Free Beautiful Darkness by Kami García, Margaret Stohl Page A

department.
     Even though the bus ride turned a forty-minute commute into two hours, there was no letting my dad operate heavy machinery,
     not yet. He seemed almost happy. I mean, relatively speaking, for a guy who was previously holed up in his study for months
     scribbling like a madman. The bar was pretty low.
    If things could change that much for my dad, if Amma was smiling, maybe they could change for Lena, too.
    Couldn’t they?
    But the moment was over. Amma was back on the warpath. I could see it in her face. My dad sat down next to me and poured milk
     over his cereal. Amma wiped her hands on her tool apron. “Mitchell, you best have some a those eggs. Cereal isn’t any kind
     a breakfast.”
    “Good morning to you, too, Amma.” He smiled at her, the way I bet he did when he was a kid.
    She squinted at him and slammed a glass of chocolate milk next to my plate, even though I barely drank it anymore.
    “Doesn’t look so good to me.” She sniffed and started pushing a massive amount of bacon onto my plate. To Amma, I would always
     be six years old. “You look like the livin’ dead. What you need is some brain food, to pass those examinations a yours.”
    “Yes, ma’am.” I chugged the glass of water Amma had poured for my dad. She held up her infamous wooden spoon with the hole
     in the middle, the One-Eyed Menace—that’s what I calledit. When I was a kid, she used to chase me around the house with it if I sassed her, even though she never actually hit me
     with it. I ducked, to play along.
    “And you better pass every single one. I won’t have you hangin’ around that school all summer like the Pettys’ kids. You’re
     gonna get a job, like you said you would.” She sniffed, waving the spoon. “Free time means free trouble, and you got heaps
     of that already.”
    My dad smiled and stifled a laugh. I bet Amma had said exactly the same thing to him when he was my age.
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    I heard a car honk, and the sound of way too much Beater bass, and grabbed my backpack. All I saw was the blur of the spoon
     behind me.
    I slid into the Beater and rolled down the window. Gramma had gotten her way, and Lena had come back to school a week ago,
     for the end of the year. I had driven all the way out to Ravenwood to take her to school on her first day back, even stopping
     at the Stop & Steal to get her one of their famous sticky buns, but by the time I got there Lena was already gone. Ever since
     then, she had been driving herself to school, so Link and I were back in the Beater.
    Link turned down the music, which was blasting through the car, out the windows, and down the block.
    “Don’t you embarrass me over at that school a yours, Ethan Wate. And you turn down that music, Wesley Jefferson Lincoln! You’re
     goin’ to knock over my whole row a rutabagas with that ruckus.” Link honked back at her. Amma knocked her spoon against the
     post, put her hands on her hips, and then softened. “You do well on those tests a yours, and maybe I’ll bake you a pie.”
    “That wouldn’t be Gatlin peach, would it, ma’am?”
    Amma sniffed and nodded her head. “Just might be.”
    She would never admit it, but Amma had finally developed a soft spot for Link, after all these years. Link thought it was
     because Amma felt sorry for his mom after her invasion-of-the-body-snatchers experience with Sarafine, but that wasn’t it.
     She felt bad for Link. “Can’t believe that boy has to live in the house with that woman. He’d be better off if he was bein’
     raised by wolves.” That’s what she’d said last week before she packed up a pecan pie for him.
    Link looked at me and grinned. “Best thing that ever happened to me, Lena’s mom gettin’ mixed up with my mom. Never had so
     much a Amma’s pie in my life.” It was about as much as he ever said about Lena’s nightmare of a birthday anymore. He floored
     it, and the Beater went skidding down the road. It almost wasn’t worth