you’re saying Madison and Hayes hired a henchman to follow her around or something?”
“I’m just telling you what I heard. I don’t have concrete theories. All I’m saying is, we’re not in Kansas anymore. Or California or Iowa. These rules are different. Like once at a bonfire, I ran into Sina. I don’t ever talk to her. I mean, she’s way too hot for normal dorky conversation. But I was taking a leak in the woods, and I bumped into her by accident. She looked… weird. Like old. Really old. Then she kind of hissed at me, and I blinked, and she was totally gone.”
“You sure it wasn’t just something you ate?” I say, watching him pop another egg into his mouth.
“Fine, it’s true. I’m a human garbage disposal,” he says, still chewing. “But this is a weird, weird place, dude. I’m telling you—beware. Almost nothing in Savannah is what it seems.”
14
The sun’s been cooking the town all day, so the ride home from the River School is even more miserable than the trip there. I pedal my way through the thick, hot air, thankful when I finally reach the shaded inner sanctum of the downtown streets of Savannah.
As I coast up Abercorn, I mull over my bizarre day. My first experience with school, at sixteen (is that a record?), actually wasn’t that terrible. Sure, the classes were all boring except Constance’s, and I accidentally gave a girl a black eye during gym class (I thought capture the flag had more or less the same rules as mud ball), but at least I made a friend. That Dex, he’s pretty cool.
I stop my bike and look around Forsyth Park.
“Well, if it isn’t Alexandria Lee,” someone calls from the direction of the fountain. I whip my head around and spot Sam Buzzard, who is leaning against a wrought-iron lamppost and smiling at me.
“Hey,” I say, stopping next to him. I wipe the sweat off my forehead with the back of my hand. Just like the other day, Sam’s not perspiring at all.
“How is everything?”
“First day of school,” I reply.
“Oh, man. That can be brutal.”
“It was okay, actually. Weird, but okay.”
“You know, I was thinking about you the other day. Wondering if you wanted to come out to my house. There’s a great dock for swimming, and—you’re into gardening and herbs, right?”
“I try,” I admit. “It’s something I learned from my mother. Just your basic root stuff. I’m kind of scared I’ll get rusty.”
He nods. “Well, why don’t you come out and see what I’ve got? Begonia tess, for starters.”
“Begonia tess? The kind those botanists just found in India?”
“Turns out they could have looked right here in the States.”
I shake my head in disbelief. Begonia tess is a notoriously powerful leaf, but no one has reported seeing it here for more than one hundred years. It can be used for all sorts of things, from clotting blood to getting rid of colds. Some people even say it can be used as an aphrodisiac. Every summer, my mom tried to create a hybrid like it, but she would always end up cursing the shriveled, dead seedlings.
“Want to go check it out now?”
“Okay.”
“Throw your bike in the back.” He points to a gorgeous robin’s-egg blue vintage Chevy truck, perfectly restored.
“Nice ride,” I say, loading my M8 and climbing up to the passenger’s seat. Sam turns on the radio, and we weave through the green downtown streets, quickly reaching the suburbs and the highway dotted with strip malls and tanning parlors. Eventually even those thin out, and we’re in the country, driving along the Savannah River. I look out at the thick, junglelike forest and the miles of marsh grass. The din of crickets drifts through the open window.
“That marsh grass is so pretty,” I say. “The more I stare at it, the less I can tell what color it is. Green? Yellow?”
“It changes every day. That’s what’s so gorgeous about it. See? We’ll make a Georgia girl of you yet.”
I look up at the sky, which is milky white in the shimmering afternoon heat. Every once in a while Sam takes a turn; the roads are getting wilder and thinner. The land is dotted with little houses and trailers. We pass a group of men gathered around some fighting roosters. Many of the men grip liquor bottles in their hands, and there are guns attached to the back of several of the trucks.
It’s at this point that I realize a few things:
1. I might