12.13

Last time, bigoted caster books and the daaaaaaaaaance is coming.

I was standing in front of Amma so she could tie my bow tie. Amma was so short, she had to stand three stairs up from me to reach my collar.

Who wants to hear something depressing?

Older people aren’t just naturally teeny. You do tend to get a bit shorter, but the reason you see tiny, tiny old people tends to be that they started shorter from poor nutrition and hardship, then shriveled faster from that because their bones are swiss cheese. So the fact his mammy is super short isn’t actually a cute little factoid. It’s a sign her family likely went hungry.

I was picking her up in the Beater. Link was catching a ride with Shawn. The guys on the team were still saving him a seat at their new lunch table, even though he usually sat with Lena and me.

And so we see yet more proof that this place isn’t just about conformity and shunning anyone who steps out of line. Emothan has made himself a pariah, but this is not a transferable trait – if other kids want to hang out with him, there’s no social ramifications. This, in turn, makes it really unlikely that he became a pariah simply from hanging out with Lena.

Interestingly, it is possible Lena’s bullying was by transference – Emothan likes to proudly remind us that Emily hates him and he responded to her breaking up with him by going FUCK YEAH DON’T GOTTA DEAL WITH THE DUMB BITCH NO MORE so I’m thinking there’s a pretty good chance of a real grudge there. Lena had no pre-existing connections, so she’s defined by her one relationship to the guy Emily hates and who seems to have been on pretty thin ice with everyone else. The normally neutral parties are probably swayed by the fact Emothan is well known to like outsiders because those people are better than the town losers, so they’d assume Lena sees herself the way he sees her and that’s why they’re hanging out.

I reached behind me for a small box, a red rose surrounded by white baby’s breath inside. They looked pretty ugly to me, but you couldn’t get much better from Gardens of Eden, the only place in Gatlin.
“About the sorriest flowers I’ve ever seen.”

Okay, so is it that the flowers are too old and starting to wither, or is it some perfectly fresh flowers he thinks are just not very good ones? Regardless, I don’t see why the store wouldn’t have specially ordered a big batch in advance of the various school dances, or how they can keep a monopoly if their products suck – it’s South Carolina, you can grow flowers during much of the year. It’s not like they’re Alaska or something and totally reliant on shipped-in flowers.

And indeed, Amma throws them away and gets out a wrist corsage, small and delicate. White Confederate jasmine and wild rosemary, tied with a pale silver ribbon. Silver and white, the colors of the winter formal. It was perfect. and why in that case did they waste the other flowers like that?

She’d done it for me. It was something my mom would have done.

Really? I thought we established that Amma was in charge of raising you.

It was only since my mom had died that I realized how much I relied on Amma, how much I had always relied on her. She was the only thing that had kept me afloat. Without her, I probably would have drowned, like my dad.

Would be nice to see some of this instead of him just skipping along occasionally mentioning his mom’s dead.

Under the ribbon, there was a tiny bone.
“Amma!”
She shrugged. “What, are you gonna take issue with a teeny little graveyard bone like that? After all this time growin’ up in this house, after seein’ the things you’ve seen, where’s your sense? A little protection never hurt anybody—not even you, Ethan Wate.”
I sighed and put the corsage back in the box.

Also christ why is she bothering?

Not only does he know magic in general is real, not only does he know he and Lena are personally in danger, but he knows her charms in specific are also real, work, and even more specifically, do so as protective charms.

I mean, yes, Emothan is stupid enough that he couldn’t put one and one together when his magic locked door finally let him open it after he knocked her charm down, but when Lena was wearing the bracelet, he realizes it really is working. There’s no excuse here.

I knew she looked nothing like any of the other girls at the dance would look tonight.

Yeah yeah she’s special I get-

There were only two kinds of prom dresses in Gatlin County, and they all came from one of two places: Little Miss, the local pageant gown supplier, or Southern Belle, the bridal shop two towns over.
The girls who went to Little Miss wore the slutty mermaid dresses, all slits and plunging necklines and sequins; those were the girls that Amma would never have allowed me to be seen with at a church picnic, let alone the winter formal. They were sometimes the local pageant girls or the daughters of local pageant girls, like Eden, whose mom had been First Runner Up Miss South Carolina, or more often just the daughters of the women who wished they had been pageant girls. These were the same girls you might eventually see holding their babies at the Jackson High School graduation in a couple of years.
Southern Belle dresses were the Scarlett O’Hara dresses, shaped like giant cowbells. The Southern Belle girls were the daughters of the DAR and the Ladies Auxiliary members—the Emily Ashers and the Savannah Snows—and you could take them anywhere, if you could stomach it, stomach them, and stomach the way it looked like you were dancing with a bride at her own wedding.

Well. That was vile.

Let’s see you describe her own dress that has exactly the right amount of cloth involved.

Lena’s dress fell from her body, clinging to all the right places without looking Little Miss, in silvery gray strands, as delicate as a silver cobweb, spun by silver spiders.

So she’s in a sheer thin dress, but not the slutty kind, the classy kind, as in, pricier

It was probably just something he found in some little shop in Paris or Rome or New York City. Uncle Macon likes beautiful things.” She touched the silver crescent moon at her neckline, dangling just above her chain of memories. Another gift from Macon, I guessed.
The familiar drawl came out of the dark hallway, accompanied by a single silver candlestick. “Budapest, not Paris. Other than that, guilty as charged.”

So we see they are indeed rich assholes. It’s not simply that they can make anything they want by magic, they’re participating in the same usual snobbery as the rest of the elite.

Not that you need to be told, but Pretty Suit is also in a very pretty suit he probably bought in some other country too.

He handed me a corsage for Lena, a small wreath of Confederate jasmine.
…
I looked at the corsage more closely. A silver ring dangled from the pin that held the flowers. It had an inscription in a language I didn’t understand, but recognized from The Book of Moons. I didn’t have to look too closely to see it was the ring he had worn night and day, until now. I pulled out Amma’s nearly identical corsage. Between the hundred Casters probably Bound to the ring, and all of Amma’s extended Greats

What?

So are these dead casters bound, or did he get a geis passed around the family? I find it hard to believe there’s a hundred living casters in in their extended family, especially when we’ve got to substract any dark casters from the count. Does he have contacts with other families too? And yet again, what exactly is binding?

And are the spirits Amma deals with not casters despite being able to do the exact same thing with the exact same name? Why would you say people who can cast magic spells aren’t casters?

“And have her back by midnight.”
“Is that some powerful Caster hour?”
“No. It’s her curfew.”

This isn’t a joke that works well. We know midnight is a powerful caster hour, at least sixteenth-birthday midnight, we know moon phases determine what type of magic you can cast, and we know certain holidays thought of as magical are also super magical in exactly the way people think.

Now, if he’d said eleven, which incidentally makes more sense for a girl he’s worried about in general and disproving of her relationships in particular, this could make sense.

“Is it crazy that we’re going tonight?” Lena looked at me expectantly.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean everyone hates me.” She looked down at her hands.
“You mean everyone hates us.”

You mean everyone hates you, Emothan.

“Last year, Ridley and I had planned to go together. But then…”

There continues to be this faint strain of evil lesbians. Like I said earlier, there’s no lack of evil women, and there’s also no lack of evil female relationships. It’s only the positive ones that are solidly male. Ridley only loved Lena, and the boys were just people she could use. Having been kicked out of her family, she’s now close to Lena’s mother, who presumably evilly took in a terrified sixteen year old because that’s how evil rolls.

When we walked into the gym, even I was impressed by how hard Student Council must have worked all weekend. Jackson had gone all the way with the whole Midwinter Night’s Dream concept. Hundreds of tiny paper snowflakes—some white, some shimmering with tinfoil, glitter, sequins, and anything else that could be made to sparkle—hung on fishing wire from the ceiling of the gym. Powdery soap flake “snow” drifted into the corners of the gym, and twinkling white lights fell in strands from the risers.

I think this might be the first positive thing he’s said about mainstream Gatlin. Well, that and the food, he seems to like the evil lady posse’s cooking.

“Hi, Ethan. Lena, you look lovely.” Coach Cross handed us both cups of Gatlin Peach Punch. She was in a black dress that showed just a little too much leg

Well aren’t we a judgey little asshole.

I thought, for Link’s sake.

Sure, sure, you’re not saying she shouldn’t be wearing it, you’re just saying she shouldn’t be wearing it for reasons.

Still, her eyes were shining and she clung to my hand tightly, like she was a kid at her first birthday party. I had never believed Link when he claimed school dances had some sort of inexplicable effect on girls. But it was clear it was true of all girls, even Caster girls.

Even Lena-not-like-the-other-girls is still thought of as part of the amorphous female mass, full of inexplicable and irrational feelings.

Nevermind that this probably is her first party, and that it’s also part of having a normal life which she so desperately wants. No, it’s just that girls like dances.

“It’s beautiful.” Honestly, it wasn’t. What it was, was a plain old Jackson High dance

You fucking asshole you just said they did a good job but no, as soon as anyone else thinks it, it’s just shit.

Maybe magic wasn’t the magic thing, when you grew up with it.

The closest the book has to implementing good ideas is when it says what idea it was trying to go for.

“Hey, Short Straw! Hey, Cuz!” I heard that unmistakable voice again, over the crowd, over the DJ, over the thumping of pounding bass, and the couples on the dance floor. Honey, sugar, molasses, and cherry lollipops, all rolled into one. It was the only time in my life I’d ever thought something was too sweet.

Oh thank god Ridley’s here.

in the smallest splash of silver sequins ever worn to a Jackson High formal, maybe any formal, was Ridley. I didn’t even know where to look; she was all legs and curves and blond hair spilling everywhere.

This actually appears to be IC for Ridley, who you can tell really is enjoying herself.

That said – wait a second. Why is Ridley standardly hot when her power is unrelated? Why can’t someone who isn’t standard model still be considered hot, especially with magical backup? I mean, can’t she at least have hair other than blonde, maybe? Unless it’ll turn out she wasn’t really blonde and curvey but that was just siren powers – could see it going either way.

I could feel the temperature in the room rising just by looking at her. From the number of guys who had stopped dancing with their wedding cake–topper dates, who were fuming

So her powers, or at least her automatic ones, only work on boys. Or maybe they would work on lesbians, but we’d need some other dark casters around to see that.

In a world where all the prom dresses came from one of two stores, Ridley had out–Little Missed even the Little Misses. She made Coach Cross look like the Reverend Mother.

Seriously, Lena, sweetie, I know he seems nice and everyone else seems mean but I think you’ve made a horrible horrible mistake in judgement here. You’re able to read his mind, aren’t you? People who think like this are not nice people.

“Cuz. We finally got to that dance after all. Aren’t you ecstatic? Isn’t it fantastic?”

Aw Ridley remembers her precious baby cousin and wants them to get to do the stuff they promised they would!

Naturally, Link is on her arm. Emothan pries him off for a quick conversation about how he needs to stay off it.

All I know is, I’m here at the formal with the hottest hotness in three counties.

I’m getting more and more irritated by the whole ranking business. Sure, she’s the hottest thing they’ve ever seen, but hey, she’s probably not four-county hot, especially not one of those bigger, urban counties. Maybe she ranks a twenty-two or so on the ranks of hottest hotties in the state.

Ethan-Hating Southern Belle Emily looked like a silver and peachfilled cream puff, plucked and primped and puckered into taffeta. Her hair, in scary little piggy ringlets, looked like it was made out of yellow curling ribbon. Her face looked like it had been stretched a little too tightly while she was getting her hair done at the Snip ’n’ Curl, stabbed in the head one too many times with a bobby pin.
What had I ever seen in any of them?

From the bit about Lena making him realize he’s a lot like the rest of Gatlin, you could see this being actual development – of him starting off one way, then coming to this realization. But that’s not what we have here. There’s been no development, because he already loathed them.

So they go off to get their pictures taken.

We kissed, and the flash from the camera went off. For one second, one perfect second, it seemed like there was nobody else in the world, and nothing else mattered.
The blinding light of a flashbulb and then, sticky white goop was pouring everywhere, all over the two of us.

How traditional.

It’s actually surprisingly reasonable. Instead of going all out for pig’s blood, the idea is to dump soap flake snow over for the photograph, and they just filled the bucket with some water too.

I was willing to bet the Jackson Angels hadn’t seen a thing.

Wow, it’s almost like it would have been a good idea to make a big deal of how glad you were those guys were on the case back then, so this was the standard they could actually be judged by. The kids may know it’s a farce but they’re going to look bad to the adults if this stuff keeps going on. And then when they did this, you could make a big deal about how, bless their hearts, but they’re just not up to the task, are they?

I realize that’s not a tactic boys are supposed to use, but really Emothan, you already live in the girl’s social circle and slutshame with the best of them, you’re obviously using that social model already.

“She’s melting!” someone shouted. We stood in a puddle of white soap or glue or whatever, wishing we could shrink until we disappeared; at least, that’s how it must have looked to the crowd standing around us laughing.

Okay, look, not only are you the viewpoint character but we’re doing first person narration here, so why the hell are you telling us what the crowd must have seen instead of what was actually happening.

Also, god, you’re so helpless. Bullying is certainly tolerated, but public bullying being met by schoolwide cheers is one of those things that make adults unhappy.

Now, small towns can be toxic places, but so far here, it’s always been true they needed reasons for their behavior. The anti-Lena campaign only kicks off once she smashes the window, and they’re unable to actually kick her out when they want to – the most the principal can say is she’ll be kicked out if she does anything else bad, then rather than get some trumped up charge an hour later (a week at the most, if they’re trying to be polite and subtle) she’s still there months later and actively dating corrupting one of their precious boys the whole time. There haven’t even been close calls. Hell, she’s even skipped school, with that same precious Gatlin boy, and no one’s even tried to use that against her.

Evidently, this is not a situation where the majority is really on board with bullying a girl for bullying’s sake. Willing to look the other way? Well naturally. But that doesn’t mean it looks good for the bullies, and that’s the key thing Emothan has been totally ignoring. You can make the people doing the bullying look bad, and that’s so much easier when you have them make a big public campaign you could easily coopt into being all about poor Lena.

Earl makes the mistake of joining in on the mockery, so Emothan slammed my soap-covered fist into his jaw and he hit the ground because he is so badass, and Earl doesn’t dare fight back at all because He could say what he wanted, but we both knew if he got up, he was the one who would end up back on the ground. Makes sense, we know Emothan’s great at basketball and never bothers to practice, so it stands to reason that since he doesn’t even have any experience in a fight, he must be godly at it.

Ridley appeared at her side, with Link right behind her. She was furious, I could see that much.

Wow, it’s almost like Ridley is prioritizing concern for someone she cares about over violence despite being the designated evil one while you’re supposedly our hero.

“I don’t get it, Cuz. I don’t see why you want to hang out with their kind.” She spat the words out, sounding just like Emily.

And it’s time for victims are just as bad as victimizers because why you gotta be so mad about it? Truly, resenting people because they treat you badly is exactly like treating people badly just because you can.

“No one treats us like this, Light or Dark—not one of them. Where’s your self-respect, Lena Beana?”

And no, she isn’t trying to seduce Lena to the dark side. Lena is shaken and doesn’t want to fight back, and Ridley doesn’t do anything to try to change it, she’s just as wound up by this as Lena is exhausted.

Link took off his silver jacket and put it around her shoulders. “That was messed up.”

Okay, so not only is her beloved cousin doing a better job here than her boyfriend, her beloved cousin’s date is now doing better at it.

“They’re bad news, Cuz, except Short Straw. And my new boyfriend, Shrinky Dink.”

And look, Ridley’s not even prejudiced! She understands this isn’t some sort of inherent thing about non-casters, because she has no problem believing individual non-casters can be okay. But clearly hanging out with the groups of people who are obviously hostile is not such a great idea. If this was any other situation, “Hey, these people are toxic, why do you want to be around them? Hang out with people who don’t mistreat you.” would be obviously right and show its speaker was a good person.

“Shut up, Ridley. She’s had enough.” The Siren effect wasn’t working on me anymore.

It didn’t seem to be working before.

The Ice Queen and her Court had made their way up to the stage, and were grinning from the catbird seat. Once again, Savannah was the Snow Queen. Nothing ever changed. She was beaming at Emily, once again her Ice Princess

Wait…this tiny school has a whole court worth of kids get picked? That’s surprisingly inclusive compared to just having a king and queen. I mean, I’m sure it’s all still a popularity contest where lots of kids get snubbed, but it’s a lot fewer kids getting snubbed when a whole court is getting picked and not just two.

Also, aw, she made her friend princess!

Anyway, Ridley’s had enough and is going to be enacting the other half of Carrie on Lena’s behalf! Lena objects that she’ll just get the blame, but Lena’s nowhere near anyone and so far no one seems to actually believe she’s got supernatural powers. The witch teasing is ten percent because she wears black and lives at spooky Ravenwood, ninety percent because the author thinks it’s a great idea.

This isn’t about you, Cuz. It’s bigger than that. Things are about to change in this back-assward town.

Godspeed, Ridley!

Incidentally, Emothan’s response to this is some tepid man poor Lena and not holy shit superpowered evil now has a laser focus on my classmates.

Anyway, Lena needn’t have worried, Ridley’s being subtle.

Charlotte was walking up the stairs, in yards of shiny lavender taffeta two sizes too small, toward her sparkly, plastic silver crown and her usual place in fourth position of the Royal Court, behind Eden—Ice Handmaiden, I guess. Just as she was taking the last step, her gigantic lavender sweatshop creation caught the edge of the riser, and when she stepped up onto the last stair, the back of her dress tore right off, right at the feebly sewn seam. It took Charlotte a couple of seconds to realize it and by then, half the school was staring at her hot pink panties, the size of the state of Texas. Charlotte screamed a bloodcurdling, now-everyone-knows-how-fat-I-really-am scream.

Is there anything more fucked up than the idea of people being “secretly” fat? I remember reading about India’s messed up relationship with skin color, where having dark skin is the worst thing so women will describe someone they dislike as that she looks light but actually she’s very very dark, even though objectively the color of her skin everyone’s seeing is light colored, she’s totally dark and just uses skin whitening products and therefore ugly. And I thought right then that this was some sort of particular insanity, but it’s really not, it’s just that they say dark skin and we say fat, and if you actually listen to it instead of tuning it out as normal, it’s the exact same insanity of people being secretly ugly underneath all that attractiveness.

Incidentally, the rest of the girls quickly shield her from sight while Emothan just notes once again that the dresses look like wedding dresses and are therefore awful.

Then the music changes (The people on the dance floor just assumed it was another one of Dickey Wix’s screw-ups) and the lights start exploding (I’m sure they all thought they were in the middle of some kind of electrical wiring disaster that Red Sweet, Gatlin’s only electrician, would get blamed for. so why on earth was anyone concerned Lena would be blamed?) while Ridley dances around on the floor with Link, which might be a little suspicious but it seems too chaotic for anyone to be paying attention.

Ethan—we have to do something!

Of course, neither of them do anything but decide to run for it, but at least Lena thinks this. The sprinklers go off, the floor turns slippery and soapy, Emily falls really badly.

I didn’t feel sorry for her

You don’t need to clarify that, it’s pretty obvious. It’s like how you don’t need to announce that you’re just generally a terrible person.

Anyway, they make their way back to Ravenwood to the upset Pretty Suit, who idly mentions that they didn’t even manage a dance, and we learn that omg the dog following around Lena who we’re told every five seconds has human eyes does surveillance. Shocking.

I should have known, maybe I had always known. He had Macon’s eyes.

See, in cool stories this would be literal. Witches could just yank their eye out and stick it in some animal.

But no, here it’s just sloppy. Maybe it’ll turn out to be that missing Sherman-era brother, though.

And deux ex doggina also happens to have the polaroid of their dance picture, because apparently the photographer was doing polaroids, and Lena’s kind did show up on film, only she was shimmering, transparent, as if from the waist down she had already begun to dissolve into some kind of ghostly apparition. and he just knows that this isn’t because casters don’t show up on film but because it’s specific to the fact she’s running out of time except for the part where she isn’t really, she’ll still exist either way.