“That’s so romantic,” she said quietly.

“No, it’s crazy. But nobody talks about it, because there’s nobody left to talk to. Except Amma, who hides magic charms in my room and screams at me for bringing old jewelry into the house.”

I could tell she was almost smiling. “Maybe you are a freak.”

“I’m a freak, you’re a freak. Your house makes rooms disappear, my house makes people disappear. Your shut-in uncle is nuts and my shut-in dad is a lunatic, so I don’t know what you think makes us so different.”

Lena smiled, relieved. “I’m trying to find a way to see that as a compliment.”

“It is.” I looked at her smiling in the moonlight, a real smile. There was something about the way she looked just at that moment. I imagined leaning in a little farther and kissing her. I pushed myself away, up one step higher than she was.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just tired.” But I wasn’t.

We stayed like that, just talking on the steps, for hours. I lay on the step above; she lay on the step below. We watched the dark night sky, then the dark morning sky, until we could hear the birds.

By the time the hearse finally pulled away, the sun was starting to rise. I watched Boo Radley lope slowly home after it. At the rate he was going, it would be sunset before that dog got home. Sometimes I wondered why he bothered.

Stupid dog.

I put my hand on the brass doorknob of my own door, but I almost couldn’t bring myself to open it. Everything was upside down, and nothing inside could change that. My mind was scrambled, all stirred up like a big frying pan of Amma’s eggs, the way my insides had felt like for days now.

T. I. M. O. R. O. U. S. That’s what Amma would call me. Eight across, as in another name for a coward. I was scared. I’d told Lena it was no big deal that she and her family—were what? Witches? Casters? And not the ten and two kind my dad had taught me about.

Yeah, no big deal.

I was a big liar. I bet even that stupid dog could sense that.

9.24

The Last Three Rows

You know that expression, “It hit me like a ton of bricks”? It’s true. The minute she turned the car around and ended up on my doorstep in her purple pajamas, that’s how I felt about Lena.

I knew it was coming. I just didn’t know it would feel like this.

Since then, there were two places I wanted to be: with Lena, or alone, so I could try to hammer it all out in my mind. I didn’t have the words for what we were. She wasn’t my girlfriend; we weren’t even dating. Up until last week, she wouldn’t even admit we were friends. I had no idea how she felt about me, and it wasn’t like I could send Savannah over to find out. I didn’t want to risk whatever we had, whatever it was. So why did I think about her every second? Why was I so much happier the minute I saw her? I felt like maybe I knew the answer, but how could I be sure? I didn’t know, and I didn’t have any way to find out.

Guys don’t talk about stuff like that. We just lie under the pile of bricks.

“So what are you writing?”

She closed the spiral notebook she seemed to carry around everywhere. The basketball team had no practice on Wednesdays, so Lena and I were sitting in the garden at Greenbrier, which I’d sort of come to think of as our special place, though that’s not something I would ever admit, not even to her. It was where we found the locket. It was a place we could hang out without everyone staring and whispering. We were supposed to be studying, but Lena was writing in her notebook, and I’d read the same paragraph about the internal structure of atoms nine times now. Our shoulders were touching, but we were facing different directions. I was sprawled in the fading sun; she sat under the growing shadow of a moss-covered oak. “Nothing special. I’m just writing.”

“It’s okay, you don’t have to tell me.” I tried not to sound disappointed.

“It’s just… it’s stupid.”

“So tell me anyway.”

For a minute she didn’t say anything, scribbling on the rubber rim of her shoe with her black pen. “I just write poems sometimes. I’ve been doing it since I was a kid. I know it’s weird.”

“I don’t think it’s weird. My mom was a writer. My dad’s a writer.” I could feel her smiling, even though I wasn’t looking at her. “Okay, that’s a bad example, because my dad is really weird, but you can’t blame that on the writing.”

I waited to see if she was going to just hand me the notebook and ask me to read one. No such luck. “Maybe I can read one sometime.”

“Doubtful.” I heard the notebook open again and her pen moving across the page. I stared at my chemistry book, rehearsing the phrase I’d gone over a hundred times in my head. We were alone. The sun was slipping away; she was writing poetry. If I was going to do it, now was the time.

“So, do you want to, you know, hang out?” I tried to sound casual.

“Isn’t that what we’re doing?”

I chewed on the end of an old plastic spoon I had found in my backpack, probably from a pudding cup. “Yeah. No. I mean, do you want to, I don’t know, go somewhere?”

“Now?” She took a bite out of an open granola bar, and swung her legs around so she was next to me, holding it out toward me. I shook my head.

“Not now. Friday, or something. We could see a movie.” I stuck the spoon in my chemistry book, closing it.