“I think it had something to do with this.” My hand had been curled around a battered old cameo, black and oval, with a woman’s face etched in ivory and mother of pearl. The work on the face of it was intricate with detail. On the side, I noticed a small bump. “Look. I think it’s a locket.”
I pushed on the spring, and the cameo front opened to reveal a tiny inscription. “It just says greenbrier.
And a date.”
She sat up. “What’s Greenbrier?”
“This must be it. This isn’t Ravenwood. It’s Greenbrier. The next plantation over.”
“And that vision, the fires, did you see it, too?”
I nodded. It was almost too horrible to talk about. “This has to be Greenbrier, what’s left of it, anyway.”
“Let me see the locket.” I handed it to her carefully. It looked like something that had survived a lot— maybe even the fire from the vision. She turned it over in her hands. “february 11th, 1865.” She dropped the locket, turning pale.
“What’s wrong?”
She stared down at it in the grass. “February eleventh is my birthday.”
“So it’s a coincidence. An early birthday present.”
“Nothing in my life is a coincidence.”
I picked up the locket and flipped it over. On the back were two sets of engraved initials. “ECW & GKD.
This locket must have belonged to one of them.” I paused. “That’s weird. My initials are ELW.”
“My birthday, your initials. Don’t you think that’s a little more than weird?” Maybe she was right. Still — “We should try it again, so we can find out.” It was like an itch that had to be scratched.
“I don’t know. It could be dangerous. It really felt like we were there. My eyes are still burning from the smoke.” She was right. We hadn’t left the garden, but it had felt like we had been right there in the middle of the fires. I could feel the smoke in my lungs, but it didn’t matter. I had to know.
I held out the locket, and my hand. “Come on, aren’t you braver than that?” It was a dare. She rolled her eyes, but reached toward it all the same. Her fingers brushed against mine, and I felt the warmth of her hand spreading into mine. Electric goosebumps. I don’t know any other way to describe it.
I closed my eyes and waited—nothing. I opened my eyes. “Maybe we just imagined it. Maybe it’s just out of batteries.”
Lena looked at me like I was Earl Petty in Algebra, the second time around. “Maybe you can’t tell something like that what to do, or when to do it.” She got up and brushed herself off. “I’ve gotta go.”
She paused, looking down at me. “You know, you’re not what I expected.” She turned her back on me and began to weave her way through the lemon trees, to the outer edge of the garden.
“Wait!” I called after her, but she kept going. I tried to catch up with her, stumbling back over the roots.
When she reached the last lemon tree, she stopped. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
She wouldn’t look at me. “Just leave me alone, while everything’s still okay.”
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about. Seriously. And I’m trying, here.”
“Forget it.”
“You think you’re the only complicated person in the world?”
“No. But—it’s sort of my specialty.” She turned to go. I hesitated, and put my hand on her shoulder. It was warm from the fading sun. I could feel the bone beneath her shirt, and in that moment she seemed like a fragile thing, like in the dreams. Which was weird, because when she was facing me, all I could think of was how unbreakable she seemed. Maybe it had something to do with those eyes.
We stood like that for a moment, until finally she gave in and turned toward me. I tried again. “Look.
There’s something going on here. The dreams, the song, the smell, and now the locket. It’s like we’re supposed to be friends.”
“Did you just say, the smell?” She looked horrified. “In the same sentence as friends?”
“Technically, I think it was a different sentence.”
She stared at my hand, and I took it off her shoulder. But I couldn’t let it go. I looked right into her eyes, really looked, maybe for the first time. The green abyss looked like it went somewhere so far away I could never reach it, not in a whole lifetime. I wondered what Amma’s “eyes are the windows to the soul” theory would make of that.
It’s too late, Lena. You’re already my friend.
I can’t be.
We’re in this together.
Please. You have to trust me. We’re not.
She broke her eyes away from me, leaning her head back against the lemon tree. She looked miserable.
“I know you’re not like the rest of them. But there are things you can’t understand about me. I don’t know why we connect the way we do. I don’t know why we have the same dreams, any more than you.”
“But I want to know what’s going on—”
“I turn sixteen in five months.” She held up her hand, inked with a number as usual. 151. “A hundred and fifty-one days.” Her birthday. The changing number written on her hand. She was counting down to her birthday.
“You don’t know what that means, Ethan. You don’t know anything. I may not even be here after that.”
“You’re here now.”
She looked past me, up toward Ravenwood. When she finally spoke, she wasn’t looking at me. “You like that poet, Bukowski?”
“Yeah,” I answered, confused.
“Don’t try.”