Beautiful Darkness(23)

I stepped in front of her and lifted my shirt again. “Then how do you explain this?”

The jagged outline of the scar was still pink and newly healed. Lena's eyes were wide, catching the sunlight of the first day of summer. In the sun, her hazel eyes seemed to glint with gold. She didn't say a word.

“And the song — it's changing. I know you hear it, too. Time is high? Are we going to talk about that?” She started backing away from me, which I guess was her answer. But I didn't care and it didn't matter, because I couldn't stop myself. “Something's happening, isn't it?”

She shook her head.

“What is it? Lena —”

Before I could say anything else, Link caught up to us, snapping me with his towel. “Looks like nobody's goin’ to the lake today, except maybe you two.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look at the tires, oh Whipped One. They're all slashed, every car in the lot, even the Beater.”

“Every car?” Fatty, Jackson's truant officer, would be all over this. I calculated the number of cars in the lot. Enough to get the whole mess kicked up to Summerville, maybe even the sheriff's office. This was out of Fatty's league.

“Every car except Lena's.” Link pointed at the Fastback in the parking lot. I still had trouble getting my head around the idea that it was Lena's car. The lot was in total chaos. Savannah was on her cell phone. Emily was screaming at Eden Westerly. The basketball team was going nowhere.

Link bumped his shoulder against Lena's. “I don't really blame you for the rest a them, but did you have to get the Beater? I'm a little short on cash for new tires.”

I looked at her. She was transfixed.

Lena, did you?

“It wasn't me.” Something was wrong. The old Lena would have bitten our heads off for even asking.

“You think it was Ridley or —” I looked over at Link. I didn't want to say Sarafine's name.

Lena shook her head. “It wasn't Ridley.” She didn't sound like herself, or sure of herself. “She's not the only one who hates Mortals, believe it or not.”

I looked at her, but it was Link who said the one thing we were both thinking. “How do you know?”

“I just do.”

Over the chaos of the parking lot, a motorcycle gunned its engine. A guy in a black T-shirt swerved through the parked cars, blowing exhaust into the faces of angry cheerleaders, and disappeared out onto the road. He was wearing a helmet, so you couldn't see his face. Just his Harley.

But my stomach balled itself up, because the motorcycle looked familiar. Where had I seen it before? Nobody at Jackson had a motorcycle. The closest thing was Hank Porter's ATV, which hadn't worked since he rolled it after Savannah's last party. Or so I'd heard, now that I no longer made the guest list.

Lena stared after the motorcycle as if she had seen a ghost. “Let's get out of here.” She headed for her car, practically running down the stairs.

“Where to?” I tried to catch up to her, Link jogging behind me.

“Anywhere but here.”





6.12





The Lake


If it wasn't Ridley, why weren't your tires slashed?” I pushed again. What happened in the parking lot didn't make sense, and I couldn't stop thinking about it. Or the motorcycle. Why did I recognize it?

Lena ignored me, looking out at the water. “It's probably a coincidence.” Neither of us believed in coincidences.

“Yeah?” I grabbed a handful of sand, brown and gritty. Except for Link, we had the lake to ourselves. Everyone else was probably lined up at the BP trying to buy new tires before Ed ran out.

In another town, you might have put your shoes back on and called the sand dirt and this part of our lake a swamp, but the murky water of Lake Moultrie was the closest thing Gatlin had to a swimming pool. Everyone hung out on the northern shore because it was on the edge of the woods and a hike from the cars, so you never ran into anyone who wasn't in high school — especially not your parents.

I didn't know why we were here. It was weird to have the lake to ourselves, since the whole school had planned to be here today. I hadn't believed Lena when she told me she wanted to come. But she did, and we had, and now Link was thrashing around in the water, and we were sharing a dirty towel Link had grabbed out of the back of the Beater before we left.

Lena turned over next to me. For a minute, it seemed like everything was back to normal and she wanted to be there on my towel. But that only lasted until the silence set in. I could see her pale skin glistening under the thin white undershirt, which was sticking to her in the suffocating heat and humidity of a June South Carolina day. The sound of the cicadas chirping almost drowned out the awkward silence. Almost. Lena's black skirt was riding low on her hips. I wished we had our bathing suits for the hundredth time. I'd never seen Lena in one. I tried not to think about it.

Did you forget I can hear you?

I raised an eyebrow. There she was again. Back in my mind, twice in one day, as if she'd never left. One minute she was barely speaking to me, and the next she acted like nothing had changed between us at all. I knew we should talk about it, but I didn't want to fight anymore.

Not like there'd be anything forgettable about you in a bikini, L.