Should she not have mentioned spirits in front of Christians? But she had only said she was giving him the strength of her spirit. She’d said nothing directly of earth spirits.
Sadie took Jackie’s hand, keeping her hard stare on Raven. Chris looked at Raven with similar outrage. Suddenly Raven understood. They were angry because she had said “I love you.” The words had come as naturally as breathing. She refused to feel guilty. She had spoken with all her heart and soul. It had been an unusual kind of Asking, and Askings were pure, above the pettiness of human teenagers.
Jackie’s mother saw Raven’s trouble. She took Raven’s hand and said, “How are you, sweetheart? I haven’t seen you for so long. I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you, too,” Raven said, letting Ms. Danner guide her away from the grave. “I’m sorry about Mr. Danner.”
“Thank you,” she said, patting Raven’s hand.
When they arrived at the parked cars, Chris said, “Let’s go,” in a gruff voice.
Chris brooded in silence as he drove out of the cemetery.
“What was that?” he finally said.
“What?”
“The hand on the heart. The I love you.”
She refused to explain herself.
“Tell me the truth,” he said. “Are you in love with him?”
Of course she loved Jackie. She had since she was seven.
Chris looked at her as he drove. “You know Reece says you are. And vice versa. He’s joked about that for years.”
“Reece jokes about everything,” she said.
“I know. That’s what I thought. But I saw the way you were with him. Everyone did.”
“I was trying to help him.”
“It was pretty embarrassing, Raven. We’re going out. Everyone assumes we are.”
“Does that mean I can’t be myself?”
“It means you don’t publicly display affection with other men.”
“He’s heartbroken. He needs help.”
“Oh my god. Seriously? I think you used the funeral as an excuse to go at him.”
She could remember only one time in her life when she had felt as she did in this moment. The day Mama had told her she could never again set foot on Jackie’s land. That day she had cursed the raven spirit that made her.
Now she could curse only Chris and the other teenagers. They were shallow and didn’t understand her spirit world. She wanted nothing more than to be out of his presence.
“Where are we?” she said. “Why aren’t you taking me home?”
“We’re invited to the lunch at the restaurant. I told you that.”
“Take me home.”
“Goddamn it, Raven!”
“Take me home!”
He swerved the car, making the tires squeal. He drove recklessly, frightening her, but she said nothing. She was already opening the car door before he’d fully stopped on her road near her gate.
“Come back here!” he shouted.
“Why? So you can insult me some more? Go away!”
He drove slowly alongside her. “I get it. This is why you can’t get physical with me. It’s because of him. Right? Is that it?”
“I said go!”
He stopped at the gate as she pressed the code. “Are we going to prom?”
“No!” she shouted.
He jumped out of the car and followed her inside the gate. The first alarm was going off inside the house. If Mama was looking at the video screens, she would see that he was on the road to their house. That was absolutely forbidden.
“You can’t be in here!” she said.
“I don’t care about that bullshit,” he said.
“Get out!”
“I only want to talk about this.”
“I don’t. I’ve seen how you are. Now I know I don’t want to be with you.”
“Are you kidding?” he said. “Five minutes and I’m out?”
“Yes. Now go. I’m closing the gate.”
“So close the goddamn gate!” he said.
She looked behind her, afraid she’d see Mama coming.
“Raven . . .” He ran his hand over his hair. “It’s just . . . what I said the other day was true. I’m, like, in love with you. It just made me kind of crazy to see how you looked at him. And in front of everyone.”
“I can see it made you crazy,” she said. “That’s why I can’t be with you anymore.”
He stepped toward her. “Let’s just talk about it.”
“What could we talk about that hasn’t already been said? You accused me of using Mr. Danner’s death to influence Jackie. You said I’m not allowed to say I love you to Jackie when he most needs to feel love.”
“So you do love him?”
She walked down the road fast, hoping he’d go back to his car, but he followed her. He jogged to catch up and blocked her.
“What are you doing?” she said.
He grabbed her arm. “Come back to the car.”
“You need to go.”
“Just come back to the car, damn it!”
“Get your hands off her!” Mama called out. She was hurrying down the road, her rifle pointed at him. As she got closer, she said, “I do believe my daughter asked you to leave.”
He backed up. “You’re crazy, old lady, you know that?”
Raven’s mother cocked the gun. “I am. And you never know what a crazy old lady will do.” She walked toward him. “You’re on my land, and my signs clearly say trespassing isn’t allowed.”
He left, muttering curses. Raven closed the gate, and Chris pulled away with a screech of tires.
Mama lowered the gun. “What a child he is.”
“I know,” Raven said. “I just found that out.”
Mama held the gun on one arm, wrapped her other around Raven’s back as they walked to the house. “What drew you to such a boy?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe only that he liked me. My raven spirit always kept its distance when I was with him. It seemed afraid of him for some reason.”
“He wanted to possess you, put you in a cage,” Mama said.
He did, Raven realized. Her raven side had been trying to tell her that from the start.
“The prom dresses arrived while you were gone.”
“Let’s go find two big pairs of scissors,” Raven said.
6
Raven turned off her alarm, buried herself beneath the duvet, and went back to sleep.
Mama woke her hours later, her hand on Raven’s forehead to check for fever. “Are you unwell?” she asked.
“Not really.”
“Since second grade, you’ve missed only two days of school. What happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Mama’s pale eyes glittered with resentment. “I know what happened. That boy—Chris Williams—has caused trouble for you, hasn’t he?”
Raven looked away from her eyes.
“I should have shot his balls off,” she muttered.
“Mama!”
“What has he done?”
“He’s telling people only his side of the story. And he told them about you coming at him with the gun.”
Mama grinned.
“It’s not funny. They’re all treating me different.”
“Well, you are different. You’re a miracle. Keep that in mind and hold your head high.”
Miracle or not, she hated going to school now. Reece was the only one who wasn’t aloof with her. Chris was bitter, didn’t even sit at their lunch table. And Jackie and Huck were like different people. But that had nothing to do with her. Their father’s death had changed them. They were serious all the time, and when they laughed at a joke, Raven saw they were pretending.
School had become seven hours of bleakness. She remembered Mama’s warnings about school when she was younger: You will be the raven’s child caught in a cage. You’ll feel like a bird beating against glass in your desperation to get out.
“I don’t want to go back
,” Raven said.
“In this state, you have to go until your eighteenth birthday. You may quit then if you like.”
“I’d nearly be done with high school by then,” Raven said.
Mama shrugged.
Raven sat up in the bed. “Am I going to college?”
“Why would you? You can learn anything a college teaches from books.” She stood. “Let’s eat and spend the day outdoors. The spirits will do you good.”
Raven doubted that. Their ninety acres sometimes felt as much a prison as school did.
“Let’s ask the spirits for a baby together,” Mama said. “We haven’t tried that yet. Having a baby in the house is what we both need.” She caressed Raven’s cheek. “I know you can’t imagine the joy of it yet. You’ll understand when it happens.”
Mama’s talk of having a baby always unsettled her. Raven didn’t crave it, and that felt like betrayal when Mama wanted it so badly. To ask for a baby with Mama would be as difficult as school. Her heart and soul were in neither.
For the remainder of the school year, she mostly kept to herself. She found quiet places to eat away from everyone. Reece sometimes hunted her down and made her go back to the lunch table. She went without a fight, mostly because she liked to see Jackie. He was gradually recovering. And as he did, he was attentive to Raven when they were together. He didn’t seem to care anymore that it made Sadie angry. Raven wondered if her Asking had bonded him too much to her. It made her feel a little guilty.
In June, Huck and Reece graduated. Huck would study environmental engineering at the University of Washington in autumn. Reece was working to earn money for college and helping his mother. As always, Raven’s life with the boys was changing too fast. She couldn’t imagine school without Reece the next year. But she was glad her freshman year was over. For the first time, she wanted to go to Montana for the summer.
Summers in the tiny cabin had been the same for seven years. The eighth year, their life there changed in a bad way, like everything else recently. Mama had trouble climbing the mountain trails she’d been trekking since she was a girl. She breathed hard and had to slow down. But when Raven asked, she insisted she was fine.
By the end of summer, Mama admitted she felt different. But she refused to see a doctor or talk to Aunt Sondra about it. She said the earth spirits would heal her. Raven performed many Askings, begging the spirits to heal whatever was wrong with Mama’s heart. She knew it was the heart because Mama sometimes put her hand on her chest. In her Askings, Raven used anything she could find that was shaped like a human heart—a stone, a leaf, a bit of mollusk shell. And she asked with all her heart and soul.
But Mama was still sick when they returned to Washington. She was getting caught in the spirit world more often, the bad spells where Raven had to feed her and dress her like she was a baby. As Mama withdrew more and more into the spirit world, Raven felt as if her spirit were retreating with her.
She wished she didn’t have to go to school. She wanted to keep watch on Mama. She wanted to go to the woods and fields to ask her kin for help. But every day she got on the bus because Mama said she had to.
She sat at the lunch table with Jackie and his friends. Since Chris Williams and his poison had left, they treated her well again. What had happened at the funeral seemed forgotten. But Raven didn’t pay much attention to them. Usually she read a book to distract her from thinking about Mama.
What would she do if Mama went to the spirit world? How would she live? Maybe the bad people of Mama’s warnings would find her when she no longer had the protection of Mama’s powerful spirit.
Raven forced herself to focus on her book. The roar of her frantic thoughts and the chaotic lunchroom receded as she read the words.
“What are you reading?”
She looked up at Jackie. His multicolored eyes were beautiful. Sometimes she could hardly look into them. In a way, Jackie was a disease of the heart, an actual pain that made her want to press her hand on her chest the way Mama did.
She showed him the cover of the book.
“One Hundred Years of Solitude,” he said. “Sounds like your life.”
It was the kind of joke Reece would have made. But Jackie couldn’t sustain the humor. He immediately looked regretful.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that,” he said.
“Why not? It was funny.”
He glanced at the others at the table to make sure they weren’t listening. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” she said.
He whispered, “No one cares about that stuff Chris said last spring. It’s over.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you always so quiet now?”
She wished she could tell him. She wanted to feel the way she had the night she’d sneaked into his house. The warmth of his body beneath his blanket. His arm around her.
“Raven?”
“It’s nothing.”
His look said he didn’t believe her.
After school, he found her before she got on the bus. “Let me drive you home,” he said.
It was almost a command. His father’s death had changed him. He wouldn’t have been so bold last year. Maybe it was simply maturity. And the absence of a girlfriend. Over the summer, he’d broken up with Sadie.
“It should be okay, right?” he said. “Your mom let you drive home with Chris last year.”
“You’ve probably heard what happened the last time he drove me home.”
“Yeah, the gun.”
“Are you sure you’re up for that?”
He looked worried. “Do you think she’ll—”
“I’m joking. Let’s go.”
He’d taken over the old car Huck used to drive. Raven was aware of the students in the parking lot watching her get in his car, but she didn’t waste her thoughts on them. She now knew the consequences of caring about “hive mind,” as Reece called it. She wouldn’t get stung again.
“So how’ve you been?” he asked. “I never get a chance to talk to you alone these days.”
“We haven’t really talked alone since I was seven and you were eight.”
“I guess not,” he said.
“How’s your mom?” she asked.
“She’s better. But she hides her sadness well.”
“What about you?”
“I really miss him, but I’m better than I was.” He glanced at her as he drove. “I asked how you are. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”
“I told you—”
“I’ve known you for a long time. There’s something wrong.”
“I can’t talk about it.”
“Why not? Your mother told you not to?”
“If she did, why would I talk about it?”
“I know. She told you never to set foot on our land again, and you never did. You take your promises to her too seriously.”
“What is this? Are you the new Reece?”
“My hair’s the wrong color.”
“I miss him,” she said.
“I know. He hardly ever stops by now that Huck’s gone.”
“At least you see him sometimes. And Huck is close enough to visit.”
“Yeah, but the house feels really weird with just my mom and me.” He added, “I guess you’re used to that.”
She was used to that. What would she do if Mama went to the spirit world? She looked out the window to hide her tears. When she thought he wouldn’t notice, she quickly wiped her hand over her face.
“Are you crying?”
“No.”
“Raven . . .”
“Could we just not talk for a while?”
That was how the rest of the drive was. Both of them quiet, her absorbing as much Jackie light as she could store up until the ride was over. She wondered if he still had the plastic stars on his bedroom ceiling.
He stopped the car in front of the gate, not hiding from the cameras.
“Do you want to ride with me again?” he asked. “It g
ets you home faster than the bus.”
She would arrive earlier to check on Mama. “I’d like to drive with you,” she said.
“Okay, good.” He looked out the front windshield in the direction of his house, about a mile down the country road. “I’d offer to take you to school in the morning, but I’d have no way to let you know when I’m not going to school. You’d miss the bus.”
He had already missed two days of school, and it was early in the semester. When he came back each time, he’d said he was sick.
“Sometimes I just can’t go,” he said.
Raven remembered the day she’d been too depressed to go to school.
“Because you’re too sad to go?” she asked.
He looked away from her. “Something like that. Over the summer, I had a few panic attacks. I see a psychologist sometimes.”
She’d heard other kids talk about panic attacks. “Is it bad when it happens?”
He nodded. “It took me a while before I could drive. Because my dad . . .”
“I can see how that would happen,” she said.
“I like having someone in the car. It helps.”
“I’ll ride with you anytime you want,” she said.
He looked anxious. “I asked you today because I wanted to talk to you. I didn’t ask just because of that.”
“I know.”
He looked out the window at her driveway. “Is your mom watching us? Is this okay?”
“It’s okay, but I’d better go.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow.” He waited until she was inside the gate before he drove away.
After that day, they rode home together three or four times a week. Sometimes he went out with friends instead, but he wasn’t interested in any particular girl as far as Raven could tell.
At first when they drove together, he’d ask if she wanted to stop for food at Bear’s or another drive-through. She always said no. Mama was getting sicker and acting stranger. Raven had to be at home as much as possible.
He knew something was wrong but stopped asking about it. They talked about their classes, or he would tell her something happening in the news or about a movie he liked. She would describe whatever book she was reading. Sometimes they said very little. She didn’t worry about being quiet with him anymore. In fact, she found their silences comforting. She sensed he felt that way, too.
The Light Through the Leaves Page 22