Half Truths (Secret Society Book 1)

by Claire Contreras

  “When do you use it?”

  “Only to summon. We don’t want to bring people here unless we know for sure they’re going to be initiated.”

  I followed her to the top of the stairs, she paused by the door and turned to face me. “For the record, you’re not allowed up here, so pretend you never saw any of this.”

  She put the key in the hole and turned. It unlocked with a click, similar to the sound the front door made when Logan unlocked it. Nora walked inside and waited for me to take in the room—a dome ceiling that reminded me of the Sistine Chapel, with paintings of naked people sitting on clouds in a blue sky. I tried to make out the faces, but couldn’t really, so I figured they must be actual saints. The room itself, covered with wall-to-wall books, was smaller than the library Logan had shown me, but somehow seemed to contain more things. There were eight white busts on top of pillars that circled the library.

  “I guess The Eight really loves to read,” I said, looking around.

  “These are photo albums.”

  “What?” I walked up to one, pulling it out of the shelf.

  That was when I noticed the gold numbers on the spines. This one said 1924. I opened it carefully, not wanting to leave any grease from my fingers on the pictures. They were all covered in plastic, as if to preserve them.

  “There were women in the group even back then.” I looked up at Nora.

  “We were the only society to do that.” She smiled proudly.

  I shut the book and put it back in its place. I wasn’t going to know anyone who attended in the twenties. My father had been the first of his family to attend college in the United States. His mother always joked that he was too much of a genius for their city, even though their city had its share of intelligent individuals, but of course, Abuela Maria would think her son was the most intelligent of all. Not to knock him, despite all of his questionable choices, my father was extremely smart and business savvy. I moved to the years he would’ve been here—seventies. The first page I opened, there he was, standing with seven other people—The Eight of that year. Beside him, Ella Valentine.

  Maybe it was because I’d just seen a portrait of them together, looking like they were a couple, but seeing the young, college version of themselves together hit me hard. They weren’t even touching, but I could just tell they were together. I reminded myself of what she’d told me—they had actually been dating before he met mom. I kept turning the pages. In some pictures, they wore cloaks, in others they were serving food to the homeless, picking up trash around the park, reading to children. I kept turning the pages. My attention stayed on the next picture. It was a couple I’d seen before, maybe at one of my parent’s Christmas parties. They were laughing, looking at the camera, but it was the background that caught my eye. It was my father and Ella Valentine back there, looking like they were caught in the middle of an argument. I shut the book and opened another one, and then another one, and then moved on to the one labeled Alumni—1999. I’d been a toddler then. This photo album was thinner and showed mostly photos of various parties that occurred that year. I didn’t find my father until I reached the tenth page, but there he was, holding Ella Valentine’s hand.

  My heart was in my throat as I looked at the picture. I shut the album with a thump and looked up at Nora.

  “This is disgusting.”

  “My father is this one.” She opened up the book and pointed at the familiar couple I’d seen in the other book. “This is not my mother, who he’s still married to, by the way.”

  “Geez.” I shook my head. “Disgusting.”

  “I promised I’d draw up the societies for you so that you could see how they’re connected,” she said, pushing the books aside and grabbing a sheet of paper. Up top, she wrote Blackwell and drew two lines underneath it—one that said Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell and the other said Dr. Henry Blackwell.

  “They were a couple when they were here. They married their senior year,” she explained. Beneath Elizabeth Blackwell, she wrote The Eight. “She’s the octopus lady. She was a marine scientist who worked tirelessly in the original Hydro Lab, which is now falling apart. You’ve seen it, it’s right by the waterfall behind where you did the blindfold test.”

  “Oh yeah.” I nodded. “That was an actual building?”

  “Very long time ago.” Nora smiled. “Which is why it’s said that’s the body of water with the octopuses. She threw them out the window there.”

  “That’s a weird thing to do.”

  “I think they took away her funding, but I’m not sure. Point is, she built this society and modeled it after her favorite creature—eight legs, eight members, intelligent, camouflage, etcetera.”

  “Dr. Henry Blackwell started The Swords. He was a mad scientist. Where his wife was a marine scientist, he experimented on people. It is said, he bought the old church not only because of the cemetery, but because once upon a time these lots were combined and that was where the crazy owner of this house killed all of her lovers. Her husbands she made seem like natural causes or accidents. The lovers didn’t get that lucky.”

  I shivered. “This house is totally haunted.”

  “Both of them are.”

  “I barely like sleeping in the dark, so I’m going to pass on the horror stories for now,” I said. “I have an overactive imagination and watch too much crime television so I feel like anything and everything is going to happen to me.”

  Nora laughed, pointing at the paper. She drew two arrows beneath both societies that met at the bottom and wrote The Labyrinth Initiative.

  “No way.” I gasped. “It’s connected to both?”

  “Yep. Think of it as a shell company,” she said. “So T.L.I. actually files under non for profit. This part is what we all know. This . . . ” She drew another line beneath that and wrote Mentorships and Sugar Babies. “Is the part we’re still trying to figure out, but it’s pretty obvious to those of us who have been around, and it’s definitely obvious after seeing these albums.”

  She walked away and pulled three albums off the far-end bookshelf, placing them in front of me. Unlike the black leather-bound albums around the room, these were red and black. My hand shook slightly as I opened the first one and shut it right away.

  “What the hell is this? Porn?” I looked up at Nora, wide-eyed. I didn’t want to see naked pictures of my father.

  “Relax, members are all clothed,” she said.

  “Relax,” I repeated, opening the album back up. “Relax?”

  I couldn’t imagine anyone relaxing as they flipped through this album. One picture, in particular, made me pause and stare, a disgusted taste in my mouth. Three men in suits sitting in chairs while three naked women lay on the floor with their legs spread open, touching themselves as the men looked on. One man had reached down to seemingly help the girl, mid-picture. That man was my father. And that girl looked a lot like Lana. I slammed the book shut again.

  “I can’t look at this. I’ll be sick.” I placed a hand on my queasy stomach. “Why don’t you show this to people before they go through initiation? This would be the exact kind of hazing that would scare people away.”

  “We need you in.” She shrugged, a small smile touching her lips. “You’re a Bastón, you were always meant to be in The Eight.”

  “I don’t know if I want any part in this. If I’m expected to walk around naked for these old guys—”

  “No,” Nora said quickly, eyes wide. “These were things we recently discovered. You’d never be part of this.” She tapped on the books, then picked one up and opened it to the very first page, which I’d completely bypassed. Written in script was: Labor Union.

  “Labor Union?” I said loudly. “This is disgusting.”

  “It’s extremely complicated even for a crash course, but technically, they have this mentorship program and within that program is another in which girls are basically . . . prostitutes.” She gathered the books and walked to the shelf, sliding them in their place.

 
; “It’s like a damn never-ending matryoshka doll,” I said, looking at the paper. “How did you find out about this?”

  “The short story? Lana told a friend about it and that friend started showing up here, lurking in the woods out back, parking in front of the gates and looking in. It was creepy. I thought it was someone’s ex-girlfriend or someone Fitz pissed off.” She cringed as she said it. “Sorry. But Lana was here one day, for a gala, and saw the girl and said it was a friend of hers. She went outside and asked her to please leave. Apparently, the girl wanted to make sure she was okay.”

  “You don’t buy that?” I asked.

  “Lana worked for the paper. We all knew she wanted to tear the societies down from the inside and we all agreed she shouldn’t be here.”

  Her words sent a chill down my spine. If she had been unwanted . . . was that why my brother was arguing with her in those pictures? Telling her to stay away from The Eight? From The Lab? From our father?

  “How involved are the guys we know in this little ring?” I asked and felt the need to hold my breath as I waited for the answer.

  “If you’re asking whether or not Logan fucks these girls, the answer is hell no. In case you haven’t noticed, Fitz is extremely particular with who he fucks and he’s never brought a regular around. Anywhere.” She frowned as she spoke the words, as if just now realizing this. “Honestly, you’re the only person I’ve ever actually seen him hang out with. I mean, we hang out, but he’s like a brother. He’s cordial, at best, to some of the girls around campus, but I wouldn’t say he’s very welcoming, if you know what I mean.”

  I did know what she meant and it gave me a little more confidence in what we had.

  “Does anyone else?” I asked. “Marcus? Nolan?”

  “No. Absolutely not.” She shook her head. “My understanding is that this whole idea stemmed from The Swords. They’ve been known to hire girls.” She waved a hand toward another bookcase. The one with a row of red spines. “You can see those books for yourself. Of course, we only have blackmail power. We can’t really say for sure what goes on behind closed doors over there. Not even my brother will tell me that. The fact of the matter is, in recent years, The Lab Initiative decided to mentor some of these people—girls and boys alike, and I guess some have evolved into something more.”

  “So they’re taking advantage of these people.” My stomach turned. My father was taking advantage of these students.

  “My understanding is that the people being mentored don’t have to do anything, but a lot of them end up actually falling for these men.” She paused. “And women.”

  “The whole thing is disturbing.” I crossed my arms.

  Now I understood why Logan wanted to be here when I learned all of this. Between the pictures of my father with Ella and then my father with those naked girls, it was all too much. I thought about my brother and what he must have thought of all of this. It wasn’t that Lincoln was Mr. Perfect, but he was definitely a stickler for rules and this was not something I could picture him condoning.

  He obviously knew about Lana and dad. I’d seen those pictures of them arguing. But then Lana just disappeared. I looked at Nora again, trying to wrap my head around everything she told me.

  “Did The Eight have anything to do with Lana’s disappearance?”

  “No. Of course not.” Her eyes widened. “We talked about needing her to get out of here and not welcoming her in, but we would never . . . ” She paused, suddenly looking contrite. “Your brother was the last person to see her.”

  Logan had said this to me already, but hearing it again felt like taking a blow to the chest. Could my brother have gone that far? Could he have hurt her? I checked my phone again. Still nothing from my family. I desperately needed him to wake up.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  The pep rally was a blur. Even as I snapped photos, I didn’t feel like I was actually there. Physically, yes. If you’d been in the stands or standing beside me, you would’ve been able to say that I’d been there taking pictures for the paper. A true Peter Parker, hiding my face behind an enormous camera lens. Mentally, I was elsewhere. I was with Lincoln, wondering if he had anything to do with the Lana thing. Maybe she’d been in the car with him when he got in that accident. Maybe she died and he didn’t know how to cope with it so he hid it? A shiver raked through me. Would Lincoln hide something that big? I thought of my father and his relationship with Lana, which I now confirmed was true. I had too much evidence to deny it. Would Lincoln hide it for dad’s sake? For The Eight? My hand itched. I reached up and grabbed the necklace around my neck. Nora had given me my own skeleton key to open the front door of The Lab, a way of officially welcoming me into The Eight. I’d been happy to accept it when she dropped me off at home, but the longer I stood there with it around my neck, the more it felt like a noose rather than a gift.

  “Have you gotten any good pictures?”

  “I think so.” I glanced at Max, who was standing beside me. “How many do you think I need? I’m dying to get out of here.”

  “Too many people?”

  “More like . . . not in the mood for this.”

  “So you’re not going to the party tonight?”

  “What party?”

  “Just a keg party out in the main lawn.”

  “That sounds exactly like everything I want to avoid tonight.”

  “Come on, let’s stand on the other side where the actual media is.” Max laughed and tugged on the strap of the lanyard around my neck.

  We shouldered our way through the crowd until we made it to the other side. Max let out a relieved breath.

  “There are a lot more people here than last year,” he said. “It’s Fitz’s last year, so it was bound to be crazy.” He pointed to the other side of the arena, where we’d just been. I’d seen people waving something around, but I wasn’t paying attention. Now that I was on the other side, all I could see were huge foam gloves that said FITZ on the bottom.

  “He’s not even the goalie.”

  “I know, but Fitz’s Mitts.” Max nudged me. “It’s a Canadian thing, I gather. We call them gloves, they call them mitts, so yeah, Fitz’s Mitts. Get it?”

  “No.” I frowned. Just when I thought I was getting the hang of hockey, these people threw something else my way. “I thought they were called gloves?”

  “Those are his Canadian supporters,” Max explained. “They call people who have good stickhandling Nifty Mitts, hence, Fitz’s Mitts.”

  “Oh. So they’re like . . . his groupies?”

  “Fan base, but yeah.” Max laughed.

  “Hm. It’s cute.” I repeated it in my head: Fitz’s Mitts. It actually was cute, though I wouldn’t say it aloud.

  “Wait until he skates onto the ice. It’ll be mayhem.”

  “It’s pretty loud already.”

  “This is not loud in comparison to when he comes out,” Max shouted over the noise. “Do you still hate each other?”

  “No.” I blushed. “Water under the bridge.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s good, because Fitz is the kind of guy who could make your time here a living hell if he wanted to.”

  “How would he do that?” I raised my brows. “Our school has a zip code. It’s not like I have to see him.”

  “You take pictures of sports events for the paper.” He shot me a look. “You’ll see him. Besides, as big as campus is, I bet you’ve seen all of them around everywhere.”

  “True.”

  “And I’ve heard the way girls talk about him. Cry over him.” He shot me another look.

  My heart pounded, but I tried to keep my expression neutral. I did not want to hear anything about my boyfriend’s past. I’d convinced myself to get over his partner at The Eight from last year and stop obsessing over the thought of him with anyone else before me. It was a dumb thing to think about anyway. It wasn’t like I could change any of that. I put it out of my mind as the crowd got louder, cheers and screams sounding as the music was lowered and t
he announcer started announcing the team. First, he introduced the coaches, who walked out on the ice in a large group and waved. I snapped a picture.

  “And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for . . . this year’s hockey team!” the announcer screamed into the microphone.

  The crowd roared. The lights shut off and spotlights shone on the ice, moving back and forth as the music started up again. Players were introduced as they skated onto the ice, and I clicked photos of each of them. The crowd seemed to get louder with each one. I wondered if they’d done it on purpose, given them an order of popularity to come out in. If so, I felt bad for the first one. Nolan was introduced. Nolan Chadwick Astor. It was a long, important-sounding name. I wondered if his mother was waiting for him to grow out of the long hair and inappropriate comments phase and grow into his name or if she’d given up hope.

  Logan was last. “Logan ‘Fitz’ Fitzgerald!” The crowd went crazy, pounding on the glass, stomping on the floor, climbing on their seats, and I had to pause taking pictures to look around because I really thought they’d bring the house down. The noise vibrated through me as I stood there, and I smiled as I lifted the camera up and snapped a picture of the crowd first, and then Logan as he skated out on the ice. It got louder when he was in full sight. Unlike his teammates, who did a wave and stood in line, Logan skated around the ice and waved. It was then that it hit me. He really was popular. He really was sort of famous. And yeah, he was arrogant, but not as arrogant as you’d expect someone with this kind of following to be. When he skated toward my section, I braced myself, pressing my face to the camera and holding it tighter, as if it would somehow fall out of my hands at the sight of a close-up. I took a breath. I needed to calm down.

  This was Logan, for God’s sake. When he reached us, people pounded on the glass. I stood closer to it and snapped, snapped, snapped. I didn’t want to miss him if he went by really fast. Suddenly, it seemed almost quiet, as if the crowd around me was waiting in anticipation of something. When I blinked into the little window of the camera, I saw his face right in front of me, staring into the lens—into me. I licked my lips, and he grinned, a slow, sexy grin that made his green eyes sparkle with mischief. He knew I was flustered. I lowered the camera but kept my finger on the button in case he did anything film-worthy. He nodded at me. I smiled, shaking my head. What was he doing? And then he did something I would have never expected in a million years. While holding my gaze from the other side of the glass, he opened his hand and kissed his palm.