We stood like that for a moment, until finally she gave in and turned toward me. I tried again. “Look. There’s something going on here. The dreams, the song, the smell, and now the locket. It’s like we’re supposed to be friends.”

“Did you just say, the smell?” She looked horrified. “In the same sentence as friends?”

“Technically, I think it was a different sentence.”

She stared at my hand, and I took it off her shoulder. But I couldn’t let it go. I looked right into her eyes, really looked, maybe for the first time. The green abyss looked like it went somewhere so far away I could never reach it, not in a whole lifetime. I wondered what Amma’s “eyes are the windows to the soul” theory would make of that.

It’s too late, Lena. You’re already my friend.

I can’t be.

We’re in this together.

Please. You have to trust me. We’re not.

She broke her eyes away from me, leaning her head back against the lemon tree. She looked miserable. “I know you’re not like the rest of them. But there are things you can’t understand about me. I don’t know why we connect the way we do. I don’t know why we have the same dreams, any more than you.”

“But I want to know what’s going on—”

“I turn sixteen in five months.” She held up her hand, inked with a number as usual. 151. “A hundred and fifty-one days.” Her birthday. The changing number written on her hand. She was counting down to her birthday.

“You don’t know what that means, Ethan. You don’t know anything. I may not even be here after that.”

“You’re here now.”

She looked past me, up toward Ravenwood. When she finally spoke, she wasn’t looking at me. “You like that poet, Bukowski?”

“Yeah,” I answered, confused.

“Don’t try.”

“I don’t understand.”

“That’s what it says, on Bukowski’s grave.” She disappeared through the stone wall and was gone. Five months. I had no idea what she was talking about, but I recognized the feeling in my gut.

Panic.

By the time I made it through the door in the wall, she had vanished as if she was never there, leaving only the wafting breeze of lemons and rosemary behind her. Funny thing was, the more she ran, the more determined I was to follow.

Don’t try.

I was pretty sure my grave would say something different.

9.12

The Sisters

The kitchen table was still set when I got home, lucky for me, because Amma would have killed me if I’d missed dinner. What I hadn’t considered was the phone tree that had been activated the minute I walked out of English class. No less than half the town must have called Amma by the time I got home.

“Ethan Wate? Is that you? Because if it is, you are in for a world a trouble.”

I heard a familiar banging sound. Things were worse than I thought. I ducked under the doorway and into the kitchen. Amma was standing at the counter in her industrial denim tool apron, which had fourteen pockets for nails and could hold up to four power tools. She was holding her Chinese cleaver, the counter piled high with carrots, cabbage, and other vegetables I couldn’t identify. Spring rolls required more chopping than any other recipe in Amma’s blue plastic box. If she was making spring rolls, it only meant one thing, and it wasn’t just that she liked Chinese food.

I tried to come up with an acceptable explanation, but I had nothing.

“Coach called this afternoon, and Mrs. English, and Principal Harper, and Link’s mamma, and half the ladies from the DAR. And you know how I hate talkin’ to those women. Evil as sin, every one a them.”

Gatlin was full of ladies’ auxiliaries, but the DAR was the mother of them all. True to its name, the Daughters of the American Revolution, you had to prove you were related to an actual patriot from the American Revolution to be eligible for membership. Being a member apparently entitled you to tell your River Street neighbors what colors to paint their houses and generally boss, pester, and judge everyone in town. Unless you were Amma. That I’d like to see.

“They all said the same thing. That you ran out a school, in the middle a class, chasin’ after that Duchannes girl.” Another carrot rolled across the cutting board.

“I know, Amma, but—”

The cabbage split in half. “So I said, ‘No, my boy wouldn’t leave school without permission and skip practice. There must be some mistake. Must be some other boy disrepectin’ his teacher and sullyin’ his family name. Can’t be a boy I raised, livin’ in this house.’” Green onions flew across the counter.

I’d committed the worst of crimes, embarrassing her. Worst of all, in the eyes of Mrs. Lincoln and the women of the DAR, her sworn enemies.

“What do you have to say for yourself? What would make you run out a school like your tail was on fire? And I don’t wanna hear it was some girl.”

I took a deep breath. What could I say? I had been dreaming about some mystery girl for months, who showed up in town and just happened to be Macon Ravenwood’s niece? That, in addition to terrifying dreams about this girl, I had a vision of some other woman, who I definitely didn’t know, who lived during the Civil War?

Yeah, that would get me out of trouble, around the same time the sun exploded and the solar system died.

“It’s not what you think. The kids in our class were giving Lena a hard time, teasing her about her uncle, saying he hauls dead bodies around in his hearse, and she got really upset and ran out of class.”