Kami Garcia - Dangerous Dream

Principal Harper was trying to rap. Those are five words I never thought Id say. Everything has got an end, so toss those caps and lets hit Send. Try getting that out of your head.

As I sat there on the bleachers at the Stonewall Jackson High School graduationEthan Wate being uncomfortably alphabetized between Savannah Snow and Emory Watkinsit didnt feel all that much like the end of anything.

I wished it would end. Graduation, at least.

But it wouldntnot until the fat lady had sung. Or, in my case, not until the skinny lady, Miss Spider, had conducted the school orchestra. According to the folded paper program, it was going to be a Celine Dion medley.

Featured solo by Emily Ellen Asher, Her Heart Will Go On and On and On and On.

Of course it would. Even though her heart could give the Titanic a run for its money in a downward-spiral contest. I tried not to catch her eye, but I could see Emily looking at me, all the way from the As.

I could take it, one last time. It felt like torture, but Id faced worse. This was Gatlin-style torture, not Otherworld-pile-of-bones-maze-that-goes-nowhere or damned-waters-of-the-undead torture.

Principal Harper rapped something about facing the world around us by standing up with couragemostly, trying to rhyme courage with scourge, which didnt really work. Besides, I was pretty sure his approach to facing the world didnt include a whole lot of standing up for anything.

He was more of a sitting-it-out kind of a guy.

I was relieved when he finally did sit down after a good twenty-two minutes, but who was counting? But then our class president, Savannah Snow, went on about how shed miss teasing Link, and how excited she was to get on with being the most popular girl at the University of South Carolina, over in the big city of Columbia, and how her daddy was going to buy her a new Dodge Charger for graduating without getting knocked up, and how she could finally admit that she really had been better than Emily and Charlotte and the rest of the cheer squad all along.

Thats probably not exactly what she said, but its close enough to what she was thinking. None of us were actually listening anymore. It was too hot and too late for that.

On the plus side, Savannah wasnt rapping.

With crushing heat like this, it was hard to believe that the Order of Things had been restoredthat the curse and the chaos that had almost ended the world as Gatlin knew it was all behind us now. A debt had been paid. Wed lived so long with it all hanging in the balance, it felt weird to be only worrying about the heat wilting the flowers our families had ordered from Gardens of Eden, cooking the blooms until they looked like a bunch of dead broccoli clumps.

I squinted to find my dad. He hadnt let me wear sunglasses; he said Amma would have rolled over in her grave, if shed had one. But I knew Amma couldnt give a crap about whether or not I wore my aviators with my cap and gown, not where she was now. She was probably too busy sassing all my Aunt Prues husbands, or yelling at my mom about her fried green tomatoes, or hanging out on the porch with Uncle Abner. That was the Otherworld for you, but I couldnt expect my dad to understand.

When I finally found him, he was sitting with my Aunt Caroline, who had driven up from Savannah for the occasion. His new girlfriend, Mrs. English, had to sit with the faculty, and I was grateful that I didnt have to kiss up to her today. Or watch him kiss her, for that matter.

We all had to take this slow.

On the other side of my dad was my girlfriends family: Lenas cousin Ridley, wearing a black straw hat as big as a hubcap, and a little black dress as small as a handkerchief; Aunt Del, fanning her face with a peacock feather fan; and Lenas cousins Reece and Ryan, in matching round sunglasses. Uncle Macon was back home, since the whole town still thought he was dead. Long story. But our friends John Breed and Liv Durand were there to report the whole thing to himwhat little of it, that is, that Boo Radley couldnt report himself, from where he sat on the grass near the stage, wagging his tail in time with the band.

John waved from the crowd when he saw me, even though Liv elbowed him. I didnt wave back.

Could this go on any longer? Lena Kelted to me, sounding as grouchy as I was, even in my mind. There were some drawbacks to having a Caster girlfriend, like a nasty curse and an even nastier mother (now in the Otherworld, another long story), but there were benefits, too. She had lots of unique abilitiesincluding allowing us to hear each others thoughts.

I craned my neck to see her, down in the front row with the As through the Ds. Duchannes, Lena, was seated perilously close to Asher, Emily.

I smiled. Im just trying not to pass out, L.

Five more minutes of this and Ill join you, Ethan.

A louder thought shoved past the others. You think we can hide beneath the bleachers without anyone noticin? Which would be Link, my best friend and former Mortal, now one-quarter Incubus. Lena and I always managed to forget that he could Kelt, too, ever since he Turned. As a result, he found a way to pop in at the most awkward times.

Get out of my head, butt wipe, I Kelted back.

Down on the bleacher in front of me, he shook his head. Hey, dont lose it on me. Tell your girlfriend there to squeeze out a little rain. Im not wearin anythin under this gown, and my cheeks are sweatin so hard it looks like I peed my pants.

I burst out laughing. Savannah Snow glared at me.

Shut up, both of you. Theyre starting. We may actually get home before midnight.

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 Id ever seen it, as if shed 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 Ws.

No sooner had Emily taken her diploma and smiled for the cameraOzzy Phelps, from Gatlins only paper, The Stars and Stripes, moonlighted as the school photographerwhen the diploma turned into a snake.

Hissing and rattling, it wrapped itself around her wrist like a fancy pharaohs bracelet.

Emily screamed, and then the crowd screamedbecause 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 Spiders 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 Lenas 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 wasnt 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 didnt want to have to explain this new situation to him. Id 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.