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“I was there, in the land of the dead. I had a vision.” She cupped her hands and whispered, tickling Isaiah’s ear. “There’s something about his coat and all those stories inside the lining. It’s all there. Every single story. All the history. But he lets the people choose. They see what they want to see. They hear what they wanna hear. They tell what they wanna tell.”
“What’s that got to do with stopping him?” Isaiah asked. He was getting tired of her games.
“His story’s in there, too. You have to be able to stare through all of it to see what’s really there.”
“Have you seen it?” Isaiah wanted to know.
“Maybe,” Sarah Beth said, all high-hat. “Ladies are allowed to have secrets. It’s part of their charm.”
“I have a secret, too,” Isaiah said. Because suddenly, he wanted to share something with her the way she had with him. And maybe he wanted to one-up her, too. “I plucked a feather from his coat. In Gideon.”
Sarah Beth’s mouth fell open. “Where is it? Can I see it?”
“I gave it to Evie.”
Sarah Beth pouted. “You gave it to her instead of me?”
“So she could read it!”
Sarah Beth seemed to mull this over. “Well. What did she say?”
“She couldn’t get anything from it.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me till now. You must never lie to me like that again. Not if we’re to be friends. Don’t you see? We got these powers because we’re special. We’re the chosen.”
“We got these powers because they gave our mamas some kind of vitamins called eugenics. We’re experiments.”
Sarah Beth tossed her hair over her shoulder. “Maybe for you. Mine’s natural.”
“No. No, it ain’t.”
“Mine is natural!” Sarah Beth barked, but like a quick summer storm, she calmed. “I’ll bet yours is, too. We came after them. Like I said, we’re special. We brought down the rain!”
That made some kind of sense to Isaiah. His auntie always tutted that pride goeth before a fall, but Is
aiah liked feeling a little apart from the others. He liked feeling special.
“Where’d Evie put the feather?” she asked.
“Beats me.”
“She really couldn’t get anything from it?”
“That’s what she said.”
“She’s probably lying.”
“She wouldn’t do that.”
“My mama and daddy lie to me all the time,” Sarah Beth said, quiet-like. “They don’t want me to know how sick I am. Or that they’re afraid of me. They act like they ain’t, but they are.”
“How come they’re afraid of you?” Isaiah’s parents had never been afraid of him that he could recall.
“’Cause I’m not like them. They wanted an ordinary, pretty girl who’d help around the farm and not be any trouble. I’m a burden. They say I’m not but I know I am. I can feel it. Just like you can feel the truth behind what folks say.”
“Like I said, I ain’t afraid of you.”
Sarah Beth smiled real big, and that made Isaiah happy. “I know. Friends?”
