Beautiful Chaos (Caster Chronicles 3)

try

forget addition

multiply

and i reply

this is why

remainders

hate

division

I rested my head against the wall next to the words.

Lena.

She didn’t respond.

L. You’re not a remainder. You’re a survivor.

Her thoughts came slowly, in a jagged rhythm.

I won’t be able to survive this. You can’t ask me to.

I knew she was crying. I imagined her lying in the dry grass at Greenbrier. I would look for her there next.

You shouldn’t be alone. Wait for me. I’m coming.

There was so much to say that I stopped trying to say it. Instead, I wiped my eyes with my sleeve, and opened my backpack. I pulled out the spare Sharpie Lena kept there, the way people have a spare tire in the back of their car.

For the first time, I uncapped it and stood on the girly chair in front of her old white dresser. It groaned under my weight, but it held. And I didn’t have long, anyway. My eyes were stinging, and it was hard to see.

I wrote on her ceiling, where the plaster had cracked, where so many times other words, better words, more hopeful words had appeared above our heads.

I wasn’t much of a poet, but I had the truth, and that was enough.

I will always love you.

Ethan

I found Lena lying in the charred grass at Greenbrier, the same place I had found her the day she shattered the windows in our English class. Her arms were flung over her head, the same way they were that day, too. She stared up at the thin stretch of blue.

I lay down next to her.

She didn’t try to stop the tears. “It’s different, you know that? The sky looks different now.” She was talking, not Kelting. Suddenly talking was special. All the regular things were.

“It does?”

She took an uneven breath. “When I first met you, that’s what I remember. I looked up at the sky and thought, I’m going to love this person because even the sky looks different.” I couldn’t say anything. My breath was caught in my throat.

But she wasn’t finished. “I remember the exact moment I saw you. I was in my car. You were playing basketball outside with your friends. And the ball rolled off the court and you went to get it. You looked at me.”

“I remember that. I didn’t know you saw me.”

She smiled. “See you? I almost crashed the hearse.”