Lena smiled at Link in spite of herself.
“You shut your mouth, Wesley Lincoln. I’m gonna tell your mamma that you’re hangin’ out with that freak, and she won’t let you outta your house till Christmas.”
“You know what that thing on her face is, don’t you?” Emily smirked, pointing from Lena’s birthmark to the crescent she’d drawn on her cheek. “It’s called a witch’s mark.”
“Did you look that up online last night? You’re an even bigger idiot than I thought.” I laughed.
“You’re the idiot. You’re goin’ out with her.” I was turning red, which was the last thing I wanted to do. This wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have in front of the whole school, not to mention the fact that I had no idea if Lena and I were even going out. We had kissed once. And we were always together, in one way or another. But she wasn’t my girlfriend, at least I didn’t think she was, even though I thought I’d heard her say that at the Gathering. And what could I do, ask? Maybe it was one of those things that if you had to ask, the answer was probably no. There was some part of her that still seemed to be holding back from me, a part of her I just couldn’t reach.
Emily jabbed me with the end of her broom. I could tell the whole “stake in the heart” concept would be attractive to her, just about now.
“Emily, why don’t you all go jump out a window. See if you can fly. Or not.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I hope you enjoy yourselves sittin’ around the house together tonight, while the rest a the school is at Savannah’s party. This will be the last holiday she spends at Jackson.” Emily spun around and marched back down the hall toward her locker, Savannah and their minions trailing behind her.
Link was joking around with Lena, trying to cheer her up, which wasn’t hard, considering how ridiculous he looked. Like I said, I could always count on Link.
“They really hate me. It’s never going to get old, is it?” Lena sighed.
Link broke into a cheer, jumping around and waving his pom-poms. “They really hate you, yes they do. They hate everyone, how ’bout you?”
“I’d be more worried if they liked you.” I leaned over and put my arm around her awkwardly, or tried to. She turned away, my hand barely brushing her shoulder. Great.
Not here.
Why not?
You’re just making it worse for yourself.
I’m a glutton for punishment.
“Enough of the PDA.” Link elbowed me in the ribs. “You’re gonna make me start feelin’ bad for myself, now that I’ve doomed myself to another year without a date. We’re gonna be late for English, and I gotta take these pantyhose off on the way. I’m gettin’ a serious wedgie.”
“I just have to stop at my locker and get my book,” Lena said. Her hair began to curl around her shoulders. I was suspicious, but I didn’t say anything.
Emily, Savannah, Charlotte, and Eden were standing in front of their lockers, primping in front of the mirrors hanging inside the doors. Lena’s locker was only a little farther down the hall.
“Just ignore them,” I said.
Emily was rubbing her cheek with a Kleenex. The black moon-shaped mark was only smearing bigger and blacker, not coming off at all. “Charlotte, do you have any makeup remover?”
“Sure.”
Emily wiped her cheek a few more times. “This isn’t comin’ off. Savannah, I thought you said this stuff came off with soap and water.”
“It does.”
“Then why isn’t it comin’ off?” Emily slammed her locker door, annoyed.
The drama got Link’s attention. “What are those four doin’ over there?”
“Look’s like they’re having some kind of problem,” Lena said, leaning against her locker.
Savannah tried to wipe the black moon off her own cheek. “Mine isn’t comin’ off, either.” The moon was now smeared across half her face. Savannah started digging around in her purse. “I have the pencil right here.”
Emily pulled her purse out of her locker, searching through it. “Forget it. I have mine in my bag.”
“What the—” Savannah pulled something out of her bag.
“You used Sharpie?” Emily laughed.
Savannah held the marker up in front of her. “Of course not. I have no idea how this got in here.”
“You’re so lame. That will never come off before the party tonight.”
“I can’t have this thing on my face all night. I’m goin’ dressed as a Greek Goddess, Aphrodite. This will completely ruin my costume.”
“You should’ve been more careful.” Emily dug around in her little silver purse some more. She dumped her purse on the ground under her locker, lip gloss and nail polish bottles rolling around on the floor. “It has to be here.”
“What are you talkin’ about?” Charlotte asked.
“The makeup I used this mornin’, it’s not here.” By now, Emily was attracting an audience; people were stopping to see what was going on. A Sharpie rolled out of Emily’s purse into the middle of the hall.
“You used Sharpie, too?”
“Of course I didn’t!” Emily shrieked, rubbing her face frantically. But the black moon only grew bigger and blacker like the others. “What the hell is goin’ on?”
“I know I have mine,” Charlotte said, turning the lock on her locker door. She opened the door and stood there for a few seconds, staring inside.
“What is it?” Savannah demanded. Charlotte pulled her hand back out of her locker. She was holding a Sharpie.
Link shook his pom-pom. “Cheerleaders rock!”
I looked at Lena.
Sharpie?
A mischievous smile spread across her face.
I thought you said you couldn’t control your powers.
Beginner’s luck.
By the end of the day, everyone at Jackson was talking about the cheer squad. Apparently, every one of the cheerleaders who dressed up as Lena had somehow used a Sharpie to draw the innocuous crescent moon on her face, instead of eyeliner. Cheerleaders. The jokes were endless.
All of them would be walking around school and the rest of town, singing in the church youth choirs, and cheering at the games, with Sharpie on their cheeks for the next few days, until it faded away. Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Snow were going to have a fit.
I just wished I could be there to see it.
After school, I walked Lena back to her car, which was really just an excuse to try to hold her hand a little longer. The intense physical feelings I had when I touched her weren’t the deterrent you might have expected. No matter what it felt like, whether I was burning or blowing out light bulbs or getting struck by lightning, I had to be close to her. It was like eating, or breathing. I didn’t have a choice. And that was scarier than a month of Halloweens, and it was killing me.
“What are you doing tonight?” As she spoke, she pulled her hand absentmindedly through her hair. She was sitting on the hood of the hearse and I was standing in front of her.
“I thought maybe you’d come over, and we’d stay home and answer the door for trick-or-treaters. You can help me watch the lawn to make sure no one burns a cross on it.” I tried not to think too clearly about the rest of my plan, which involved Lena and our couch and old movies and Amma being gone for the night.
“I can’t. It’s a High Holiday. I have relatives coming in from all over. Uncle M won’t let me out of the house for five minutes, not to mention the danger. I’d never open my door to strangers on a night of such Dark power.”
“I never thought of it that way.” Until now.
By the time I got home, Amma was getting ready to leave. She was boiling a chicken on the stove and mixing biscuit batter with her hands, “the only way any self-respectin’ woman makes her biscuits.” I looked at the pot suspiciously, wondering if this meal was going to make it to our dinner table or the Greats’.
I pinched some dough, and she caught my hand.
“P. U. R. L. O. I. N. E. R.” I smiled.
“As in, keep your thievin’ hands off a my biscuits, Ethan Wate. I’ve got hungry people to feed.” Guess I wouldn’t be eating chicken and biscuits tonight.
Amma always went home on Halloween. She said it was a special night at church, but my mom used to say it was just a good night for business. What better night to have your cards read than Halloween? You weren’t going to get quite the same crowd on Easter or Valentine’s Day.
But in light of recent events, I wondered if there wasn’t another reason. Maybe it was a good night for reading chicken bones in the graveyard, too. I couldn’t ask, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. I missed Amma, missed talking to her, missed trusting her. If she felt the difference, she didn’t let on. Maybe she just thought I was growing up, or maybe I was.
“You goin’ to that party over at the Snows’?”
“No, I’m just gonna stay home this year.”
She raised an eyebrow, but she wasn’t going to ask. She already knew why I wasn’t going. “You make your bed, you better be ready to lie in it.”
I didn’t say anything. I knew better. She wasn’t expecting a response.
“I’m fixin’ to go in a few minutes. You answer the door for those young’uns when they come around. Your daddy’s busy workin’.” Like my dad was going to come out of his self-imposed exile to answer the door for trick-or-treaters.
“Sure.”
The bags of candy were in the hall. I ripped them open and turned them over into a big glass bowl. I couldn’t get Lena’s words out of my head. A night of such Dark power. I remembered Ridley standing in front of her car, outside the Stop & Steal, all sticky sweet smiles and legs. Obviously, identifying Dark forces wasn’t one of my talents, or deciding who you should and shouldn’t open your front door for. Like I said, when the girl you couldn’t stop thinking about was a Caster, Halloween took on a whole new meaning. I looked at the bowl of candy in my hands. Then I opened the front door, put the bowl out on the porch, and went back inside.
As I settled in to watch The Shining, I found myself missing Lena. I let my mind wander, because it usually found a way of wandering over to wherever she was, but she wasn’t there. I fell asleep on the couch waiting for her to dream me, or something.
A knock at the door startled me. I looked at my watch. It was nearly ten, too late for trick-or-treaters.
“Amma?”
No answer. I heard knocking again.
“Is that you?”
The den was dark, and only the light of the TV was flickering. It was the moment in The Shining when the dad chops down the hotel room door with his bloody axe to bludgeon his family. Not a great moment for answering any door, especially on Halloween. Another knock.
“Link?” I clicked off the TV and looked around for something to pick up, but there was nothing. I picked up an old game console, lying on the floor in a pile of video games. It wasn’t a baseball bat, but some decently solid old-school Japanese technology. It had to weigh at least five pounds. I raised it over my head and took a step closer to the wall separating the den from the front hall. Another step, and I moved the lace curtain covering the glass-paned door, just a millimeter.