“Hey, man. Take it easy.”
Link eased up a little, and our side of the table smacked down against the linoleum. People were staring. “Sorry. I keep forgettin’. I’m Transitioning. Mr. Ravenwood said this would be a rough time, when you’re the new kid on the block.”
Lena kicked me under the table, trying not to laugh.
Ridley was less subtle. “I think all this sugar is making me sick. Oh wait, did I say sugar? I meant sap.” She looked at Link. “And when I said sap, I meant you.”
Link smiled. This was the Ridley he liked best. “Your uncle said no one would understand.”
“Yeah, I bet it’s really tough being the Hulk.” I was kidding, but I wasn’t far off.
“Dude, it’s no joke. I can’t sit down for more than five minutes or people start throwing their food at me, like they expect me to eat it.”
“Well, you did have a reputation for being a human garbage disposal.”
“I could still eat if I wanted to.” He looked disgusted. “But food doesn’t taste like anything. It’s like chewin’ on cardboard. I’m on the Macon Ravenwood diet. You know, snackin’ on a few dreams here and there.”
“Whose dreams?” If Link was feeding off my dreams, I was going to kick his ass. They were confusing enough without him.
“No way. Your head’s too full a crazy for me. But you wouldn’t believe what Savannah dreams about. Let’s just say she’s not thinking about the state finals.”
No one wanted to hear the details—especially not Ridley, who was stabbing at her Jell-O. I tried to spare her. “That’s a visual I can live without, thanks.”
“It’s cool. But you’ll never guess what I saw.” If he said Savannah in her underwear, he was a dead man.
Lena was thinking the same thing. “Link, I don’t think—”
“Dolls.”
“What?” It wasn’t the answer Lena was expecting.
“Barbies, but not the ones girls had in elementary school. These puppies are all dressed up. She’s got a bride, Miss America, Snow White. And they’re in this big glass case.”
“I knew she reminded me of a Barbie.” Ridley stabbed another cube.
Link slid closer to her. “You still ignorin’ me?”
“You’re not worth the time it takes to ignore.” Ridley stared through the jiggling red cube. “I don’t think Kitchen makes this. What’s it called again?”
“Jell-O Surprise.” Link grinned.
“What’s the surprise?” Ridley examined the red gelatin more closely.
“What they put in it.” He flicked the cube with his finger, and she pulled it away.
“Which is?”
“Ground-up hooves, hides, and bones. Surprise.”
Ridley looked at him, shrugged, and put the spoon in her mouth. She wasn’t going to give him an inch. Not as long as he was creeping around Savannah Snow’s bedroom at night and flirting with her all day.
Link looked over at me. “So, you wanna shoot some hoops after school?”
“No.” I shoved the rest of the sloppy joe into my mouth.
“I can’t believe you’re eating that. You hate those things.”
“I know. But they’re pretty good today.” A Jackson first. When Amma’s cooking was off and the cafeteria’s was on, maybe it really was the End of Days.
You know, you can play basketball if you want to.
Lena was offering me something, the same thing Link was. A chance to make peace with my former friends, to be less of an outcast, if that was possible. But it was too late. Your friends were supposed to stand by you, and now I knew who my friends really were. And who they weren’t.
I don’t want to.
“Come on. It’s cool. All that crazy stuff with the guys is history.” Link believed what he was saying. But history was hard to forget when it included tormenting your girlfriend all year.
“Yeah. People around here aren’t into history.”
Even Link caught my sarcasm. “Well, I’m gonna hit the court.” He didn’t look at me. “I might even go back on the team. I mean, it’s not like I was really off.”
Not like you. That’s the part he didn’t say.
“It’s really hot in here.” Sweat was dripping down my back. So many people, crammed into one room.
You okay?
No. Yeah. I just need to get some air.
I stood up to go, but the door looked like it was a mile away.
This school had a way of making you feel small. As small as it was, maybe even smaller. I guess some things never change.
Turns out, Ridley wasn’t interested in studying the cultures of the Southern states any more than she was interested in Link studying Savannah Snow, and five minutes into the period she convinced him they should switch to World History. Which wouldn’t have surprised me except switching classes usually involved taking your schedule to Miss Hester—then lying and begging and, if you were really stuck, crying. So when Link and Ridley showed up in World History and he told me that his schedule had miraculously changed, I was more than suspicious.
“What do you mean, your schedule changed?”
Link dropped his notebook onto the desk next to me and shrugged. “I don’t know. One minute Savannah sits down next to me, then Ridley comes in and sits on the other side, and the next thing I know, World History’s printed on my schedule. Rid’s, too. She shows the teacher, and we get kicked right outta class.”
“How did you manage that?” I asked as Ridley settled into her seat.
“Manage what?” She looked at me innocently, clicking and un-clicking her creepy scorpion belt buckle.
Lena wasn’t letting her off that easy. “You know what he’s talking about. Did you take a book from Uncle Macon’s study?”
“Are you actually accusing me of reading?”
Lena lowered her voice. “Were you trying to Cast? It’s not safe, Ridley.”
“You mean not safe for me. Because I’m a stupid Mortal.”
“Casting is dangerous for Mortals, unless you’ve had years of training, like Marian. Which you haven’t.” Lena wasn’t trying to rub it in, but every time she said the word “Mortal,” Ridley cringed. It was like pouring gasoline on a fire.
Maybe it was too hard to hear from a Caster. I jumped in. “Lena’s right. Who knows what could happen if something went wrong?”
Ridley didn’t say a word, and for a second it seemed like I had single-handedly put out the flames. But as she turned to face me, her blue eyes blazing as bright as her yellow ones ever had, I realized how wrong I was.
“I don’t remember anyone complaining when you and your little British Marian-in-training were Casting at the Great Barrier.”
Lena blushed and looked away.
Ridley was right. Liv and I had Cast at the Great Barrier. It was how we freed Macon from the Arclight, and why Liv would never be a Keeper. And it was a painful reminder of a time when Lena and I were as far away from each other as two people could be.
I didn’t say anything. Instead I stumbled over my thoughts, crashing and burning in the silence while Mr. Littleton tried to convince us how fascinating World History was going to be. He failed. I tried to come up with something to say that would rescue me from the awkwardness of the next ten seconds. I failed.
Because even though Liv wasn’t at Jackson, and she spent all her days in the Tunnels with Macon, she was still the elephant in the room. The thing Lena and I didn’t talk about. I had only seen Liv once since the night of the Seventeenth Moon, and I missed her. Not like I could tell anyone that.
I missed her crazy British accent, and the way she mispronounced Carolina so it sounded like Carolin-er. I missed her selenometer that looked like a giant plastic watch from thirty years ago, and the way she was always writing in her tiny red notebook. I missed the way we joked around and the way she made fun of me. I missed my friend.
The sad part was, she probably would have understood.
I just couldn’t tell her.
9.07
Off Route 9
After school, Link stayed to play basketball with the guys. Ridley wouldn’t leave without him as long as the cheer squad was in the gym, even though she wouldn’t admit it.
I stood inside the gym doors and watched Link dribble down the court without breaking a sweat. I watched him sink the ball from the paint, from the top of the key, from the three-point mark, from center court. I watched the other guys stand there with their mouths hanging open. I watched Coach sit back on the bleachers with his whistle still stuck in his mouth. I enjoyed every minute, almost as much as Link.
“You miss it?” Lena was watching me from the doorway.
I shook my head. “No way. I don’t want to hang out with the rest of those guys.” I smiled. “And for once, no one’s looking at us.” I held out my hand and she took it. Hers was warm and soft.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said.
Boo Radley was sitting at the corner of the lot by the stop sign, panting like there wasn’t enough air in the world to cool him off. I wondered if Macon was still watching us and everyone else through the Caster dog’s eyes. We pulled up next to him and opened the door. Boo didn’t even hesitate.
We drove up Route 9, where Gatlin’s houses disappeared and turned into rows of fields. This time of year, those fields were usually a mix of green and brown—corn and tobacco. But this year there was nothing but black and yellow, as far as the eye could see—dead plants, and lubbers eating their way right onto the road. You could hear them crunching beneath the tires. It looked wrong.
It was the other thing we didn’t like to talk about. The apocalypse that had settled over Gatlin in place of fall. Link’s mom was convinced that the heat wave and the bugs were the results of the wrath of God, but I knew she was wrong. At the Great Barrier, Abraham Ravenwood had promised that Lena’s choice would affect both the Caster and Mortal worlds. He wasn’t kidding.
Lena stared out the window, her eyes locked on the ravaged fields. There was nothing I could say that would make her feel any better, or less responsible. The only thing I could do was try to distract her. “Today was crazy, even for the first day of school.”
“I feel bad for Ridley.” Lena pushed her hair up off her shoulders, twisting it into a messy knot. “She’s not herself.”
“Which means she’s not an evil Siren secretly working for Sarafine. How sorry should I be?”
“She seems so lost.”
“My prediction? She’s gonna mess with Link’s head again.”
Lena bit her lip. “Yeah, well. Ridley still thinks she’s a Siren. Messing with people is part of the job description.”
“I bet she’ll bring down the whole cheer-amid before she’s done.”
“Then she’ll get expelled,” Lena said.
I pulled off at the crossroads, turning off Route 9 and onto the road to Ravenwood. “Not before she burns Jackson to the ground.”
The oak trees grew and arched over the road leading up to Lena’s house, bringing the temperature down a degree or two.