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“Fire! Someone help!” Emily was holding her test, and it was burning up in her hand. She dropped the test on the linoleum floor and kept screaming. Mrs. English picked up her sweater off the back of her chair, walked to the back of the room, and swiveled so she could use her good eye. Three good slaps and the fire was out, leaving a charred and smoking test in the charred and smoking spot on the floor.
“I swear, it was some kinda spot-aneous combustion. It just started burnin’ while I was writin’.”
Mrs. English picked up a shiny black lighter from the center of Emily’s desk. “Really? pack up your things. You can explain it all to Principal Harper.”
Emily stormed out the door while Mrs. English marched to the front of the classroom. As she passed me, I noticed the lighter was emblazoned with a silver crescent moon.
Lena turned back to her own test and started writing. I stared at the baggy white undershirt, her necklace jingling beneath it. Her hair was up, twisted into a weird knot, another new preference she never bothered to explain. I poked her with my pencil. She stopped writing and looked up at me, curving her mouth into a crooked half-smile, which was about the best she could do these days.
I smiled back at her, but she looked down at her test, as if she would rather consider assonance and consonance than look at me. Like it actually hurt to look at me—or, worse, she just didn’t want to.
When the bell rang, Jackson High turned into Mardi Gras. Girls peeled off their tank tops and went running through the parking lot in their bikini tops. Lockers were emptied, notebooks dumped into the trash. Talking turned into shouting, then screaming, as sophomores turned into juniors and juniors into seniors. Everyone finally had what they’d been waiting for all year—freedom, and a fresh start.
Everyone but me.
Lena and I walked to the parking lot. Her bag swung as she walked, and we brushed against each other. I felt the electricity from months ago, but it was still cold. She stepped to the side, avoiding me.
“So, how’d you do?” I was trying to make conversation, as if we were total strangers.
“What?”
“The English final.”
“I probably failed it. I didn?
??t really do any of the reading.” It was hard to imagine Lena not doing the reading for class, considering she had answered every question for months when we read To Kill a Mockingbird.
“Yeah? I aced it. I stole a copy of the test off Mrs. English’s desk last week.” It was a lie. I would have failed before I cheated in the House of Amma. But Lena wasn’t listening anyway. I waved my hand in front of her eyes. “L? Are you listening to me?” I wanted to talk to her about the dream, but first I had to get her to notice I was here.
“Sorry. I have a lot on my mind.” She looked away. It wasn’t much, but it was more than I’d gotten out of her in weeks.
“Like what?”
She hesitated. “Nothing.”
Nothing good? Or nothing you can talk about here?
She stopped walking and turned to face me, refusing to let me in. “We’re leaving Gatlin. All of us.”
“What?” I hadn’t seen this coming. Which must have been what she wanted. She was shutting me out so I couldn’t see inside, where things were happening, where she hid the feelings she didn’t want to share. I kept thinking she just needed time. I didn’t realize it was time away from me.
“I didn’t want to tell you. It’s only for a few months.”
“Does it have anything to do with—” The familiar panic in my stomach dropped like a stone.
“It has nothing to do with her.” Lena looked down. “Gramma and Aunt Del think if I get away from Ravenwood, I might think about it less. About him less.”
If I get away from you. That’s what I heard.
“It doesn’t work like that, Lena.”
“What?”
“You aren’t going to forget Macon by running away.”
She tensed at the mention of his name. “Yeah? Is that what your books say? Where am I? Stage five? Six, tops?”
“Is that what you think?”
