His expression was shadowed. He wasn’t talking. I couldn’t even hear his breath.
Nervous, I offered, “You could still make an epic connection with Jess. Let’s go back and try.”
He held his arm taut, resisting me for a moment. Then a plaintive sigh, and his arm slackened, and he shuffled after me.
When we were under the trellis, a few yards away from the bumping music, I heard him whisper behind me. His voice ghosted into the night and I pretended not to notice.
I wonder, what if I’d stopped. Faced him. And listened.
Retrieved from the cellular phone of Vivian Marlo
Transcript and notes prepared by Badge #821891
Shared Media Folder Titled: IV, Sun., Oct. 13, 2:06 a.m.
Video start.
V. Marlo levels a finger at the camera. “I am not drunk.” She laughs. “Okay, maybe just a teensy little bit. The head drama instructor at the Lessing Summer Theater Academy is this ancient hag who once upon a time starred in an off-Broadway production of The Fantastics.” She twirls a finger in the air. “Stuff of legends, I know. She’s a million years old, a cigarette dangling from her mouth, and wine stains on her coat. Most of my fellow thespians consider themselves too advanced to humor her. But once she heard me say that acting is the best kind of lying, lies even the liar believes, and she pulled me aside where she breathed her rancid old-person breath into my face and said, ‘People are all lies, Ms. Marlo, lies piled on lies, on top of lies, and they almost always believe their own hype. To be a truly great actor,’ she wheezed past her cigarette, ‘is to forget the truth.’ ”
She stares at the lens for a long time. When she speaks again, she’s whispering. “The old crow was right. Last night at homecoming, I forgot the truth. Those girls.” She slowly shakes her head. “Jess always acts way over the world, so when she thinks you’re interesting, it’s major. Rachel is the best sidekick ever. She’s all uh-huh and absolutely and amirite to everything. She said her dad could show my headshot to one of his clients who represents models. And Amanda, she was the best. All reminiscing, like Remember when you played Lucy in Dracula, now I can say you were the be-all end-all.”
She smiles slyly. “And I almost bought it. Those slippery bitches. I grinned, said thank you, danced, and shared their flask of raspberry vodka. I loved the way they sat in one another’s laps, fell over hugging, and acted grossed out by the boys but were all flirty anyway. By the end of the night, when Amanda air-kissed me good-bye after her little performance confessing to breaking and entering, I saw it in her eyes. Amanda thinks she played me. She thinks I’m dumb enough to ever trust her again.”
She hugs herself. “I’d hold a grudge against that girl after a hundred years of her kissing my ass. Some things you never forgive.”
Video stop.
21
Our story has to be a tragedy. Epic. Shakespearean. Greek,” Viv proclaimed, arms thrown wide as she balanced along the edge of the stage. “It’ll have betrayal. Intrigue. Murder. Maybe an exiled queen. And heroes.” She went up on her toes to pivot and reverse, her black dress lifting and swirling. “I just love a tragic hero.”
I was on my stomach, idly kicking my socked heels together. “Tragic hero. Murder. Intrigue,” I recited, adding each to my notes.
“People like their heroes to be partly bad,” Graham said.
I typed antihero.
Harry’s calculus text thudded on the stage as he said, “Not really.”
I highlighted antihero; hit backspace. On second thought, I added it again, with a question mark.
Graham considered Harry with an intense stare. “We’ll agree to disagree on the subject of heroics.” He chomped down on a fistful of chocolate-covered peanuts, ruminating over his next thought. “The Order’s story has got to be a spectacle of blood and guts. Like the apocalypse of an ancient civilization who worshipped our idol.”
“But if this ancient civilization ended, who passed their story on?” Harry asked, propping his elbows on his knees. “History’s written by winners, and winners say sucky things about losers. They don’t pass on their legends and stories.”
“Maybe they weren’t completely obliterated, then. There were a few survivors of a fallen kingdom and they kept the story alive,” Graham said. “Satisfied?”
Harry scratched the back of his head. “It’s too complicated. Amanda, Conner—they begged us to join. They bragged about their crappy behavior. We’re allowing them in. No convincing needed.”
“Do you think that’ll be enough for them to do whatever we say?” Viv asked. “Like, if Amanda goes, Why do we have to do blah-blah rebellion and we say, Because, it’ll be enough?”
“We’ll say, Because the rebellion punks this or that jerk,” Harry said. “And yeah, I think it’ll be enough.”
“But if it’s not?” Graham asked. “If they’re punking us and if we don’t prove to them how serious we are, then what?”
“So keep it simple,” I said. “Have a story about the Order, how we discovered it, and why they should follow its rules. Just use what’s right in front of us.”
“Chocolate-covered peanuts,” Viv said, sinking into our circle.
“No.” I side-eyed her. “The meteorite, the drawings, the birds, and Goldilocks.”
“I mean, communism.” She opened and closed an outstretched hand.
Graham slid the bag of chocolate in her direction. She caught it, ignoring an escapee peanut that dropped off the stage. Viv had reserved the auditorium to practice her blocking and lines, but when I stopped by to say good-bye after Monday’s classes, she was on her back, kicking the red velvet curtain and swiping through pictures on her cell. “I can’t concentrate on Antigone when there’s a better performance to plan,” she’d whined. And there we all were, on the stage, an appropriate place to reinvent the Order of IV.
“Hmmm. Use what’s right in front of us,” Graham murmured to himself. To us he said, “But we have to start out with a demonstration of conviction. Blood. Guts. Something so they know how serious the Order is. Too bad we already cut our hands.”
“I am not doing another blood offering,” Viv said, thumbing her freshly healed palm. “One scar is character; two’s deformity.”
Graham kept brainstorming. Viv struck down each of his ideas. I clicked over to my web browser; it was already open to a missing persons database. I scanned the photos that were new in the last week. I couldn’t imagine a scenario where her family failed to notice that Goldilocks was missing for five years. Where was this girl’s version of Graham, Harry, and Viv?
All those eyes of the missing inhabited my computer screen. I gave each a perfunctory glance. Don’t let them in. Nothing familiar about any of the girls, except the sense that they could be in the back row of any of my classes. Regular girls. Biting their nails, twisting their earring studs, and singing off-key.
Viv reclined on her back beside me. The gold buttons on her black dress were the shape of scarab beetles, marching up her front. “All we need is for Amanda and Conner to play along. The rest are lemmings,” she stated matter-of-factly to the stage lights. “I wish I knew how they all became friends. How Conner and Amanda became king and queen.”
I smiled at the Viv classicism.
If she vanished, what would I do? There were hands in my stomach turning it inside out. What if there was someone out there who’d been able to help her, and instead they pulled indifference and their comforters over their heads to go back to sleep? Threw out her shoe. Washed away her blood. Rage brought tears to my eyes. Screw indifference. What would I do to her killer? Goldilocks had one, a fact I kept glossing over. It was difficult to grasp. The adults weren’t interested in holding anyone accountable for her death, and even if I didn’t like it, their thinking influenced mine. I had to remind myself there was someone to blame above all the rest. Someone who deserved punishment far more than Denton, Carver, and our neighbors did.
I closed the browser. A mere few weeks before, leaving my fri
ends for college seemed like a tragedy. How privileged, flimsy, and naive of me.
• • •
• • •
On Wednesday afternoon, Viv delivered instructions to Amanda and Conner. With their four friends, they were to arrive at the barn without cell phones, dressed in white, at midnight on Saturday. All would be revealed. Viv warned them that if a hint of this arrangement was whispered to anyone outside the six who were invited, the invitation would be revoked.
As instructed, they came, ghosts slipping through the orchard. Graham, Viv, Harry, and I were in our places, backs facing north, east, south, and west. We’d cleared the furniture from the center of the barn to make room for the formation of white candles we surrounded.
The muffled laughter outside grew louder. Viv clutched the idol to her breasts, the cut of her black dress low, a lace choker at her thin neck. We were in dark-colored Victorian-era costumes that she’d pieced together from the wardrobes in her attic. My lace collar was high and tight, curling like flower petals under my chin. Viv’s black fingerless gloves accentuated her red talons. Graham stood tall in a vest under a long, unbuttoned jacket. There was a vampiric quality to his stiff posture, pale skin, and ruddy mouth; only the needlepoints of sweat gathering at his brow gave him away. Harry had left his jacket behind in the attic, his shirtsleeves were rolled up, and a watch chain ran from a buttonhole to the pocket of his vest.
“We have to shock them into submission,” Viv had told me when she presented the costumes. “It has to be a production. We have to commit.”
The initiates filtered into the barn, wide-eyed, whispering, wearing white. The girls wore slightly old-fashioned dresses, either by coincidence or Viv’s direction.
Graham took charge. “Jess and Trent, stand between Viv and Harry. Amanda and Conner, go between Harry and Izzie. Rachel, you’re here, and Campbell, you’re between me and Izzie.” They filled the gaps of our circle around the burning candles.
Their eyes had the glassy strain of holding back laughter. Only Campbell met my gaze with curiosity. If one of them burst, we’d lose the rest. Forget the ridicule; if they laughed, left, there’d be no reason for them not to out us as IV.
Viv lifted the idol above her head. The initiates struggled to smooth their expressions. “Before we can welcome you into our ranks and share our secrets, there are a series of initiation rites. The first will be administered tonight.” The conviction in her voice was a hypnotic lullaby. “If you complete the initial rite, we’ll tell you about the Order.”
Breathy echoes of “the Order” traveled the circle.
“The first rite is a show of good faith,” Harry said. “Because these traditions are built on the secrets of the land we’re standing on, we require each of you to share a secret with us.” Somehow his staring uncomfortably at the wall worked, making him seem captivated by an unseen presence.
Graham’s arms were crossed high on his chest and his voice was commanding, kingly. “You’ll wait outside for your turn and then one by one you’ll take a sip of our truth-telling serum and offer us a secret. We will either accept or deny your bid to join us. We swear on the Order that we’ll keep your confidence so long as you keep ours.”
“Objections?” I asked. I expected there to be, which was why I was about to follow up the question with a threat: If they chose to leave without sharing a secret and told anyone about the Order, Harry would reveal their friends’ secrets on the school news blog.
They played the roles of devoted initiates. They filed out. Amanda remained, beaming, hands nervously ticking over her pin-straight hair.
Graham indicated the clearing in the formation of candles where he’d placed an old, dusty blue bottle brimming with a homemade concoction of animal blood and a pine-flavored liquor that Stepdad Number Four left behind.
Amanda was given the idol. She made her way amid the candles, her hem fanning the flames, distorting her shadow on the wall. Her free hand grappled with the heavy bottle.
“Take a sip of the truth serum,” Graham said. He believed that if we told the initiates it worked, it would. Power of suggestion.
I widened my eyes at Harry as Amanda took two long drags.
She coughed with the second; a fine spray of red dots left on her white collar when she was done. “Blah,” she spat. “Tastes like blood and dirt.” She placed the bottle at her feet and let the idol hang at her side.
“Put her against your heart,” Viv instructed.
Amanda hugged the statue, cheeks flushing.
“The Mistress of Rebellion and Secrets will burn you if you lie,” I said, a growl to my voice. “Begin.”
Her eyes narrowed. “How can I be sure you aren’t going to blab what I tell you?”
“You know we’re IV,” I said. “You know what we did to the police chief’s and the mayor’s houses. That’s leverage.” I could practically hear Graham thinking sarcastically, And mutual assured destruction never fails.
One of Amanda’s thin blond eyebrows lifted. “Okay. Just as long as you know how screwed you’d be.” She drew back her shoulders. “What do I get if I have the best secret?”
Harry grunted his inquiry.
“If my secret is better, do I get to stop being an initiate first?” she clarified.
I opened my mouth to say no when Viv said, “I promise that if your secret is best, you’ll have a better role in the Order once you’re all not initiates anymore. More power than your friends.”
Amanda’s thin lips spread into a superior grin. “That’ll do.” She hardly paused a beat. “When Con and I went out we used to meet up at night in his dad’s model homes. But then he got wasted while we were at a USB party and was all over another girl, right in front of Jess and Campbell. Like they wouldn’t tell me. Then Con’s older brother, Bowden, was home from school and I was angry with Con, so I went with Bowden to one of the models. Bowden and I were, you know, and I heard someone coming up the stairs. Over Bowden’s shoulder the door opened a crack. I figured it was Con, following us, jealous. I got all moany to rub it in while he watched. Make sure he knew his brother was better. When we finished I went to the window to see how pissed Con looked getting into his car. It wasn’t Con.”
“Who was it?” I asked, caught up in the scandalous story.
Amanda’s smugness faltered and her voice strained as she answered, “Sebastian.”
“Conner’s dad?” Harry exclaimed.
“Gross,” I said. Viv’s fingers never stopped toying with her choker. Her features conveyed the same expression of aloof all-powerfulness as the idol in Amanda’s arms.
“Gross if he wasn’t so hot,” Amanda aimed at me. “He’s even hotter than Bowden.” A tilt of her head. “Come on, you’ve noticed.”
My mind scurried to recall Sebastian Welsh. Blond. Tan. Suit. Cocky smile like Conner’s. Fancy car. Mom and Dad didn’t socialize with him. He’d been over a few times when they designed one of his developments. “I guess,” I said doubtfully.
“He’s like, only forty,” she said.
“Only,” I muttered.
“The best secret, amirite?”
None of us spoke. She left, a swing to her hips, shaking her hands out at her side like she was shaking off a character.
“Was that for real?” I asked.
The boys made indistinct sounds. Viv arranged the beads at her collar. “Amanda would not lie.”
Then came Jess: nervous flutter of hands. Rogue red lipstick on her overly whitened front teeth. “My dad has a drinking problem,” she confessed in a bored tone, eyeing Graham. “He’s been to rehab four times. I think he’ll probably have to go back soon. I think he likes it there. It’s our dirty family secret.”
Next, Trent: refusal to look us in the eyes. A burp loud as a truck horn after the truth serum. But there was something in his manner that made him seem like he wanted to impress us.
“Amanda said she and Conner messed stuff up in his dad’s houses, but they got that idea from me. Con and me, we use
d to do all kinds of shit in his dad’s first block. It was that shitty street with the small houses that backs up against the freeway? Little dumps. His dad used to put furniture in them to show people what their crap would look like. I jacked a Plasma from one. We sold it at the gas station for a dime bag. Skank weed, too. Ripped off bad, but we were like thirteen.”
“You guys get caught?” Harry wondered.
“You shitting me? No way. Con’s dad blamed the real estate agent and that dude blamed the guy who mowed the lawn. Can I put her down now?” He clipped a candle retreating from the idol.
Rachel: pink, puffy face upturned, ready to confess to the loft. There was sweat beading on her forehead, the hundred tiny flames making her glisten. “Can I take another sip?” She indicated the serum at her feet.
“You may,” Graham said.
Her arm shook lifting the bottle as she took a drag longer than her first two. After setting the bottle down, she bit her lip purple. “I’m totally into this, really. Uhhhh, lemme think.” She hit her palm to her damp forehead, until finally she made a little surprised yelp. “I know: I almost got a DUI freshman year. I didn’t even have my license. But my dad plays golf with a prosecutor and he made it go away. Didn’t even get community service.”
Rachel left in a relieved and sweaty flurry.
I broke the stunned silence. “We shouldn’t know that.” It was occurring to me that secrets weren’t only dangerous for those who kept them—it was dangerous to know them.
“We’re exactly the ones who should know about a corrupt prosecutor,” Graham said, and went to continue, but the sliding door opened and in came Campbell.
Campbell made his way uneasily along the narrow passage in the candles. In place, he looked over his shoulder at Graham. “Wait. I can’t face you all at once. What about . . .” He started to turn. “Is this okay?” He adjusted to face me. I inclined my head with a quick smile, finding it a bit harder to appear the unforgiving Order member with Campbell. He lifted the Mistress and studied her face. “My sisters would either love this thing or be majorly creeped out. Hard to tell.”
First We Were IV Page 19
