Beautiful Creatures

10.09

A Crack in the Plaster

When I woke up, I had no idea where I was. I tried to focus on the first few things that came into view. Words. Phrases handwritten in what looked like carefully scripted Sharpie, right on the ceiling over the bed.

moments bleed together, no span to time

There were hundreds of others, too, written everywhere, parts of sentences, parts of verses, random collections of words. On one closet door was scrawled fate decides. On the other, it said until challenged by the fated. Up and down the door I could see the words desperate / relentless / condemned / empowered. The mirror said open your eyes; the windowpanes said and see.

Even the pale white lampshade was scribbled with the words illuminatethedarknessilluminatethedarkness over and over again, in an endlessly repeating pattern.

Lena’s poetry. I was finally getting to read some of it. Even if you ignored the distinctive ink, this room didn’t look like the rest of the house. It was small and cozy, tucked up under the eaves. A ceiling fan swirled slowly above my head, cutting through the phrases. There were stacks of spiral notebooks on every surface, and a stack of books on the nightstand. Poetry books. Plath, Eliot, Bukowski, Frost, Cummings—at least I recognized the names.

I was lying in a small white iron bed, my legs spilling over the edge. This was Lena’s room, and I was lying in her bed. Lena was curled in a chair at the foot of the bed, her head resting on the arm.

I sat up, groggy. “Hey. What happened?”

I was pretty sure I had passed out, but I was fuzzy on the details. The last thing I remembered was the freezing cold moving up my body, my throat closing up, and Lena’s voice. I thought she had said something about me being her boyfriend, but since I was about to pass out at the time and nothing had really happened between us, that was doubtful. Wishful thinking, I guessed.

“Ethan!” She jumped out of the chair and onto the bed next to me, although she seemed careful not to touch me. “Are you okay? Ridley wouldn’t let go of you, and I didn’t know what to do. You looked like you were in so much pain, and I just reacted.”

“You mean that tornado in the middle of your dining room?”

She looked away, miserable. “That’s what happens. I feel things, I get angry or scared and then… things just happen.”

I reached over and put my hand over hers, feeling the warmth move up my arm. “Things like windows breaking?”

She looked back at me, and I curled my hand around hers until I was holding it in mine. A random crack in the old plaster in the corner behind her seemed to grow, until it curled its way across the ceiling, circled the frosted chandelier, and swirled its way back down. It looked like a heart. A giant, looping, girly heart had just appeared in the cracking plaster of her bedroom ceiling.

“Lena.”

“Yeah?”

“Is your ceiling about to fall in on our heads?”

She turned and looked at the crack. When she saw it, she bit her lip, and her cheeks turned pink. “I don’t think so. It’s just a crack in the plaster.”

“Were you trying to do that?”

“No.” A creeping pink spread across her nose and cheeks. She looked away.

I wanted to ask her what it was she’d been thinking, but I didn’t want to embarrass her. I just hoped it had something to do with me, with her hand nestled in mine. With the word I thought I heard her say, the moment before I blacked out.

I looked dubiously at the crack. A lot was riding on that crack in the plaster.

“Can you undo them? These things that just… happen?”

Lena sighed, relieved to talk about something else. “Sometimes. It depends. Sometimes I get so overwhelmed that I can’t control it and I can’t fix it, not even after. I don’t think I could have put the glass back into that window at school. I don’t think I could have stopped the storm from coming, the day we met.”

“I don’t think that one was your fault. You can’t blame yourself for every storm that rolls through Gatlin County. Hurricane season isn’t even over yet.”

She flipped over onto her stomach and looked me right in the eye. She didn’t let go, and neither did I. My whole body was buzzing with the warmth of her touch. “Didn’t you see what happened tonight?”

“Maybe sometimes a hurricane is just a hurricane, Lena.”

“As long as I’m around, I am hurricane season in Gatlin County.” She tried to pull her hand away, but that only made me hold on more tightly.

“That’s funny. You seem more like a girl to me.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not. I’m a whole storm system, out of control. Most Casters can control their gifts by the time they’re my age, but half the time it feels more like mine control me.” She pointed to her own reflection in the mirror on the wall. The Sharpie writing scribbled itself across the reflection as we watched. Who is this girl? “I’m still trying to figure it all out, but sometimes it seems like I never will.”

“Do all Casters have the same powers, gifts, whatever?”

“No. We can all do simple things like move objects, but each Caster also has more specific abilities related to their gifts.”

Right about now, I wished there was some kind of class I could take so I’d be able to follow these conversations, Caster 101, I don’t know, because I was always sort of lost. The only person I knew who had any special abilities was Amma. Reading futures and warding off evil spirits had to count for something, right? And for all I knew, maybe Amma could move objects with her mind; she could sure get my butt moving with just a look. “What about Aunt Del? What can she do?”

“She’s a Palimpsest. She reads time.”

“Reads time?”

“Like, you and I walk into a room and see the present. Aunt Del sees different points in the past and the present, all at once. She can walk into a room and see it as it is today and as it was ten years ago, twenty years ago, fifty years ago, at the same time. Kind of like when we touch the locket. That’s why she’s always so confused. She never knows exactly when or even where she is.”

I thought about how I felt after one of the visions, and what it would be like to feel that way all of the time. “No kidding. How about Ridley?”

“Ridley’s a Siren. Her gift is the Power of Persuasion. She can put any idea into anyone’s head, get them to tell her anything, do anything. If she used her power on you, and she told you to jump off a cliff—you’d jump.” I remembered how it felt in the car with her, like I would’ve told her almost anything.

“I wouldn’t jump.”

“You would. You’d have to. A Mortal man is no match for a Siren.”

“I wouldn’t.” I looked at her. Her hair was blowing in the breeze around her face, except there wasn’t an open window in the room. I searched her eyes for some kind of sign that maybe she was feeling the same way I was. “You can’t jump off a cliff when you’ve already fallen off a bigger one.”

I heard the words coming out of my mouth, and I wanted to take them back as soon as I said them. They had sounded a lot better in my head. She looked back at me, trying to see if I was serious. I was, but I couldn’t say that. Instead, I changed the subject. “So what’s Reece’s superpower?”

“She’s a Sybil, she reads faces. She can see what you’ve seen, who you’ve seen, what you’ve done, just by looking into your eyes. She can open up your face and literally read it, like a book.” Lena was still studying my face.

“Yeah, who was that? That other woman Ridley turned into for a second, when Reece was staring at her? Did you see that?”

Lena nodded. “Macon wouldn’t tell me, but it had to be someone Dark. Someone powerful.”

I kept asking. I had to know. It was like finding out I’d just had dinner with a bunch of aliens. “What can Larkin do? Charm snakes?”

“Larkin’s an Illusionist. It’s like a Shifter. But Uncle Barclay’s the only Shifter in the family.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Larkin can Spellcast, or make anything look like anything he wants, for a spell—people, things, places. He creates illusions, but they’re not real. Uncle Barclay can Shiftcast, which means he can actually change any object into another object, for as long as he wants.”

“So your cousin changes how things seem, and your uncle changes how they are?”

“Yeah. Mostly, Gramma says their powers are too close. It happens sometimes with parents and their children. They’re too much alike, so they’re always fighting.” I knew what she was thinking, that she would never know that for herself. Her face clouded over, and I made a stupid attempt to lighten the mood.

“Ryan? What’s her power? Dog fashion designer?”

“Too soon to tell. She’s only ten.”

“And Macon?”

“He’s just… Uncle Macon. There’s nothing Uncle Macon can’t do, or wouldn’t do for me. I spent a lot of time with him growing up.” She looked away, avoiding the question. She was holding something back, but with Lena, it was impossible to know what. “He’s like my father, or how I imagine my father.” She didn’t have to say anything else. I knew what it was like to lose someone. I wondered if it was worse to never have them at all.

“What about you? What’s your gift?”

As if she had just one. As if I hadn’t seen them in action since the first day of school. As if I hadn’t been trying to get up the nerve to ask her this question since the night she sat on my porch in her purple pajamas.

She paused for a minute, collecting her thoughts, or deciding if she was going to tell me; it was impossible to know which. Then she looked at me, with her endless green eyes. “I’m a Natural. At least Uncle Macon and Aunt Del think I am.”

A Natural. I was relieved. It didn’t sound as bad as a Siren. I didn’t think I could have handled that. “What exactly does that mean?”

“I don’t even know. It’s not really one thing. I mean, supposedly a Natural can do a lot more than other Casters.” She said it quickly, almost like she was hoping I wouldn’t hear, but I did.

More than other Casters.

More. I wasn’t sure how I felt about more. Less, I could have handled less. Less would’ve been good.

“But as you saw tonight, I don’t even know what I can do.” She picked at the quilt between us, nervous. I pulled on her hand until she was lying on the bed next to me, propped up on one elbow.

“I don’t care about any of that. I like you just the way you are.”

“Ethan, you barely know anything about me.”

The drowsy warmth was washing through my body, and to be honest, I couldn’t have cared less what she was saying. It felt so good just to be near her, holding her hand, with only the white quilt between us. “That’s not true. I know you write poetry and I know about the raven on your necklace and I know you love orange soda and your grandma and Milk Duds mixed into your popcorn.”

For a second, I thought she might smile. “That’s hardly anything.”

“It’s a start.”

She looked me right in the eye, her green eyes searching my blue ones. “You don’t even know my name.”

“Your name is Lena Duchannes.”

“Okay, well, for starters, it’s not.”

I pushed myself all the way up, and let go of her hand. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s not my name. Ridley wasn’t lying about that.” Some of the conversation from earlier started to come back to me. I remembered Ridley saying something about Lena not knowing her real name, but I didn’t think she had meant literally.

“Well, what is it then?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is that some kind of Caster thing?”

“Not really. Most Casters know their real names, but my family’s different. In my family, we don’t learn our birth names until we turn sixteen. Until then, we have other names. Ridley’s was Julia. Reece’s was Annabel. Mine is Lena.”

“So who’s Lena Duchannes?”

“I’m a Duchannes, that much I know. But Lena, that’s just a name my gramma started calling me, because she thought I was skinny as a string bean. Lena Beana.”

I didn’t say anything for a second. I was trying to take it all in. “Okay, so you don’t know your first name. You’ll know in a couple of months.”

“It’s not that simple. I don’t know anything about myself. That’s why I’m so crazy all the time. I don’t know my name and I don’t know what happened to my parents.”

“They died in an accident, right?”

“That’s what they told me, but nobody really talks about it. I can’t find any record of the accident, and I’ve never seen their graves or anything. How do I even know it’s true?”

“Who’s going to lie about something as creepy as that?”

“Have you met my family?”

“Right.”

“And that monster downstairs, that—witch, who almost killed you? Believe it or not, she used to be my best friend. Ridley and I grew up together living with my gramma. We moved around so much we shared the same suitcase.”

“That’s why you guys don’t have much of an accent. Most people would never believe you had lived in the South.”

“What’s your excuse?”

“Professor parents, and a jar full of quarters every time I dropped a G.” I rolled my eyes. “So Ridley didn’t live with Aunt Del?”

“No. Aunt Del just visits on the holidays. In my family, you don’t live with your parents. It’s too dangerous.” I stopped myself from asking my next fifty questions while Lena raced on, as if she’d been waiting to tell this story for about a hundred years. “Ridley and I were like sisters. We slept in the same room and we were home-schooled together. When we moved to Virginia, we convinced my gramma to let us to go to a regular school. We wanted to make friends, be normal. The only time we ever spoke to Mortals was when Gramma took us on one of her outings to museums, the opera, or lunch at Olde Pink House.”

“So what happened when you went to school?”

“It was a disaster. Our clothes were wrong, we didn’t have a TV, we turned in all our homework. We were total losers.”

“But you got to hang out with Mortals.”

She wouldn’t look at me. “I’ve never had a Mortal friend until I met you.”

“Really?”

“I only had Ridley. Things were just as bad for her, but she didn’t care. She was too busy making sure no one bothered me.”

I had a hard time imagining Ridley protecting anyone.

People change, Ethan.

Not that much. Not even Casters.

Especially Casters. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.

She pulled her hand away from me. “Ridley started acting strange, and then the same guys who had ignored her started following her everywhere, waiting for her after school, fighting over who would walk her home.”

“Yeah, well. Some girls are just like that.”

“Ridley isn’t some girl. I told you, she’s a Siren. She could make people do things, things they wouldn’t normally want to do. And those boys were jumping off the cliff, one by one.” She twisted her necklace around her fingers and kept talking. “The night before Ridley’s sixteenth birthday, I followed her to the train station. She was scared out of her mind. She said she could tell she was going Dark, and she had to get away before she hurt someone she loved. Before she hurt me. I’m the only person Ridley ever really loved. She disappeared that night, and I never saw her again until today. I think after what you saw tonight, it’s pretty obvious she went Dark.”

“Wait a second, what are you talking about? What do you mean going Dark?”

Lena took a deep breath and hesitated, like she wasn’t sure if she wanted to tell me the answer.

“You have to tell me, Lena.”

“In my family, when you turn sixteen, you’re Claimed. Your fate is chosen for you, and you become Light, like Aunt Del and Reece, or you become Dark, like Ridley. Dark or Light, Black or White. There’s no gray in my family. We can’t choose, and we can’t undo it once we’re Claimed.”

“What do you mean, you can’t choose?”

“We can’t decide if we want to be Light or Dark, good or evil, like Mortals and other Casters can. In my family, there’s no free will. It’s decided for us, on our sixteenth birthday.”

I tried to understand what she was saying, but it was too crazy. I’d lived with Amma long enough to know there was White and Black magic, but it was hard to believe that Lena had no choice about which one she was.

Who she was.

She was still talking. “That’s why we can’t live with our parents.”

“What does that have to do with it?”

“It didn’t used to be that way. But when my gramma’s sister, Althea, went Dark, their mother couldn’t send Althea away. Back then, if a Caster went Dark, they were supposed to leave their home and their family, for obvious reasons. Althea’s mother thought she could help her fight it, but she couldn’t, and terrible things started happening in the town where they lived.”

“What kind of things?”

“Althea was an Evo. They’re incredibly powerful. They can influence people like Ridley can, but they can also Evolve, morph into other people, into anyone. Once she Turned, unexplained accidents started happening in town. People were injured and eventually a girl drowned. That’s when Althea’s mother finally sent her away.”

I thought we had problems in Gatlin. I couldn’t imagine a more powerful version of Ridley hanging around, full-time. “So now none of you can live with your parents?”

“Everyone decided it would be too hard for parents to turn their backs on their children if they went Dark. So ever since then, children live with other family members until they’re Claimed.”

“Then why does Ryan live with her parents?”

“Ryan is… Ryan. She’s a special case.” She shrugged. “At least, that’s what Uncle Macon says every time I ask.”

It all sounded so surreal, the idea that everyone in her family possessed supernatural powers. They looked like me, like everyone else in Gatlin, well, maybe not everyone, but they were completely different. Weren’t they? Even Ridley, hanging out in front of the Stop & Steal—none of the guys had suspected she was anything other than an incredibly hot girl, who was obviously pretty confused if she was looking for me. How did it work? How did you get to be a Caster instead of just some ordinary kid?

“Were your parents gifted?” I hated to bring up her parents. I knew what it was like to talk about your dead parent, but at this point I had to know.

“Yes. Everyone in my family is.”

“What were their gifts? Were they anything like yours?”

“I don’t know. Gramma’s never said anything. I told you, it’s like they never existed. Which just makes me think, you know.”

“What?”

“Maybe they were Dark, and I’m going to go Dark, too.”

“You’re not.”

“How do you know?”

“How can I have the same dreams you have? How do I know when I walk into a room whether or not you’ve been there?”

Ethan.

It’s true.

I touched her cheek, and said quietly, “I don’t know how I know. I just do.”

“I know you believe that, but you can’t know. I don’t even know what’s going to happen to me.”

“That’s the biggest load of crap I’ve ever heard.” It was like everything else tonight; I hadn’t meant to say it, at least not out loud, but I was glad I did.

“What?”

“All that destiny garbage. Nobody can decide what happens to you. Nobody but you.”

“Not if you’re a Duchannes, Ethan. Other Casters, they can choose, but not us, not my family. When we’re Claimed at sixteen, we become Light or Dark. There is no free will.”

I lifted her chin with my hand. “So you’re a Natural. What’s wrong with that?”

I looked into her eyes, and I knew I was going to kiss her, and I knew there was nothing to worry about, as long as we stayed together. And I believed, for that one second, we always would.

I stopped thinking about the Jackson basketball playbook and finally let her see how I felt, what was in my mind. What I was about to do, and how long it had taken me to get up the nerve to do it.

Oh.

Her eyes widened, bigger and greener, if that was even possible.

Ethan—I don’t know—

I leaned down and kissed her mouth. It tasted salty, like her tears. This time, not warmth, but electricity, shot from my mouth to my toes. I could feel tingling in my fingertips. It was like shoving a pen into an electrical outlet, which Link had dared me to do when I was eight years old. She closed her eyes and pulled me in to her, and for a minute, everything was perfect. She kissed me, her lips smiling beneath mine, and I knew she had been waiting for me, maybe just as long as I had been waiting for her. But then, as quickly as she had opened herself up to me, she shut me out. Or more accurately, pushed me back.

Ethan, we can’t do this.

Why? I thought we felt the same way about each other.

Or maybe we didn’t. Maybe she didn’t.

I was staring at her, from the end of her outstretched hands that were still resting on my chest. She could probably feel how fast my heart was beating.

It’s not that….

She started to turn away, and I was sure she was about to run away like she had the day we found the locket at Greenbrier, like the night she left me standing on my porch. I put my hand on her wrist, and instantly felt the heat. “Then what is it?”

She stared back at me, and I tried to hear her thoughts, but I had nothing. “I know you think I have a choice about what’s going to happen to me, but I don’t. And what Ridley did tonight, that was nothing. She could’ve killed you, and maybe she would have if I hadn’t stopped her.” She took a deep breath, her eyes glistening. “That’s what I could turn into—a monster—whether you believe it or not.”

I slid my arms back around her neck, ignoring her. But she went on. “I don’t want you to see me like that.”

“I don’t care.” I kissed her cheek.

She climbed off the bed, sliding her arm out of my hand.

“You don’t get it.” She held up her hand. 122. One hundred and twenty-two more days, smeared in blue ink, as if that was all we had.

“I get it. You’re scared. But we’ll figure something out. We’re supposed to be together.”

“We’re not. You’re a Mortal. You can’t understand. I don’t want to see you get hurt, and that’s what will happen if you get too close to me.”

“Too late.”

I’d heard every word she had said, but I only knew one thing.

I was all in.