I didn’t understand what she was talking about, but I knew Marian loved me, like she had loved my mom. If she couldn’t help us, there had to be a reason. “Fine. You can’t help us. Just take me to this Caster Library, and I’ll figure it out myself.”
“You’re not a Caster, Ethan. This isn’t your decision to make.”
Lena stepped next to me, and took my hand. “It’s mine. And I want to go.”
Marian nodded. “All right, I’ll take you, the next time it’s open. The Caster Library doesn’t operate on the same schedule as the Gatlin County Library. It’s a bit more irregular.”
Of course it was.
10.31
Hallow E’en
The only days of the year that the Gatlin County Library was closed were bank holidays—like Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, New Year’s Day, Easter. As a result, these were the only days the Gatlin County Caster Library was open, which apparently wasn’t something Marian could control.
“Take it up with the county. Like I said, I don’t make the rules.” I wondered what county she was talking about—the one I had lived in my whole life, or the one that had been hidden from me for just as long.
Still, Lena seemed almost hopeful. For the first time, it was as if she actually believed there might be a way to prevent what she had considered the inevitable. Marian couldn’t give us any answers, but she anchored us in the absence of the two people we relied on most, who hadn’t gone anywhere, but seemed far away just the same. I didn’t say anything to Lena, but without Amma I was lost. And without Macon, I knew Lena couldn’t even find her way to lost.
Marian did give us something, Ethan and Genevieve’s letters, so old and delicate they were almost transparent, and everything she and my mother had collected about the two of them. A whole stack of papers in a dusty brown box, with cardboard printed to look like wood paneling on the sides. Although Lena loved poring over the prose—“the days without you bleed together until time is nothing more than another obstacle we must overcome,”—all it seemed to amount to was a love story with a really bad, and really Black ending. But it was all we had.
Now all we had to do was figure out what we were looking for. The needle in the haystack, or in this case, the cardboard box. So we did the only thing we could do. We started looking.
After two weeks, I’d spent more time with Lena on the locket papers than I would have thought possible. The more we read through the papers, the more it seemed like we were reading about ourselves. At night, we stayed up late trying to solve the mystery of Ethan and Genevieve, a Mortal and a Caster, desperate to find a way to be together, against impossible odds. At school, we faced some steep odds ourselves, just getting through another eight hours at Jackson, and it was only getting harder. Every day, there was another scheme to drive Lena away, or us apart. Especially if that day was Halloween.
Halloween was generally a pretty loaded holiday at Jackson. For a guy, anything involving costumes was an accident waiting to happen. And then, there was always the stress of whether or not you made the guest list to Savannah Snow’s annual blowout. But Halloween took on a whole new level of stress when the girl you were crazy about was a Caster.
I had no idea what to expect when Lena picked me up for school, a couple of blocks from my house, safely around the corner from the eyes in the back of Amma’s head.
“You’re not dressed up,” I said, surprised.
“What are you talking about?”
“I thought you’d be wearing a costume or something.” I knew I sounded like an idiot the second the words came out of my mouth.
“Oh, you think Casters dress up on Halloween and fly around on brooms?” She laughed.
“I didn’t mean—”
“Sorry to disappoint you. We just dress for dinner like we do on any other holiday.”
“So it’s a holiday for you guys, too.”
“It’s the most sacred night of the year, and the most dangerous—the most important of the four High Holidays. It’s our version of New Year’s Eve, the end of the old year and the beginning of the new.”
“What do you mean by dangerous?”
“My gramma says it’s the night when the veil between this world and the Otherworld, the world of spirits, is the thinnest. It’s a night of power and a night of remembrance.”
“The Otherworld? Is that like the afterlife?”
“Sort of. It’s the realm of spirits.”
“So Halloween really is all about spirits and ghosts.” She rolled her eyes.
“We remember the Casters who were persecuted for their differences. Men and women who were burned for using their gifts.”
“Are you talking about the Salem Witch Trials?’
“I guess that’s what you call them. There were Witch Trials all along the eastern seaboard, not just in Salem. All over the world, even. The Salem Witch Trials are just the ones your textbooks mention.” She said “your” like it was a dirty word, and today of all days, maybe it was.
We drove past the Stop & Steal. Boo was sitting by the stop sign at the corner. Waiting. He saw the hearse and loped slowly after the car. “We should just give that dog a ride already. He must be tired, following you around day and night.”
Lena glanced in her rearview mirror. “He’d never get in.”
I knew she was right. But as I turned back to look at him, I could have sworn he nodded.
I spotted Link in the parking lot. He was wearing a blond wig and a blue sweater with a Wildcats patch sewn on it. He was even carrying pom-poms. He looked scary and sort of like his mom, actually. The basketball team had decided to dress up like Jackson cheerleaders this year. With everything else that had been going on, it had slipped my mind—at least that’s what I told myself. I was going to get a lot of crap for this, and Earl was just waiting for a reason to jump all over me. Since I had started hanging out with Lena, I had developed a hot hand on the court. Now I was starting center instead of Earl, who was not too happy about it.
Lena swore there was nothing magic about it, at least not Caster magic. She came to one game and I made every shot. The drawback was, she was in my head throughout the game, asking me a thousand questions about foul shots and assists and the three-second rule. Turns out, she had never been to a game. It was worse than taking the Sisters to the County Fair. After that, she skipped the games. I could tell she was listening, though, when I played. I could feel her there.
On the other hand, maybe she was the reason the cheer squad was having a tougher year than usual. Emily was having a hard time staying on top of the Wildcats pyramid, but I didn’t ask Lena about that.
Today it was hard to pick out my teammates, until you got close enough to see the hairy legs and facial hair. Link caught up to us. He looked worse up close. He had tried to put on makeup, smeared pink lipstick and all. He hitched up his skirt, tugging on the straining pantyhose underneath.
“You suck,” he said, pointing at me across a row of cars. “Where’s your costume?”
“I’m sorry, man. I forgot.”
“Bull. You just didn’t want to put all this crap on. I know you, Wate. You wussed out.”
“I swear, I just forgot.”
Lena smiled at Link. “I think you look great.”
“I don’t know how you girls wear all this junk all over your face. It itches like hell.”
Lena made a face. She almost never wore makeup; she didn’t have to. “You know, it’s not like we all sign a contract with Maybelline when we turn thirteen.”
Link patted his wig and stuffed another sock down his sweater. “Tell that to Savannah.”
We walked up the front steps, and Boo was sitting on the lawn, next to the flagpole. I almost asked how that dog could have possibly beaten us to school, but by now I knew not to bother.
The halls were packed. It looked like half the school had skipped first period. The rest of the basketball team was hanging out in front of Link’s locker, also in drag, which was a big hit. Just not with me.
“Where’re your pom-poms, Wate?” Emory shook one in my face. “What’s the matter? Those chicken legs a yours didn’t look good in the skirt?”
Shawn pulled on his sweater. “I bet none a the girls on the squad would lend him a skirt.” A few of the guys laughed.
Emory put his arm around me, leaning in toward me. “Was that it, Wate? Or is it Halloween every day, when you’re hookin’ up with a girl who lives in the Haunted Mansion?”
I grabbed him by the back of his sweater. One of the socks in his bra fell down to the floor. “You want to do this now, Em?”
He shrugged. “Your call. Bound to happen sooner or later.”
Link stepped in between us. “Ladies, ladies. We’re here to cheer. And you don’t want to mess up that pretty face, Em.”
Earl shook his head, pushing Emory down the hall in front of him. As usual, he didn’t say a word, but I knew the look.
Once you go down that road, Wate, there’s no goin’ back.
It seemed like the basketball team was the talk of the school, until I saw the real cheer squad. Turns out, my teammates weren’t the only ones who had come up with a group costume. Lena and I were on our way to English when we saw them.
“Holy crap.” Link hit my arm with the back of his hand.
“What?”
They were marching down the hall single file. Emily, Savannah, Eden, and Charlotte, followed by every member of the Jackson Wildcats’ cheerleading squad. They were dressed exactly alike in ridiculously short black dresses, of course, pointy black boots, and tall, bent witches’ hats. But that wasn’t the worst part. Their long black wigs were curled into wild ringlets. And in black makeup, just below their right eyes were painstakingly drawn exaggerated crescent moons. Lena’s unmistakable birthmark. To complete the effect, they were carrying brooms, pretending to frantically sweep around people’s feet as they walked down the hall, in procession.
Witches? On Halloween? How creative.
I squeezed her hand. Her expression didn’t change, but I could feel her hand shaking.
I’m sorry, Lena.
If they only knew.
I waited for the building to start shaking, the windows to blow out, something. But nothing happened. Lena just stood there, seething.
The future generation of the DAR headed toward us. I decided to meet them halfway. “Where’s your costume, Emily? Did you forget it was Halloween?”
Emily looked confused. Then she smiled at me, the sticky sweet smile of someone a little too proud of herself. “What are you talkin’ about, Ethan? Isn’t this what you’re into now?”
“We were just tryin’ to make your girlfriend feel at home,” Savannah said, smacking her gum.
Lena shot me a look.
Ethan, stop. You’ll just make it worse for yourself.
I don’t care.
I can handle this.
What happens to you happens to me.
Link walked up beside me, yanking up his stockings. “Hey girls, I thought we were comin’ as bitches. Oh wait, that’s every day.”