Beautiful Darkness

Beneath the Paper

All of those?" There were three stacks of brown paper packages on the checkout desk. Marian marked the last one with the familiar GATLIN COUNTY LIBRARY stamp, always twice and always tied with the same white string.

"No, take that pile, too." She pointed to a second pile, on the nearest trolley.

"I thought nobody in this town reads."

"Oh, they read. They just don't own up to what they read, which is why we make not only library-to-library deliveries but library-to-home ones as well. Circulating books only. Allowing two to three days for the processing of requests, of course."

Great. I was afraid to ask what was in these brown paper packages, and I was pretty sure I didn't want to know. I picked up a stack of books and groaned. "What are these, encyclopedias?"

Liv pulled the receipt from the top bundle. "Yes. The Encyclopedia of Ammunition, actually."

Marian waved us out the door. "Go with Ethan, Liv. You haven't had an opportunity to see our beautiful little town yet."

"I can handle it."

Liv sighed and pushed the trolley toward the door. "Come on, Hercules. I'll help you load up. Can't keep the ladies of Gatlin waiting on their ..." She consulted another receipt. "... Carolin-er Cake Doctor Cookbook, now can we?"

"Carolina," I said, automatically.

"That's what I said. Carolin-er."

Two hours later, we had delivered most of the books and driven by both Jackson High and the Stop & Steal. As we circled the General's Green, I realized why Marian had been so eager to hire me at a library that was always empty and didn't need summer employees. She had planned for me to be Liv's teenage tour guide all along. It was my job to show her the lake and the Dar-ee Keen and fill in the gaps between what folks around here said and what they meant. My job was to be her friend.

I wondered how Lena was going to feel about that. If she noticed.

"I still don't understand why there's a statue of a general from a war the South didn't win, and one which was generally embarrassing for your country, in the middle of town." Of course she didn't.

"Folks honor the fallen around here. There's a whole museum dedicated to them." I didn't mention the Fallen Soldiers was also the scene of my dad's Ridley-induced suicide attempt a few months ago.

I looked over at Liv from behind the wheel of the Volvo. I couldn't remember the last time there had been any girl except Lena in the passenger's seat.

"You're a terrible tour guide."

"This is Gatlin. There isn't all that much to see." I glanced in the rearview mirror. "Or just not that much I want you to see."

"What do you mean by that?"

"A good tour guide knows what to show and what to hide."

"I stand corrected. You're a terribly misguided tour guide." She pulled a rubber band out of her pocket.

"So I'm more of a mis-guide?" It was a stupid joke, my trademark.

"And I take issue with both your punning and your tour-guiding philosophy, generally speaking." She was working her blond hair into two braids, her cheeks pink from the heat. She wasn't used to the South Carolina humidity.

"What do you want to see? You want me to take you to shoot cans behind the old cotton mill off Route 9? Flatten pennies on the train tracks? Follow the trail of flies into the eat-at-your-own-risk grease pit we call the Dar-ee Keen?"

"Yes. All of the above, particularly the last bit. I'm starving."

Liv dropped the last library receipt into one of two piles. "... seven, eight, nine. Which means I win, you lose, and get your hands off those chips. They belong to me now." She pulled my chili fries over to her side of the red plastic table.

"You mean fries."

"I mean business." Her side of the table was already covered with onion rings, a cheeseburger, ketchup, mayonnaise, and my sweet tea. I knew whose side was whose because she had made a line between us, laying french fries end to end, like the Great Wall of China.

"'Good fences make good neighbors.' "

I remembered the poem from English class. "Walt Whitman."

She shook her head. "Robert Frost. Now keep your hands off my onion rings."

I should've known that one. How many times had Lena quoted Frost's poems or twisted them into one of her own?

We had stopped for lunch at the Dar-ee Keen, which was down the road from the last two deliveries we'd made -- Mrs. Ipswich (Guide to Colon Cleanliness) and Mr. Harlow (Classic Pinups of World War II), which we had given to his wife because he wasn't home. For the first time, I understood the reason for the brown paper.

"I can't believe it." I wadded up my napkin. "Who would have figured Gatlin was so romantic?" I had bet on church books. Liv had bet on romance novels. I lost, eight to nine.

"Not only romantic, but romantic and righteous. It's a wonderful combination, so --"

"Hypocritical?"

"Not at all. I was going to say American. Did you notice we delivered It Takes a Bible and Divinely Delicious Delilah to the very same house?"

"I thought that was a cookbook."

"Not unless Delilah's cooking up something quite a bit hotter than these chili chips." She waved a fry in the air.

"Fries."

"Exactly."

I turned bright red, thinking about how flustered Mrs. Lincoln had looked when we dropped those books off at her door. I didn't point out to Liv that Delilah's devotee was the mother of my best friend, and the most ruthlessly righteous woman in town.

"So, you like the Dar-ee Keen?" I changed the subject.

"I'm mad about it." Liv took a bite of her cheeseburger, big enough to put Link to shame. I'd already seen her wolf down more than the average varsity basketball player at lunch. She didn't seem to care what I thought about her one way or another, which was a relief. Especially since everything I did around Lena lately was wrong.

"So what would we find in your brown paper package? Church books, romance novels, or both?"

"I don't know." I had more secrets than I knew what to do with, but I wasn't about to share any of them.

"Come on. Everyone has secrets."

"Not everyone," I lied.

"There's nothing at all beneath your paper?"

"Nope. Just more paper, I guess." In a way, I wished it was true.

"So you're rather like an onion?"

"More like a regular old potato."

She picked up a fry and examined it. "Ethan Wate is no regular old potato. You, sir, are a french fry." She popped it into her mouth, smiling.

I laughed and conceded. "Fine. I'm a french fry. But no brown paper, nothing to tell."

Liv stirred her sweet tea with her straw. "That confirms it. You are definitely on the waiting list for Divinely Delicious Delilah."

"You caught me."

"I can't promise anything, but I will tell you that I know the librarian. Rather well, it turns out."

"So you'll hook me up?"

"I will hook you up, dude." Liv started laughing, and I did, too. She was easy to be around, like I'd known her forever. I was having fun, which, by the time we stopped laughing, turned into feeling guilty. Explain that to me.

She returned to her fries. "I find all the secrecy sort of romantic, don't you?" I didn't know how to answer that, considering how deep the secrets went around here.

"In my town, the pub is on the same street as the church, and the congregation moves directly from one to the other. Sometimes we even eat Sunday dinner there."

I smiled. "Is it divinely delicious?"

"Nearly. Maybe not quite so hot. But the drinks are not quite so cold." She pointed at her sweet tea with a fry. "Ice, my friend, is something you find on the ground more often than in your glass."

"You have a problem with Gatlin County's famous sweet tea?"

"Tea is meant to be hot, sir. From a kettle."

I stole a fry and pointed it back at her sweet tea. "Well, ma'am, to a strict Southern Baptist, that is the Devil's drink."

"You mean because it's cold?"

"I mean because it's tea. No caffeine allowed."

Liv looked shocked. "No tea? I'll never understand this country."

I stole another fry. "You want to talk about blasphemy? You weren't there when Millie's Breakfast 'n' Biscuits over on Main started serving premade freezer biscuits. My great-aunts, the Sisters, pitched a fit that nearly took down the place. I mean, chairs were flying."

"Are they nuns?" Liv stuck an onion ring inside her cheeseburger.

"Who?"

"The Sisters." Another onion ring.

"No. They're actual sisters."

"I see." She slapped the bun back down.

"You don't, not really."

She picked up the burger and took a bite. "Not at all." We both started laughing again. I didn't hear Mr. Gentry walk up behind us.

"Y'all get enough to eat?" he asked, wiping his hands with a rag.

I nodded. "Yes, sir."

"How's that girlfriend a yours?" He asked as if he was hoping I had come to my senses and dumped Lena by now.

"Um, fine, sir."

He nodded, disappointed, and walked back toward the counter. "Say hello to Miss Amma for me."

"I take it he doesn't like your girlfriend?" She said it like a question, but I didn't know what to say. Was a girl still technically your girlfriend if she drove off with another guy? "I think Professor Ashcroft may have mentioned her."

"Lena. My -- her name is Lena." I hoped I didn't look as uncomfortable as I felt. Liv didn't seem to notice.

She took another sip of her tea. "I'll probably meet her at the library."

"I don't know if she'll be coming by the library. Things have been weird lately." I don't know why I said it. I barely knew Liv. But it felt good to say it out loud, and my insides untwisted a little.

"I'm sure you'll work it out. Back home, I fought with my boyfriend all the time." Her voice was light. She was trying to make me feel better.

"How long have you guys been together?"

Liv waved her hand in the air, the weird watch sliding down her wrist. "Oh, we broke up. He was a bit of a prat. I don't think he liked having a girlfriend who was smarter than he was."

I wanted to get off the subject of girlfriends, and ex-girlfriends. "So what's that thing, anyway?" I nodded at the watch, or whatever it was.

"This?" She held her wrist over the table so I could see the clunky black watch. It had three dials and a little silver needle that rested on a rectangle with zigzags all over it, sort of like one of those machines that track the strength of earthquakes. "It's a selenometer."

I looked at her blankly.

"Selene, the Greek goddess of the moon. Metron, or 'measure' in Greek." She smiled. "A little rusty on your Greek etymology?"

"A little."

"It measures the moon's gravitational pull." She turned one of the dials, thoughtfully. Numbers appeared under the pointer.

"Why do you care about the moon's gravitational pull?"

"I'm an amateur astronomer. I'm interested in the moon, mostly. It has a tremendous impact on the Earth. You know, the tides and everything. That's why I made this."

I almost spit out my Coke. "You made it? Seriously?"

"Don't be so impressed. It wasn't that difficult." Liv's cheeks flushed again. I was embarrassing her. She reached for another fry. "These chips really are brilliant."

I tried to imagine Liv sitting in the English version of the Dar-ee Keen, measuring the gravitational pull of the moon over a mountain of fries. It was better than picturing Lena on the back of John Breed's Harley. "So let's hear about your Gatlin. The one where they call fries by the wrong name." I had never been any farther than Savannah. I couldn't imagine what life would be like in another country.

"My Gatlin?" The pink spots on her cheeks faded.

"Where you're from."

"I'm from a town north of London, called Kings Langley."

"What?"

"In Hertfordshire."

"Doesn't ring a bell."

She took another bite of her burger. "Maybe this will help. It's where they invented Ovaltine. You know, the drink?" She sighed. "You stir it in milk, and it makes the milk into a chocolate malted?"

My eyes widened. "You mean chocolate milk? Kind of like Nesquik?"

"Exactly. It's amazing stuff, really. You should try it sometime."

I laughed into my Coke, which spilled on my faded Atari T-shirt. Ovaltine girl meets Quik boy. I wanted to tell Link, but he would get the wrong idea.

Even though it had only been a few hours, I had the feeling she was a friend.

"What do you do when you're not drinking Ovaltine and making scientific devices, Olivia Durand of Kings Langley?"

She crumpled the paper from her cheeseburger. "Let's see. Mostly I read books and go to school. I study at a place called Harrow. Not the boys' school."

"Is it?"

"What?" She scrunched up her nose.

"Harrowing?" H. A. R. R. O. W. I. N. G. Nine across, as in, gettin' on in years and can't take much more a these harrowin' times, Ethan Wate.

"You can't resist a terrible pun, can you?" Liv smiled.

"And you didn't answer the question."

"No. Not especially harrowing. Not for me."

"Why not?"

"Well, for starters, I'm a genius." She was matter-of-fact, as if she'd just said she was blond, or British.

"So why did you come to Gatlin? We're not exactly a genius magnet."

"Well, I'm part of the AGE, Academically Gifted Exchange, between Duke University and my school. Will you pass the mayo-nnaise?"

"Mann-aise." I tried to say it slowly.

"That's what I said."

"Why would Duke bother to send you to Gatlin? So you could take classes at Summerville Community College?"

"No, silly. So I could study with my thesis adviser, the renowned Dr. Marian Ashcroft, truly the only one of her kind."

"What is your thesis about?"

"Folklore and mythology, as it relates to community building after the American Civil War."

"Around here most people still call it the War Between the States," I said.

She laughed, delighted. I was glad someone thought it was funny. To me, it was just embarrassing. "Is it true people in the South sometimes dress up in old Civil War costumes and fight all the battles over again, for fun?"

I stood up. It was one thing for me to say it, but I didn't want to hear it from Liv, too. "I think it's time to get going. We've got more books to deliver."

Liv nodded, grabbing her fries. "We can't leave these. We should save them for Lucille."

I didn't mention that Lucille was used to Amma feeding her fried chicken and plates of leftover casserole on her own china plate, as the Sisters had instructed. I couldn't see Lucille eating greasy fries. Lucille was partic-u-lar, as the Sisters would say. She liked Lena, though.

As we headed for the door, a car caught my eye through the grease-coated windows. The Fastback was making a three-point turn at the end of the gravel parking lot. Lena made a point of not driving past us.

Great.

I stood and watched the car skid onto Dove Street.

That night, I lay in my bed and stared up at the blue ceiling, my hands folded behind my head. A few months ago, this would've been when Lena and I went to bed in our separate rooms together -- reading, laughing, talking through our days. I had nearly forgotten how to fall asleep without her.

I rolled over and checked my old, cracked cell. It hadn't really been working since Lena's birthday, but still, it would ring when someone called me. If someone had.

Not like she'd use the phone.

Right then, I was back to being the same seven-year-old who had dumped every puzzle in my room into one giant, miserable mess. When I was a kid, my mom sat on the floor and helped me turn the mess into a picture. But I wasn't a kid anymore, and my mom was gone. I turned the pieces over and over in my mind, but I couldn't seem to get them sorted out. The girl I was madly in love with was still the girl I was madly in love with. That hadn't changed. Only now the girl I was madly in love with was keeping secrets from me and barely speaking to me.

Then there were the visions.

Abraham Ravenwood, a Blood Incubus who had killed his own brother, knew my name and could see me. I had to figure out how the pieces fit together until I could see something -- some kind of pattern. I couldn't get the puzzle back into the box. It was too late for that. I wished someone could tell me where to put even one piece. Without thinking, I got up and pushed open my bedroom window.

I leaned out and breathed in the darkness, when I heard Lucille's distinctive meow. Amma must have forgotten to let her back inside. I was about to call out to tell her I was coming, when I noticed them. Under my window, at the edge of the porch, Lucille Ball and Boo Radley sat side by side in the moonlight.

Boo thumped his tail, and Lucille meowed in response. They sat like that at the top of the porch steps, thumping and meowing, as if they were carrying on as civilized a conversation as any two townsfolk on a summer night. I don't know what they were gossiping about, but it must have been big news. As I lay in bed listening to the quiet conversation of Macon's dog and the Sisters' cat, I drifted off before they did.