9.02 We are really wringing all the importance we can out of the first day of school, aren’t we.

He comes home to the inexplicably furious Amma and his cold stereotypical supper of Fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, string beans, and biscuits, and maybe this is a cultural difference thing but who the fuck cares as long as he went from one place to the other as fast as he reasonably could? I could at least understand this if, say, they stopped off for donuts, and we actually see that small town everyone-knows stuff in action by Amma knowing exactly why he was late because the one who sold the donuts told Suzy who told Mary Jane who told…

But literally all they did was not drive fast enough from his house to get to school on time, and Amma was right there when he left, if his friend was really late she should have already been berating him beforehand rather than only caring because the principal called her and if they almost made it why does anyone care?

She’s doing the New York Times crossword.

My dad secretly subscribed to the Sunday edition, because the ones in The Stars and Stripes had too many spelling mistakes, and the ones in Reader’s Digest were too short. I don’t know how he got it past Carlton Eaton, who would’ve made sure the whole town knew we were too good for The Stars and Stripes, but there was nothing my dad wouldn’t do for Amma.

……couldn’t they just subscribe to both if that’s a concern? I mean, it’s not like you can get more crosswords by subscribing to The Stars and Stripes twice, they could just say that she does both of them.

She slid the plate in my direction, looking at me without looking at me. I shoveled cold mashed potatoes and chicken into my mouth. There was nothing Amma hated like food left on your plate.

I’m going to assume she actually won’t let him just microwave the stuff, but there’s not much evidence of that – he claims that normally she’d have kept the food warm for him this whole time, and he doesn’t do anything to suggest it’d be an option at other times. It seems like the reason he’s eating it cold is simply because he’s so incapable of feeding himself he doesn’t even know how to heat already made food up again.

“Come on, Amma. Don’t be mad. It was pouring this morning. You wouldn’t want us speeding in the rain, would you?”
She raised an eyebrow, but her expression softened. “Well, it looks like it’ll be rainin’ from now until the day after you cut that hair, so you better figure out a way to get yourself to school before that bell rings.”

O…kay.

So what was the point of all this? It’s not to make it just all seem realistic, because I can’t understand why anyone could care so much, and it’s not for plot reasons, because it’s come to nothing.

He tells her there’s a new girl, and Amma explains that she’s a member of the real small town, not in the bizarro version he’s been hanging out where you only find out that morning that there’s a new student.

Anyway, new girl is Lena Duchannes. Pronounced, in the South, to rhyme with rain. The way Amma rolled it out, you would have thought the word had an extra syllable. Du-kay-yane.

Okay then. So we have something to call her until I settle on some nicknames for everyone.

“Is that her name? Lena?”
Amma pushed a glass of chocolate milk in my direction. “Yes and no and it’s none a your business. You shouldn’t be messin’ with things you don’t know anything about, Ethan Wate.”

Wat.

Emo kid explains that she’s a super tarot reader that everyone thinks is awesome, and somehow that’s the same thing as making weird charms and sticking them all over, and she’s been doing it for six generations, which is the same number he gave for how long his family’s been there.

Gatlin was full of God-fearing Baptists, Methodists, and Pentecostals, but they couldn’t resist the lure of the cards

Really, three flavors of Christian in Tiny McBoringTown in Homogenous County? Just for you, I just checked and yes, Baptists still think Methodists are going to be hanging out in the lava sauna. I mean, they’re not the cannibal devilworshipper not-Christians that Catholics are or anything, but, you know, their name starts with M and not B, they’re obviously wrong. This is a place that can’t handle someone subscribing to a different newspaper! I mean, Pentecostals, sure, but Methodists?

And how boring can a place be if you’ve got faith healing and speaking in tongues, anyway? That stuff tends to be rather dramatic.

(Plus, you said everyone knows everyone from church, what the hell do you guys do, timeshare it?)

“Did you hear anything else about her?”
“You watch yourself. One day you’re gonna pick a hole in the sky and the universe is gonna fall right through. Then we’ll all be in a fix.”

Oh, I wish he was that sort of person. Wouldn’t that be great, a main character curious about everything! And that’d be a great fit for wanting to leave a small town, it’d give him more motivation than EVERYONE SUCKS AND IT’S BORING. He could want to see new things, instead of just hating the old ones.

Anyway, then his dad wanders in, having just woken up. Amma starts rinsing bones in the sink (?) and the only thing he thinks about it is that it’s weird because the bone looks like it
‘s pork, not chicken. But why would you rinse either in the sink?

He then informs us that Amma raised his dad just like she’s raising him, and yuuuup there is just no way she’s not black.

Apparently his dad’s weird schedule and general sickliness is a new thing and they used to go fishing and stuff together. Okay, you hate baseball but torturing fish is an acceptable pastime? Your priorities are fucked up.

The last five months had been hard for him. He had really loved my mother. But so had I.

Wait. His mom’s been dead just five months? And all he does is whine about how the town’s shitty because it’s full of jocks and airheads and he can’t wait to leave?

Anyway, his dad pops the earplugs back in, so yeah, he’s completely absent from the kid’s life.

So his dad is emotionally dead and currently physically fading away, his mom is all the way dead, and still, all he can do is bitch that the stupid jocks aren’t smart enough and the hot cheerleaders talk about stuff he doesn’t care about?

my father’s desk was carved mahogany, another antique that had been handed down along with our house, from generation to generation. And books, old leather-bound books that were so heavy they rested on a huge wooden stand when they were open. Those were the things that kept us bound to Gatlin, and bound to Wate’s Landing, just as they had bound my ancestors for more than a hundred years.

Anyway, his dad doesn’t let him near any of the books while he’s working on them. He writes gothic horror, because the author thinks that’s clever probably.

Before the bell even rang the next day, Lena Duchannes was all everyone at Jackson could talk about. Somehow between storms and power outages, Loretta Snow and Eugenie Asher, Savannah’s and Emily’s mothers, had managed to get supper on the table and call just about everyone in town

But that should have happened the day she arrived, day after at the most.

There are two things you can always count on in Gatlin. One, you can be different, even crazy, as long as you come out of the house every now and then, so folks don’t think you’re an axe murderer.

Yeah, that sounds awful. How do you ever cope.

But of course, everyone isn’t actually talking about it. “Everyone”, as in, those off camera, totally are, but he explains his group of boys is just interested in scoping out the cheerleaders

Shawn shook his head. “Like pickin’ peaches off the vine.”
“Peaches grow on trees.” I was already annoyed, maybe because I’d met up with the guys at the Stop & Steal magazine stand before school and been subjected to this same conversation while Earl flipped through issues of the only thing he ever read—magazines featuring girls in bikinis, lying across the hoods of cars.
Shawn looked at me, confused. “What are you talkin’ about?”

Okay, so they live in the ass end of nowhere in the south, and they don’t have peach trees? Christ, book.

I would demand to know why he’s there if he hates everything, but he’s way ahead of me.

It was something I’d come to think of as roll call. A few things were expected if you were on the team. You sat together in the lunchroom. You went to Savannah Snow’s parties, asked a cheerleader to the winter formal, hung out at Lake Moultrie on the last day of school. You could bail on almost anything else, if you showed up for roll call. Only it was getting harder and harder for me to show up, and I didn’t know why.

Do you know what was missing from that? The consequences. He just says it’s what’s expected, but there’s no sign of what, if anything, happens if you buck that expectation. I mean, is there shunning? And considering his absolute loathing for them, why would he care about even that? Will they beat him up? What? What is motivating him here?

But then, dream girl shows up!

Everyone actually stepped aside when she came down the hall. Like she was a rock star. Or a leper.

I’m going to assume it’s because she’s more like a rock star, since he can’t have an uncool waifu.

But all I could see was a beautiful girl in a long gray dress

Hey look at me being right.

under a white track jacket with the word Munich sewn on it, and beat-up black Converse peeking out underneath. A girl who wore a long silver chain around her neck, with tons of stuff dangling from it—a plastic ring from a bubblegum machine, a safety pin, and a bunch of other junk I was too far away to see. A girl who didn’t look like she belonged in Gatlin.
…
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. She had the greenest eyes I’d ever seen, so green they could’ve been considered some new color altogether.
“Yeah, she’s hot,” said Billy.

She’s a goth sue, Billy, do you have no taste at all?

For a second, she was a possibility.
Earl gave her the once-over, then slammed his locker door. “If you ignore the fact that she’s a freak.”

Oh no, the pack of jocks won’t descend on her like wolves on fresh meat! King Asshole dismissed her! Quick, defend her honor, idiot boy!

There was something about the way he said it, or more like, the reason he said it. She was a freak because she wasn’t from Gatlin, because she wasn’t scrambling to make it onto the cheer squad, because she hadn’t given him a second look, or even a first.

Yeah it can’t be her trendy goth look. Must be the jealousy.

So he demands to know why she’s a freak, is it because she’s not blond and in a short skirt?

“Because she’s a Ravenwood.”

Well no actually that sounds kind of reasonable. I mean, a minute ago Emothan was saying King Asshole has a mean streak because all of that surname have it, and while the fact her uncle is a weird shut-in with a hearse doesn’t prove she’s weird, it’s kind of a notch, especially when she was apparently independently a goth. A pretty good argument for it being in the blood there. Especially when also they’re called Ravenwoods. That’s piling it on rather thick.

The message was clear. Hot, but don’t even think about it. She wasn’t a possibility anymore.

I really don’t see why you’d want her to be a possibility. You don’t want them to date her, you want them to date her, and you hate them so it’s not like you should care what they’d think of you for it.

In English class, the teacher offers her To Kill a Mockingbird and he informs us the book looks like it had never been opened because there is nothing, nothing this kid won’t bitch about. His school doesn’t have new stuff? Bitchity bitch bitch. Oh, the books look new? Bitchity bitch bitch.

Anyway his future waifu pulls her own copy out and it’s all battered and old and she says it’s her favorite book and you can practically feel the sparkles erupting around her.

Mrs. English had one glass eye, and the terrible hearing you get if your family runs the only shooting range in the county. If you sat anywhere else but right in front of her desk, she couldn’t see you and she wouldn’t call on you.

So apparently having a glass eye makes you nearsighted with tunnel vision and also makes you unable to move from your desk ever again. Wow, the south really is different.

Anyway as Future Waifu is sitting down, Emily kicks her bag over then grabs her notebook and starts pawing through it, but luckily Emothan grabs it himself and then hands it back to her and sits next to Future Waifu even though it means being in the narrow zone of answering questions in English class. Why the fuck is this even a big deal, Mr. Supposedly Likes Books?

And he sees that the ink on her hand is the number 156 and not a word and okay then can we get to something relevant please.

Anyway amazingly she does not fall over herself to be his friend and just keeps ignoring him. It’s futile, Lena, but good effort and points for taste.

Meanwhile he’s getting more obsessed by the minute.

It wasn’t just her that was bothering me, not exactly. It wasn’t about how she looked, which was pretty, even though she was always wearing the wrong clothes and those beat-up sneakers. It wasn’t about what she said in class—usually something no one else would’ve thought of, and if they had, something they wouldn’t have dared to say. It wasn’t that she was different from all the other girls at Jackson. That was obvious.
It was that she made me realize how much I was just like the rest of them, even if I wanted to pretend I wasn’t.

Yes! Thank you book, maybe you’re finally getting it.

I was sitting in ceramics, otherwise known as AGA, “a guaranteed A,” since the class was graded on effort.

But you also said you get autoAs because your parents are professors and your teachers are too lazy to actually read anything you turn in.

I was desperate to stay out of band, which was practicing noisily downstairs, conducted by the crazily skinny, overly enthusiastic Miss Spider.

So teachers who don’t care about their jobs are evil, but you also hate those who do. I thought we were going somewhere with your little revelation that you suck.

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.

And I have no idea what you mean here. It doesn’t clarify anything further on, we just go right into the teacher telling them to experiment.

Suddenly, the bad playing of the band switches to some beautiful violin music.

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.
Sixteen moons, sixteen years
Sound of thunder in your ears
Sixteen miles before she nears
Sixteen seeks what sixteen fears…

And he dreams of grabbing the girl but he can’t hold on.

The clay on the potter’s wheel held the perfect imprint of a hand, like I had just flattened whatever I was working on. I looked at it more closely. The hand wasn’t mine, it was too small. It was a girl’s.

So naturally he does not point this out, because what sort of book would we have if someone acted like a human being? A good one, that’s what.


I looked under my nails, where I could see the clay I had clawed from her wrist.

Wait.

It was dirt. Black dirt. From your description, it’s always been dirt. And now, the one time you have your dream in a known location and for a known duration, it’s not dirt but the clay that’s right in front of you?

That’s actually even more worrying than supernatural dirt. It sounds like you’re going insane.

If this was supernatural, it shouldn’t have suddenly turned into clay just because you’re playing with clay at the moment. It should still be black dirt.

The fact it’s clay suggests that it’s under your nails because while you were blacked out, you clawed the clay. Which in turn means you have dirt under your nails every night because you are somehow getting out and clawing up dirt.

This could also explain why Savannah next to you does not see anything odd about the handprint being tiny despite the fact she’s looking right at it and paying plenty of attention because she’s making fun of you for being weird. There is nothing wrong with the handprint, it was yours.

After all, we already know he just hallucinated the music no one else heard. With that in mind, it’s quite possible the ipod earlier was a similar delusion, and that involved a visual component, as did the more intense vision just now, so why not a visual one with the handprint itself? (And if it was real, why didn’t he point it out, or even wait long enough to take a second look at it? No, he destroys it immediately, which also erases the possibility of anything contradicting his belief it’s “her” handprint.)

But this is YA romance, and that train of thought makes more sense and is so interesting I just spent several paragraphs on it, so I’m clearly off-base. No, totally supernatural and he’s just refusing to acknowledge it.

At least he does something afterward – he goes to check out the music room.

I took a deep breath, but knew what I would smell before I smelled it.
Lemons and rosemary.

Oh, yeah so he’s been going on about that for a while, it’s how his dream waifu smells.

This really doesn’t make sense, though – the song he just heard was clearly supernatural – he heard it clearly when he shouldn’t have and no one else reacted at all, and also, they were playing Dixie seconds before.

“We have a wonderful new addition to our strings section. A viola. She’s just moved into town—”
No. It couldn’t be. Not her.

No. Not the hot girl you were already obsessed with. How could it possibly be her? Can your life get any worse????????

(Although you’re right, it probably can’t. If she smells of ~*~*~*~lemon&rosemary~*~*~*~*~ you’d have told us.)

So he freaks out and tells his friend he needs to borrow the car and go do something rather than go to practice. As far as I can tell, the plan is to drive randomly to distract himself from this and not to go find her or otherwise actually investigate anything.