But not tonight. Tonight I just wanted to remember chicken salad sandwiches and ten and two and a time when my dad ate his Shredded Wheat in the kitchen, joking around with me. I fell asleep remembering. Before the bell even rang the next day, Lena Duchannes was all everyone at Jackson could talk about.
From there it just got wilder. There are two things you can always count on in Gatlin. They had business to attend to first. I slammed my locker door. Em was as delusional as Link, but not as harmless. He had a mean streak; all the Watkinses did. Shawn shook his head. Shawn looked at me, confused. It was a stupid conversation, the same way it was stupid that all the guys had to meet up before school on Wednesday mornings. A few things were expected if you were on the team.
You sat together in the lunchroom. You could bail on almost anything else, if you showed up for roll call. Everyone actually stepped aside when she came down the hall.
Like she was a rock star. Or a leper. But all I could see was a beautiful girl in a long gray dress, under a white track jacket with the word Munich sewn on it, and beat-up black Converse peeking out underneath. She tucked her dark curls behind her ear, black nail polish catching the fluorescent light.
Her hands were covered with black ink, like she had written on them. She walked down the hall as if we were invisible. I knew what they were thinking. For a second, they were thinking about dumping their girlfriends for the chance to hit on her. For a second, she was a possibility. Earl gave her the once-over, then slammed his locker door.
The hallway, and everyone in it, had locked in on her as if she was a deer caught in the crosshairs. But she just kept walking, her necklace jingling around her neck. Minutes later, I stood in the doorway of my English class.
There she was. English, who squinted to read it. History for two periods, and I already took U. History at my old school. History, not the way Mr. Lee taught it. Take any open seat. English handed her a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. The new girl looked up and caught me watching her. I looked away, but it was too late.
I tried not to smile, but I was embarrassed, and that only made me smile more. It looked really old and worn, like she had read it more than once. Now I was staring. Wrong move. Everybody knew not to sit there. English had one glass eye, and the terrible hearing you get if your family runs the only shooting range in the county.
Lena was going to have to answer questions for the whole class. She held it up like it was a dead mouse. Is that your name? I thought it was Ravenwood. Are you a writer? Things were going to get interesting. Good-Eye Side.
Emily looked at me in disbelief. I was just as shocked as she was. Lena opened her notebook and ignored both of us. English looked up from her desk. And now, far enough from me. When the bell rang, I turned to Lena. Maybe I was expecting her to thank me.
It was a number. That was obvious. I had signed up for ceramics last spring because I had to fulfill my arts requirement, and I was desperate to stay out of band, which was practicing noisily downstairs, conducted by the crazily skinny, overly enthusiastic Miss Spider.
Savannah sat down next to me. I was the only guy in the class, and since I was a guy, I had no idea what I was supposed to do next. Feel the clay. Free your mind. And ignore the music from downstairs. Feel your way to your soul. I sighed. This was almost as bad as band. I heard a violin, or maybe one of those bigger violins, a viola, I think.
It was beautiful and sad at the same time, and it was unsettling. There was more talent in the raw voice of the music than Miss Spider had ever had the pleasure of conducting. I looked around; no one else seemed to notice the music. The sound crawled right under my skin. I recognized the melody, and within seconds I could hear the words in my mind, as clearly as if I was listening to my iPod.
But this time, the words had changed. As I stared at the spinning clay in front of me, the lump became a blur. The harder I focused on it, the more the room dissolved around it, until the clay seemed to be spinning the classroom, the table, my chair along with it.
As if we were all tied together in this whirlwind of constant motion, set to the rhythm of the melody from the music room. The room was disappearing around me. Slowly, I reached out a hand and dragged one fingertip along the clay.
We were falling. I was back in the dream. I saw her hand. I saw my hand grabbing at hers, my fingers digging into her skin, her wrist, in a desperate attempt to hold on. But she was slipping; I could feel it, her fingers pulling through my hand.
More than I had ever wanted anything. Abernathy sounded concerned. I opened my eyes, and tried to focus, to bring myself back. I stared at my gray, muddy hand, caked with drying clay. I looked at it more closely. It was hers. I looked under my nails, where I could see the clay I had clawed from her wrist. Abernathy put her hand on my shoulder, and I jumped. Outside the classroom window, I heard the rumble of thunder. I mashed the handprint with my fist, turning it back into a lump of gray nothing.
I stood up, wiping my hands on my jeans as the bell rang. I grabbed my backpack and sprinted out of the room, slipping in my wet high-tops when I turned the corner and almost tripping over my untied laces as I ran down the two flights of stairs that stood between the music room and me.
I had to know if I had imagined it. I pushed open the double doors of the music room with both hands. The stage was empty. The class was filing past me. I was going the wrong way, heading downstream when everyone else was going up. I took a deep breath, but knew what I would smell before I smelled it. Down on the stage, Miss Spider was picking up sheet music, scattered along the folding chairs she used for the sorry Jackson orchestra.
A viola. Not her. I turned and ran before she could say the name. When the eighth-period bell rang, Link was waiting for me in front of the locker room. He raked his hand through his spiky hair and straightened out his faded Black Sabbath T-shirt. I need your keys, man. She was like that, I could tell her anything. But she was gone, and my dad was holed up in his study all the time, and Amma would be sprinkling salt all over my room for a month if I told her.
I was on my own. Link held out his keys. Too late. The storm had been building all week. 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.
Lightning sliced through the dark sky ahead of me. 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. 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. The storm was getting closer. I flipped on the windshield wipers. It was no use. Lightning flashed. 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.
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 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. Slowly, she pulled the hood off her head, letting the rain run down her face. Green eyes, black hair. They were huge and unnaturally green, an electric green, like the lightning from the storm.
I stumbled out of the Beater into the rain, leaving the engine running and the door open. Adrenaline was pumping through my veins and my muscles were tense, as if my body was still waiting for the crash.
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. 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.
Or just a terrible driver? With something. Thanks to you. I ran to catch up with her. For the first time, I saw the long black car in the shadows. The hearse, with its hood up. I was looking for someone to help me, genius. You could have just driven by. And the song. The weird song on my iPod. What song? Are you drunk, or is this some kind of joke? You have the marks on your wrist. I have a dog. Get over it. I could see the face from my dream so clearly now.
She pulled up her hood and began the long walk to Ravenwood in the pouring rain. I caught up with her. Call Anyway, my cell is dead. The storm was picking up. I had to shout over the howl of the rain. It could be hours before anyone else comes by. My mom had raised me better than that. Her hood blew off. Now she was shouting, too. Get in. With me. With you on the road, anyway. 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. 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 pulled the wet poncho over her head. Her gray vest dripped a steady stream of water onto the pleather seat. I reached forward, and she froze.
I could just make out a few numbers. Maybe a one or a seven, a five, a two. 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. 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. 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.
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. 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. She looked down at her hands. If she knew what everyone was saying about her.
The uncomfortable look on her face said she did. I tried to think of something to say to break the silence. Usually people are trying to get out of Gatlin; no one really moves here. I even lived in Barbados for a while. They died when I was two. She had to take a trip for a few months. Car accident. I spent most of my time trying not to talk about it.
We stopped in front of a weather-beaten black wrought-iron gate. I turned off the motor. Now the storm had faded into a kind of soft, steady drizzle. I started to open my door, to walk her up to the house. My door was half open. Her door was half open. We were both getting even wetter, but we just sat there without saying anything.
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. She spoke first. And the ride. I started to feel claustrophobic, like I had to get out of there.
She looked at me, shaking her head, and tossed the sleeping bag at me, a little too hard. The smile was gone. 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.
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. When I woke up, the window was closed. No mud in my bed, no mysterious songs on my iPod. I checked twice. Even my shower just smelled like soap. I lay in my bed, looking up at my blue ceiling, thinking about green eyes and black hair. Lena Duchannes, it rhymes with rain.
How far off could a guy be? When Link pulled up, I was waiting at the curb. I climbed in and my sneakers sank into the wet carpet, which made the Beater smell even worse than usual.
Link shook his head. Well, maybe not the whole story. Even best friends have their limits. I was still having a hard time believing it myself. Damage control. You drove her home. Were you even listening? It was one thing to hang out with a beautiful girl, in any situation. It was another thing to hang out with Old Man Ravenwood. I shook my head. All this is on a strictly need-to-know basis.
As in, nobody else needs to know. Maybe it was the way she wore that crazy necklace with all the junk on it, as if every single thing she touched could matter or did matter to her.
Maybe it was the way she wore those beat-up sneakers whether she was wearing jeans or a dress, like she could take off running, any minute. Maybe it was that. I guess when I started thinking, I stopped walking, and I felt someone bump into me.
We collided, hard. The second we touched, the ceiling light shorted out over us, and a shower of sparks rained down on our heads. I ducked. The two little words that could forever change your life at Jackson. I could feel my face going red. She looked amused, but kept walking. She slung her book bag on the same desk she had been sitting at all week, right in front of Mrs.
No matter what you thought about the Ravenwoods, you had to give her that. Like I had all week. Only this time she was talking to me, and somehow that made everything different. Not bad-different, just terrifying.
She started to smile, but caught herself. I tried to think of something interesting to say, or at least not stupid. But before I came up with anything, Emily sat down on the other side of me, with Eden Westerly and Charlotte Chase flanking her on either side. Six rows closer than usual. Not even sitting on the Good-Eye Side was going to help me today.
English looked up from her desk, suspicious. Eden was strictly second string, on the cheer squad and in life. Eden never gave up trying to do something to make that leap, though.
Her thing was to be different, except for, I guess, the part about being different. Nobody was different at Jackson. If Eden was second string, Charlotte was third. Charlotte was one thing no selfrespecting Jackson cheerleader should ever be, a little chunky. Ate the pie and left the crust. Double the biscuits and half the gravy.
This was a territorial dispute. Lena smiled back and looked as if she was going to say something friendly, when Emily shot Abby a look that made it clear that the famed Southern hospitality did not apply to Lena.
Defying Emily Asher was an act of social suicide. Abby pulled out her Student Council folder and buried her nose in it, avoiding Lena. Message received. Lena opened her tattered spiral notebook and started to write.
Emily got out her phone and began to text. I looked back down at my notebook, slipping my Silver Surfer comic between the pages, which was a lot harder to do in the front row. I hope everyone did the reading last night.
English was scribbling madly on the chalkboard. Halfway through class, we had more than social conflict in a small-town setting. Emily was coordinating a full-scale attack.
English turned her good eye on us, and we all shut up. Lena shifted her weight; her chair scraped loudly against the floor. I sat up, startled. I looked around, but no one was talking to me; no one was talking at all. A Gatlin where a curse has marked Lena's family of powerful Supernaturals for generations. A Gatlin where impossible, magical, life-altering events happen. Sometimes life-ending. Together they can face anything Gatlin throws at them, but after suffering a tragic loss, Lena starts to pull away, keeping secrets that test their relationship.
And now that Ethan's eyes have been opened to the darker side of Gatlin, there's no going back. Haunted by strange visions only he can see, Ethan is pulled deeper into his town's tangled history and finds himself caught up in the dangerous network of underground passageways endlessly crisscrossing the South, where nothing is as it seems.
Catch up with Ethan, Lena, and Link as they finally graduate from high school and get ready to leave the small Southern town of Gatlin. But when Dark Caster Ridley makes an appearance, the sometime bad girl can't resist picking a fight with her sometime boyfriend, Link.
Angry and rebellious as ever, Ridley ends up alone in New York City and becomes entangled in the dangerous underground Caster club scene, where the stakes are high and losers pay the ultimate price.
Where's a Linkubus when you need him? Hanging out with her best friend, Simon, is just about the most exciting thing in Clary's life But when her mother disappears and a monster attacks her, Clary has to embrace a world that she never even knew existed--a world full of vampires, werewolves, demons, and those who fight for the humans, Shadowhunters Ethan Wate thought he was getting used to the strange, impossible events happening in Gatlin, his small Southern town.
But now that Ethan and Lena have returned home from the Great Barrier, strange and impossible have taken on new meanings. Swarms of locusts, record-breaking heat, and devastating storms ravage Gatlin as Ethan and Lena struggle to understand the impact of Lena's Claiming.
Even Lena's family of powerful Supernaturals is affected -- and their abilities begin to dangerously misfire. As time passes, one question becomes clear: What -- or who -- will need to be sacrificed to save Gatlin? For Ethan, the chaos is a frightening but welcome distraction. He's being haunted in his dreams again, but this time it's not Lena -- and the mysterious figure is following him out of his dreams and into his everyday life. Worse, Ethan is gradually losing pieces of himself -- forgetting names, phone numbers, even memories.
Your Rating:. Your Comment:. Read Online Download. Great book, Beautiful Chaos pdf is enough to raise the goose bumps alone. Add a review Your Rating: Your Comment:. Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia.
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