“Be careful, man. Could be she’s got her own place over in Nutsville.”
“If you really believe that, you’re an idiot.”
We pulled into the school parking lot without speaking. I was annoyed, even though I knew Link was just trying to look out for me. But I couldn’t help it. Everything felt different today. I got out and slammed the car door.
Link called after me. “I’m worried about you, dude. You’ve been actin’ crazy.”
“What, are you and me a couple now? Maybe you should spend a little more time worrying about why you can’t even get a girl to talk to you, crazy or not.”
He got out of the car and looked up at the administration building. “Either way, maybe you better tell your ‘friend,’ whatever that means, to be careful today. Look.”
Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Asher were talking to Principal Harper on the front steps. Emily was huddled next to her mother, trying to look pathetic. Mrs. Lincoln was lecturing Principal Harper, who was nodding as if he was memorizing every word. Principal Harper may have been the one running Jackson High, but he knew who ran the town. He was looking at two of them.
When Link’s mom finished, Emily dove into a particularly animated version of the window-shattering incident. Mrs. Lincoln reached out and put her hand on Emily’s shoulder, sympathetic. Principal Harper just shook his head.
It was a bad cloud day, all right.
Lena was sitting in the hearse, writing in her beat-up notebook. The engine was idling. I knocked on the window and she jumped. She looked back toward the administration building. She had seen the mothers, too.
I motioned for her to open the door, but she shook her head. I walked around to the passenger side. The doors were locked, but she wasn’t going to get rid of me that easily. I sat down on the hood of her car and dropped my backpack on the gravel next to me. I wasn’t going anywhere.
What are you doing?
Waiting.
It’s gonna be a long wait.
I’ve got time.
She stared at me through the windshield. I heard the doors unlock. “Did anyone ever tell you that you’re crazy?” She walked around to where I was sitting on the hood, her arms folded, like Amma ready to scold.
“Not as crazy as you, I hear.”
She had her hair tied back with a silky black scarf that had conspicuously bright pink cherry blossoms scattered across it. I could imagine her staring at herself in the mirror, feeling like she was going to her own funeral, and tying it on to cheer herself up. A long black, I don’t know, a cross between a T-shirt and a dress, hung over her jeans and black Converse. She frowned and looked over at the administration building. The mothers were probably sitting in Principal Harper’s office right now.
“Can you hear them?”
She shook her head. “It’s not like I can read people’s minds, Ethan.”
“You can read mine.”
“Not really.”
“What about last night?”
“I told you, I don’t know why it happens. We just seem to—connect.” Even the word seemed hard for her to say this morning. She wouldn’t look me in the eye. “It’s never been like this with anyone before.”
I wanted to tell her I knew how she felt. I wanted to tell her when we were together like that in our minds, even if our bodies were a million miles away, I felt closer to her than I’d ever felt to anyone.
I couldn’t. I couldn’t even think it. I thought about the basketball playbook, the cafeteria menu, the green pea-soup-colored hallway I was about to walk down. Anything else. Instead, I cocked my head to the side. “Yeah. Girls say that to me all the time.” Idiot. The more nervous I got, the worse my jokes were.
She smiled, a wobbly, crooked smile. “Don’t try to cheer me up. It’s not going to work.” But it was.
I looked back at the front steps. “If you want to know what they’re saying, I can tell you.”
She looked at me, skeptically.
“How?”
“This is Gatlin. There’s nothing even close to a secret here.”
“How bad is it?” She looked away. “Do they think I’m crazy?”
“Pretty much.”
“A danger to the school?”
“Probably. We don’t take kindly to strangers around here. And it doesn’t get much stranger than Macon Ravenwood, no offense.” I smiled at her.
The first bell rang. She grabbed my sleeve, anxious. “Last night. I had a dream. Did you—”
I nodded. She didn’t have to say it. I knew she had been there in the dream with me. “Even had wet hair.”
“Me, too.” She held out her arm. There was a mark on her wrist, where I had tried to hold on. Before she had sunk down into the darkness. I hoped she hadn’t seen that part. Judging from her face, I was pretty sure she had. “I’m sorry, Lena.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“I wish I knew why the dreams are so real.”
“I tried to warn you. You should stay away from me.”
“Whatever. I’ll consider myself warned.” Somehow I knew I couldn’t do that—stay away from her. Even though I was about to walk into school and face a huge load of crap, I didn’t care. It felt good to have someone I could talk to, without editing everything I said. And I could talk to Lena; at Greenbrier it felt like I could’ve sat there in the weeds and talked to her for days. Longer. As long as she was there to talk to.
“What is it about your birthday? Why did you say you might not be here after that?”
She quickly changed the subject. “What about the locket? Did you see what I saw? The burning? The other vision?”
“Yeah. I was sitting in the middle of church and almost fell out of the pew. But I found out some things from the Sisters. The initials ECW, they stand for Ethan Carter Wate. He was my great-great-great-great-uncle, and my three crazy aunts say I was named after him.”
“Then why didn’t you recognize the initials on the locket?”
“That’s the strange part. I’d never heard of him, and he’s conveniently missing from the family tree at my house.”
“What about GKD? It’s Genevieve, right?”
“They didn’t seem to know, but it has to be. She’s the one in the visions, and the D must stand for Duchannes. I was gonna ask Amma, but when I showed her the locket her eyes almost fell out of her head. Like it was triple hexed, soaked in a bucket of voodoo, and wrapped in a curse for good measure. And my dad’s study is off-limits, where he keeps all my mom’s old books about Gatlin and the War.” I was rambling. “You could talk to your uncle.”
“My uncle won’t know anything. Where’s the locket now?”
“In my pocket, wrapped in a pouch full of powder Amma dumped all over it when she saw it. She thinks I took it back to Greenbrier and buried it.”
“She must hate me.”
“No more than any of my girl, you know, friends. I mean, friends who are girls.” I couldn’t believe how stupid I sounded. “I think we’d better get to class before we get in even more trouble.”
“Actually, I was thinking about going home. I know I’m going to have to deal with them eventually, but I’d like to live in denial for one more day.”
“Won’t you get in trouble?”
She laughed. “With my uncle, the infamous Macon Ravenwood, who thinks school is a waste of time and the good citizens of Gatlin are to be avoided at all costs? He’ll be thrilled.”
“Then why do you even go?” I was pretty sure Link would never show up at school again if his mom wasn’t chasing him out the door every morning.
She twisted one of the charms on her necklace, a seven-pointed star. “I guess I thought it would be different here. Maybe I could make some friends, join the newspaper or something. I don’t know.”
“Our newspaper? The Jackson Stonewaller?”
“I tried to join the newspaper at my old school, but they said all the staff positions were filled, even though they never had enough writers to get the paper out on time.” She looked away, embarrassed. “I should get going.”
I opened the door for her. “I think you should talk to your uncle about the locket. He might know more than you think.”
“Trust me, he doesn’t.” I slammed the door. As much as I wanted her to stay, a part of me was relieved she was going home. I was going to have enough to deal with today.
“Do you want me to turn that in for you?” I pointed at the notebook lying on the passenger seat.
“No, it’s not homework.” She flipped open the glove compartment and shoved the notebook inside. “It’s nothing.” Nothing she was going to tell me about, anyway.
“You’d better go before Fatty starts scouting the lot.” She started the car before I could say anything else, and waved as she pulled away from the curb.
I heard a bark. I turned to see the enormous black dog from Ravenwood, only a few feet away, and who it was barking at.
Mrs. Lincoln smiled at me. The dog growled, the hair along its back standing on end. Mrs. Lincoln looked down at it with such revulsion, you would’ve thought she was looking at Macon Ravenwood himself. In a fight, I wasn’t sure which one of them would come out on top.
“Wild dogs carry rabies. Someone should notify the county.” Yeah, someone.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Who was that I just saw drivin’ off in that strange black car? You seemed to be havin’ quite a conversation.” She already knew the answer. It wasn’t a question. It was an accusation.
“Ma’am.”
“Speakin’ a strange, Principal Harper was just tellin’ me he’s plannin’ on offerin’ that Ravenwood girl an occupational transfer. She can take her pick, any school in three counties. As long as it’s not Jackson.”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t even look at her.
“It’s our responsibility, Ethan. Principal Harper’s, mine—every parent in Gatlin’s. We have to be sure to keep the young people in this town outta harm’s way. And away from the wrong sorta people.” Which meant anyone who wasn’t like her.
She reached out her hand and touched me on the shoulder, just as she had done to Emily, not ten minutes ago. “I’m sure you understand my meanin’. After all, you’re one of us. Your daddy was born here and your mamma was buried here. You belong here. Not everyone does.”
I stared back at her. She was in her van before I could say another word.
This time, Mrs. Lincoln was after more than burning a few books.
Once I got to class, the day became abnormally normal, weirdly normal. I didn’t see any more parents, though I suspected they were there loitering around the office. At lunch, I ate three bowls of chocolate pudding with the guys, as usual, though it was clear what and who we weren’t talking about. Even the sight of Emily madly texting all through English and chemistry seemed like some kind of reassuring universal truth. Except for the feeling that I knew what, or rather who, she was texting about. Like I said, abnormally normal.