12.13

Melting

I don’t see why she can’t meet you here. I was hopin’ to see Melchizedek’s niece all dolled up in her fancy dress.” I was standing in front of Amma so she could tie my bow tie. Amma was so short, she had to stand three stairs up from me to reach my collar. When I was a kid, she used to comb my hair and tie my necktie before we went to church on Sundays. She had always looked like she was so proud, and that’s how she was looking at me now.

“Sorry. No time for a photo session. I’m picking her up from her house. The guy is supposed to pick up the girl, remember?” That was a stretch, considering I was picking her up in the Beater. Link was catching a ride with Shawn. The guys on the team were still saving him a seat at their new lunch table, even though he usually sat with Lena and me.

Amma yanked on my tie and snorted a laugh. I don’t know what she thought was so funny, but it made me edgy.

“It’s too tight. I feel like it’s strangling me.” I tried to wedge a finger in between my neck and the collar of my rented jacket from Buck’s Tux, but I couldn’t.

“Isn’t the tie, it’s your nerves. You’ll do fine.” She surveyed me approvingly, like I imagined my mom would have if she’d been here. “Now, let me see those flowers.” I reached behind me for a small box, a red rose surrounded by white baby’s breath inside. They looked pretty ugly to me, but you couldn’t get much better from Gardens of Eden, the only place in Gatlin.

“About the sorriest flowers I’ve ever seen.” Amma took one look and tossed them into the wastebasket at the bottom of the stairs. She turned on her heel and disappeared into the kitchen.

“What did you do that for?”

She opened the refrigerator and pulled out a wrist corsage, small and delicate. White Confederate jasmine and wild rosemary, tied with a pale silver ribbon. Silver and white, the colors of the winter formal. It was perfect.

As much as I knew that Amma wasn’t crazy about my relationship with Lena, she had done this anyway. She’d done it for me. It was something my mom would have done. It was only since my mom had died that I realized how much I relied on Amma, how much I had always relied on her. She was the only thing that had kept me afloat. Without her, I probably would have drowned, like my dad.

“Everything means somethin’. Don’t try to change somethin’ wild into somethin’ tame.”

I held the corsage up to the kitchen lamp. I felt the length of the ribbon, carefully probing it with my fingers. Under the ribbon, there was a tiny bone.

“Amma!”

She shrugged. “What, are you gonna take issue with a teeny little graveyard bone like that? After all this time growin’ up in this house, after seein’ the things you’ve seen, where’s your sense? A little protection never hurt anybody—not even you, Ethan Wate.”

I sighed and put the corsage back in the box. “I love you, too, Amma.”

She gave me a bone-crushing hug, and I ran down the steps and into the night. “You be careful, you hear? Don’t get carried away.”

I had no idea what she meant, but I smiled at her anyway. “Yes, ma’am.”

My father’s light was on in the study as I drove away. I wondered if he even knew tonight was the winter formal.

When Lena pulled the door open, my heart almost stopped, which was saying something considering she wasn’t even touching me. I knew she looked nothing like any of the other girls at the dance would look tonight. There were only two kinds of prom dresses in Gatlin County, and they all came from one of two places: Little Miss, the local pageant gown supplier, or Southern Belle, the bridal shop two towns over.

The girls who went to Little Miss wore the slutty mermaid dresses, all slits and plunging necklines and sequins; those were the girls that Amma would never have allowed me to be seen with at a church picnic, let alone the winter formal. They were sometimes the local pageant girls or the daughters of local pageant girls, like Eden, whose mom had been First Runner Up Miss South Carolina, or more often just the daughters of the women who wished they had been pageant girls. These were the same girls you might eventually see holding their babies at the Jackson High School graduation in a couple of years.

Southern Belle dresses were the Scarlett O’Hara dresses, shaped like giant cowbells. The Southern Belle girls were the daughters of the DAR and the Ladies Auxiliary members—the Emily Ashers and the Savannah Snows—and you could take them anywhere, if you could stomach it, stomach them, and stomach the way it looked like you were dancing with a bride at her own wedding.

Either way, everything was shiny, everything was colorful, and everything involved a lot of metallic trim and a particular shade of orange folks called Gatlin Peach, that was probably reserved for tacky bridesmaids’ dresses everywhere else but Gatlin County.

For guys, there was less obvious pressure, but it wasn’t really any easier. We had to match, usually our date, which could involve the dreaded Gatlin Peach. This year, the basketball team was going in silver bow ties and silver cummerbunds, sparing them the humiliation of pink or purple or peach bow ties.

Lena had definitely never worn Gatlin Peach in her life. As I looked at her, my knees started to buckle, which was starting to become a familiar feeling. She was so pretty it hurt.

Wow.

Like it?

She spun around. Her hair curled around her shoulders, long and loose, held back with glinting clips, in one of those magical ways girls have of making their hair look like it is supposed to be up, but also sort of falling down. I wanted to run my fingers through it, but I didn’t dare touch her, not a single hair. Lena’s dress fell from her body, clinging to all the right places without looking Little Miss, in silvery gray strands, as delicate as a silver cobweb, spun by silver spiders.

Was it? Spun by silver spiders?

Who knows? It could’ve been. It was a gift from Uncle Macon.

She laughed and pulled me into the house. Even Ravenwood seemed to reflect the wintry theme of the formal. Tonight, the entry hall looked like old Hollywood; tiles of black and white checkered the floor, and silver snowflakes sparkled, floating in the air above us. A black lacquered antique table stood in front of iridescent silver curtains, and beyond them, I could see something that glinted like the ocean, though I knew it couldn’t be. Flickering candles hovered over the furniture, tossing little pools of moonlight everywhere I looked.

“Really? Spiders?”

I could see the candlelight reflecting off her shining lips. I tried not to think about it. I tried not to want to kiss the little moon-shaped crescent on her cheekbone. The most subtle dusting of silver shone on her shoulders, her face, her hair. Even her birthmark seemed to be silver tonight.

“Just kidding. It was probably just something he found in some little shop in Paris or Rome or New York City. Uncle Macon likes beautiful things.” She touched the silver crescent moon at her neckline, dangling just above her chain of memories. Another gift from Macon, I guessed.

The familiar drawl came out of the dark hallway, accompanied by a single silver candlestick. “Budapest, not Paris. Other than that, guilty as charged.” Macon emerged in a smoking jacket over neat black pants and a white dress shirt. The silver studs in his shirt caught the glint of the candlelight.

“Ethan, I would appreciate it greatly if you could take every precaution with my niece tonight. As you know, I prefer her home in the evenings.” He handed me a corsage for Lena, a small wreath of Confederate jasmine. “Every possible precaution.”

“Uncle M!” Lena sounded annoyed.

I looked at the corsage more closely. A silver ring dangled from the pin that held the flowers. It had an inscription in a language I didn’t understand, but recognized from The Book of Moons. I didn’t have to look too closely to see it was the ring he had worn night and day, until now. I pulled out Amma’s nearly identical corsage. Between the hundred Casters probably Bound to the ring, and all of Amma’s extended Greats, there wasn’t a spirit in town that would mess with us. I hoped.

“I think, between you and Amma, sir, Lena will survive the Jackson High winter formal all right.” I smiled.

Macon didn’t. “It’s not the formal I worry about, but I’m grateful to Amarie just the same.”

Lena frowned, looking from her uncle to me. Maybe we didn’t look like the two happiest guys in town. “Your turn.” She picked up a boutonniere from the hall table, a plain white rose with a tiny sprig of jasmine, and pinned it on my jacket. “I wish you would all stop worrying for one minute. This is getting embarrassing. I can take care of myself.”

Macon looked unconvinced. “In any event, I wouldn’t want anyone to get hurt.”

I didn’t know if he was referring to the witches of Jackson High, or the powerful Dark Caster, Sarafine. Either way, I’d seen enough in the last few months to take a warning like that seriously.

“And have her back by midnight.”

“Is that some powerful Caster hour?”

“No. It’s her curfew.”

I stifled a smile.

Lena seemed anxious on the way to school. She sat stiffly in the front seat, fiddling with the radio, her dress, her seatbelt.

“Relax.”

“Is it crazy that we’re going tonight?” Lena looked at me expectantly.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean everyone hates me.” She looked down at her hands.

“You mean everyone hates us.”

“Okay, everyone hates us.”

“We don’t have to go.”

“No, I want to go. That’s the thing…” She twisted the corsage around her wrist a few times “Last year, Ridley and I had planned to go together. But then…”

I couldn’t hear her answer, not even in my head.

“Things had already gone wrong by then. Ridley turned sixteen. Then she was gone, and I had to leave school.”

“Well, this isn’t last year. It’s just a dance. Nothing’s gone wrong.”

She frowned and shut the mirror.

Not yet.

When we walked into the gym, even I was impressed by how hard Student Council must have worked all weekend. Jackson had gone all the way with the whole Midwinter Night’s Dream concept. Hundreds of tiny paper snowflakes—some white, some shimmering with tinfoil, glitter, sequins, and anything else that could be made to sparkle—hung on fishing wire from the ceiling of the gym. Powdery soap flake “snow” drifted into the corners of the gym, and twinkling white lights fell in strands from the risers.

“Hi, Ethan. Lena, you look lovely.” Coach Cross handed us both cups of Gatlin Peach Punch. She was in a black dress that showed just a little too much leg, I thought, for Link’s sake.

I looked at Lena, thinking of the silver snowflakes floating through the air at Ravenwood, without fishing wire or silver tinfoil. Still, her eyes were shining and she clung to my hand tightly, like she was a kid at her first birthday party. I had never believed Link when he claimed school dances had some sort of inexplicable effect on girls. But it was clear it was true of all girls, even Caster girls.

“It’s beautiful.” Honestly, it wasn’t. What it was, was a plain old Jackson High dance, but I guess to Lena, that was something beautiful. Maybe magic wasn’t the magic thing, when you grew up with it.

Then I heard a familiar voice. It couldn’t be.

“Let’s get this party started!”

Ethan, look—

I turned around and almost choked on my punch. Link grinned at me, wearing what looked like a silver sharkskin tuxedo. He had one of those black T-shirts with a picture of the front of a tuxedo shirt screened on it underneath, and his black high-tops. He looked like a Charleston street performer.

“Hey, Short Straw! Hey, Cuz!” I heard that unmistakable voice again, over the crowd, over the DJ, over the thumping of pounding bass, and the couples on the dance floor. Honey, sugar, molasses, and cherry lollipops, all rolled into one. It was the only time in my life I’d ever thought something was too sweet.

Lena’s hand tightened on mine. On Link’s arm, unbelievably, in the smallest splash of silver sequins ever worn to a Jackson High formal, maybe any formal, was Ridley. I didn’t even know where to look; she was all legs and curves and blond hair spilling everywhere. I could feel the temperature in the room rising just by looking at her. From the number of guys who had stopped dancing with their wedding cake–topper dates, who were fuming, it was obvious I wasn’t the only one. In a world where all the prom dresses came from one of two stores, Ridley had out–Little Missed even the Little Misses. She made Coach Cross look like the Reverend Mother. In other words, Link was doomed.

Lena looked from me to her cousin, ill. “Ridley, what are you doing here?”

“Cuz. We finally got to that dance after all. Aren’t you ecstatic? Isn’t it fantastic?”

I could see Lena’s hair starting to curl in the nonexistent wind. She blinked and half the string of twinkling white lights went dark. I had to act fast. I pulled Link over to the punch bowl. “What are you doing with her?”

“Dude, can you believe it? She’s the hottest chick in Gatlin, no offense. Third Degree Burns. And she was just hangin’ out at the Stop & Steal when I went in to buy Slim Jims on the way here. She even had a dress on.”

“Don’t you think that’s a little weird?”

“Do you think I care?”

“What if she’s some kind of psycho?”

“You think she’ll tie me up or somethin’?” He grinned, already picturing it.

“I’m not joking.”

“You’re always jokin’. What’s up? Oh, I get it, you’re jealous. ’Cause I seem to remember you gettin’ in her car pretty fast yourself. Don’t tell me you tried to get with her or somethin’—”

“No way. She’s Lena’s cousin.”

“Whatever. All I know is, I’m here at the formal with the hottest hotness in three counties. It’s like, what are the odds of a meteor hittin’ this town? This’ll never happen again. Be cool, okay? Don’t ruin it for me.” He was under her spell already, not that she had needed much of one with Link. It didn’t matter what I said.

I gave it another half-hearted try. “She’s bad news, man. She’s messing with your head. She’ll suck you in and spit you out when she’s done.”

He grabbed my shoulders with both hands. “Suck away.”

Link put his arm around Ridley’s waist and went out onto the dance floor. He didn’t so much as look at Coach Cross as they walked by.

I pulled Lena away in the other direction, toward the corner where the photographer was taking pictures of the couples in front of a fake snowdrift with a fake snowman, while members of Student Council took turns shaking fake snow down onto the scene. I bumped right into Emily.

She looked at Lena. “Lena. You look… shiny.”

Lena just looked at her. “Emily. You look… puffy.”

It was true. Ethan-Hating Southern Belle Emily looked like a silver and peach-filled cream puff, plucked and primped and puckered into taffeta. Her hair, in scary little piggy ringlets, looked like it was made out of yellow curling ribbon. Her face looked like it had been stretched a little too tightly while she was getting her hair done at the Snip ’n’ Curl, stabbed in the head one too many times with a bobby pin.

What had I ever seen in any of them?

“I didn’t know your kind danced.”

“We do.” Lena stared at her.

“Around a bonfire?” Emily’s face twisted into a nasty smile.

Lena’s hair began to curl again. “Why? Looking for a bonfire so you can burn that dress?” The other half of the twinkle lights shorted out. I could see Student Council scrambling to check the cord connections.

Don’t let her win. She’s the only witch here.

She’s not the only one, Ethan.

Savannah appeared next to Emily, dragging Earl behind her. She looked exactly like Emily, only she was silver and pink, rather than silver and peach. Her skirt was just as fluffy. If you squinted, you could visualize both of their weddings now. It was horrifying.

Earl looked at the ground, trying to avoid making eye contact with me.

“Come on, Em, they’re announcin’ the Royal Court.” Savannah looked at Emily meaningfully.

“Don’t let me hold ya up.” Savannah gestured to the line for pictures. “I mean, will you even show up on film, Lena?” She flounced off, massive cream puff dress and all.

“Next!”

Lena’s hair was still curling.

They’re idiots. It doesn’t matter. None of it matters.

I heard the photographer’s voice again. “Next!”

I grabbed Lena’s hand and pulled her into the fake snowdrift. She looked up at me, her eyes clouded. And then, the clouds passed, and she was back. I could feel the storm settle.

“Cue the snow,” I heard in the background.

You’re right. It doesn’t matter.

I leaned in to kiss her.

You’re what matters.

We kissed, and the flash from the camera went off. For one second, one perfect second, it seemed like there was nobody else in the world, and nothing else mattered.

The blinding light of a flashbulb and then, sticky white goop was pouring everywhere, all over the two of us.

What the—?

Lena gasped. I tried to clear the glop out of my eyes, but it was everywhere. When I saw Lena, it was even worse, her hair, her face, her beautiful dress. Her first dance. Ruined.

It was foaming up, the consistency of pancake mix, dripping down from a bucket over our heads, the one that was supposed to release the flakes of fake snow so it could drift down gently for the photo. I looked up, only to get another face full of the stuff. The bucket rattled to the floor.

“Who put water in the snow?” The photographer was furious. No one said a word, and I was willing to bet the Jackson Angels hadn’t seen a thing.

“She’s melting!” someone shouted. We stood in a puddle of white soap or glue or whatever, wishing we could shrink until we disappeared; at least, that’s how it must have looked to the crowd standing around us laughing. Savannah and Emily were standing off to the side, enjoying every minute of what was maybe the most humiliating moment of Lena’s life.

A guy called out over the din. “You shoulda stayed home.”

I would’ve known that stupid voice anywhere. I’d heard it enough times on the court, about the only place he ever used it. Earl was whispering in Savannah’s ear, his arm slung around her shoulder.

I snapped. I was across the room so fast Earl didn’t even see me coming at him. I slammed my soap-covered fist into his jaw and he hit the ground, knocking Savannah on her hoop-skirted butt in the process.

“What the hell? Have you lost your mind, Wate?” Earl started to get up, but I pushed him back down with my foot.

“You better stay down.”

Earl sat up and pulled on the collar of his jacket to straighten it, as if he could still look cool sitting on the gym floor. “You better hope you know what you’re doin’.” But he didn’t get back up. He could say what he wanted, but we both knew if he got up, he was the one who would end up back on the ground.

“I do.” I pulled Lena out of the growing slush puddle of what used to be the fake snowdrift.

“Let’s go, Earl, they’re announcin’ the court,” Savannah said, annoyed. Earl got up and brushed himself off.

I wiped my eyes, shaking out my wet hair. Lena stood there shivering, dripping fake snow like whitewash. Even in the crowd, there was a little puddle of space around her. No one dared get too close, except me. I tried to wipe her face with my sleeve, but she backed away.

This is the way it always is.

“Lena.”

I should’ve known better.

Ridley appeared at her side, with Link right behind her. She was furious, I could see that much. “I don’t get it, Cuz. I don’t see why you want to hang out with their kind.” She spat the words out, sounding just like Emily. “No one treats us like this, Light or Dark—not one of them. Where’s your self-respect, Lena Beana?”

“It’s not worth it. Not tonight. I just want to go home.” Lena was too embarrassed to be as angry as Ridley. It was fight or flight, and right now, Lena was choosing flight. “Take me home, Ethan.”

Link took off his silver jacket and put it around her shoulders. “That was messed up.”

Ridley couldn’t calm down, or wouldn’t. “They’re bad news, Cuz, except Short Straw. And my new boyfriend, Shrinky Dink.”

“Link. I told you, it’s Link.”

“Shut up, Ridley. She’s had enough.” The Siren effect wasn’t working on me anymore.

Ridley looked over my shoulder, and smiled, a dark smile. “Come to think of it, I’ve had enough, too.”

I followed her gaze. The Ice Queen and her Court had made their way up to the stage, and were grinning from the catbird seat. Once again, Savannah was the Snow Queen. Nothing ever changed. She was beaming at Emily, once again her Ice Princess, just like last year.

Ridley took off her movie star sunglasses, just a little. Her eyes began to glow—you could almost feel the heat coming off her. A lollipop appeared in her hand, and I smelled the thick, sickly sweetness in the air.

Don’t, Ridley.

This isn’t about you, Cuz. It’s bigger than that. Things are about to change in this back-assward town.

I could hear Ridley’s voice in my head as clearly as Lena’s. I shook my head.

Leave it alone, Ridley. You’re only going to make things worse.

Open your eyes; they can’t get any worse. Or maybe they can.

She patted Lena on the shoulder.

Watch and learn.

She was staring at the Royal Court, sucking on her cherry lollipop. I hoped it was too dark for them to see her creepy cat eyes.

No! They’ll just blame me, Ridley. Don’t.

Gat-dung needs to learn a lesson. And I’m just the one to teach it to them.

Ridley strode toward the stage, her glitter heels clicking against the floor.

“Hey, babe, where ya goin’?” Link was right behind her.

Charlotte was walking up the stairs, in yards of shiny lavender taffeta two sizes too small, toward her sparkly, plastic silver crown and her usual place in fourth position of the Royal Court, behind Eden—Ice Handmaiden, I guess. Just as she was taking the last step, her gigantic lavender sweatshop creation caught the edge of the riser, and when she stepped up onto the last stair, the back of her dress tore right off, right at the feebly sewn seam. It took Charlotte a couple of seconds to realize it and by then, half the school was staring at her hot pink panties, the size of the state of Texas. Charlotte screamed a bloodcurdling, now-everyone-knows-how-fat-I-really-am scream.

Ridley grinned.

Oopsies!

Ridley, stop!

I’m just getting started.

Charlotte was screaming, while Emily, Eden, and Savannah tried to shield her from view with their teen wedding dresses. The sound of a record scratching ripped across the speakers, as the record that was playing abruptly changed to the Stones.

“Sympathy for the Devil.” It could’ve been Ridley’s theme song. She was introducing herself, in a big way.

The people on the dance floor just assumed it was another one of Dickey Wix’s screw-ups, on his way to becoming the most famous thirty-five-year-old DJ on the prom circuit. But the joke was on them. Forget light strands shorting out; within seconds all the bulbs above the stage and the track lighting along the dance floor began to blow, one by one, like dominoes.

Ridley led Link onto the dance floor, and he twirled her around as Jackson students screamed, pushing their way off the floor, under the spray of sparks. I’m sure they all thought they were in the middle of some kind of electrical wiring disaster that Red Sweet, Gatlin’s only electrician, would get blamed for. Ridley threw her head back, laughing and undulating around Link in that loincloth of a dress.

Ethan—we have to do something!

What?

It was too late to do anything. Lena turned and ran, and I was right behind her. Before either of us reached the doors to the gym, the sprinklers went off, all along the ceiling. Water poured into the gym. The audio equipment started to short out, sparking like an electrocution just waiting to happen. Wet snowflakes dropped to the floor like soaked pancakes, and soap-flake snow turned into a bubbling mess.

Everyone started to scream, and girls dripping mascara and hair product ran toward the door in their soggy taffeta skirts. In the mess, you couldn’t tell a Little Miss from a Southern Belle. They all looked like pastel-colored drowned rats.

As I reached the door, I heard a loud crash. I turned to the stage just as the giant glitter snowflake backdrop toppled. Emily flopped out of position, off her step on the slippery stage. Still waving to the crowd, she tried to catch herself, but her feet slipped out from under her and she fell to the gym floor. She collapsed into a pile of peach and silver taffeta. Coach Cross went running.

I didn’t feel sorry for her, even though I did feel sorry for the people who would be blamed for this nightmare: the Student Council for their dangerously unstable backdrop, Dickey Wix for capitalizing on the misfortune of a fat teenage cheerleader in her underwear, and Red Sweet for his unprofessional and potentially life-threatening wiring of the lighting in the Jackson High gym.

See you later, Cuz. This was even better than a prom.

I pushed Lena out the door in front of me. “Go!”

She was so cold I could barely stand to touch her. By the time we got to the car, Boo Radley was already catching up to us.

Macon shouldn’t have worried about her curfew.

It wasn’t even half past nine.

Macon was infuriated, or maybe he was just worried. I couldn’t tell which, because every time he looked at me, I looked away. Even Boo didn’t dare look at him, lying at Lena’s feet, thumping his tail on the floor.

The house no longer resembled the dance. I bet Macon would never allow a silver snowflake through the doors of Ravenwood again. Everything was black now. Everything: the floors, the furniture, the curtains, the ceiling. Only the fire in the study fireplace burned steadily, casting light out into the room from the hearth. Maybe the house reflected his changing moods, and this was a dark one.

“Kitchen!” A black mug of cocoa appeared in Macon’s hand. He handed it to Lena, who sat wrapped in a scratchy woolen blanket in front of the fire. She clutched the mug with both hands, her wet hair tucked behind her ears, clinging to the warmth. He paced in front of her. “You should have left the moment you saw her, Lena.”

“I was kind of busy getting doused with soap and laughed at by everyone in school.”

“Well, you won’t be busy anymore. You’re grounded until your birthday, for your own good.”

“My own good is so clearly not the point here.” She was still shaking, but I didn’t think it was from the cold, not anymore.

He stared at me, his eyes cold and dark. He was furious, I was sure now. “You should have made her leave.”

“I didn’t know what to do, sir. I didn’t know Ridley was going to destroy the gym. And Lena had never been to a dance.” It sounded stupid even as I was saying it.

Macon just stared back at me, swirling the scotch in his glass. “Interesting to note, you didn’t even dance. Not a single dance.”

“How do you know that?” Lena put down her mug.

Macon paced. “That’s not important.”

“Actually, it’s important to me.”

Macon shrugged. “It’s Boo. He is, for lack of a better word, my eyes.”

“What?”

“He sees what I see. I see what he sees. He’s a Caster dog, you know.”

“Uncle Macon! You’ve been spying on me!”

“Not on you, in particular. How do you think I manage as the town shut-in? I wouldn’t get far without man’s best friend. Boo here sees everything, so I see everything.” I looked at Boo. I could see the eyes, human eyes. I should have known, maybe I had always known. He had Macon’s eyes.

And something else, something he was chewing. He had a ball of something in his mouth. I bent down to take it from him. It was a crumpled, soggy Polaroid. He had carried it all the way from the gym.

Our picture from the formal. I was standing there, with Lena, in the middle of the fake snow. Emily was wrong. Lena’s kind did show up on film, only she was shimmering, transparent, as if from the waist down she had already begun to dissolve into some kind of ghostly apparition. Like she really was melting, before the snow had even hit her.

I patted Boo’s head and pocketed the photo. This wasn’t something Lena needed to see, not right now. Two months until her birthday. I didn’t need the picture to know we were running out of time.