"Thanks."

The Sisters linked arms, and those three gargantuan hats knocked up against each other as they shuffled toward their friends. Even the Sisters had friends. My life sucked.

"Shawn and Earl brought some beer and Jim Beam. Everyone's meetin' behind the Honeycutt crypt." At least I had Link.

We both knew I wouldn't be getting drunk anywhere. In a few minutes, I would be standing over my dead mother's grave. I'd be thinking about the way she always laughed when I told her about Mr. Lee and his twisted version of U.S.

History, or U.S. Hysteria, as she cal ed it. How she and my dad danced to James Taylor in our kitchen in bare feet. How she knew exactly what to say when everything was going wrong, like when my ex-girlfriend would rather be with some kind of mutant Supernatural than with me.

Link put his hand on my shoulder. "You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. Let's walk around." I would be standing over her grave today, but I wasn't ready. Not yet.

L, where are --

I caught myself and tried to pul my mind away. I don't know why I stil reached for her. Habit, I guess. But instead of Lena's voice, I heard Savannah's. She stood in front of me, wearing way too much makeup but somehow stil managing to look pretty. She was al glossy hair and gloppy eyelashes and tied-up little straps on her sundress that were probably only there to make a guy think about untying them. I mean, if you didn't know what a bitch she was, or didn't care.

"I'm real sorry about your mamma, Ethan." She cleared her throat awkwardly. Her mother probably made her come over here, pil ar of the community that Mrs. Snow was. Tonight, though it was barely over a year since my mom died, I'd find more than one casserole on our doorstep, just like the day after her funeral. Time passed slowly in Gatlin, kind of like dog years, only in reverse. And like the day after the funeral, Amma would leave every one of them out there for the possums.

Seems possums never get tired of ham 'n' apple casserole.

It was stil the nicest thing Savannah had said to me since September. Even though I didn't care what she thought of me, today it was nice to have one less thing to feel like crap about. "Thanks."

Savannah smiled her fake smile and walked off, her high heels jerking as they got stuck in the grass. Link loosened his tie, which was crooked and too short. I recognized it from sixth-grade graduation. Underneath it, he had snuck out of the house wearing a T-shirt that said I'M WITH STUPID, with arrows pointing in al different directions. It pretty much summed up how I was feeling today, too. Surrounded by stupid.

The hits kept on coming. Maybe folks were feeling guilty because I had a crazy father and a dead mother. More likely, they were scared of Amma. Anyway, I must have surpassed Loretta West, a three-time widow whose last husband died after a gator bit a hole in his stomach, as the most pathetic person at Al Souls. If they gave out prizes, I would've won the blue ribbon. I could tel by the way folks shook their heads when I walked by. What a pity, Ethan Wate doesn't have a mamma anymore.

It was the same way Mrs. Lincoln was shaking her head right now, as she headed my way, with You Poor Misguided Motherless Boy written on her face. Link ducked out before she hit her target. "Ethan, I wanted to say how much we all miss your mamma." I wasn't sure who she was talking about -- her friends in the DAR, who couldn't stand my mom, or the women who sat around the Snip 'n' Curl talking about how my mother read too many books and no good could come from that. Mrs. Lincoln blotted a nonexistent tear from her eye. "She was a good woman. You know, I remember how much she loved to garden. Always outside tendin' her roses with her tender heart."

"Yes, ma'am."

The closest my mom ever came to gardening was when she sprinkled cayenne pepper al over the tomatoes so my dad wouldn't kil the rabbit that kept eating them. The roses were Amma's. Everyone knew that. I wished Mrs. Lincoln would try that "tender heart" comment to Amma's face. "I like to think she's right up there with the angels, tendin' that old, sweet Garden a Eden now. Prunin' and trimmin' the Tree a Knowledge, with the cherubs and the --"

Snakes?

"I've gotta go find my dad, ma'am." I had to get away from Link's mom before lightning struck her -- or me, for wanting it to.

Her voice trailed after me. "Tel your daddy I'm gonna drop him off one a my famous ham 'n' apple casseroles!" That sealed the deal. I was getting the blue ribbon for sure. I couldn't get away from her fast enough. But at Al Souls, there was no escape. As soon as you made it past one creepy relative or neighbor, there was another one right around the corner. Or, in Link's case, another creepy parent.

Link's dad slung his arm around Tom Watkins' neck. "Earl was the best of us. He had the best uniform, the best battle formations --" Link's dad choked back a drunken sob. "And he made the best ammunition." Coincidently, Big Earl was kil ed making some of that ammo, and Mr. Lincoln had replaced him as the leader of the Cavalry, in the Reenactment of the Battle of Honey Hil . Some of that guilt was here today in the form of whiskey.

"I wanted to bring my gun and give Earl a proper salute, but Dammit Doreen hid it from me." Ronnie Weeks' wife was general y known as Dammit Doreen, sometimes shortened to DD, on account of that's al he ever said to her. He took another swig of whiskey.

"To Earl!" They grabbed each other around the neck, raising their cans and bottles over Earl's grave. Beer and Wild Turkey sloshed al over the headstone, Gatlin's tribute to the fal en.