by Travis, Todd
“Oh Lordy, did I ever. She was right in front me,” this from the assistant coach who spoke just before Goodwin, the one who openly sobbed as he delivered his eulogy. “What are they calling that shit they do with their ass, like what’s-her-name?”
“Twerking. I’d like to be the straw in that milkshake, lemme tell you.”
“Uh-uh, that’s a do-not-pass-go, go-directly-to-jail card, Jerry.”
“A man can dream, can’t he? And hell, she’s been hosing half the varsity and at least a couple of the JV, I mean, she’s been riding the meatpole like she invented it.”
Tracy Jones shrieked and ran out, Roger close behind her. Faye didn’t bother to hide her feelings at all, she beamed as if blessed, and so did Ed.
“I hate these damn kids,” Healy’s voice said. “I hate these damn kids.”
Darin gave them a nudge. “We’d better get out of here.”
They got out and followed the pushing and shouting crowd out of the gymnasium, but the voice followed them everywhere throughout the school.
“I hate these damn kids,” Healy’s voice echoed again. That line repeated over and over again until the powers-that-be in the school finally figured out how to turn the intercom off.
“That was really pretty cool,” Valerie said, when it was all over and done.
Shakes beamed and considered this day to be one of the best days of his life.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“WE WILL MAKE THEM PAY. EVERYONE WHO EVER MADE FUN OF US, EVERYONE WHO EVER HURT US. THEY WILL PAY. EVERY SINGLE 1,” – text message from Faye.
Chapter Twenty-Three
They all gathered at Shakes’s house afterward.
The school superintendent had kept Shakes and Darin after school, along with a few other potential suspects, for questioning, but once it was done Shakes had sent a text inviting them over to celebrate their collective triumph. They all agreed.
“Did you SEE the look on Goodwin’s face? Classic!” Shakes said. He pulled out a bottle of wine and fumbled with a corkscrew. “This calls for wine!”
“So they kept you after?” Valerie asked Darin.
“Yeah, and they pushed at me pretty hard. I pointed out that I get pretty much all Ds in nearly every class and had no idea how to even begin to set up a stunt like that. They couldn’t answer that, because they’re still not sure how it was done, but they think I’m dumber than they are, so I got away pretty clean.”
“They kept me afterward, too,” Faye said. “They said they saw me laughing about Tracy. I said of course I laughed, she’s always mean to me and it made me happy when she got what she had coming to her. But that I didn’t do it.”
“They didn’t keep me after, didn’t ask me a single thing,” Valerie said.
“Me, either,” Ed said.
“Be glad, Ed. And they looked through my phone,” Faye said. “I’m glad you told us to erase the messages.”
“Yeah, they went through mine, too. But they didn’t get my prepaid, no one knows about that. What about you, Shakes, how did it go?”
Faye finally took the corkscrew from Shakes, who couldn’t get it to work, and opened the wine for him.
“Oh yeah, they had me in interrogation, but I did not crack, no sir. They were making all sorts of threats and stuff, but I just said to them, it wasn’t me. It wasn’t me. They said they KNEW it had to be me, and I said prove it. They called my mom up and everything, she’s actually in Seattle for the weekend, and they had her on speakerphone and she was like, Sam, did you do this? I said, no, Ma, it wasn’t me. She asked if they had any proof that it was me and they had to say no, not yet. She said if they had no proof then to let her boy go or she’d sue them for every dime they had. And then she told them that if I said it wasn’t me, then it wasn’t me and she knew that her Sam wouldn’t put his college future in jeopardy with a stunt like this. And to stop bothering her with this stuff and then she hung up on them. She scared them and they let me go, didn’t even take my phone. Heh. My ma, she’s no joke once she gets rolling.”
Darin had looked around at the house. It was big and sprawling, everything new and expensive and, well, kind of empty in spite of that. Shakes’s parents obviously had money. Ed was checking out the massive gaming platforms in the rec room. Shakes had every game system that existed.
“Hey. Can I play a game?” Ed asked.
“Yes, Ed, we all are, but not yet, first a little bubbly!”
“It’s wine, not champagne,” Faye said.
“Wine, champagne, bubbly, whatever, let’s drink!”
Faye poured everyone some wine in a glass.
“You said your dad is a patent lawyer, what’s your mom do?” Darin asked.
“Software engineer. Come on, Ed, drink!”
“They’re not home?”
“They’re never home. Dad’s probably at the office all weekend, he does that. Ma’s in Seattle for a conference, as I said. I can do pretty much whatever I want.”
“Dude, look at this place. Why are you even in public school?”
“They believed I should have a normal upbringing. To which I say, yeah, RIGHT. They both went to public school, and believe that I should, too. They also don’t believe in being too hands-on, that’s their parenting policy. Really it just means they want me to figure stuff out myself, I heard ’em talking about it, once. They don’t believe in helicopter parenting, but really I just think they don’t want to be bothered, they’re too busy with their own shit. Toast! To us, to the Furious Five!”
They clinked glasses together and took a drink. Ed wrinkled his nose.
“Too spicy.”
“That’s what makes it good, Ed my man!”
“I like root beer better.”
“I got that, too, root beer, regular beer, soda, I gots it all.”
“So … how did you guys do this?” Valerie asked. “The recordings?”
“Well, it was a lot of editing and hacking, but it was Darin who supplied the recordings, I mean, what you heard was only the tip of the iceberg, he has a treasure trove of good stuff from that asshole.”
“You recorded him?”
Darin felt Valerie stare at him and felt self-conscious, a feeling he wasn’t too familiar with. He cleared his throat.
“Yeah, I’ve had a beef with him for quite a while, so I was saving some of this stuff up. It was insurance if he tried to bust me. I was looking for something to use as leverage, never got him admitting to anything illegal, just embarrassing shit more than anything. I was planning on releasing a bunch of this shit once I turned eighteen and got out, or if I got expelled, whichever came first, but, you know, then the accident happened.”
“He never knew you were doing it?”
“I don’t think he paid attention, most of the time. I mean, he gave me shit whenever he could, yeah, but mostly he just thought I was a nothing and as a result, most of the time that made me invisible to him. I’d be around a corner with my headphones and sunglasses, listening and recording everything on my phone and he didn’t even really see me.”
Valerie stared at him. “Cool.”
“You sure they won’t be able to track this?” Darin asked Shakes.
“No way, I told you, I’m a cyber-ninja, man. We’re talking NSA level hacking, boyee! I left no virtual trace or footprint, nada.”
“They might not be able to prove you did it, but they’ll know it was you and they may hassle you because of it.”
“I’ll worry about that when it happens, today I want to celebrate!”
The doorbell buzzed. “There’s the pizzas,” Shakes said. “Okay, everyone into the game room, we’re going to drink, eat pizza and finally play the game.”
“We’re playing games?” Ed asked. “Yay! Which one?”
“Sex, Marry, Kill, of course, big Ed!”
Chapter Twenty-Four
They carried the pizzas and their drinks into the rec room and crashed on the long sprawling couch in the center of the room. Shakes turned his bi
g screen television into a computer screen via a keyboard.
“Whoa,” Ed said. “That’s humongous.”
“You know it, Ed, me and computers, only first class, yo. I got the whole house wired. Okay, so the site did let me on a few times when I was alone, but it kept telling me I needed four more friends to initiate proceedings, which I could never figure out.”
“Why?” Valerie asked.
“Well, it’s a website, how does it know if I’m one or five people once I bring the site up online? Unless it’s got a program to take over a person’s webcam and look, which is possible, but even then, you can fudge it, and does that mean that there is a live person watching every time someone logs on? Doesn’t seem probable, and I couldn’t see any cam hack, either. So it’s been an ear worm I haven’t been able to get out of my head, how that’s even verified. I even asked my ma, and she just said she didn’t think it was possible for an insecure online site to do that. Even if someone set something like that up, a hacker would find a way to circumvent it. So I figured it must be a joke, it doesn’t know if we’re five or not, that Mr. Herman was punking us and the site doesn’t work even if you DO have five friends together when you bring it up. Except …”
“Except what?” Ed asked.
“Except that I didn’t think Mr. Herman was punking us. I think he was for real.”
“Me, too,” said Faye.
“I thought the whole thing was one big punk,” Darin said. “I mean, come on, how he was dressed, those women, the waiters? It was surreal.”
“Surreal, yeah, but also real. If it was a punk, for TV, why didn’t they come out and have us sign waivers? And giving us real booze? That’d never happen. And kicking Healy out, I mean, he was well and truly pissed, you think he’s that good of an actor? They didn’t fake his death, either. He’s really dead, I looked it up, the health department has to list the death certificate. It’s there. He died. That was all real.”
“Maybe they did the stunt and then had to call it off after Healy died?” Valerie asked. “Maybe they didn’t plan on that, maybe there were punking HIM.”
“Maybe, but I don’t think so, not with the alcohol and all that. I think Mr. Herman was for real, whatever he was. Anyway, we’re about to find out because there are one-two-three-four-five of us sitting here right now, the Furious Five have assembled, and so now let’s see if the site comes up, shall we?”
Shakes typed the site into the browser and waited. The screen went entirely black. Then a single word popped up. It read: “WELCOME.”
“Huh,” Shakes said. “Never done that before. It’s already different.”
He tapped on the word and a mournful cry echoed as a nighttime picture of a dark and lonely bridge, over a small river and shrouded with willow trees, came up. The cry, like that of a faraway child, kept echoing.
“Ooo, cool!” Shakes said. “This has never happened before!”
“Spooky,” Ed said. “Spooky and scary.”
The screen read: “YOU ARE FIVE. WOULD YOU LIKE TO PLAY?”
Shakes grinned at everyone. “I don’t know how it figured out there were five of us, but it did. Let’s play and see what happens!”
Everyone nodded. Shakes clicked on it.
Text flashed over the picture of the bridge. It read: “WELCOME TO SEX, MARRY, KILL, A GAME OF POWER AND STRATEGY.”
“Cool,” Shakes said.
“THERE ARE RULES. YOU CAN INFLUENCE THE WILL OF ALL OTHERS AROUND YOU, BUT NOT THE OTHER PLAYERS, ASSIGNATION ONLY AFFECTS NON-PLAYERS. FIVE PLAYERS START, BUT PLAYERS MAY PLAY ON THEIR OWN AFTER IT BEGINS OR IF OTHERS DROP OUT. PROTECT YOUR CIRCLE AT ALL COSTS.”
“I still don’t know what they mean by play,” Darin said. “Assignation? What the hell is that?”
“We’ll find out, I guess,” Shakes said. He tapped on it and more text followed.
“BEGIN BY ENTERING YOUR NAMES AND DOB.”
“DOB?” Ed asked.
“Date of birth,” Faye said.
“I don’t know, man, this could be some identify theft thing,” Darin said.
“Not unless they ask for social security numbers, shit like that,” Shakes said. “DOB is pretty easy to find no matter what. Trust me, I know this stuff. Let’s take it a little further.”
A five-pointed symbol popped up, with an empty space on the end of each point.
“Okay, here we go,” Shakes said as he entered his name on the top point. “Boom! Next!” Shakes handed the keyboard to Valerie.
“That’s a pentagram,” Valerie said.
“A pentagram?” Faye said.
“Yeah, so?” Darin said.
“Is it bad?” Ed asked.
“Only if you believe in black magic,” Valerie said. “Do you?”
“Yeah, RIGHT. Not me,” Shakes said. “Come on. Do you?”
“No. I don’t believe in any of that crap.”
“Then there’s no problem. Let’s roll.”
Valerie looked at everyone, then entered her name and birthday. She handed the keyboard to Darin. “You afraid of black magic?” she asked him.
“No,” he said. “I don’t believe in that fairy tale shit.”
He entered his information and handed it to Faye.
“I don’t either,” Faye said and followed suit. She handed it to Ed.
“I don’t know,” Ed said. “It looks scary. It is really black magic?”
“Come on, Ed, it’s just a video game. It’s an online game, man,” Shakes said. “They do this shit all the time with games, they plant atmosphere and the dark arts shit, you know that. But it’s all a game. Silent Hill, remember?”
“Yeah, but I never play the scary ones.”
“Come on, Ed, we’re here with you. It’s gonna be cool,” Shakes said.
Ed glanced around at everyone, then sighed and entered his own information. The pentagram disappeared with a small wail. More text appeared over the bridge.
“TO INITIATE AND COMPLETE THE CIRCLE, PLEASE ENTER ONE DEEP, DARK SECRET PER PLAYER, ONE SECRET ABOUT YOURSELF THAT NO ONE ELSE IN THE CIRCLE KNOWS, ENTER IT IN THE BOX AND SHARE IT WITH THE OTHERS IN THE CIRCLE. ONCE THAT’S COMPLETE, THE GAME COMMENCES.”
Ed’s name came up, with a blinking box below it.
“IT MUST BE REAL AND TRUE TO INITIATE,” it read below.
“A secret?” Ed said. “I don’t know any secrets.”
“Sure you do, something about yourself that no one else knows, Ed.”
“Oh. I don’t know. And I don’t know how to write it.”
“Give me the keyboard, tell it to me and I’ll write it.”
Ed handed the keyboard back to Shakes. He thought hard. “I don’t want to tell you, though.”
“That’s how the game is played, big man.”
“We won’t tell anyone,” Faye said.
“Well,” Ed sighed. “Okay. I had a blanket, when I was little. It was my special blanky. Grandma said I’d never let it go, I carried it everywhere I went, especially after my parents died. But when I got bigger and older, she took it away from me, because she said I was a big boy and big boys didn’t carry blankets and suck on their thumbs. And I know she’s right, Grandma is always right, but I missed my blanket. And a couple years ago, I was getting something in the attic for Grandma and I found it there, in a trunk. It was a lot smaller than I remembered, but it was my blanket. I found it and it made me happy. So later I went back and got it, I hid it in my room, where Grandma can’t find it, and sometimes … when I’m feeling bad, sometimes I get into the closet and sit with it, I … I even suck my thumb, too. I do that and it makes me feel better. I know it’s bad, but it makes me feel good.”
Ed looked at his feet, embarrassed. “Don’t tell nobody about it, please. Especially at school.”
“We won’t tell anyone,” Valerie said. “Right?”
“Right,” Darin said.
“Right,” Faye said.
“Right. Protect the circle,” Shakes said and typed all of that into the sc
reen and hit enter. The screen processed it and Faye’s name came up next. They looked to her. She swallowed and turned pink.
“I was raped when I was twelve,” Faye finally said. “It was an uncle, or, no … a step-uncle, I guess. He got me alone this one time at some family thing, upstairs or something, told me I was pretty and said I was growing up really fast. He grabbed me and did … things. Made me do things. At first I was, you know, kind of glad for the attention, that he liked me. I didn’t get a lot of attention and while I wasn’t really fat then, not yet, I was big and … kind of self-consciousness about it. I got real uncomfortable but I didn’t stop him. I didn’t even know … what we were doing, really, until he was done. I didn’t figure it out until way later.”
Everyone stopped eating and just listened.
“I told my parents, I didn’t say that I was raped because I hadn’t figured that out yet, but I told them that he’d touched me and made me do some things to him. And they … they didn’t do anything about it, they just … told me … to stay away from him from now on. They … didn’t want trouble, I think. And they said never to tell anyone or talk about it, ever,” Faye wiped a couple tears away.
“Holy shit,” Darin said.
“I think that’s really why I can’t lose weight. My parents are fat, too, but they like being fat. I don’t like it, I hate being fat. I try every diet and try not to eat, but I think that there’s some weird part of me that wants to be this fat, wants to be so fat that no one will ever want me like he did or do what he did to me ever again.”
Faye wiped more tears away and then shook it off. “Whatever. It was a while ago. It happened. There are worse things, that’s what my parents always say. There are worse things. Whatever. That’s my secret.”
Shakes paused for but a second before typing all of that into the blinking box. He hit enter and his name came up next. Shakes leaned back and thought hard.
“Okay, that’s gonna be tough to follow,” Shakes said and that burst the tension. Faye laughed, they all did. “But … let’s see,” he sighed. “Well.”