates was too busy reading the latest issue of Guns and Ammo to notice. I thought about it during the Future Farmers of America assembly, when I couldn’t find Lena and ended up sitting with the band.

Link was sitting with the guys a few rows behind me, but I didn’t notice until Shawn and Emory started making animal noises. After a while, I couldn’t hear them anymore. My mind kept going back to Ethan Carter Wate.

It wasn’t that he was a Confederate. Everyone in Gatlin County was related to the wrong side in the War Between the States. We were used to that by now. It was like being born in Germany after World War II, being from Japan after Pearl Harbor, or America after Hiroshima. History was a bitch sometimes. You couldn’t change where you were from. But still, you didn’t have to stay there. You didn’t have to stay stuck in the past, like the ladies in the DAR, or the Gatlin Historical Society, or the Sisters. And you didn’t have to accept that things had to be the way they were, like Lena. Ethan Carter Wate hadn’t, and I couldn’t, either.

All I knew was, now that we knew about the other Ethan Wate, we had to find out more about Genevieve. Maybe there was a reason we had stumbled across that locket in the first place. Maybe there was a reason we had stumbled across each other in a dream, even if it was more of a nightmare.

Normally, I would’ve asked my mom what to do, back when things were normal and she was still alive.

But she was gone, my dad was too out of it to be any help, and Amma wasn’t about to help us with anything that had to do with the locket. Lena was still being moody about Macon; the rain outside was a dead giveaway. I was supposed to be doing my homework, which meant I needed about a half gallon of chocolate milk and as many cookies as I could carry in my other hand.

I walked down the hallway from the kitchen and paused in front of the study. My dad was upstairs taking a shower, which was about the only time he left the study anymore, so the door was probably locked. It always was, ever since the manuscript incident.