Hill. Now that it was down to the last minute, Confederate uniforms were being steamed and pressed all over the county, the smell of warm wool wafting through the air.
Whitworth rifles were cleaned and swords polished, and half the men in town had spent last weekend at Buford Radford’s place making homemade ammunition, because his wife didn’t mind the smell. The widows were busy washing sheets and freezing pies for the hundreds of tourists descending on the town to witness Living History. The members of the DAR had spent weeks preparing for their version of the Reenactment, the Southern
Heritage Tours, and their daughters had spent two Saturdays baking pound cakes to serve after the tours.
This was particularly amusing because the DAR members, including Mrs. Lincoln, conducted these tours in period dress; they squeezed into girdles and layers of petticoats that made them look like sausages about to burst from their casings. And they weren’t the only ones; their daughters, including Savannah and Emily, the future generation of the
DAR, had to putter around the historic plantation houses dressed like characters from
Little House on the Prairie. The tour had always started at the DAR headquarters, since it was the second-oldest house in Gatlin. I wondered if the roof would be fixed in time. I couldn’t help imagining all those women wandering around the Gatlin Historical Society, pointing out starburst quilt patterns above the hundreds of Caster scrolls and documents awaiting the next bank holiday below.
But the DAR weren’t the only ones to get into the act. The War Between the States was often referred to as the “first modern war,” but if you took a walk around Gatlin the week before the Reenactment, there was nothing modern looking about it. Every Civil War relic in town was on display, from horse-drawn wagons to Howitzers, which any preschooler in town could tell you were artillery cannons resting on a set of old wagon wheels. The Sisters even dragged out their original Confederate flag and tacked it up on their front door, after I refused to hang it on the porch for them. Even though it was all for show, that’s where I drew the line.
There was a big parade the day before the Reenactment, which gave the reenactors an opportunity to march through town in full regalia in front of all the tourists, because the next day they’d be so covered in smoke and dirt that no one would notice the shiny brass buttons on their authentic shell jackets.
After the parade, there was a huge festival, with a pig pick, a kissing booth, and an oldfashioned pie sale. Amma spent days baking. Outside of the County Fair, this was her biggest pie show, and her biggest opportunity to claim victory over her enemies. Her pies were always bestsellers, which drove Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Snow crazy—Amma’s primary motivation for all that baking in the first place. There was nothing she liked better than showing up the women of the DAR and rubbing their noses in their secondrate pies.
So every year when the second week of February rolled around, life as we knew it ceased to exist, and we all found ourselves back at the Battle of Honey Hill, circa 1864. This year was no exception, with one peculiar addition. This year, as pickups pulled into town towing double-barreled cannons and horse trailers—any self-respecting cavalry reenactor owned his own horse—different preparations were also under way, for a different battle.
Only this one didn’t begin at the second-oldest house in Gatlin, but the oldest. There were
Howitzers, and then there were Howitzers. This battle wasn’t concerned with guns and horses, but that didn’t make it any less of a battle. To be honest, it was the only real battle in town.
As for the eight casualties of Honey Hill, I couldn’t really compare. I was only worried about one. Because if I lost her, I would be lost, too.
So forget the Battle of Honey Hill. To me, this felt more like D-Day.
2.11
Sweet Sixteen
Leave me alone! I told all of you! There’s nothing you can do!
Lena’s voice woke me from a few hours of fitful sleep. I pulled on my jeans and a gray
T-shirt without even stopping to think about it. About anything other than this: Day One.
We could stop waiting for the end to come.
The end was here. not with a bang but a whimper not with a bang but a whimper not with a bang but a whimper Lena was losing it, and it was barely daylight.
The Book. Damn, I’d forgotten it. I ran back up into my room, two stairs at a time. I reached up to the top shelf of my closet, where I’d hidden it, bracing myself for the scorching that went along with touching a Caster book.
Only it didn’t happen. Because it wasn’t there.
The Book of Moons, our book, was gone. We needed that book, today of all days. But
Lena’s voice was pounding in my head. this is the way the world ends not with a bang but a whimper
Lena reciting T. S. Eliot was not a good sign. I grabbed the keys to the Volvo and ran.
The sun was rising as I drove down Dove Street. Greenbrier, or the only empty field in
Gatlin to everyone else in town—making it the location of the Battle of Honey Hill—was beginning to come to life, too. The funny thing was, I couldn’t even hear the artillery outside my car window, because of the artillery going off in my head.
By the time I ran up the steps of Ravenwood’s veranda, Boo was waiting for me, barking.
Larkin was on the steps, too, leaning against one of the pillars. He was in his leather jacket, playing with the snake that curled and uncurled its way around his arm. First it was his arm, then it was a snake. He Shifted idly between shapes, like a dealer shuffling a deck of cards. The sight of it caught me off guard for a second. That, and the way he made Boo bark. Come to think of it, I couldn’t tell if Boo was barking at me or Larkin.
Boo belonged to Macon, and Macon and I hadn’t exactly left things on speaking terms.
“Hey, Larkin.” He nodded, disinterested. It was cold, and a puff of breath crept out of his mouth, as if from an imaginary cigarette. The puff stretched out into a circle that became a tiny white snake, which then bit into its own tail, devouring itself until it disappeared.
“I wouldn’t go in there if I was you. Your girlfriend is a little, how should I put it?
Venomous?” The snake curved its length around his neck, then became the collar of his leather jacket.
Aunt Del flung the door open. “Finally, we’ve been waiting for you. Lena’s in her room and she won’t let any of us in.”
I looked at Aunt Del, so muddled, her scarf dangling lopsidedly from one shoulder, her glasses askew, even her off-kilter gray bun coming unraveled from its twist. I leaned in to give her a hug. She smelled like one of the Sisters’ antique cabinets, full of lavender sachets and old linens, handed down from Sister to Sister. Reece and Ryan stood behind her like a mournful family in a grim hospital lobby, waiting for bad news.
Again, Ravenwood seemed more attuned to Lena and her mood than to Macon’s, or maybe this was a mood they shared. Macon was nowhere to be found, so I couldn’t tell.
If you could imagine the color of anger, it had been splashed over every wall. Rage, or something equally dense and seething, was hanging from every chandelier, resentment woven into thick carpets padding the room, hatred flickering underneath every lampshade. The floor was bathed in a creeping shadow, a particular darkness that had seeped up into the walls, and right now was rolling across my Converse so I almost couldn’t see them. Absolute darkness.
I can’t say for sure how the room looked. I was too distracted by how it felt, and it felt pretty rank. I took a tentative step onto the grand flying staircase that led up to Lena’s bedroom. I’d gone up those stairs a hundred times before; it’s not like I didn’t know where they went. And yet somehow, today felt different. Aunt Del looked at Reece and
Ryan, following behind me, as if I was leading the way into an unknown war front.
When I stepped onto the second stair, the whole house shook. The thousand candles of the ancient chandelier swinging over my head shuddered and dripped wax down onto my face. I winced and jerked back. Without warning, the stairway curled up beneath my feet and snapped underneath me, tossing me back onto my butt, sending me skidding halfway across the polished floors of the entry hall. Reece and Aunt Del made it out of the way, but I took poor Ryan with me like a bowling ball hitting the pins at County Line Lanes.
I stood up and shouted up the stairs. “Lena Duchannes. If you sic those stairs on me again, I’m gonna report you to the Disciplinary Committee myself.”
I took a step onto the first stair, and then the second. Nothing happened. “I will call Mr.
Hollingsworth and personally testify that you’re a dangerous lunatic.” I double-jumped the stairs, all the way up to the first landing. “Because if you do that to me again, you will be, you hear me?” Then I heard it, her voice, uncurling in my mind.
You don’t understand.
I know you’re scared, L, but shutting everyone out isn’t going to make things any better.
Go away.
No.
I mean it, Ethan. Go away. I don’t want anything to happen to you.