9.11
Collision
By the time I got to the car, I was soaking wet. The storm had been building all week. There was a weather advisory on every radio station I could get any reception from, which wasn’t saying much considering the Beater only got three stations, all AM. The clouds were totally black, and since it was hurricane season, that wasn’t something to be taken lightly. But it didn’t matter. I needed to clear my head and figure out what was going on, even if I had no idea where I was going.
I had to turn on the headlights to even drive out of the parking lot. I couldn’t see more than three feet in front of the car. It wasn’t a day to be driving. Lightning sliced through the dark sky ahead of me. I counted, as Amma had taught me years ago—one, two, three. Thunder cracked, which meant the storm wasn’t far off—three miles according to Amma’s calculations.
I pulled up at the stoplight by Jackson, one of only three in town. I had no idea what to do. The rain jackhammered down on the Beater. The radio was reduced to static, but I heard something. I cranked the volume and the song flooded through the crappy speakers.
Sixteen Moons.
The song that had disappeared from my playlist. The song no one else seemed to hear. The song Lena Duchannes had been playing on the viola. The song that was driving me crazy.
The light turned green and the Beater lurched into drive. I was on my way, and I had absolutely no idea where I was going.
Lightning ripped across the sky. I counted—one, two. The storm was getting closer. I flipped on the windshield wipers. It was no use. I couldn’t even see halfway down the block. Lightning flashed. I counted—one. Thunder rumbled above the roof of the Beater, and the rain turned horizontal. The windshield rattled as if it could give way at any second, which, considering the condition of the Beater, it could have.
I wasn’t chasing the storm. The storm was chasing me, and it had found me. I could barely keep the wheels on the slick road, and the Beater started to fishtail, skating erratically back and forth between the two lanes of Route 9.
I couldn’t see a thing. I slammed on the brakes, spinning out into the darkness. The headlights flickered, for barely a second, and a pair of huge green eyes stared back at me from the middle of the road. At first I thought it was a deer, but I was wrong.
There was someone in the road!
I pulled on the wheel with both hands, as hard as I could. My body slammed against the side of the door.
Her hand was outstretched. I closed my eyes for the impact, but it never came.
The Beater jerked to a stop, not more than three feet away. The headlights made a pale circle of light in the rain, reflecting off one of those cheap plastic rain ponchos you can buy for three dollars at the drugstore. It was a girl. Slowly, she pulled the hood off her head, letting the rain run down her face. Green eyes, black hair.
Lena Duchannes.
I couldn’t breathe. I knew she had green eyes; I’d seen them before. But tonight they looked different—different from any eyes I had ever seen. They were huge and unnaturally green, an electric green, like the lightning from the storm. Standing in the rain like that, she almost didn’t look human.
I stumbled out of the Beater into the rain, leaving the engine running and the door open. Neither one of us said a word, standing in the middle of Route 9 in the kind of downpour you only saw during a hurricane or a nor’easter. Adrenaline was pumping through my veins and my muscles were tense, as if my body was still waiting for the crash.
Lena’s hair whipped in the wind around her, dripping with rain. I took a step toward her, and it hit me. Wet lemons. Wet rosemary. All at once, the dream started coming back to me, like waves crashing over my head. Only this time, when she slipped through my fingers—I could see her face.
Green eyes and black hair. I remembered. It was her. She was standing right in front of me.
I had to know for sure. I grabbed her wrist. There they were: the tiny moon-shaped scratches, right where my fingers had reached for her wrist in the dream. When I touched her, electricity ran through my body. Lightning struck the tree not ten feet from where we were standing, splitting the trunk neatly in half. It began to smolder.
“Are you crazy? Or just a terrible driver?” She backed away from me, her green eyes flashing—with anger? With something.
“It’s you.”
“What were you trying to do, kill me?”
“You’re real.” The words felt strange in my mouth, like it was full of cotton.
“A real corpse, almost. Thanks to you.”
“I’m not crazy. I thought I was, but I’m not. It’s you. You’re standing right in front of me.”
“Not for long.” She turned her back on me and started up the road. This wasn’t going the way I had imagined it.
I ran to catch up with her. “You’re the one who just appeared out of nowhere and ran out into the middle of the highway.”
She waved her arm dramatically like she was waving away more than just the idea. For the first time, I saw the long black car in the shadows. The hearse, with its hood up. “Hello? I was looking for someone to help me, genius. My uncle’s car died. You could have just driven by. You didn’t have to try to run me down.”
“It was you in the dreams. And the song. The weird song on my iPod.”
She whirled around. “What dreams? What song? Are you drunk, or is this some kind of joke?”
“I know it’s you. You have the marks on your wrist.”
She turned her hand over and looked down, confused. “These? I have a dog. Get over it.”
But I knew I wasn’t wrong. I could see the face from my dream so clearly now. Was it possible she didn’t know?
She pulled up her hood and began the long walk to Ravenwood in the pouring rain. I caught up with her. “Here’s a hint. Next time, don’t get out of your car in the middle of the road during a storm. Call 911.”
She didn’t stop walking. “I wasn’t about to call the police. I’m not even supposed to be driving. I only have a learner’s permit. Anyway, my cell is dead.” Clearly she wasn’t from around here. The only way you’d get pulled over in this town was if you were driving on the wrong side of the road.
The storm was picking up. I had to shout over the howl of the rain. “Just let me give you a ride home. You shouldn’t be out here.”
“No thanks. I’ll wait for the next guy who almost runs me down.”
“There isn’t gonna be another guy. It could be hours before anyone else comes by.”
She started walking again. “No problem. I’ll walk.”
I couldn’t let her wander around alone in the pouring rain. My mom had raised me better than that. “I can’t let you walk home in this weather.” As if on cue, thunder rolled over our heads. Her hood blew off. “I’ll drive like my grandma. I’ll drive like your grandma.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you knew my gramma.” The wind was picking up. Now she was shouting, too.
“Come on.”
“What?”
“The car. Get in. With me.”
She looked at me, and for a second I wasn’t sure if she was going to give in. “I guess it’s safer than walking. With you on the road, anyway.”
The Beater was drenched. Link would lose it when he saw it. The storm sounded different once we were in the car, both louder and quieter. I could hear the rain pounding the roof, but it was nearly drowned out by the sound of my heart beating and my teeth chattering. I pushed the car into drive. I was so aware of Lena sitting next to me, just inches away in the passenger seat. I snuck a look.
Even though she was a pain, she was beautiful. Her green eyes were enormous. I couldn’t figure out why they looked so different tonight. She had the longest eyelashes I had ever seen, and her skin was pale, made even paler by the contrast of her wild black hair. She had a tiny, light brown birthmark on her cheekbone just below her left eye, shaped sort of like a crescent moon. She didn’t look like anybody at Jackson. She didn’t look like anybody I’d ever seen.
She pulled the wet poncho over her head. Her black T-shirt and jeans clung to her like she’d fallen in a swimming pool. Her gray vest dripped a steady stream of water onto the pleather seat. “You’re s-staring.”
I looked away, out the windshield, anywhere but at her. “You should probably take that off. It’ll only make you colder.”
I could see her fumbling with the delicate silver buttons on the vest, unable to control the shaking in her hands. I reached forward, and she froze. Like I would’ve dared touch her again. “I’ll turn up the heat.”
She went back to the buttons. “Th-thanks.”
I could see her hands—more ink, now smeared from the rain. I could just make out a few numbers. Maybe a one or a seven, a five, a two. 152. What was that about?
I glanced in the backseat for the old army blanket Link usually kept back there. Instead there was a ratty sleeping bag, probably from the last time Link got in trouble at home and had to sleep in his car. It smelled like old campfire smoke and basement mold. I handed it to her.
“Mmmm. That’s better.” She closed her eyes. I could feel her ease into the warmth of the heater, and I relaxed, just watching her. The chattering of her teeth slowed. After that, we drove in silence. The only sound was the storm, and the wheels rolling and spraying through the lake the road had become. She traced shapes on the foggy window with her finger. I tried to keep my eyes on the road, tried to remember the rest of the dream—some detail, one thing that would prove to her that she was, I don’t know, her, and that I was me.
But the harder I tried, the more it all seemed to fade away, into the rain and the highway and the passing acres and acres of tobacco fields, littered with dated farm equipment and rotting old barns. We reached the outskirts of town, and I could see the fork in the road up ahead. If you took a left, toward my house, you’d hit River, where all the restored antebellum houses lined the Santee. It was also the way out of town. When we came to the fork in the road, I automatically started to turn left, out of habit. The only thing to the right was Ravenwood Plantation, and no one ever went there.
“No, wait. Go right here,” she said.
“Oh, yeah. Sorry.” I felt sick. We climbed the hill up toward Ravenwood Manor, the great house. I had been so wrapped up in who she was, I had forgotten who she was. The girl I’d been dreaming about for months, the girl I couldn’t stop thinking about, was Macon Ravenwood’s niece. And I was driving her home to the Haunted Mansion—that’s what we called it.
That’s what I had called it.
She looked down at her hands. I wasn’t the only one who knew she was living in the Haunted Mansion. I wondered what she’d heard in the halls. If she knew what everyone was saying about her. The uncomfortable look on her face said she did. I don’t know why, but I couldn’t stand seeing her like that. I tried to think of something to say to break the silence. “So why did you move in with your uncle? Usually people are trying to get out of Gatlin; no one really moves here.”
I heard the relief in her voice. “I’ve lived all over. New Orleans, Savannah, the Florida Keys, Virginia for a few months. I even lived in Barbados for a while.”
I noticed she didn’t answer the question, but I couldn’t help thinking about how much I would’ve killed to live in one of those places, even for a summer. “Where are your parents?”
“They’re dead.”
I felt my chest tighten. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay. They died when I was two. I don’t even remember them. I’ve lived with lots of my relatives, mainly my gramma. She had to take a trip for a few months. That’s why I’m staying with my uncle.”
“My mom died, too. Car accident.” I had no idea why I said that. I spent most of my time trying not to talk about it.
“I’m sorry.”
I didn’t say it was okay. I had a feeling she was the kind of girl who knew it wasn’t.
We stopped in front of a weather-beaten black wrought-iron gate. In front of me, on the rising hill, barely visible through the blanket of fog, stood the dilapidated remains of Gatlin’s oldest and most notorious plantation house, Ravenwood Manor. I’d never been this close to it before. I turned off the motor. Now the storm had faded into a kind of soft, steady drizzle. “Looks like the lightning’s gone.”
“I’m sure there’s more where that came from.”
“Maybe. But not tonight.”
She looked at me, almost curiously. “No. I think we’re done for tonight.” Her eyes looked different. They had faded back to a less intense shade of green, and they were smaller somehow—not small, but more normal looking.
I started to open my door, to walk her up to the house.
“No, don’t.” She looked embarrassed. “My uncle’s kind of shy.” That was an understatement.
My door was half open. Her door was half open. We were both getting even wetter, but we just sat there without saying anything. I knew what I wanted to say, but I also knew I couldn’t say it. I didn’t know why I was sitting here, soaking wet, in front of Ravenwood Manor. Nothing was making any sense, but I knew one thing. Once I drove back down the hill and turned back onto Route 9, everything would change back. Everything would make sense again. Wouldn’t it?
She spoke first. “Thanks, I guess.”
“For not running you down?”
She smiled. “Yeah, that. And the ride.”
I stared at her smiling at me, almost like we were friends, which was impossible. I started to feel claustrophobic, like I had to get out of there. “It was nothing. I mean, it’s cool. Don’t worry about it.” I flipped up the hood of my basketball sweatshirt, the way Emory did when one of the girls he’d blown off tried to talk to him in the hall.
She looked at me, shaking her head, and tossed the sleeping bag at me, a little too hard. The smile was gone. “Whatever. I’ll see you around.” She turned her back on me, slipped through the gates and ran up the steep, muddy drive toward the house. I slammed the door.
The sleeping bag lay on the seat. I picked it up to throw it into the back. It still had the moldy campfire smell, but now it also smelled faintly of lemons and rosemary. I closed my eyes. When I opened them, she was already halfway up the driveway.
I rolled down my window. “She has a glass eye.”
Lena looked back at me. “What?”
I shouted, the rain dripping down the inside of the car door. “Mrs. English. You have to sit on her other side, or she’ll make you talk.”
She smiled as the rain rolled down her face. “Maybe I like to talk.” She turned back to Ravenwood and ran up the steps to the veranda.
I shifted the car into reverse and drove back down to the fork in the road, so I could turn the way I usually turned, and take the road I had taken my whole life. Until today. I saw something shining from the crack in the seat. A silver button.
I shoved it into my pocket, and wondered what I’d dream about tonight.