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 sstaring.”
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.