Beautiful Creatures (18 page)

I slammed the car door. I could see Lena through the driver’s window now, as she idled in front of my house. “See you tomorrow.”

“Sure.”

But I knew we wouldn’t see each other tomorrow. I knew if she drove down my street that was it. It was a path, just like the
fork in the road leading to Ravenwood or to Gatlin. You had to pick one. If she didn’t pick this one, now, the hearse would
keep on going the other way at the fork, passing me by. Just as it had the morning I first saw it.

If she didn’t pick me.

You couldn’t take two roads. And once you were on one, there was no going back. I heard the motor grind into drive, but kept
walking up to my door. The hearse pulled away.

She didn’t pick me.

I was lying on my bed, facing the window. The moonlight was streaming in, which was annoying, because it kept me from falling
asleep when all I wanted was for this day to end.

Ethan.
The voice was so soft I almost couldn’t hear it.

I looked at the window. It was locked, I had made sure of it.

Ethan. Come on.

I closed my eyes. The latch on my window rattled.

Let me in.

The wooden shutters banged open. I would say it was the wind, but of course there wasn’t even a breeze. I climbed out of bed
and looked outside.

Lena was standing on my front lawn in her pajamas. The neighbors would have a field day, and Amma would have a heart attack.
“You come down or I’m coming up.”

A heart attack, and then a stroke.

We sat out on the front step. I was in my jeans, because I didn’t sleep in pajamas, and if Amma had walked out and found me
with a girl in my boxers, I would’ve been buried under the back lawn by morning.

Lena leaned back against the step, looking up at the white paint peeling off the porch. “I almost turned around at the end
of your street, but I was too scared to do it.” In the moonlight, I could see her pajamas were green and purple and sort of
Chinese.

“Then by the time I got home, I was too scared not to do it.” She was picking at the nail polish on her bare feet, which was
how I knew she had something to say. “I don’t really know how to do this. I’ve never had to say it before, so I don’t know
how it will all come out.”

I rubbed my messy hair with one hand. “Whatever it is, you can tell me. I know what it’s like to have a crazy family.”

“You think you know crazy. You have no idea.”

She took a deep breath. Whatever she was about to say, it was hard for her. I could see her struggling to find the words.
“The people in my family, and me, we have powers. We can do things that regular people can’t do. We’re born that way, we can’t
help it. We are what we are.”

It took me a second to understand what she was talking about, or at least what I thought she was talking about.

Magic.

Where was Amma when I needed her?

I was afraid to ask, but I had to know. “And what, exactly, are you?” It sounded so crazy that I almost couldn’t say the words.

“Casters,” she said quietly.

“Casters?”

She nodded.

“Like, spell casters?”

She nodded again.

I stared at her. Maybe she was crazy. “Like, witches?”

“Ethan. Don’t be ridiculous.”

I exhaled, momentarily relieved. Of course, I was an idiot. What was I thinking?

“That’s such a stupid word, really. It’s like saying jocks. Or geeks. It’s just a dumb stereotype.”

My stomach lurched. Part of me wanted to bolt up the steps, lock the door, and hide in my bed. But then another part of me,
a bigger part, wanted to stay. Because hadn’t a part of me known all along? I may not have known what she was, but I had known
there was something about her, something bigger than just that junky necklace and those old Chucks. What was I expecting,
from someone who could bring on a downpour? Who could talk to me without even being in the room? Who could control the way
the clouds floated in the sky? Who could fling open the shutters to my room from my front yard?

“Can you come up with a better name?”

“There’s not one word that describes all the people in my family. Is there one word that describes everyone in yours?”

I wanted to break the tension, to pretend she was just like any other girl. To convince myself that this could be okay. “Yeah.
Lunatics.”

“We’re Casters. That’s the broadest definition. We all have powers. We’re gifted, just like some families are smart, and others
are rich, or beautiful, or athletic.”

I knew what the next question was, but I didn’t want to ask it. I already knew she could break a window just by thinking about
it. I didn’t know if I was ready to find out what else she could shatter.

Anyway, it was starting to feel like we were talking about just another crazy Southern family, like the Sisters. The Ravenwoods
had been around as long as any family in Gatlin. Why should they be any less crazy? Or at least that’s what I tried to tell
myself.

Lena took the silence as a bad sign. “I knew I shouldn’t have said anything. I told you to leave me alone. Now you probably
think I’m a freak.”

“I think you’re
talented
.”

“You think my house is weird. You already admitted that.”

“So you redecorated, a lot.” I was trying to hold it together. I was trying to keep her smiling. I knew what it must have
cost her to tell me the truth. I couldn’t run out on her now. I turned around and pointed to the lit study above the azalea
bushes, hidden behind thick wooden shutters. “Look. See that window over there? That’s my dad’s study. He works all night
and sleeps all day. Since my mom died, he hasn’t left the house. He won’t even show me what he’s writing.”

“That’s so romantic,” she said quietly.

“No, it’s crazy. But nobody talks about it, because there’s nobody left to talk to. Except Amma, who hides magic charms in
my room and screams at me for bringing old jewelry into the house.”

I could tell she was almost smiling. “Maybe you are a freak.”

“I’m a freak, you’re a freak. Your house makes rooms disappear, my house makes people disappear. Your shut-in uncle is nuts
and my shut-in dad is a lunatic, so I don’t know what you think makes us so different.”

Lena smiled, relieved. “I’m trying to find a way to see that as a compliment.”

“It is.” I looked at her smiling in the moonlight, a real smile. There was something about the way she looked just at that
moment. I imagined leaning in a little farther and kissing her. I pushed myself away, up one step higher than she was.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just tired.” But I wasn’t.

We stayed like that, just talking on the steps, for hours. I lay on the step above; she lay on the step below. We watched
the dark night sky, then the dark morning sky, until we could hear the birds.

By the time the hearse finally pulled away, the sun was starting to rise. I watched Boo Radley lope slowly home after it.
At the rate he was going, it would be sunset before that dog got home. Sometimes I wondered why he bothered.

Stupid dog.

I put my hand on the brass doorknob of my own door, but I almost couldn’t bring myself to open it. Everything was upside down,
and nothing inside could change that. My mind was scrambled, all stirred up like a big frying pan of Amma’s eggs, the way
my insides had felt like for days now.

T. I. M. O. R. O. U. S. That’s what Amma would call me. Eight across, as in another name for a coward. I was scared. I’d told
Lena it was no big deal that she and her family—were what? Witches? Casters? And not the ten and two kind my dad had taught
me about.

Yeah, no big deal.

I was a big liar. I bet even that stupid dog could sense that.

9.24

Y
ou know that expression, “It hit me like a ton of bricks”? It’s true. The minute she turned the car around and ended up on
my doorstep in her purple pajamas, that’s how I felt about Lena.

I knew it was coming. I just didn’t know it would feel like this.

Since then, there were two places I wanted to be: with Lena, or alone, so I could try to hammer it all out in my mind. I didn’t
have the words for what we were. She wasn’t my girlfriend; we weren’t even dating. Up until last week, she wouldn’t even admit
we were friends. I had no idea how she felt about me, and it wasn’t like I could send Savannah over to find out. I didn’t
want to risk whatever we had, whatever it was. So why did I think about her every second? Why was I so much happier the minute
I saw her? I felt like maybe I knew the answer, but how could I be sure? I didn’t know, and I didn’t have any way to find
out.

Guys don’t talk about stuff like that. We just lie under the pile of bricks.

“So what are you writing?”

She closed the spiral notebook she seemed to carry around everywhere. The basketball team had no practice on Wednesdays, so
Lena and I were sitting in the garden at Greenbrier, which I’d sort of come to think of as our special place, though that’s
not something I would ever admit, not even to her. It was where we found the locket. It was a place we could hang out without
everyone staring and whispering. We were supposed to be studying, but Lena was writing in her notebook, and I’d read the same
paragraph about the internal structure of atoms nine times now. Our shoulders were touching, but we were facing different
directions. I was sprawled in the fading sun; she sat under the growing shadow of a moss-covered oak. “Nothing special. I’m
just writing.”

“It’s okay, you don’t have to tell me.” I tried not to sound disappointed.

“It’s just… it’s stupid.”

“So tell me anyway.”

For a minute she didn’t say anything, scribbling on the rubber rim of her shoe with her black pen. “I just write poems sometimes.
I’ve been doing it since I was a kid. I know it’s weird.”

“I don’t think it’s weird. My mom was a writer. My dad’s a writer.” I could feel her smiling, even though I wasn’t looking
at her. “Okay, that’s a bad example, because my dad is really weird, but you can’t blame that on the writing.”

I waited to see if she was going to just hand me the notebook and ask me to read one. No such luck. “Maybe I can read one
sometime.”