Eternity (29 page)

“It’s hard to believe something so beautiful could be so bad,” she said, reaching up to make a picking motion with her fingers. Then she passed her hand toward him. While she was doing it, it looked like a miming exercise. But as soon as their fingers touched, JD felt a jolt run through him. He felt something
between his thumb and his pointer finger, something like a stem. He blinked.

The garden seemed to grow in front of him, with greenery shooting up from the ground and pushing forcefully over high stone walls that were miraculously erected out of the rubble in a matter of seconds. It was like watching a movie in fast-forward. The enormous garden of flowers crystallized in a flash of magic, framed by drooping willows that sprouted instantaneously from blackened stumps.

“Holy shit,” he whispered.

This was the place. It was time.

“Stay here,” he mouthed to Melissa as he started unpacking his backpack. With one of the sticks, he scratched a large protective circle in the ground. He motioned that she should sit in the middle of it. She did. Her eyes were big and scared. He kneeled down and took her shoulders. “Nothing will happen to you,” he said, digging out both snake pins from his pockets and pinning them hastily to her shirt. He had to move fast now. The moon was almost directly overhead. He arranged the sticks in a circle around her, some of them pointing vertically toward the sky, others in clumps on the ground, following the line he’d drawn in the dirt. He piled orchid petals, ripped from their stems, around everything. Then he ran back over to the supplies, grabbed the can of gasoline, and squirted a bit of that over the sticks. They’d been wet with spring rain. He needed to be sure they caught fire.

Melissa whimpered. “What are you doing?” There was panic in her voice.

“No matter what happens, don’t move,” he said. His hands were shaking. Then he repeated his vow: “Nothing will happen to you. I promise. Just don’t move.”

With trembling hands, he pulled a matchbook from his pants pocket. Was he really going to do this?

You know as well as anyone that this is dead serious,
Ali had said. And she was right. He’d already lost one friend and he was in danger of losing another. All his paths were blocked. All except this one.

“You ready?” he asked Melissa.

She nodded but couldn’t contain another whimper.

With every ounce of false confidence he could muster, he smiled at her—the same smile he’d given her a hundred times, over board games or the dinner table or at their grandparents’ house when Grandma Rose started telling the story of the pickle jar. It was a smile that said,
We’re in this together. I’m feeling what you’re feeling. I’ve got your back.

When she tried, and failed, to smile back, his heart nearly broke.

Now.

He lit the match, crouched down, and held the tiny flame to a piece of kindling. It nearly singed his fingernails. A trail of sulfur hung in the air once he shook the match out. Then another,
and another. The branches caught fire almost immediately, and the circle went
whoosh
, up in flames like a domino chain of red heat. Then, crackling and popping, the familiar sounds of a campfire. He walked backward, taking in the scene.

“JD!” Melissa yelled, scrabbling toward the center. “What the hell? Where are you going?”

“I’m not going anywhere. It’s okay, Mel.” JD tried to keep his voice calm. He yelled so she could hear him over the distance and noise of the fire. “It’s like a spell. I promise I won’t let it get out of control. You have to trust me.”

Melissa nodded, but she was shaking, and he could tell she was trying not to cry. In the light of the flames, her cheeks were pink-orange; her blue shirt looked black. Her eyes glistened, like tears were on the brink of spilling.

“Shhhh,” he said. “Just a few minutes. You’re safe.”

JD looked around, waiting for the Furies to appear. Praying that they would, yet dreading the moment they did. When they showed up—
if
they showed up—what would happen then? Mr. Feiffer’s letter hadn’t included a spell or a chant. . . . JD felt sweat beading on his brow. What if he’d missed something? What if this wasn’t right?

There was crashing in the underbrush nearby. Someone was coming. He and Melissa locked eyes, and he braced himself for impact. He waited to see Ali or Ty or Meg emerge from the trees. He spun in a circle, searching the darkness, his eyes
already bleary with smoke, trying to guess where they would come from.

Then, a scream. Melissa. The crashing hadn’t come from below. It was from above. A branch, falling from the tall maple tree next to the fire circle. He ran toward her in horror, but he wasn’t fast enough—the branch slammed against the top of Melissa’s head, and she collapsed in a heap in the center of the flames.

Oh god oh god oh god.
He edged close to the flames, trying to get past them, but they were as high as his waist and he couldn’t get to her. “Melissa!” he cried out. But she didn’t move.

The fire was licking up into the tree now, racing over its branches. He took a deep breath, steeling himself to charge through the flames. But just then another sound came from behind him. A racing footfall.
Thump-thump-thump.
He whirled around, expecting the Furies to be at his back.

But it wasn’t them.

It was Crow.

“What are you
doing
?” Crow’s face was wild; fire-shadows danced across his face and deepened the black craters under his eyes. “You’re going to ruin everything!”

“What are
you
doing?” JD barked back. “Go away! Stay away! It’s under control!”

Crow pushed past him, looking around frantically for something. Crow began to stomp on the fire with his boots.

“
Stop!”
JD bellowed, diving toward him. It wasn’t time yet. He landed on the dirt, and a sharp spray of dust hit his eyes and his mouth. But he brought Crow down with him. JD spat pieces of grit from his tongue.

Crow’s elbow went into JD’s ribs, so deep it felt like cracking. They were inches from the fire. JD could feel the sweat all over him—on his forehead, his arms, the back of his neck.

“What are you
doing
,” Crow said, shoving a calloused hand against JD’s face and pushing him down toward the ground. JD strained against it, feeling his muscles stretch like elastic, so taut that they might snap.
No. Let go.
He had to trust Walt. Crow was on the wrong side.

“I know you’re part of this,” JD panted. He reared back and kneed Crow right in the stomach, feeling his kneecap make contact, hearing Crow’s sharp intake of breath. JD had knocked the wind out of him, at least for a second.

He flipped Crow over, felt his weight shift, taking the advantage. He pinned Crow to the dirt. He looked down and tried to catch his breath. There was a smear of blood on his right hand. It was red-brown and ugly. “I saw you with them. You’re with the Furies.”

Crow turned his face to the side and spit blood onto the ground, trying to catch his breath. “I’m
not
working—with them. I was—trying to—strike a bargain.”

“A bargain?” JD huffed. The air was getting smoky and his
lungs were tight from exertion. He was worried about Melissa. Maybe he should put out the fire after all.

“I offered myself,” Crow was saying between frantic gasps. “Instead. I thought it would save her. I saw it in a vision.”

“Instead of who?” JD increased the pressure on Crow’s chest. The heat of the fire was starting to scorch his face.
A vision.

“Her,” Crow gasped. “They wanted her. Em.”

JD didn’t know what to think, what to believe.

“But it’s too late now,” Crow said. He didn’t look angry anymore. He just looked sad. “I was wrong. My vision was wrong.”

Sweat was dripping down JD’s face. It was hot, too hot. The fire was raging out of control. Soon the whole garden would combust. The moon was high, like a spotlight.

Melissa still lay motionless in a small, bare patch of ground.

And JD realized what he had done.

They’d all die—Melissa would die—if he couldn’t stop the fire, couldn’t get her out of there.

He scrambled to his feet just as a scream tore through the air.

When he turned around he saw Em come running out of the Furies’ house. She was sobbing. Babbling. “It’s almost time,” she was saying. “You saved me.”

“Where are they? Where are the Furies?” He tried to take Em’s shoulders but she pushed past him, moving into the garden, thick with smoke and flame. She was shoving aside the rippling tide of flowers, as though she’d lost something there.

“Em!” JD shouted.

Crow had climbed to his feet next to JD. “That’s not—,” he started to say.

“Shut up!” JD yelled. “I can’t think.” He needed to douse the flames—
now
. He lunged for the fire extinguisher he’d stolen from the auditorium, but Em blocked him off, a blissful smile on her face and a beautiful white flower in her hand. She grabbed his face on either side with surprising strength and a shock went through him as her lips touched his.

Adrenaline.

Fiery heat.

Desire.

“I love you,” he whispered.

Another frenzied voice broke into the chaos.

“What are you
doing
?” a girl shrieked behind them.

He broke away from the kiss as a mess of dark brown hair whipped past him. The smell of Ivory soap and cocoa butter lingered in her wake.
Em.

Stunned, confused, and utterly frozen, he watched as Emily Winters—another Emily Winters, the real Emily Winters?—plunged into the circle of flames.

Em flew out of her trance like a bullet, immediately confronted with the insane scene in front of her.

There was a circle of raging flames over there, to her right. She could just barely make out a person in the middle of the circle. She looked closer. It was Melissa.

Just next to the fire, two boys wrestled in the dirt. Em squinted. It was JD.  JD and . . . Crow?

And then, right there, on her left, amid the greenery . . . Ty. Ty, holding a big, beautiful, white flower. So white it practically glowed. Ty was holding it aloft so that the bright, big moon shone down on it like a spotlight.

It was midnight. Maybe she even heard a bell tolling somewhere
in the distance. She couldn’t tell if it was real or in her imagination.

The flower.

It was midnight, and the albino flower had bloomed.

She wanted to reach for it. She wanted to so badly. To have it and rescue herself and stop the transformation. But there was no way she could get the flower and also get to Melissa in time. Em could see she was the only one to save Melissa. The boys were rolling around, too consumed in their own competition, and there was no one else. No one but her. All this for one mistake. One for which she had apologized. It wasn’t right.

She wasn’t going to let Melissa die. She wasn’t going to let another person get hurt because of her. She scrambled to her feet and propelled herself forward with unnatural speed. If the Furies wanted to take her down, so be it—but she wasn’t going to let anyone else die. She covered the ground in seconds and threw herself into the flames. She didn’t see a fire, just the chance to save someone other than herself. For once.

It wasn’t the searing pain she imagined. Instead it was pinpricks of heat dancing on her skin and an immense pressure, closing in on all sides, like the force of a freezing waterfall coming at her body from every angle—so cold that it feels hot. Except this was so hot, it felt cold. She came out on the other side, within the circle, and saw Melissa at her feet. Em fell to her knees beside her.
“I’m going to get you out of here,” she whispered. Melissa’s skin was slick with sweat, and her eyelids were fluttering. She hoisted Melissa’s body into her arms.

She tried to plot her way out of the fiery maze. It was just darkness and smoke everywhere, like in Crow’s vision. Flames were reaching up around her. The threads of blackness pulled at her heart: the same sticky, angry web she’d been walking through for months.

No more.

Through the wall of smoke and flames, she adjusted her grip on Mel, who was cradled in her arms like a baby. Like when they used to pick her up and throw her off the dock at Galvin Pond when they were all so much younger. She sheltered Melissa’s body with her own, and attempted to move out of the circle of fire. She took one step backward, and then another. Meanwhile, the flames grew higher and hotter . . . higher and hotter . . .

She braced herself—cringing against the heightened sensation—and finally managed to twist her torso just enough to deposit Melissa’s body safely across. She could feel the fire eating away at her skin, and smoke filling her lungs.

Smoke was all around her, trapping her, flames lit by JD—just as Crow had seen it.

But he’d misunderstood.

They had all misunderstood.

As she shoved Melissa’s body just outside the flames, she stumbled. The heat ripped at her; now she could feel it everywhere, in her skin and teeth and hair. It was like a fist of pain gripped her from all sides.

Burning flowers. The smell was horrible, intense, searing her nose, making her feel as though her whole mind were on fire. Maybe it was.

And then, suddenly, the pain stopped. There was a high-pitched but very faint ringing in her ears, almost like a hum. Almost like a song. The darkness began to swallow her. But it was different from before. This sensation was strangely soothing, like rocking on a gentle wave. A rowboat swaying ever so slightly. In its embrace, Em felt peaceful. And in an instant, she understood.

I love you, JD,
she thought.
It was you all along, but I didn’t see it until too late.

I love you, Gabby. I love you for forgiving me. For showing me what real justice and real forgiveness is.

And Crow . . . Thank you for teaching me what sacrifice means.

I love you, Mom and Dad, and Melissa, and Drea. God, Drea, I’m so sorry. We should have known all along—the Furies are evil, and to defeat them, we needed pure love. Not tricks and books and rituals.