“Leaving Ridley to solve her own problems. Let’s go.”
“Where are we going?”
“To solve yours.”
10.09
Good-Eye Side
Apparently Lena believed the answer to my problems was waiting at the Gatlin County Library, because five minutes later we were there. A chain-link fence surrounded the building, which looked more like a construction site than a library now. The missing half of the roof was covered with enormous blue plastic tarps. The doorway was flanked by the carpet that had been ripped up from the concrete floor, destroyed as much by the water as the fire. We stepped over the charred boards and walked inside.
The opposite side of the library was sealed off with heavy plastic. It was the one that had burned. I didn’t want to know what it looked like over there. The side where we were standing was just as depressing. The stacks were gone, replaced by boxes of books that looked like they’d been sorted into piles.
The destroyed. The partly destroyed. The salvageable.
Only the card catalog sat there, untouched. We would never get rid of that thing.
“Aunt Marian! You here?” I wandered past the boxes, expecting to see Marian in her stocking feet, walking around with an open book.
Instead, I saw my dad, sitting on a box behind the card catalog, talking enthusiastically to a woman.
There was no way.
Lena stepped in front of me so they wouldn’t notice me looking like I was going to puke. “Mrs. English! What are you doing here? And Mr. Wate! I didn’t know that you knew our teacher.” She even managed a smile, as if running into them here was a pleasant coincidence.
I couldn’t stop staring.
What the hell is he doing here with her?
If my dad was flustered, it didn’t show. He looked excited—happy, even, which was worse. “Did you know Lilian knows almost as much about the history of this county as your mom did?”
Lilian? My mom?
Mrs. English looked up from the books scattered on the floor around her, and our eyes locked. For a second, her pupils looked slit-shaped, like a cat’s. Even the glass eye that wasn’t real.
L, did you see that?
See what?
But now there was nothing to see—only our English teacher blinking over her glass eye as she watched my father with her good one. Her hair was a graying mess that matched the lumpy gray sweater she was wearing over her shapeless dress. She was the toughest teacher at Jackson, if you ignored the loophole most people chose to exploit—the Bad-Eye Side. I never imagined that she existed outside the classroom. But here she was, existing all over my dad. I felt sick.
My dad was still talking. “She’s helping me with my research for The Eighteenth Moon. My book, remember?” He turned back to Mrs. English, grinning. “They don’t hear a word we say anymore. Half my students are listening to their iPods or talking on their cell phones. They might as well be deaf.”
Mrs. English looked at him strangely and laughed. I realized I’d never heard her laugh before. The laugh itself wasn’t disturbing. Mrs. English laughing at my father’s jokes was. Disturbing and gross.
“That’s not entirely true, Mitchell.”
Mitchell?
It’s his name, Ethan. Don’t panic.
“According to Lilian, the Eighteenth Moon could be viewed as a powerful historical motif. The phases of the moon could coordinate with—”
“Nice to see you, ma’am.” I couldn’t stand to hear my dad’s theories on the Eighteenth Moon, or listen to him share them with my English teacher. I walked past them, toward the archive. “Be home by dinner, Dad. Amma’s making pot roast.” I had no idea what Amma was cooking, but pot roast was his favorite. And I wanted him home for dinner.
I wanted him to exist away from my English teacher.
She must have understood what my dad didn’t, that I really didn’t want to see her as anything but my teacher, because as soon as I tried to go, Lilian English disappeared and Mrs. English took her place. “Ethan, don’t forget I need the outline for your essay on The Crucible. On my desk by the end of class tomorrow, please. You, too, Miss Duchannes.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I expect you have a thesis already?”
I nodded, but I had completely forgotten an essay was due, let alone an outline. English wasn’t high on my list of priorities lately.
“And?” Mrs. English looked at me expectantly.
You gonna help me out here, L?
Don’t look at me. I haven’t thought about it.
Thanks.
I’ll be hiding in the mess in the reference section until they leave.
Traitor.
“Ethan?” She was waiting for an answer.
I stared at her, and my father stared at me. Everyone was watching me. I felt like a goldfish trapped in a bowl.
What was the life span of a goldfish? It was one of the Sisters’ Jeopardy! questions a few nights ago. I tried to think.
“Goldfish.” I didn’t know why I said it. But lately I was blurting out things without even thinking.