And there, standing in the middle of it all, was Lena. She was perfectly still, her hair whipping in the wind around her. What was happening?

I felt my legs buckle. Just as I lost consciousness, I felt the wind, a surge of power that literally ripped my arm out of Ridley’s hand, as she was sucked out of the room, toward the front door. I collapsed to the floor, as I heard Lena’s voice, or thought I did.

“Get the hell away from my boyfriend, witch.”

Boyfriend.

Was that what I was?

I tried to smile. Instead, I blacked out.

10.09

A Crack in the Plaster

When I woke up, I had no idea where I was. I tried to focus on the first few things that came into view. Words. Phrases handwritten in what looked like carefully scripted Sharpie, right on the ceiling over the bed.

moments bleed together, no span to time

There were hundreds of others, too, written everywhere, parts of sentences, parts of verses, random collections of words. On one closet door was scrawled fate decides. On the other, it said until challenged by the fated. Up and down the door I could see the words desperate / relentless / condemned / empowered. The mirror said open your eyes; the windowpanes said and see.

Even the pale white lampshade was scribbled with the words illuminatethedarknessilluminatethedarkness over and over again, in an endlessly repeating pattern.

Lena’s poetry. I was finally getting to read some of it. Even if you ignored the distinctive ink, this room didn’t look like the rest of the house. It was small and cozy, tucked up under the eaves. A ceiling fan swirled slowly above my head, cutting through the phrases. There were stacks of spiral notebooks on every surface, and a stack of books on the nightstand. Poetry books. Plath, Eliot, Bukowski, Frost, Cummings—at least I recognized the names.

I was lying in a small white iron bed, my legs spilling over the edge. This was Lena’s room, and I was lying in her bed. Lena was curled in a chair at the foot of the bed, her head resting on the arm.

I sat up, groggy. “Hey. What happened?”

I was pretty sure I had passed out, but I was fuzzy on the details. The last thing I remembered was the freezing cold moving up my body, my throat closing up, and Lena’s voice. I thought she had said something about me being her boyfriend, but since I was about to pass out at the time and nothing had really happened between us, that was doubtful. Wishful thinking, I guessed.

“Ethan!” She jumped out of the chair and onto the bed next to me, although she seemed careful not to touch me. “Are you okay? Ridley wouldn’t let go of you, and I didn’t know what to do. You looked like you were in so much pain, and I just reacted.”

“You mean that tornado in the middle of your dining room?”

She looked away, miserable. “That’s what happens. I feel things, I get angry or scared and then… things just happen.”

I reached over and put my hand over hers, feeling the warmth move up my arm. “Things like windows breaking?”

She looked back at me, and I curled my hand around hers until I was holding it in mine. A random crack in the old plaster in the corner behind her seemed to grow, until it curled its way across the ceiling, circled the frosted chandelier, and swirled its way back down. It looked like a heart. A giant, looping, girly heart had just appeared in the cracking plaster of her bedroom ceiling.

“Lena.”

“Yeah?”

“Is your ceiling about to fall in on our heads?”

She turned and looked at the crack. When she saw it, she bit her lip, and her cheeks turned pink. “I don’t think so. It’s just a crack in the plaster.”

“Were you trying to do that?”

“No.” A creeping pink spread across her nose and cheeks. She looked away.

I wanted to ask her what it was she’d been thinking, but I didn’t want to embarrass her. I just hoped it had something to do with me, with her hand nestled in mine. With the word I thought I heard her say, the moment before I blacked out.

I looked dubiously at the crack. A lot was riding on that crack in the plaster.

“Can you undo them? These things that just… happen?”

Lena sighed, relieved to talk about something else. “Sometimes. It depends. Sometimes I get so overwhelmed that I can’t control it and I can’t fix it, not even after. I don’t think I could have put the glass back into that window at school. I don’t think I could have stopped the storm from coming, the day we met.”

“I don’t think that one was your fault. You can’t blame yourself for every storm that rolls through Gatlin County. Hurricane season isn’t even over yet.”

She flipped over onto her stomach and looked me right in the eye. She didn’t let go, and neither did I. My whole body was buzzing with the warmth of her touch. “Didn’t you see what happened tonight?”

“Maybe sometimes a hurricane is just a hurricane, Lena.”

“As long as I’m around, I am hurricane season in Gatlin County.” She tried to pull her hand away, but that only made me hold on more tightly.

“That’s funny. You seem more like a girl to me.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not. I’m a whole storm system, out of control. Most Casters can control their gifts by the time they’re my age, but half the time it feels more like mine control me.” She pointed to her own reflection in the mirror on the wall. The Sharpie writing scribbled itself across the reflection as we watched. Who is this girl? “I’m still trying to figure it all out, but sometimes it seems like I never will.”