Beautiful Chaos (9 page)

“We are never going to hear the end of this.” Lena looked at Ridley. She was chewing gum like Ronnie Weeks slapping on nicotine patches when he quit smoking. The more Savannah jumped, the harder Ridley chewed.

“Give me a K!”

“Give me a break.” Ridley spit out her gum and stuck it underneath the bench. Before we could stop her, she was climbing over the aluminum bleachers, down to the court—superhigh sandals, pink-striped hair, black miniskirt, and all.

“Oh no.” Lena started to get up, but I pulled her back down.

“You can’t stop it from happening, L.”

“What is she doing?” Lena couldn’t bear to look.

Ridley was talking to Savannah, tightening the low-slung
belt with the poisonous insect trapped in it, like a gladiator gearing up for battle. At first I strained to listen, but within seconds they were shouting.

“What’s your problem?” Savannah snapped.

Ridley grinned. “Nothing. Oh, wait… you.”

Savannah dropped her pom-poms on the gym floor. “You’re a skank. If you want to lure some other guy into your skanky trap, be my guest. But Link is one of us.”

“Here’s the thing, Barbie. I’ve already trapped him, and since I’m trying to play nice, this is me giving you fair warning. Back off before you get hurt.”

Savannah crossed her arms over her chest. “Make me.”

It looked like they needed a ref.

Lena covered her eyes. “Are they fighting?”

“Uh—more like cheering, I think.” I pulled Lena’s hand from her eyes. “You have to see this for yourself.”

Ridley had one thumb hooked over her belt, the other shaking a lone, borrowed pom-pom like it was a dead skunk. The squad was next to her, climbing into their standard pyramid formation—Savannah leading the way.

Link stopped running down the court. Everyone did.

L, I don’t know if this is the right time for payback.

Lena didn’t take her eyes off Ridley.

I’m not doing anything. But someone is.

Savannah was smiling from the base. Emily scowled as she climbed to the top. The other girls followed almost mechanically.

Ridley waved a drooping pom-pom over her head.

Link dribbled the ball in place. Waiting, like the rest of us who knew Ridley, for the terrible thing that hadn’t happened yet but would any second now.

L, you think Ridley—?

It’s impossible. She’s not a Caster anymore. She doesn’t have any powers.

“Give me an”—Ridley shook her pom-pom halfheartedly—“R.”

Emily wobbled at the top of the pyramid.

Ridley called out again. “Um, and an I?”

A shudder went through the team, like they were doing the wave in pyramid formation.

“And then, let’s go with a D.” Ridley dropped the pom-pom. Emily’s eyes widened. Link held the ball in one hand. “What does it spell, Cheerlosers?” Ridley winked.

Lena—

I started to move before I saw it happen.

“Rid?” Link shouted at her, but she didn’t look back at him.

Lena was halfway over the bench, on her way down to the court.

Ridley, no!

I was right behind her, but there was no way to stop it.

It was too late.

The pyramid collapsed on top of Savannah.

Everything happened really quickly after that, like Gatlin wanted to fast-forward the whole story from breaking news to ancient history. An ambulance picked up Savannah and took her to the hospital, over in Summerville. People were saying it was a miracle Emily hadn’t been killed, falling all the way from the top. Half the school kept repeating the words
spinal injury
, which was only a rumor, because Emily seemed about as full of back
bone as ever. Apparently Savannah cushioned her fall, as if she had selflessly martyred herself for the greater good of the team. That was the story, anyway.

Link went to the hospital to check on her. I think he felt as guilty as if he’d beaten Savannah up himself. But the official diagnosis, according to Link’s call from the lobby, was “good an’ banged up,” and by the time Savannah sent her mom home for her makeup, everyone involved was feeling better. It probably helped that, the way Link told it, the whole cheer squad was there asking him who he thought had been friends with Savannah the longest.

Link was still relaying the details. “The girls’ll be all right. They’ve sorta been takin’ turns sittin’ on my lap.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, everyone’s pretty upset. So I’m doin’ my part to comfort the squad.”

“How’s that going?”

I had a feeling both Link and Savannah were enjoying the afternoon, in their own ways. Ridley was nowhere to be found, but when she figured out where Link had gone, things would probably get even worse. Maybe it was a good thing Link was familiarizing himself with the county hospital.

By the time Link hung up, Lena and I were back in her room, and Ridley was moping around downstairs. Lena’s bedroom was about as far as you could get from Jackson High, and being there made everything that happened in town seem about a million miles away. Her room had changed since she came back from the Great Barrier. Lena said it was because she needed to see the world through her gold and green eyes. And Ravenwood had changed to mirror her feelings, the way it had always changed for her and Macon.

Her room was now entirely transparent, like some kind of weird tree house made of glass. From the outside it still looked exactly the same, with its weather-beaten shutters covered in vines. I could see remnants of her old room. There were still windows where there had been windows, doors where there had been doors. But the ceiling was open, with sliding panels of glass shoved to one side to let in the night air. In the afternoon, the wind scattered leaves across her bed. Her floor was a mirror that reflected the changing sky. When the sun beat down on us—as it always did now—the light refracted and broke and scattered over so many different surfaces, it was impossible to tell which sun was the real one. They all burned equally, with a blinding glare.

I lay back on her bed, closing my eyes and letting the breeze roll over me. I knew it wasn’t real, just another version of Lena’s Casting Breeze, but I didn’t care. My body felt like it was breathing for the first time today. I pulled my damp shirt off and tossed it onto the floor. Better.

I opened an eye. Lena was writing on the glass wall closest to her bed, and the words hung in the air like spoken sentences. Inked in Sharpie.

no light no dark no you no me

know light know dark know you know me

It made me feel better, seeing the handwriting I remembered from before the Sixteenth Moon.

so goes the hard way—the (fall a)part way—

the (break a)heart day

I rolled onto my side. “Hey. What does that mean, ‘the break a heart day’?” I didn’t like the sound of that one.

She looked over at me and smiled. “It’s not today.”

I pulled her down on the bed next to me, my hand on the back of her neck. My fingers tangled in her long hair, and I ran my thumb down her collarbone. I loved the way her skin felt, even if it burned. I pressed my lips against hers, and I heard Lena’s breath catch. I was losing mine, but I didn’t care.

Lena ran her hand down my back, her fingers trailing along my bare skin.

“I love you,” I whispered into her ear.

She held my face in her hands and leaned back so she could look at me. “I don’t think I could ever love anything the way I love you.”

“I know I couldn’t.”

Lena’s hand rested on my chest. I knew she could feel my heartbeat thudding beneath it. She sat up, grabbing my shirt off the floor. “You’d better put this back on, or you’re going to get me grounded for the rest of my life. It’s not like Uncle M sleeps all day. He’s probably down in the Tunnels with—” She caught herself, which is how I knew who she was talking about. “He’s in his study, and he’ll expect to see me any minute now.”

I sat up, holding my shirt in my hands.

“Anyway, I don’t know why I write the things I do. They sort of come into my head.”

“Like my father and his new bestseller,
The Eighteenth Moon
?” I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it, and Amma was avoiding me. Maybe Macon would have the answer.

“Like Savannah and her supercool new Link cheer.” Lena leaned against me. “It’s a mess.”

“Give me an M. Give me an E-S-S.”

“Shut up,” Lena said, kissing my cheek. “Shirt on.”

I pulled my shirt back over my shoulders, pausing midway. “You sure about that?” She bent to kiss my stomach, yanking my shirt back down over it. I felt the stabbing pain disappear as quickly as it came—but I reached for her anyway.

She ducked out of my arms. “We should tell Uncle Macon about what happened today.”

“Tell him what? That Ridley’s starting fights? And even though she’s completely powerless, bad things happen to cheerleaders when she’s around?”

“Just in case. She could be up to something. Maybe you should tell him about your dad’s new book.” Lena held out her hand, and I took it, the energy draining out of me slowly.

“You mean, because the last book turned out so well? We don’t even know if there is a book.” I didn’t want to think about my dad and his books any more than I wanted to think about Ridley and Savannah Snow.

We were halfway down the hall before I realized we had stopped talking. The closer we got, the more I sensed Lena’s pace slowing. She didn’t mind going back down into the Tunnels. She just didn’t want me going down there.

Which had nothing to do with the actual Tunnels and everything to do with Macon’s favorite exchange student.

9.12

L
ena stopped in front of a black lacquered door. A handmade flyer for the Holy Rollers—
WHAT’S ROCK WITHOUT THE ROLL?
—hung skewed to one side. She knocked on Ridley’s door. “Rid?”

“Why are we looking for Ridley?” I had seen enough of her today.

“We aren’t. There’s a shortcut to the Tunnels in her room. Uncle Macon’s secret passageway, remember?”