Beautiful Creatures (20 page)

“Shh.” We were annoying the people around us, which was funny considering they weren’t even watching the movie.

“I can’t leave it in the house. Amma thinks I buried it.”

“Maybe you should have.”

“It doesn’t matter, the thing has a mind of its own. It almost never works. You’ve seen it every time it has.”

“Can you shut up?” The couple in front of us came up for air. Lena jumped, dropping the locket. We both grabbed for it. I
saw the handkerchief falling off, as if it were in slow motion. I could barely see the white square in the dark. The big screen
twisted into an inconsequential spark of light, and we could already smell the smoke—

Burning a house with women in it.

It couldn’t be true. Mamma. Evangeline. Genevieve’s mind was racing. Maybe it wasn’t too late. She broke into a run, ignoring
the ragged claws of the bushes urging her to go back and Ethan and Ivy’s voices calling after her. The bushes opened up, and
there were two Federals in front of what was left of the house Genevieve’s grandfather had built. Two Federals pouring a tray
full of silver into a government-issue rucksack. Genevieve was a rush of black billowing fabric catching the gusts kicked
up by the fire.

“What the—”

“Grab her, Emmett,” the first teenage boy called to the other.

Genevieve was taking the stairs two at a time, choking on the gales of smoke pouring from the opening where the front door
had been. She was out of her mind. Mamma. Evangeline. Her lungs were raw. She felt herself falling. Was it the smoke? Was
she going to faint? No, it was something else. A hand on her wrist, pulling her down.

“Where do you think you’re going, girl?”

“Let me go!” she screamed, her voice raw from the smoke. Her back hit the stairs one by one as he dragged her, a blur of navy
and gold. Her head hit next. Heat, then something wet dripping down the collar of her dress. Dizziness and confusion mixed
with desperation.

A gunshot. The sound was so loud it brought her back, cutting through the darkness. The hand gripping her wrist relaxed. She
tried to will her eyes to focus.

Two more shots rang out.

Lord, please spare Mamma and Evangeline.
But in the end, it was too much to ask, or maybe it had been the wrong question. Because when she heard the sound of the third
body drop, her eyes refocused long enough to see Ethan’s gray wool jacket sprayed with blood. Shot by the very soldiers he
had refused to fight against anymore.

And the smell of blood mixed with gunpowder and burning lemons.

The credits were rolling, and the lights were coming up. Lena’s eyes were still closed, and she was lying back in her seat.
Her hair was messed up, and neither one of us could catch our breath.

“Lena? You okay?”

She opened her eyes, and pushed up the armrest between us. Without a word, she rested her head on my shoulder. I could feel
her shaking so hard she couldn’t even speak.

I know. I was there, too.

We were still sitting like that when Link and the rest of them walked by. Link winked at me and held out his fist as he passed,
like he was going to tap it against mine the way he did after I made a tough shot on the court.

But he had it wrong, they all did. We may have been in the last row, but we hadn’t been hooking up. I could smell the blood
and the gunshots were still ringing in my ears.

We had just watched a man die.

10.09

A
fter the Cineplex, it didn’t take long. Word got out that Old Man Ravenwood’s niece was hanging out with Ethan Wate. If I
wasn’t
Ethan Wate Whose Mamma Died Just Last Year
, the talk might have spread with more speed, or more cruelty. Even the guys on the team had something to say. It just took
them longer than usual to say it, because I hadn’t given them a chance.

For a guy who couldn’t survive without three lunches, I’d been skipping half of them since the Cineplex—at least, skipping
them with the team. But there were only so many days I could get by on half a sandwich on the bleachers, and there were only
so many places to hide.

Because really, you couldn’t hide. Jackson High was just a smaller version of Gatlin; there was nowhere to go. My disappearing
act hadn’t gone unnoticed with the guys. Like I said, you had to show up for roll call, and if you let a girl get in the way
of that, especially a girl who wasn’t on the approved list—meaning, approved by Savannah and Emily—things got complicated.

When the girl was a Ravenwood, which is what Lena would always be to them, things were pretty much impossible.

I had to man up. It was time to take on the lunchroom. It didn’t matter that we weren’t even really a couple. At Jackson,
you might as well have parked behind the water tower if you were eating lunch together. Everyone always assumed the worst,
more like, the most. The first time Lena and I walked into the lunchroom together, she almost turned around and walked back
out. I had to grab the strap on her bag.

Don’t be crazy. It’s just lunch.

“I think I forgot something in my locker.” She turned, but I kept holding on to the strap.

Friends eat lunch together.

They don’t. We don’t. I mean, not in here.

I picked up two orange plastic lunch trays. “Tray?” I pushed the tray in front of her and shoved a shiny triangle of pizza
on it.

We do now. Chicken.

You don’t think I’ve tried this before?

You haven’t tried it with me. I thought you wanted things to be different than they were at your old school.

Lena looked around the room doubtfully. She took a deep breath and dropped a plate of carrots and celery onto my tray.

You eat those, and I’ll sit anywhere you want.

I looked at the carrots, then out at the lunchroom. The guys were already hanging out at our table.

Anywhere?

♦  ♦  ♦

If this was a movie, we would’ve sat down at the table with the guys, and they would’ve learned some kind of valuable lesson,
like not to judge people by the way they look, or that being different was okay. And Lena would’ve learned that all jocks
weren’t stupid and shallow. It always seemed to work in movies, but this wasn’t a movie. This was Gatlin, which severely limited
what could happen. Link caught my eye as I turned toward the table, and started shaking his head, as in, no way, man. Lena
was a few steps behind me, ready to bolt. I was beginning to see how this was going to play out, and let’s just say no one
was going to be learning any valuable lessons. I almost turned around, when Earl looked at me.

That one look said it all. It said if you bring her over here, you’re done.

Lena must have seen it too, because when I turned back to her, she was gone.

That day after practice, Earl was nominated to have a talk with me, which was pretty funny, since talking had never really
been his thing. He sat down on the bench in front of my gym locker. I could tell it was a plan because he was alone, and Earl
Petty was almost never alone. He didn’t waste any time. “Don’t do it, Wate.”

“I’m not doing anything.” I didn’t look up from my locker.

“Be cool. This isn’t you.”

“Yeah? What if it is?” I pulled on my Transformers T-shirt.

“The guys don’t like it. Go down this road, no goin’ back.”

If Lena hadn’t disappeared in the cafeteria, Earl would’ve known I didn’t care what they thought. I hadn’t cared for a while
now. I slammed my locker door, and he left before I could tell him what I thought about him and his dead end of a road.

I had a feeling it was my last warning. I didn’t blame Earl. For once, I agreed with him. The guys were going down one road,
and I was going down another. Who could argue with that?

Still, Link refused to desert me. And I went to practice; people even passed me the ball. I was playing better than I ever
had, no matter what they said, or more often didn’t say, in the locker room. When I was around the guys, I tried not to let
on that my universe had split in half, that even the sky looked different to me now, that I didn’t care if we got to the state
finals. Lena was in the back of my mind, no matter where I was or who I was with.

Not that I mentioned that at practice, or today, after practice, when Link and I hit the Stop & Steal to refuel on the way
home. The rest of the guys were there, too, and I was trying to act like part of the team, for Link’s sake. My mouth was full
of powdered doughnuts, which I almost choked on when I stepped through the sliding doors.

There she was. The second-prettiest girl I had ever seen.

She was probably a little older than I was because, though she looked vaguely familiar, she had never been at Jackson when
I was there. I was sure of that. She was the kind of girl a guy would remember. She was blasting some music I had never heard,
and lounging at the wheel of her convertible black-and-white Mini Cooper, which was parked haphazardly across two spaces in
the parking lot. She didn’t seem to notice the lines, or she didn’t care. She was sucking on a lollipop like a cigarette,
her pouty red lips made even redder by the cherry-colored stain.

She looked us over, and turned up the music. In a split second, two legs came flying over the side of the door, and she was
standing in front of us, still sucking on the lollipop. “Frank Zappa. ‘Drowning Witch.’ A little before your time, boys.”
She walked closer, slowly, as if she was giving us time to check her out, which I admit, we were.

She had long blond hair, with a thick pink stripe sweeping down one side of her face, past her choppy bangs. She was wearing
giant black sunglasses and a short black pleated skirt, like some kind of Goth cheerleader. Her cut-off white tank was so
thin, you could see half of some kind of black bra, and most of everything else. And there was plenty to see. Black motorcycle
boots, a belly ring, and a tattoo. It was black and tribal looking and surrounded her belly button, but I couldn’t tell from
here what it was, and I was trying not to stare.