First We Were IV

by Alexandra Sirowy

  “The truth serum,” Graham reminded him politely.

  “Whoops.” Campbell cradled the Mistress as he took a sip. “Blah. Oh, crap. That really sucks balls, guys.”

  Viv and Harry exchanged a faint smile.

  “Your secret?” Graham’s stare prodded.

  “Oh yeah,” he said conversationally as he returned the bottle to the floor. “I’ve got this secret thing all figured out. I was a little freaked because I can’t usually keep things to myself. My older sister looks at me and knows what’s up and my younger sister is a huge snoop. So this isn’t a secret from them, but a secret from all of them.” He jerked a thumb toward the door.

  “Your friends,” I said.

  He bobbed his head. “I moved here the summer before high school. We used to live in Chicago. I was really skinny, wore glasses—no offense, man,” he said aside to Graham. “Didn’t know what music was good, geeked out over the wrong stuff, and didn’t have a lot of friends. I was beat up on. Bad. During the first summer here, I worked out, got contacts, and my older sister took me to concerts and helped me pick out new clothes. Being from Chicago and moving to this tiny place helped. Everyone was impressed. They thought I knew rappers because I was from Chicago and, well, black.” He pointed to his face. “They thought I was this big stoner guy and I let them all think it, telling them stories about stuff that never happened. I just slipped right in with Trent and Conner. Easy.”

  “Do you think they’d like you if they knew?” Viv asked.

  His shoulders shrugged up to his ears. “Sure. Definitely. They’re my friends.”

  “What about your old friends in Chicago?” she pressed.

  He coughed, stalling. Her question had shaken him. “Um, I don’t really know. I haven’t texted or called them, and if we were friends on social media or something, my friends now would see what I used to be like.”

  She opened her mouth and I knew she was going to say, If you think your friends now wouldn’t care, why hide what you used to be like?

  “Thanks, Campbell,” I said, sending him from the barn.

  Next, Conner. He tried to appear hard to impress while standing at the center of our circle. He swished the truth serum around his mouth, tipped his head back, and gargled before he swallowed. He checked the bottom of the idol like he was looking for a “Made in China” sticker. He rapped a knuckle on her head.

  “Stop it,” Harry said. “Tell us your secret or get out.”

  Conner’s perpetually bored smile turned cruel. Then he rolled his shoulders back, and while staring into the idol’s face said, “I’ve cheated on every girl that’s ever gone out with me.”

  “Who has ever gone out with you.” Harry didn’t miss a beat. “They’re girls, not ‘its’ or objects or animals.”

  Conner glanced up from the idol, one bushy brow hitched, mocking Harry. “Whatever you say, Chief. Was that juicy enough? You all hard? I pass?”

  “No,” Graham said, “you don’t.”

  “Why the fuck not?”

  “It has to be a secret you mind people knowing,” Graham said. “You’d write serial cheater on a T-shirt and parade it around school.”

  Conner snorted. “Not the parading part.” He balanced the idol on his open palm as he thought. “I ran away once.”

  “More,” Graham demanded.

  “After my mom died. I put protein bars, a picture of us in a macaroni heart frame she saved, and this dumb frog stuffed animal in my backpack. It was two days until my dad and brother noticed I was gone.”

  “Where did you go?” I whispered.

  “The tunnel didn’t used to be shut off,” he said, stifling a yawn.

  “The Ghost Tunnel?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How old were you?” I said.

  He scowled. “Why are you so nosey?”

  I shook my head and stammered, “Sorry.”

  “Happy?” He set the idol by his feet and left.

  Viv licked her thumb and forefinger and pinched the flame of a candle at her feet.

  “It worked,” Harry said, a heaviness to his words.

  I knelt, feeling out of breath before I even started blowing out the flames.

  Another wick sizzled between Viv’s fingers. She was smiling, almost like she was baring her teeth.

  It had worked. We were going to wield them as weapons against Seven Hills. Use them. They’d injured my friends. Didn’t that make them my enemies? Conner and Amanda especially. Shouldn’t I have wanted to use my enemies?

  Another candle died between Viv’s wetted fingers.

  “You’re going to burn yourself,” I said.

  Viv lowered her head and blew.

  I couldn’t look our initiates in their eager eyes as we met them outside of the barn, as Viv passed around glass jars with candles burning brightly within, and Harry and Graham led them into the trees toward the meteorite. Toward our stage. For Goldilocks, I promised myself. For her revenge. For us.

  22

  Graham took a winding route though the orchard. The boughs were thick and golden with leaves. Without their apples, the trees seemed taller. The initiates held their glass jar candles, one after the other, a light-touched tunnel burning through the dark.

  I brought up the caboose with Viv. Her warm arm intermittently pressed against my skin.

  Amanda and her friends slowed through the borderlands of the orchard. They stopped with the trees. The rock loomed ahead. For the six who hadn’t played on the meteorite as children, its landmark meant wilderness. It was death and mystery and nothing good.

  Graham, standing on top, silhouetted against the bonfire, waited. Jess pushed to the front and crawled up first. Brave girl.

  Halfway up the rock, my hands went slippery. The meteorite was like a conduit for mysterious appearances. I hesitated putting my toe in the last groove. Here we were, tempting it again. Only this time we were using it as a prop in a play. Even Goldilocks had become a prop. I winced. Stop. This was all for her. All for revenge.

  The initiates gathered together. Graham and Harry flanked an old-fashioned leather trunk they had delivered earlier, when we built up the bonfire.

  My eyes picked at its lock. Its rusted iron key was tucked in Graham’s pocket, yet I hoped it wouldn’t open. Let the key snap. Let the trunk’s resident stay hidden. Alive.

  Graham flung his arms in the air and the chatter fell silent. He breathed loudly through his nose. “Thousands of years ago this meteorite fell to Earth. It came slowly and defied gravity. Left no crater.” The initiates toed curiously at the rock. This wasn’t what they’d expected. Odd. Kids in Seven Hills tended to forget that our town was home to mysteries.

  Harry cleared his throat and began. “There are written legends found all over the world with a single common thread. They include a rock, large as a house, falling from the sky and landing softly at the base of seven hills.” The bonfire exhaled a whorl of embers. “Visions of this meteorite are in the histories of civilizations separated by thousands of years and thousands of miles. Told by shamans, diviners, and priestesses.”

  Viv floated to the boys, spindly and ethereal as a spider. “These civilizations sent their explorers and hunters out in search of the meteorite. Some of those who looked believed the rock was a source of magic. Others believed it was a hungry spirit that needed to be fed sacrifices.” She withdrew a collection of hat pins from a satin pouch. Each were burnished to a piercing shine, capped with black stones, her great-grandmother’s once upon a time.

  I was sure I could hear the stampeding heart of our captive sensing the instruments of its death near. “Living in these hills was a strange pack of animals.” I recited my lines without giving them thought, too distracted by listening for the beat of wings. “The animals were carnivorous. They fed on the people who came. This went on for thousands of years, tribes arriving to find the seven hills and the rock, the hoofed beasts driving them away. This idol belonged to a group of believers who worshipped her in a land far away fro
m here,” I said, brushing the Mistress in Harry’s arms. “Her name translates to the Mistress of Rebellion and Secrets. Her Order of followers had a prophecy.”

  Viv pressed her finger to the points of the pins as she spoke dreamily. “It foretold her falling to Earth on a star. Her believers only needed to find the star and then she’d bestow on them the ability to tell the future. When they learned of this rock and our seven hills, they knew it must be the place. When they arrived, the fanged animals met them. But they were different from the tribes that came before. They were skilled warriors. And they killed the entire pack and put their corpses on the meteorite to swear a blood oath to their goddess.”

  “Just as we’ll swear a blood oath tonight,” Graham’s voice boomed. A collective shiver coursed through the initiates.

  Harry took over from there. I was caught in staring at Graham, his cookie-stealing expression amplified, pulling a heist on the whole world. “The Order of believers soon realized that their Mistress had fallen to Earth as the star, not on the star,” Harry said. “And every hundred years they buried two birds, animals they believed were from the sky like the star, as a blood sacrifice. This went on for four hundred years.”

  “But then the settlers came,” Graham said.

  “Seven Hills was founded right where my house is,” Viv told the group, her eyes skittering across the timeless dark beyond us. “It was lawless, and the strong took advantage of the weak. The Order of IV put aside their ceremonial robes, buried their idol, and retreated into the hills, where they became a mountain rebel force.”

  “A guerrilla army.” Graham grinned menacingly. “Their idol and their history were buried to be recovered in a safer time. They had passed down stories of the fanged creatures that had lived in the hills, and so the Order left paw prints in blood and animal carcasses on doorsteps. They frightened away the worst people from Seven Hills. Whenever injustice was here, they marked the guilty with blood. They kept order.”

  “You remember when the scientists came to study this rock—our meteorite—and its drawings?” I asked. I knew they did. The scientists and their findings inspired months of lessons in our classrooms. For a while it was our town’s claim to fame and curious tourists would trickle up on the Marlos’ property until they posted all the Private Property and Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted signs.

  “One of the anthropologists was younger and she used to talk to us. Her expertise was in folklore and legend. She excavated the birds that were buried in sets, wings pointed north, south, east, and west,” I said. The initiates drew forward. “Everyone knows about the birds. But what she never shared with the other scientists was that she also uncovered this idol. The birds, the meteorite, the drawings, and the idol were all parts of an urban legend. She’d thought the Order of IV was just a story, until her discovery confirmed its existence.”

  “She told Graham, Izzie, and Viv the story we’ve told you,” Harry said. “She made them promise to keep the idol safe until it was time to revive the Order of IV in Seven Hills.”

  “She told us we’d know when the moment was right,” I said. “And we did. We started out small with the school dress code and Bedford. But the Order isn’t small.” I went to stand in the exact spot I’d found Goldilocks in. “A girl not much older than us was killed in Seven Hills. She was left right where I’m standing, five years ago. Someone tried to make her look connected to the rock. The police didn’t care. The mayor didn’t care. Our neighbors didn’t care even though some of them heard suspicious noises the night she died. No one helped. All of them think they’ve gotten away with it. They think she didn’t matter because she was young, because they called her a runaway.” I raised my chin in defiance. “The Order of IV has come back to Seven Hills. It’s time the adults know we’re watching them. They’re not in charge anymore. It’s time we make them pay for the girl’s unsolved murder.” There were four sets of glassy eyes on me—the girls and Campbell nodding with conviction, ready to march off to avenge her. There was a skeptical slant to Trent and Conner’s heads.

  “Seven Hills is ours,” I said. “It can be yours too.” I met Conner’s stare. “We’re its keepers. We decide who’s wrong and right. Who gets punished. You can too.” I paused, let it sink in, felt victory surge through me when Conner swallowed. He wanted it.

  “To join us, you’ll have to complete initiation rites,” Harry said. “After these rites, you’ll belong to the Order of IV.” Empty promise. They’d never belong in the way we did.

  Viv explained the procedures for the rites. An acolyte’s role to play was a rite; these rites together added up to the larger rebellion. Initiates would be given a sequence of them. Instructions would be delivered in secret, one at a time. The initiate needed to memorize it and then destroy the paper trail.

  Graham crouched to open the trunk as Viv handed a hat pin to each initiate, touching the lance to their shoulder like a queen knighting subjects.

  “Each of us will drive a pin into the same heart and swear an oath to the Order of IV,” Viv said unfalteringly.

  Graham’s legs straightened and he turned, revealing the dove. It was frozen in terror, a dim rattle coming from its throat.

  Jess cursed under her breath. There was a nervous flutter of laughter, a This is not for real feeling. But they all came forward. The dove’s head twitched back and forth; its yellow talons curled in on themselves.

  I broke into a cold sweat approaching it. I needed to be certain my pin hit its mark, not too low in the liver or too high in the crop. No suffering, only instant death. I’d studied anatomy charts. I’d examined the downy white bird this morning, mustering a clinical indifference that made me cruel. Necessary so the initiates drove their pins into a corpse.

  The flutter of the dove’s tiny heart thrummed under my fingertips. It knew. Goldilocks likely hadn’t been given an instant, painless death. Not a skewer through the heart. You won’t suffer. I set the pin’s point in the spot between its ribs.

  Graham whispered, barely moving his lips, “It’ll be over soon.” Whether it was meant for me or the dove, I didn’t know. I applied pressure, steadily slid the needle in, and felt the last throb of the bird’s fragile body.

  “I pledge my blood, secrets, and rites to the Mistress of Rebellion and Secrets. Seven Hills will be judged by her.” A cry swelled in my throat; I choked it down.

  The hat pin stayed piercing the dove’s heart, a compass to those following. I felt for the flask tucked inside Graham’s vest and brushed past the others. The wind beat the trees, and I tried to hear only the creaking branches. Let them all break apart. Let all of Seven Hills hear the wind’s reckoning. Their oaths rose above the wind, spiraling into the sky, threatening menace.

  I drank steadily.

  Out of the corner of my eye there were blood-striped hands. With each delivered pin, another initiate descended on the crate of cider. The first sip freed them of guilt, enchanted the rock, welcomed them to dance, sing, and howl as if it were all a play.

  Viv and Amanda channeled Lady Macbeth.

  “Out damned spot,” Viv crowed.

  “Who would have thought the bird had so much blood in him,” Amanda answered with a depraved giggle.

  I turned my back to the sacrifice. To the green goblin bottles working their magic. To the last oath given.

  “Hey,” Harry whispered. His eyes were careful on mine.

  I offered him the flask. “It tastes like lighter fluid.”

  Harry smiled crookedly. “That’s okay.”

  We stood in silence. My limbs seemed to be melting away, along with the sensation of the dove’s heartbeat in my fingers. I took another sip.

  Graham came between us with his arms slung around our shoulders. “Why aren’t you two celebrating?” He took the flask from my hand and drank, his arm tightening around me. He hissed with an open mouth. “Stepdad Number Three had crap taste in libations.”

  I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the stars turning as neon as the stickers in my c
loset.

  “We have six more to help us,” Graham murmured into my ear. “The bird had to be done. It convinced them we’re serious.”

  Graham’s head was bent watching me, Harry’s at a sharper angle beyond his. They looked slightly scared and I thought it was because they were waiting to hear if we’d crossed a line killing the bird.

  Maybe, I thought—optimistic drunk that I was—we hadn’t crossed the line but kicked it so it stayed out in front of us. It still existed. A limit. A threshold for escalating mischief.

  I took the flask back, raised it, and said, “For Goldilocks.”

  23

  The following morning Harry and I buried the dove in a grave under an apple tree. The fabric of my dress was a stiff shell from spilled cider, smoke of the bonfire, and sleeping on the barn floor. I navigated over the irregularities of the orchard with tenuous steps, searching for just the right spot.

  I withdrew each hat pin from the bird’s breast. Harry made a strange sound over my shoulder. I thought he was trying to keep from crying, but when I looked, his eyes sparked with anger.

  Shovel braced on his shoulders, arms hooked over it, Harry walked in front of me on the way back to the barn. I had trouble finding words. We had our army. At a cost. I took comfort in sketching the next rebellion in my mind.

  Viv knocked on my front door at midday. Cheery sun splashed on the porch, a lip gloss smile behind her chai, its twin with my name in barista’s scrawl. Her scarlet rain boots shrieked in the foyer and up the stairs.

  In my bedroom, “Graham thinks it’s going to rain” was the first thing out of her mouth. “It’ll rain and everything we’re planning—the blood, the fire, will be ruined.”

  She practically smelled of sunshine. “He’s paranoid,” I said. She chewed a lock of hair, unconvinced. “Vivy, the universe wouldn’t let it rain this week of all weeks. The universe wants us to have our rebellions.”