The head of the school board had begun to read the names. “Emily Asher.”
Mrs. Asher led a round of hysterical applause, mostly featuring every Asher within ninety miles of Gatlin. A few Snows chimed in for good measure, but considering it was the Ashers, there were about as many folks not clapping.
Emily marched up to the podium to the tune of “Pomp and Circumstance.” Her shoes were like two skyscrapers strapped to her feet. Even her hair was taller than I’d ever seen it, as if she’d been electrocuted. Black eye goop was sweating down her face, drowning raccoon-style. She had definitely pulled out all the stops.
It was hard to look at her, even from back here in the W’s.
No sooner had Emily taken her diploma and smiled for the camera—Ozzy Phelps, from Gatlin’s only paper, The Stars and Stripes, moonlighted as the school photographer—when the diploma turned into a snake.
Hissing and rattling, it wrapped itself around her wrist like a fancy pharaoh’s bracelet.
Emily screamed, and then the crowd screamed—because the basket of diplomas next to the podium had become a crawling, slithering, writhing bundle of snakes.
Rattlers, from the look of it. A whole mess of them.
Then the usual stuff happened. Lots of screaming. Lots of chaos. Everyone running, except Miss Spider’s ensemble, who started playing “My Heart Will Go On” in all the confusion.
Within minutes, graduation was a wrap. Everyone had cleared the field.
Everyone, that is, except Lena’s family, who sat in a row looking like the only people at a funeral. The sea of empty chairs surrounding them made you wonder if the crowd wasn’t looking for any excuse to clear out of there.
My dad went to find Mrs. English in the parking lot, and I was actually relieved. I didn’t want to have to explain this new situation to him. I’d spent the last few years explaining plenty of stuff already.
When Lena and I climbed down from the bleachers, we made a beeline for the one person who had it coming.
Also the one person who couldn’t have cared less.
“Ridley, I swear!” Aunt Del had beaten Lena to the punch, which was what she looked like she wanted to do to her daughter—Lena’s infamous Siren cousin, and my best friend’s on-again-off-again girlfriend. A good bad girl, or a bad good girl, depending on the day.
Ridley Duchannes.
Del was already mid-scold by the time we walked over. And Ridley wasn’t having any of it. “Oh please. I love it how one little thing goes wrong around here and everyone assumes I’m to blame.” Ridley twirled a bright red lollipop between her equally red manicured fingers.
Reece rolled her eyes.
Ryan couldn’t stop laughing. “Did you see their faces?”
Ridley sat, legs crossed, looking like she’d stepped out of some kind of movie where the bad girl really didn’t have a heart of gold after all. Not even tin. There was probably a big, gaping hole between her lungs.
“What? She deserved it, that little snake.” Ridley’s red-lipsticked lips curved into a smile. “Takes one to know one. I barely had to do a thing. Those snakes wanted to be there. For her.” She whistled. “Talk about venom. That girl was positively lethal.”
Link put his arm around Ridley, pulling her up out of her seat. “That’s my girl.”
“Wesley Lincoln!” He looked up to see his mother frantically waving from the edge of the field.
“Gotta go,” he said with a sigh, kissing Ridley on the cheek. “You know how my mom feels when I’m in league with the devil.” Mrs. Lincoln had tangled with my family and Lena’s, and now she mostly stayed away. Which was probably why she’d stopped at the edge of the field instead of marching over here to hiss at us directly.
“And I wore my best horns today,” Ridley said, twisting her long blond hair around her finger. For a moment, I could’ve sworn the pink stripe in her hair was actually red.
It would have been Tunnel of Fudge, if Amma was still here. That’s what I was thinking as I lay in bed, sweating and staring up at my old blue ceiling. The cake at my graduation dinner. It should’ve been Tunnel of Fudge.
Instead, it had been three pieces of my Aunt Caroline’s chocolate pecan pie, and while it was good, it wasn’t Amma-good. I had to eat all three pieces, or my dad and Aunt Caroline would’ve known what I was thinking—that things were changing in Gatlin, and they changed more every day.
It was time to go. I never expected it to feel so strange when that time actually came.
When I was little, my parents didn’t ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up. They asked me where I wanted to go. I said away. Then they bought me a map.
It was a natural reaction to life in Gatlin, South Carolina, I guess. Our small town was far enough from Charleston—or any civilization, for that matter—to feel like its own planet. And like any good astronaut, from the moment I could read well enough to study that map, I spent every waking moment planning exactly how I would get to use it. I had a box crammed with college brochures under my bed, and I always said I’d go anywhere, as long as it was at least a thousand miles from Gatlin.
Instead of a box of college brochures under his bed, Link had his plans plastered all over the garage walls, where his latest band, Meatstik, practiced. The bands Link worshipped, like Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and the Rolling Stones, had already proven that all you needed to get out of any small town were big dreams and a band. Link had both. He also had Ridley, and a destination—New York City.