Beautiful Creatures(90)

It looked like a petition.

Mrs. Lincoln noticed us standing there and zeroed in on us. The other mothers followed her gaze. For a second, they didn’t say anything. I thought maybe they felt bad for me and they were going to put down their flyers, pack up their minivans and station wagons, and go home. Mrs. Lincoln, whose house I’d slept at almost as many times as my own. Mrs. Snow, who was technically my third cousin to some degree removed. Mrs. Asher, who bandaged my hand after I sliced it open on a fishing hook when I was ten. Miss Ellery, who gave me my first real haircut. These women knew me. They’d known me since I was a kid. There was no way they were going to do this, not to me. They were going to back down.

If I said it enough times maybe it would be true.

It’s going to be okay.

By the time I realized I was wrong, it was too late. They recovered from the momentary shock of seeing Lena and me.

When Mrs. Lincoln saw us, her eyes narrowed. “Principal Harper—” She looked from Lena to me, and shook her head. Let’s just say I wouldn’t be invited to Link’s for dinner again anytime soon. She raised her voice. “Principal Harper has promised his full support. We won’t tolerate the violence at Jackson that has plagued the city schools in this country. You young people are doin’ the right thing, pro-tectin’

your school, and as concerned parents”—she looked at us—“we’ll do anything we can to support you.”

Still holding hands, Lena and I walked past them. Emily stepped in front of us, shoving a flyer at me and ignoring Lena. “Ethan, come to the meetin’ today. The Guardian Angels could really use you.”

It was the first time she had spoken to me in weeks. I got the message. You’re one of us, last chance.

I pushed her hand away. “That’s just what Jackson needs, a little more of your angelic behavior. Why don’t you go torture some children. Rip the wings off a butterfly. Knock a baby bird out of its nest.” I pulled Lena past her.

“What would your poor mamma say, Ethan Wate? What would she think about the company you’re keepin’?” I turned around. Mrs. Lincoln was standing right behind me. She was dressed the way she always was, like some kind of punishing librarian out of a movie, with cheap drugstore glasses and angry-looking hair that couldn’t decide if it was brown or gray. You had to wonder, where did Link come from? “I’ll tell you what your mamma would say. She would cry. She would be turnin’ over in her grave.”

She had crossed the line.

Mrs. Lincoln didn’t know anything about my mother. She didn’t know my mom was the one who had sent the School Superintendent a copy of every ruling against book banning in the U.S. She didn’t know my mom cringed every time Mrs. Lincoln invited her to a Women’s Auxiliary or DAR meeting.

Not because my mom hated the Women’s Auxiliary or the DAR, but because she hated what Mrs.

Lincoln stood for. That small-minded brand of superiority women in Gatlin, like Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs.

Asher, were so famous for.

My mom had always said, “The right thing and the easy thing are never the same.” And now, at this very second, I knew the right thing to do, even if it wasn’t going to be easy. Or at least, the fallout wasn’t going to be.

I turned to Mrs. Lincoln and looked her in the eye. “‘Good for you, Ethan.’ That’s what my poor mamma would’ve said. Ma’am.”

I turned back toward the door of the administration building and kept walking, pulling Lena along beside me. We were only a few feet away. Lena was shaking, even though she didn’t look scared. I kept squeezing her hand, trying to reassure her. Her long black hair was curling and uncurling, as if she was about to explode, or maybe I was. I never thought I’d be so happy to set foot in the halls of Jackson, until I saw Principal Harper standing in the doorway. He was glaring at us like he wished he wasn’t the principal so he could pass out a flyer of his own.

Lena’s hair blew around her shoulders as we walked past him. Only he didn’t even look at us. He was too busy looking past us. “What the—”

I turned and looked over my shoulder just in time to see hundreds of neon green flyers, curling away from windshields and out of stacks and boxes and vans and hands. Flying away in a sudden gust of wind, as if they were a flock of birds soaring into the clouds. Escaping and beautiful and free. Kind of like that Hitchcock movie The Birds, only in reverse.

We could hear the shrieking until the heavy metal doors closed behind us.

Lena smoothed her hair. “Crazy weather you have down here.”

12.06

Lost and Found

I was almost relieved it was Saturday. There was something comforting about spending the day with women whose only magical powers were forgetting their own names. When I arrived at the Sisters’, Aunt Mercy’s Siamese cat, Lucille Ball—the Sisters loved I Love Lucy—was “exercising” in the front yard. The Sisters had a clothesline that ran the length of the yard, and every morning Aunt Mercy put Lucille Ball on a leash and hooked it onto the clothesline so the cat could exercise. I had tried to explain that you could let cats outside and they would come back whenever they felt like it, but Aunt Mercy had looked at me like I’d suggested she shack up with a married man. “I can’t just let Lucille Ball wander the streets alone. I’m sure someone would snatch her.” There hadn’t been a lot of catnappings in town, but it was an argument I’d never win.