Copyright
Copyright © 2009 by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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First eBook Edition: December 2009
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the authors. To the extent any real names of individuals, locations, or organizations are included in the book, they are used fictitiously and not intended to be taken otherwise.
STRENGTH TO LOVE and LETTER FROM BIRMINGHAM JAIL speeches by DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. copyright © 1963 by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; copyright renewed © 1991 by Coretta Scott King. Reprinted by arrangement with the heirs to the estate of Martin Luther King Jr., c/o Writers House New York, NY.
ISBN: 978-0-316-07128-4
Contents
Copyright
Before: The Middle of Nowhere
9.02: Dream On
9.02: New Girl
9.02: A Hole in the Sky
9.11: Collision
9.12: Broken Glass
9.12: Greenbrier
9.12: The Sisters
9.14: The Real Boo Radley
9.15: A Fork in the Road
9.24: The Last Three Rows
10.09: Gathering Days
10.09: A Crack in the Plaster
10.09: The Greats
10.10: Red Sweater
10.13: Marian the Librarian
10.31: Hallow E’en
11.01: The Writing on the Wall
11.27: Just Your Average American Holiday
11.28: Domus Lunae Libri
12.01: It Rhymes with Witch
12.06: Lost and Found
12.07: Grave Digging
12.08: Waist Deep
12.13: Melting
12.16: When the Saints Go Marching In
12.19: White Christmas
1.12: Promise
2.04: The Sandman or Something Like Him
2.05: The Battle of Honey Hill
2.11: Sweet Sixteen
2.11: Lollipop Girl
2.11: Family Reunion
2.11: The Claiming
2.12: Silver Lining
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
For
Nick & Stella
Emma, May & Kate
and
all our casters & outcasters, everywhere.
There are more of us than you think.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness;
only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate;
only love can do that.
—MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
The Middle of Nowhere
There were only two kinds of people in our town. “The stupid and the stuck,” my father had affectionately classified our neighbors. “The ones who are bound to stay or too dumb to go. Everyone else finds a way out.” There was no question which one he was, but I’d never had the courage to ask why. My father was a writer, and we lived in Gatlin, South Carolina, because the Wates always had, since my great-great-great-great-granddad, Ellis Wate, fought and died on the other side of the Santee River during the Civil War.
Only folks down here didn’t call it the Civil War. Everyone under the age of sixty called it the War Between the States, while everyone over sixty called it the War of Northern Aggression, as if somehow the North had baited the South into war over a bad bale of cotton. Everyone, that is, except my family. We called it the Civil War.
Just another reason I couldn’t wait to get out of here.
Gatlin wasn’t like the small towns you saw in the movies, unless it was a movie from about fifty years ago. We were too far from Charleston to have a Starbucks or a McDonald’s. All we had was a Dar-ee Keen, since the Gentrys were too cheap to buy all new letters when they bought the Dairy King. The library still had a card catalog, the high school still had chalkboards, and our community pool was Lake Moultrie, warm brown water and all. You could see a movie at the Cineplex about the same time it came out on DVD, but you had to hitch a ride over to Summerville, by the community college. The shops were on Main, the good houses were on River, and everyone else lived south of Route 9, where the pavement disintegrated into chunky concrete stubble—terrible for walking, but perfect for throwing at angry possums, the meanest animals alive. You never saw that in the movies.
Gatlin wasn’t a complicated place; Gatlin was Gatlin. The neighbors kept watch from their porches in the unbearable heat, sweltering in plain sight. But there was no point. Nothing ever changed. Tomorrow would be the first day of school, my sophomore year at Stonewall Jackson High, and I already knew everything that was going to happen—where I would sit, who I would talk to, the jokes, the girls, who would park where.
There were no surprises in Gatlin County. We were pretty much the epicenter of the middle of nowhere.
At least, that’s what I thought, when I closed my battered copy of Slaughterhouse-Five, clicked off my iPod, and turned out the light on the last night of summer.
Turns out, I couldn’t have been more wrong.
There was a curse.
There was a girl.
And in the end, there was a grave.
I never even saw it coming.
Dream On
Falling.
I was free falling, tumbling through the air.
“Ethan!”
She called to me, and just the sound of her voice made my heart race.
“Help me!”
She was falling, too. I stretched out my arm, trying to catch her. I reached out, but all I caught was air. There was no ground beneath my feet, and I was clawing at mud. We touched fingertips and I saw green sparks in the darkness.
Then she slipped through my fingers, and all I could feel was loss.
Lemons and rosemary. I could smell her, even then.
But I couldn’t catch her.
And I couldn’t live without her.