Page 4 of The Beautiful Maddening

TWO

Headphones on—the Smashing Pumpkins howling in my ears—I stretch out on my stomach, drawing the outline of his face, the curve of his jaw, his translucent eyes like fresh grass or a blue pond. It feels like tipping into a fairy tale, losing myself in the image taking shape at the end of my pencil, as the soft evening wind carries scents of earth and faraway rain in through my open bedroom window.

Usually, I sketch only faces, but I wasn’t close enough to see the small details (a freckle here, a stray hair across an eyebrow there), so I draw his shoulders, his torso, the paperback book in his hands. He leans against the elm tree, the afternoon sun speckled through the branches, slightly kissing his cheekbone, while his eyes are just barely lifted… meeting mine. Yet… he walked away after his eyes strayed over me. Grazed my flesh.

As if he felt nothing at all.

My head thumps, a tiny insect scratch at my skull. How could he so easily turn away? I draw him in my notebook to make sense of him. To fill in the parts I don’t understand. The boy has no name. A stranger. And in a town this small, you know when someone new moves in. You know the names of everyone, you know how long they’ve lived in Cutwater and the reasons they’ve never left.

But this boy… is something new.

I pull the headphones off, needing the silence to try and bring him to mind, capture some detail I missed. But he’s already starting to fade from my memory, the shadowed parts of his cheekbones becoming less distinct. The sound of the creek fills my ears—cold glacier water twisting its way down from the Middle Fork Mountains, then cutting south across Winterset Valley before turning into the lowlands and running straight under the Goode family home. But it’s not the creek’s fault it found itself here—caught up in the folklore and long-ago curses that haunt this house—it was my great-great-grandfather Fern Goode who built the house over the creek, who deemed it a reasonable place to make a homestead, in the lowest, swampiest soil in town.

A fool’s undertaking.

But over the gurgle and rush of the creek, I hear another sound….

The wind has died down, the woods fallen still, but the noise echoes softly through my bedroom window: a breaking open, like tissue paper. Like eyelashes on the surface of tepid bathwater. So gentle and quiet, it’s hardly there at all.

I sit up, knowing the sound as clearly as if it were a scream from fearful lungs. I’ve heard it season after season, since the spring I was born. I leave the Walkman on my bed, move to the back door, and step out into the night. It’s late, near midnight. But the noise is unmistakable—the heavy teardrop heads of the tulips are beginning their slow unfurling. Petals peeling open, tufts of silklike layers bending themselves back to peer up at the clear, moonless sky.

The tulips are finally blooming.

An effort that happens only at night, only in the dark, as if they don’t want to be seen. A secretive, seductive unveiling. Like ladies peeling away their robes. Showing their pale skin to the stars.

With my heart thudding in my ears, I move down the back steps, over the churning creek, and into the garden. The wind stirs, changing direction—it begins blowing from the east. An omen. A portent. I hold in my breath, witnessing the awakening of a plague.

In this dull light, the soft blooms with their snow-white petals and garish red streaks seem innocent enough—a garden of flowers to mark the changing season. But they are not harmless. They are responsible for every bad thing that’s ever happened in this family. I reach out a hand, running my fingertip over one of the newly opened petals. The stalks are unusually, unnaturally tall, the swaying heads of each flower grazing my shoulders—a crop that reaches the height of cornstalks some years. I draw the air tight into my lungs, each particle heavy with an intoxicating sweetness, making me dizzy, and I know what will come.

Tulip season has begun.

Madness season, most call it.

Because the locals in town don’t know that the tulips are to blame. They don’t know that these blooms are the source of their twisted-up desire each spring.

But from this moment on—until the tulips wilt back into the soil—locals will feel themselves inextricably, irresistibly drawn to the Goodes, to Archer and me. They will feel a nudge in our direction, a prick at the base of their necks that is nearly impossible to ignore.

When the flowers crack open to reveal their inner petals, the need others feel for us becomes something abnormal.

A hunger.

A feral wildness that is sometimes dangerous.

A love that becomes greed.

Standing in the garden, the spring air filled with the soft perfume of their petals, I think again of my great-great-grandfather—a man who sailed across the Atlantic from the Netherlands with a small linen pouch tucked into his waistband, a dozen tulip bulbs hidden inside. Secreted away. He claimed they were the rarest of bulbs—heirlooms saved from the infamous tulip madness that ravaged Holland in the 1630s. But when Mom told the story, she said he likely stole the tulips, killed a man—a royal gardener—who kept the bulbs in a dark, dry basement. Stolen or bartered, the bulbs contained a madness that made people crave them— a delirium of love and devotion . And when he planted the bulbs into this swampy soil, he hoped to make his fortune: he would sell the flowers, be adored and revered, admired from one county line to the other. But instead locals in Cutwater feared my great-great-grandfather. They thought it ill-conceived to build a house over Forsaken Creek, in the marshy lowlands. “No rational person would build their home so carelessly,” they whispered. And that first spring, when the tulips bloomed, showing their lurid white petals cut through with scarlet veins, the locals called it a curse and refused to buy a single bloom.

In time the tulips spread, the small garden became a sea of blooms, and some in town found themselves drawn to Fern Goode for reasons they couldn’t make sense of—they fell in love with him every spring, like clockwork. And when he had three sons—who grew to be as tall and broad as Norwegian spruce trees—love befell them just as easily. A wild, feverish kind of love. And with each generation, with each Goode who was born into the house, the madness-invoked love became more deeply woven, more troublesome, the blooms braiding themselves into the blood and bones of every Goode.

Inescapable.

I drop my hand from the petal and turn on my heel.

When I was younger, I thought the tulips beautiful, enchanted, but now I hate them. Now I wish I were a girl with a different last name. Any name that wasn’t Goode.

Inside the house, I close my bedroom window—so the scent of flowers won’t saturate my room—then I sink beneath the sheets, pulling a pillow over my head. I don’t want to hear the soft splitting-open of tulips.

I don’t want the reminder of who I am. The fate I can’t escape.

Tomorrow madness season begins.

The morning sun bursts into the sky above the treetops, and the air inside the bus is already stifling, boxed in. I can feel the eyes of everyone watching me as I walk down the aisle to the last row of bench seats—a strained stillness in the air, breaths held tightly in lungs, the heartbeats of my classmates racing a little too quickly in their chests. I turn the volume up on my Walkman, Lauryn Hill vibrating through my eardrums.

Still, those seated nearest me can’t help but flick their eyes in my direction, once, twice, too many times. They feel a longing for anyone with the Goode last name, more persistent than it was yesterday.

Lark Goode smells different today, I imagine them thinking, a notion they try to shake but can’t. She looks more… like a girl I could fall in love with.

The microscopic pheromones contained in each bloom are now saturating my skin. Caught in my lungs. Leaving a cloud in my wake.

Like bloodthirsty dogs, they sense it.

Predatory and lovesick.

When the bus finally shrieks to a stop in front of the school, I can’t exit fast enough, scrambling down the steps and nearly tripping over my own feet. I glance to the tall elm tree beside the parking lot, looking for the boy. I need to see him one more time, capture the last details of his face so I can finish the sketch. But it’s more than that: there is also a curiosity inside me—I want to know , to see—can he look at me again and feel nothing, no strained urge to move closer? What if I walk toward him, will he still be able to turn his head and stride away so easily?

I doubt it. Not with the tulips now in bloom.

But across the parking lot there is no boy beneath the elm tree.

No sign of him.

I keep my head down, moving across the lawn, through the school doors, until I reach my locker in B hall—near the gymnasium, the stench of sweat and sneakers and Clorox clinging to the walls. I shove my bag into the metal rectangle, then grab my History of the World textbook for first period.

I turn the volume up on my Walkman, Lauryn Hill singing about the nature of all things: “Everything is everything; what is meant to be, will be.” My eyes are on the linoleum floor when I round the corner into the main hall, and I’m stopped short.

A crowd has gathered outside the doors into the lunchroom, near the drinking fountain that no longer works and the hand-drawn poster for Astronomy Club— WHO NEEDS MATH WHEN YOU CAN COUNT THE STARS , it reads in chunky black Sharpie.

I can’t make out who’s at the center of the crowd, or what’s happening, but I can hear the hum of activity through my headphones. Someone shouts, followed by a rush of voices, and I slip my headphones down around my neck, inching closer to the commotion—careful not to touch anyone, to meet anyone’s eyes. I slide along the row of metal lockers until I can finally stand on tiptoes, peering between two freshmen, to see Tobias Huaman—tall, broad-shouldered—facing his best friend, Mac Williams. Yesterday Mac stopped Tobias from moving toward me during lunch, from getting pulled in by the fabled Goode enchantment, but now they look like they’re about to fight—fists clenching, chests puffed, eyes willful and angry and narrowed.

“You already have a girlfriend!” Mac spits, lifting his chin.

“So do you,” Tobias barks back, taking a large step closer to Mac.

The crowd seems to press in around them, trying to get a better view before the first punch is thrown—a stupor of nervous excitement in the air. They love a good fight, especially between two of the most well-known guys in school, who only yesterday were best friends.

But clearly something has changed.

“You’ve always been an asshole,” Mac counters, and he shoves a hand against Tobias’s sturdy chest.

Someone makes a soft squeal, a tiny shriek, and my eyes swivel—finding the source of the sound. Clementine Morris, who yesterday had her fortune read by Jude on the front lawn. Now she stands with her black flute case in her left hand, only a couple of feet away from the two boys about to tackle each other. Her dull brown hair drapes long and flat over her shoulders, a few knots visible at the front, and her soft hazel eyes possess a curious glint. I think of how pretty she is—the kind of girl who will probably thrive in the outside world, in the real world. She’ll become a famous musician or invent a cure for an old disease. And everyone who attended Cutwater High the year she graduated will try to remember who she was but won’t be able to. Because right now, in the social ladder of high school, only the loud and glittery survive. Here she is unmemorable.

I scan the crowd, trying to understand what’s happening.

Tobias tries to take a step around Mac, a step toward… Clementine?

She looks briefly stunned, a little unsteady on her feet, but also… something else. A subtle twitch of delight pulls at her upper lip.

I feel my mouth tug down, and I catch the faces of those nearest me contorting in the same confused way. Tobias lifts his arm, but not toward Mac, not in a gesture of anger; he lifts it toward Clementine. He reaches for her—softly, caringly—and she touches his hand in return, a coy smile arching her pinked lips, freckled cheeks blushing instantly.

She’s enjoying this.

I hear a gasp from the crowd. The air sucked out of the crammed hallway all at once. I swing my gaze again, as does everyone else—as if we’re watching some Shakespearean play unfold before us, and each new development is more unbelievable than the last—and we find Olive Montagu with a hand to her mouth, eyes wide and stunned, like a fish left to die on the shore. I can see her throat trembling, soft blond hair tucked back behind her ears, blue eyes welling quickly with tears.

Olive is Tobias’s girlfriend.

Since freshman year.

And now she watches as he folds his fingers through the hand of another girl: Clementine Morris… who is surely the last person Olive would have imagined stealing her high school boyfriend. Shy, demure, unassuming Clementine has never been a threat.

Until today.

But Tobias touches Clementine only for a moment before Mac barrels into him, slamming his chest with both hands and shoving him back. The crowd gasps, and someone yells—I think it’s Olive. And in an instant Tobias and Mac are in a full brawl. A punch is thrown, countered by another. Tobias knocks Mac to the ground and kicks him in the gut. But then Mac is up, ramming him into a row of lockers with a loud, vibrating thud. The crowd moves back, away, not wanting to get caught in the tussle. But before Tobias can land another blow against Mac’s ribs, there is a loud, commanding shout from down the hall, then another. Coach Lopez shoves his way through the crowd and yanks Mac away from Tobias, bracing him around the chest to keep him from lunging forward again.

Principal Lee appears, eyeglasses slid down his narrow nose, and he grabs Tobias. “Get to class!” he shouts as he ushers Tobias toward the admin office.

Coach Lopez is already pulling Mac away, up the hall and out through the double doors to the football field. Separating him from Tobias.

“I want you all in first period,” Principal Lee adds. But when no one moves, he yells, “Now!”

The crowd drifts apart, scattering to their lockers and classrooms, murmuring, whispering about what just happened, and why the hell it happened at all . But I stay pressed to a locker that isn’t mine, my thoughts shuttling back and forth.

The door into my first-period class hasn’t closed yet—students are still meandering inside—and I slip through unnoticed, pass down the outer edge of the room, and sink into a seat near the back window.

But it doesn’t make a difference.

My classmates murmur to one another, pass notes scribbled hastily onto torn pages of their notebooks, then glance over their shoulders to stare at me—but they don’t snicker; they don’t make jokes at my expense. It’s another thing entirely in their expression.

Their eyes give them away, the soft lift of their mouths, the rose-stained tint of their cheeks. They’re falling in love.

“Renna!” Mr. Loon barks. “Hand it over.”

My gaze lifts briefly to see Mr. Loon marching down the row of desks, stopping beside Renna McPhee’s chair and holding out his hand.

“Now,” he instructs.

Renna rolls her eyes and places a small piece of paper in Mr. Loon’s hand. But when Mr. Loon walks back to the front of the room, I can tell that the thing in his hand has more weight and substance, not paper at all, but I can’t make it out. Not fully.

He opens a drawer in his desk and drops the thing inside: just one of many worthless items he confiscates throughout the day. But before he pushes the drawer closed, his eyes stall a moment, staring down into the drawer, and a strange expression curls at the edge of his mouth—disgust, maybe? Something else? Eyes watering.

Someone giggles from the front row, the whole class watching him, and his eyes snap back up as he shuts the drawer quickly. Clearing his throat, he begins his lesson on the fall of Rome, and I keep my head down until the bell finally rings. I bolt up from my chair, desperate to be free of this room, and dart for the door.

But Titha Roberts is there, holding the door open for me, her lovely black hair braided perfectly across her scalp, draped over one shoulder, full lips parted into a gentle, one-sided smile. “You look pretty today, Lark,” she says, peering at me with her deep brown eyes. Titha Roberts is one of the elite at Cutwater High—she’s captain of varsity volleyball, she’s dated every quarterback on our football team, and she’s president of the school’s Theater Club. And I am not someone she’d normally hold a door for. Or waste her time talking to—during any other season.

I slip through the doorway into the hall without meeting her eyes, without saying a word. Because I know she doesn’t mean it: I know it’s the scent of fresh flowers on my skin that confuses her thoughts, beckons her close.

In the hall, Randy Ashspring is waiting a few paces ahead of me, and he holds a hand toward me. “I can carry your books for you, if you want?” His eyes are all doughy and strange, and I shake my head at him, turning sharply toward the bathrooms located on the far side of the hallway.

“Hey, Lark!” a voice says to my left. I barely glance in its direction and see Cole Campbell smiling at me, his charming soccer-star grin enough to make me slow my pace. Cole plays on a state team—since Cutwater High doesn’t have a soccer club—and his shaggy blond hair sways into his eyes as he moves toward me. “I was wondering if you’re doing anything after school?” The left side of his mouth lifts, the freckles puckering along his cheeks. “I could pick you up. We could drive to Favorville, see a movie, maybe?” He pauses, like he can’t believe his own words, like he can’t believe he’s asking Lark Goode out on a date. But still, he continues. “Or just watch the sunset from Cutwater Ridge.” His eyes sway over me, lost in a dream, a heady, lovesick reverie, but I snap my gaze away—severing his stare before it gets any worse.

“Sorry, Cole,” I answer quickly. “I can’t.” And I slip into the bathroom.

I should have told him, Hell no. Told him to fuck off. I’ve found that it’s better to be blunt, to the point. The hard edge of rejection sometimes breaks the stupor of infatuation. Even if they still feel overcome by a dreadful sense of longing—a lovelorn sickness festering in their chest—their need to avoid embarrassment can sometimes override any future confessions of their feelings for me.

But right now I feel bad for them—I always do in the beginning—I know it’s not their fault, I know their feelings aren’t their own.

I lock myself in the far stall, listening to the sound of girls entering the bathroom, lingering a little too long at the sinks, their heads dizzy with a feeling they can’t explain—a spirituous scent that causes a prick at the back of the neck, a desire they can’t pinpoint—before finally retreating out into the halls. The bell rings for second period, but I stay right where I am.

The echo of footsteps and voices in the hall slowly fades, then falls quiet. My heart settles in my chest, a dulled, temporary feeling of calm.

My second-period class is American Lit, and I know Mrs. Garrison plans to have us sit in groups and discuss our favorite writers from the nineteenth century—Whitman and Poe, Emerson and Thoreau, John Muir and Ida B. Wells. A way to sum up our last year of studies. But I can’t possibly sit in a tiny circle of my classmates, their thoughts unable to focus, their eyes unblinking.

I consider leaving the bathroom, grabbing my bag from my locker, and running home. This is exactly why Archer stays away from school once the tulips have bloomed, because it’s almost unbearable. But last week Principal Lee made an announcement over the loudspeaker, warning us that anyone who missed a single day of our last week of school wouldn’t graduate.

So I stay put.

I’ll wait out second period, until lunch.

Headphones on, I mute the world beyond my safe hiding place and slide out my notebook from beneath my textbook, then press it against the wall of the bathroom stall. I open to the last page— the boy . I run my finger across his forehead, the stray pieces of his dark hair. I glide my pencil along his temple, shading in his earlobe, then falling to his chin, his mouth… but I don’t know the exact shape of his lips. I wish I could see him again, up close, get a better sense of his eye color, the shadows made by his eyelashes, the slope of his jawline—before I lose the memory of him completely.

But I haven’t seen him in the halls. He wasn’t in the crowd before the bell rang—I would have noticed him. But if he doesn’t go to Cutwater High, then who is he? And why was he in the parking lot yesterday, reading a book against a tree?

I fill in the parts of him I can remember: the broad angle of his shoulders, the paperback book in his hands, the easy way he perched against the tree trunk as if he were a million miles away, lost to the story unfolding in the pages before him. Time slinks away from me, until the bell chimes in the halls again, second period over.

I listen to the rush of students slamming their locker doors as they head for the cafeteria or the front lawn, footsteps echoing off the brick walls. When only a few voices remain, I slip silently from the bathroom and reach my locker without anyone spotting me. I retrieve my bag and push through the double doors, breathing in the crisp spring air—grateful to be free of the school.

There are fewer students scattered across the lawn than there were yesterday. Perhaps the rest have chosen to spend their lunch hour in the foul-smelling, dimly lit cafeteria— away from me .

But I don’t make it more than a step toward the lawn before I feel a hand on my shoulder. I flinch away, my heart instantly a piston, but the figure moves even closer, forcing me back against the brick wall of the school. I blink, trying to refocus, but a face—Gabby Pines’s—is suddenly right in front of me. Like she can’t get close enough. Her strawberry hair is pulled up into a bun, and a piece of some unknown candy is pressed against the inside of her left cheek. “Do you have more?” she asks, tone hushed, secretive, her breath smelling of mint and watermelon.

“What?”

I’m shocked that she’s this close to me. Surprised she would risk it.

“The tulips,” she presses, more insistent now, eyelashes no longer blinking over her glassy blue eyes. “The ones you grow behind your house.”

I take a step to my right, but she mirrors my movement, the side of her lip twitching as she shifts the candy from one cheek to the other. “They say it was the flowers all along—they’re the reason people fall in love with you each spring.” Her nostrils swell, like she’s uncovered all my secrets—like she sees what I really am.

My heart starts thudding against my eardrums. Panic claws at my thoughts, causing everything to blur—even Gabby’s face.

Locals in Cutwater have always known there is something odd about the Goodes. Witches or demons or monsters. But they’ve never understood why they fall madly in love with us as the season melts from spring into summer. They feel the enchantment to be near us, but they don’t understand its origin. Its source.

But now… I can see the look in Gabby’s eyes. Like she’s figured it all out. And my head begins to pound, my fingers shaking at my sides.

“People like to tell stories… but it’s not true,” I say, but my voice is weak, unconvincing. Shit. I just need to get away from her, away from the others who have slowed as they walk by, eyes watching me, straining to hear Gabby’s words.

“I’ll buy one from you,” Gabby adds, voice low as her eyes dart to the left like a bird watching for scavengers. “I have cash.”

I shake my head at her, my breathing starting to tighten in my lungs. I feel caged in. Trapped.

“Please…,” she hisses. And in her eyes I see something else, a shift: she’s too close to me. She’s starting to lose control of her own heart—her eyelashes flit, her mouth parts just a little—and I can see the lovesickness taking shape in the features of her face, in the strange rhythm of her breathing.

I swallow, the cold brick wall of the school against my back, and I know I need to get out of here. I turn before she can tip any closer, breaking away from her stare, and scramble down the front steps of the school.

I start across the lawn, but my eyes catch sight of something.

Some… thing .

Snow-white blooms.

White and fearful.

Awful red streaks burned across each petal, winking luridly beneath the midday sun.

I squint, certain I’m mistaken.

But the green stem is held in the hands of Mac Williams—one of the boys from the fight this morning. I’m surprised he wasn’t sent home, suspended for the last few days of school. But his best friend, Tobias Huaman, is nowhere in sight.

The group of friends surrounding Mac stare down at the delicate flower, talking as if it were some rare artifact, discussing its worth, its intended use, like thickskulled anthropologists.

And I know…. It’s undeniable.

Mac holds an infamous, whispered-about-but-never-seen-up-close Goode tulip.

My heart slams into my stomach. Fear roils up into my chest, like I’m going to be sick.

One of the Goode tulips is no longer safely contained within the garden.

It’s here, at school, in the hands of someone who isn’t a Goode .

The group shifts closer to the bloom, gaping down at it, huddling like they’re at one of their Wednesday-night games. Blood roars against my eardrums, making all the voices around me turn watery and thick.

I start toward them, the feeling inside me burning like an electrical wire running down my spine. Mac notices me first, and he takes a quick step back, away from the circle. He’s afraid of me—a girl made of rumors and fables knotted throughout my family history, a girl who might as well be death itself. When I’m close enough, I reach out and yank the tulip from his hands, sharp and swift, my eyes burning into his. And he doesn’t try to stop me. He doesn’t even blink, shoulders pulled back, mouth open slightly like he’s afraid to speak.

“How did you get this?” I demand, my voice stronger than I expected, gripping the tulip stem in my fist. “Tell me how you got it.”

He shakes his head, but no words come out.

“Did you go into our garden?”

His lower lip falls open. “I, uh—uh… I… um, it’s not… I—” He can’t find the words, confusion cut across his features—like he doesn’t remember how to access his own mind. Like being this close to Lark Goode has rendered him utterly speechless.

I shake my head at him, irritated, angry, and when my eyes swing to his group of friends, they all stagger back, toward the school, as if my stare were cutting them wide open.

“If you trespass on our property again, you’ll regret it,” I tell him, the words sounding like a hex, a malediction, my eyes meeting his one last time. It’s an empty threat, but he doesn’t know that. And his chin nods swiftly, like this he understands, his brown eyes as big as a terrified puppy’s.

I shove the tulip into my bag, then march across the lawn. I don’t look back, but I know they’re watching me, I can feel their eyes, feel the breath held in their tight throats.

And when I reach the far lawn, I don’t walk to the elm tree where I normally eat my lunch. I keep going. Past the football field, through the parking lot, and out to the road.

I run all the way home.