Beautiful Darkness(21)

“Everything's fine.” It was going to work out. It had to. I didn't know how to be without her.

“It's hard to watch, dude. She's treatin’ you like —”

“Like what?” It was a challenge. I could feel my fingers curling into a fist. I was waiting for a reason, any reason. I felt like I was going to explode, that's how badly I wanted to hit something.

“The way girls usually treat me.” I think he was waiting for me to hit him. Maybe he even wanted me to, if it would've helped. He shrugged.

I uncurled my fingers. Link was Link, whether or not I felt like kicking his butt sometimes. “Sorry, man.”

Link laughed a little, taking off down the hall a little faster than usual. “No problem, Psycho.”

As I walked up the steps toward inevitable doom, I felt a familiar pang of loneliness. Maybe Link was right. I didn't know how much longer things could go on like this with Lena. Nothing was the same. If Link could see it, maybe it was time to face facts.

My stomach started to ache, and I grabbed my side, as if I could squeeze out the pain with my hands.

Where are you, L?





I slid into my desk just as the bell rang. Lena was sitting in the seat next to mine, on the Good-Eye Side, like she always had. But she didn't look like herself.

She was wearing one of those white V-neck undershirts that was too big, and a black skirt, a few inches shorter than she would've ever worn three months ago. You could barely see it under the shirt, which was Macon's. I almost didn't notice anymore. She also wore his ring, the one he used to twist on his finger when he was thinking, on a chain around her neck. It hung on a new chain, right next to my mother's ring. The old chain had broken the night of her birthday, lost somewhere in the ash. I had given her my mom's ring out of love, though I wasn't sure it felt like that to her now. Whatever the reason, Lena loyally carried our ghosts with her, hers and mine, refusing to take off either one. My lost mother and her lost uncle, caught in circles of gold and platinum and other precious metals, hanging above her charm necklace and hidden in layers of cotton that didn't belong to her.

Mrs. English was already passing out the tests, and she didn't look amused that half the class was wearing a bathing suit or carrying a beach towel. Emily was doing both.

“Five short answers, ten points each, multiple-choice, twenty-five points, and the essay, twenty-five. Sorry, no Boo Radley this time. We're covering Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It's not summer yet, people.” We had been reading To Kill a Mockingbird in the fall. I remembered the first time Lena had shown up for class, carrying her own broken-in copy.

“Boo Radley's dead, Mrs. English. Stake through the heart.” I don't know who said it, one of the girls sitting in the back with Emily, but we all knew she was talking about Macon. The comment was meant for Lena, just like old times. I tensed up as the ripple of laughter died down. I was waiting for the windows to shatter or something, but there wasn't even a crack. Lena didn't react. Maybe she wasn't listening, or she didn't care what they said anymore.

“I bet Old Man Ravenwood isn't even in the town graveyard. That coffin's probably empty. If there is one.” The voice was loud enough for Mrs. English to direct her eye toward the back of the room.

“Shut up, Emily,” I hissed.

This time, Lena turned around and looked right at Emily. That's all it took — one look. Emily opened her test, like she had any idea what Jekyll and Hyde was about. No one wanted to take on Lena. They just wanted to talk about her. Lena was the new Boo Radley. I wondered what Macon would have had to say about that.

I was still wondering, when I heard a scream from the back of the room.

“Fire! Someone help!” Emily was holding her test, and it was burning up in her hand. She dropped the test on the linoleum floor and kept screaming. Mrs. English picked up her sweater off the back of her chair, walked to the back of the room, and swiveled so she could use her good eye. Three good slaps and the fire was out, leaving a charred and smoking test in the charred and smoking spot on the floor.

“I swear, it was some kinda spot-aneous combustion. It just started burnin’ while I was writin’.”

Mrs. English picked up a shiny black lighter from the center of Emily's desk. “Really? pack up your things. You can explain it all to Principal Harper.”

Emily stormed out the door while Mrs. English marched to the front of the classroom. As she passed me, I noticed the lighter was emblazoned with a silver crescent moon.

Lena turned back to her own test and started writing. I stared at the baggy white undershirt, her necklace jingling beneath it. Her hair was up, twisted into a weird knot, another new preference she never bothered to explain. I poked her with my pencil. She stopped writing and looked up at me, curving her mouth into a crooked half-smile, which was about the best she could do these days.

I smiled back at her, but she looked down at her test, as if she would rather consider assonance and consonance than look at me. Like it actually hurt to look at me — or, worse, she just didn't want to.

When the bell rang, Jackson High turned into Mardi Gras. Girls peeled off their tank tops and went running through the parking lot in their bikini tops. Lockers were emptied, notebooks dumped into the trash. Talking turned into shouting, then screaming, as sophomores turned into juniors and juniors into seniors. Everyone finally had what they'd been waiting for all year — freedom, and a fresh start.