“What would your poor mamma say, Ethan Wate? What would she think about the company you’re keepin’?” I turned around. Mrs. Lincoln was standing right behind me. She was dressed the way she always was, like some kind of punishing librarian out of a movie, with cheap drugstore glasses and angry-looking hair that couldn’t decide if it was brown or gray. You had to wonder, where did Link come from? “I’ll tell you what your mamma would say. She would cry. She would be turnin’ over in her grave.”

She had crossed the line.

Mrs. Lincoln didn’t know anything about my mother. She didn’t know my mom was the one who had sent the School Superintendent a copy of every ruling against book banning in the U.S. She didn’t know my mom cringed every time Mrs. Lincoln invited her to a Women’s Auxiliary or DAR meeting. Not because my mom hated the Women’s Auxiliary or the DAR, but because she hated what Mrs. Lincoln stood for. That small-minded brand of superiority women in Gatlin, like Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Asher, were so famous for.

My mom had always said, “The right thing and the easy thing are never the same.” And now, at this very second, I knew the right thing to do, even if it wasn’t going to be easy. Or at least, the fallout wasn’t going to be.

I turned to Mrs. Lincoln and looked her in the eye. “‘Good for you, Ethan.’ That’s what my poor mamma would’ve said. Ma’am.”

I turned back toward the door of the administration building and kept walking, pulling Lena along beside me. We were only a few feet away. Lena was shaking, even though she didn’t look scared. I kept squeezing her hand, trying to reassure her. Her long black hair was curling and uncurling, as if she was about to explode, or maybe I was. I never thought I’d be so happy to set foot in the halls of Jackson, until I saw Principal Harper standing in the doorway. He was glaring at us like he wished he wasn’t the principal so he could pass out a flyer of his own.

Lena’s hair blew around her shoulders as we walked past him. Only he didn’t even look at us. He was too busy looking past us. “What the—”

I turned and looked over my shoulder just in time to see hundreds of neon green flyers, curling away from windshields and out of stacks and boxes and vans and hands. Flying away in a sudden gust of wind, as if they were a flock of birds soaring into the clouds. Escaping and beautiful and free. Kind of like that Hitchcock movie The Birds, only in reverse.

We could hear the shrieking until the heavy metal doors closed behind us.

Lena smoothed her hair. “Crazy weather you have down here.”

12.06

Lost and Found

I was almost relieved it was Saturday. There was something comforting about spending the day with women whose only magical powers were forgetting their own names. When I arrived at the Sisters’, Aunt Mercy’s Siamese cat, Lucille Ball—the Sisters loved I Love Lucy—was “exercising” in the front yard. The Sisters had a clothesline that ran the length of the yard, and every morning Aunt Mercy put Lucille Ball on a leash and hooked it onto the clothesline so the cat could exercise. I had tried to explain that you could let cats outside and they would come back whenever they felt like it, but Aunt Mercy had looked at me like I’d suggested she shack up with a married man. “I can’t just let Lucille Ball wander the streets alone. I’m sure someone would snatch her.” There hadn’t been a lot of catnappings in town, but it was an argument I’d never win.

I opened the door, expecting the usual commotion, but today the house was noticeably quiet. A bad sign. “Aunt Prue?”

I heard her familiar drawl coming from the back of the house. “We’re on the sun porch, Ethan.”

I ducked under the doorway of the screened-in porch to see the Sisters scuttling around the room, carrying what looked like little hairless rats.

“What the heck are those?” I said without even thinking.

“Ethan Wate, you watch your mouth, or I’ll have ta wash it out with soap. You know better than ta use pro-fanity,” Aunt Grace said. Which, as far as she was concerned, included words like panties, naked, and bladder.

“I’m sorry, ma’am. But what is that you’ve got in your hand?”

Aunt Mercy rushed forward and thrust her hand out, with two little rodents sleeping in it. “They’re baby squirrels. Ruby Wilcox found them in her attic last Tuesday.”

“Wild squirrels?”

“There are six of ’em. Aren’t they just the cutest things you ever saw?”

All I could see was an accident waiting to happen. The idea of my ancient aunts handling wild animals, babies or otherwise, was a frightening thought. “Where did you get them?”

“Well, Ruby couldn’t take care of ’em—” Aunt Mercy started.

“On account a that awful husban’ a hers. He won’t even let her go ta the Stop & Shop without tellin’ him.”

“So Ruby gave them ta us, on account a the fact that we already had a cage.”

The Sisters had rescued an injured raccoon after a hurricane and nursed it back to health. Afterward, the raccoon ate Aunt Prudence’s lovebirds, Sonny and Cher, and Thelma put the raccoon out of the house, never to be spoken of again. But they still had the cage.

“You know squirrels can carry rabies. You can’t handle these things. What if one of them bites you?”

Aunt Prue frowned. “Ethan, these are our babies and they are just the sweetest things. They wouldn’t bite us. We’re their mammas.”