Beautiful Creatures

2.12

Silver Lining

I looked at my cell. It was broken.

The time still read 11:59.

But I knew it was well after midnight, because the fireworks finale had started, even though it was raining. The Battle of Honey Hill was over for another year.

I lay in the middle of the muddy field, letting the rain wash over me. As I watched the small-time fireworks attempt to explode in the still drizzling night sky, everything was cloudy. My mind just couldn’t focus. I had fallen, hit my head and a few other places, too. My stomach, my hip, my whole left side ached. Amma was going to kill me when I came home, banged up like this.

All I remembered was, one second I was holding onto that stupid angel statue, and the next second I was lying flat on my back in the mud, here. I thought a piece of that statue broke off when I was trying to climb to the top of the crypt, but I wasn’t really sure. Link must have carried me out here after I knocked myself out like an idiot. Aside from that, it was like my mind had been wiped clean.

I guess that’s why I didn’t understand why Marian, Gramma, and Aunt Del were huddled near the crypt, crying. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw when I finally stumbled over there.

Macon Ravenwood. Dead.

Maybe he had always been dead, I didn’t know, but now he was gone. I knew that much. Lena threw herself onto his body, the rain drenching both of them.

Macon, wet from the raindrops for the first time.

The next morning, I pieced together a few things about the night of Lena’s birthday. Macon was the only casualty. Apparently, Hunting had overpowered him after I lost consciousness. Gramma explained that feeding on dreams was much less substantial than feeding on blood. I guess he had never really stood a chance against Hunting. Still, it hadn’t stopped him from trying.

Macon always said he would do anything for Lena. In the end, he was a man of his word.

Everyone else seemed to be all right, at least physically. Aunt Del, Gramma, and Marian had dragged themselves back to Ravenwood, with Boo trailing behind them, whimpering like a lost pup. Aunt Del couldn’t understand what had happened to Larkin. Nobody knew how to break the news to her that she had not one but two bad seeds in her family, so no one said a thing.

Mrs. Lincoln didn’t remember anything, and Link had a hard time explaining what she was doing in the middle of the battlefield in her petticoat and pantyhose. She had been appalled to find herself in the company of Macon Ravenwood’s family, but had been civil as Link helped her to the Beater. Link had a lot of questions, but I figured it could wait until Algebra II. It would give us both something to do when things returned to normal, whenever that would be.

And Sarafine.

Sarafine, Hunting, and Larkin were gone. I knew that because when I came to, they had disappeared, and Lena was there, leaning against me as we walked back toward Ravenwood. I was fuzzy on the details, like everything else right now, but it appeared that Lena, Macon, all of us had underestimated Lena’s powers as a Natural. She had somehow managed to block out the moon and save herself from being Claimed after all. Without the Claiming, it looked like Sarafine, Hunting, and Larkin had fled, at least for now.

Lena still wasn’t talking about it. She still wasn’t talking much at all.

I had fallen asleep on the floor of her bedroom, next to her, our hands still intertwined. When I woke up, she was gone and I was alone. Her bedroom walls, the same ones that had been so covered with writing you couldn’t see an inch of the white walls underneath all the black, were now completely blank. Except for one, the wall that faced the windows was covered from floor to ceiling with words, only the writing no longer looked like Lena’s. The girly script was gone. I touched the wall as if I could feel the words, and I knew she had been up all night, writing.

macon ethan

i lay my head down on his chest and cried because he had lived

because he had died

a dry ocean, a desert of emotion

happysad darklight sorrowjoy swept over me, under me

i could hear the sound but i could not understand the words

and then i realized the sound was me, breaking

in one moment i was feeling everything and i was feeling nothing

i was shattered, i was saved, i lost everything, i was given

everything else

something in me died, something in me was born, i only knew

the girl was gone

whoever i was now, i would never be her again this is the way

the world ends not with a bang but a whimper

claim yourself claim yourself claim yourself claim

gratitude fury love despair hope hate

first green is gold but nothing green can stay

don’t

try

nothing

green

can

stay

T. S. Eliot. Robert Frost. Bukowski. I recognized some of the poets from her shelf and her walls. Except for the Frost, Lena got it backward, which wasn’t like her. Nothing gold can stay, that’s how the poem goes.

Not green.

Maybe it all looked the same to her now.

I stumbled down into the kitchen, where Aunt Del and Gramma were talking in low tones about arrangements. I remembered the low tones and the arrangements when my mom died. I hated them both. I remembered how much it hurt for life to go on, for aunts and grandmothers to be making plans, calling relatives, sweeping up the pieces when all you wanted to do was crawl into the coffin, too. Or maybe plant a lemon tree, fry some tomatoes, build a monument with your bare hands.

“Where’s Lena?” My tone was not low, and I startled Aunt Del. Nothing could startle Gramma.

“Isn’t she in her room?” Aunt Del was flustered.

Gramma calmly poured herself another cup of tea. “I believe you know where she is, Ethan.”

I did.

Lena was lying on the crypt, right where we had found Macon. She was staring up at the gray morning sky, muddy and wet in her clothes from the night before. I didn’t know where they had taken his body, but I understood her impulse to be here. To be with him, even without him.

She didn’t look at me, though she knew I was there. “Those hateful things I said, I’ll never get to take them back. He never knew how much I loved him.”

I lay down next to her in the mud, my sore body groaning. I looked over at her, her black hair curling, and her dirty wet cheeks. The tears ran down her face, but she didn’t try to wipe them away. Neither did I.

“He died because of me.” She stared up at the gray sky, unblinking. I wished there was something I could say to make her feel better, but I knew better than anyone that words like that didn’t really exist. So I didn’t say them. Instead, I kissed all the fingers on Lena’s hand. I stopped when my mouth tasted metal, and I saw it. She was wearing my mom’s ring on her right hand.

I held up her hand.

“I didn’t want to lose it. The necklace broke last night.”

Dark clouds were blowing in and out. We hadn’t seen the last of the storm, I knew that much. I wrapped my hand around hers. “I never loved you any more than I do, right this second. And I’ll never love you any less than I do, right this second.”

The gray expanse was just a moment of sunless calm, in between the storm that had changed our lives forever, and the one still to come.

“Is that a promise?”

I squeezed her hand.

Don’t let go.

Never.

Our hands twisted into one. She turned her head, and when I looked into her eyes, I noticed for the first time that one was green, and one was hazel—actually, more like gold.

It was almost noon by the time I started the long walk home. The blue skies were streaked with dark gray and gold. The pressure was building, but it seemed a few hours from breaking. I think Lena was still in shock. But I was ready for the storm. And when it came, it would make Gatlin’s hurricane season look like a spring shower.

Aunt Del had offered to drive me home, but I wanted to walk. Though every bone in my body ached, I needed to clear my head. I jammed my hands in my jeans pockets and felt the familiar lump. The locket. Lena and I would have to find a way to give it back to the other Ethan Wate, the one lying in his grave, just as Genevieve had wanted us to. Maybe it would give Ethan Carter Wate some peace. We owed them both that much.

I came down the steep road leading up to Ravenwood and found myself once again at the fork in the road, the one that had seemed so frightening before I knew Lena. Before I knew where I was going. Before I knew what real fear felt like, and real love.

I walked past the fields and down Route 9, thinking of that first drive, that first night in the storm. I thought about everything, how I had almost lost my dad and Lena. How I had opened my eyes to see her staring at me, and all I could think was how lucky I was. Before I realized we had lost Macon.

I thought about Macon, his books tied with string and paper, his perfectly pressed shirts, and his even more perfect composure. I thought about how hard things were going to be for Lena, missing him, wishing she could hear his voice one more time. But I would be there for her, the way I wished someone had been there for me when I lost my mom. And after the past few months, after my mom sent us that message, I didn’t think Macon was really gone, either. Maybe he was still out there somewhere, looking out for us. He had sacrificed himself for Lena, I was sure of that.

The right thing and the easy thing are never the same. No one knew that better than Macon.

I looked up at the sky. The swirls of gray were seeping across the flat blue, as blue as the paint on my bedroom ceiling. I wondered if that one shade of blue really kept the carpenter bees from nesting. I wondered if those bees really believed it was the sky.

It’s crazy what you see if you aren’t really looking.

I pulled my iPod out of my pocket and turned it on. There was a new song on the playlist.

I stared at it for a long time.

Seventeen Moons.

I clicked on it.

Seventeen moons, seventeen years,

Eyes where Dark or Light appears,

Gold for yes and green for no,

Seventeen the last to know.