He smirked. “Could be. It’s stuff I’ve read. All I know for sure is that my mom found her at a market and she has no idea where the idol originated from.”
Viv stuck her tongue out at Graham. I didn’t mind that he loved to slip lies in with the truth. The opposite. I was good at spotting them. I loved his stories. “She’s a mystery,” I said.
Viv stroked the idol’s face. “She’s pretty. Can I have her?” Graham tipped his head and handed it off. He forgot about the figurine as soon as it left his hands. I did too, for a while. Viv tossed it aside, wanting it a little less now that it was hers.
“Are we swimming or what?” Harry asked, heaving himself up with a grunt. He and Graham stood side by side, same tall height, one caramel and one pale sugar. I felt a tiny nibble of fear. I pulled my Polaroid camera out from under a throw cushion and snapped a photo. I fanned my face with the picture, waiting for their figures to appear. They were so beautiful. Next year, other girls would see it. College girls would appreciate Graham’s sophisticated, brainy confidence. They’d flock toward Harry’s thoughtful sincerity. They’d date the kind of girls who drink espresso, smoke hookahs, and backpack across Europe. How could I compete? Graham and Harry’s memories of their childhood buddy Izzie would be replaced with shiny new ones of reaching up shirts in dorm rooms.
Viv was destined for a million boyfriends. She’d make friends who knew what to look for at vintage clothing shops and who knew what to say about new Broadway plays. In college, there’d be snapshots of roommates and Cancún spring breaks on her walls, rather than Polaroids taken by me. Would we all even visit Seven Hills at the same time once we were gone? Graham used to say that in a zombie apocalypse, this town was exactly the kind of remote that keeps you alive. They’d be done with this place.
I needed to find a way to seal us all together. For good. In more than a picture.
“I’ve been thinking about a way we can make this year special,” I began, picking at the edge of a temporary tattoo I had on my thigh. A heart.
Graham turned to listen, halfway to the door leading out to Viv’s mom’s raised planter boxes.
“There’s a senior prank on the principal after homecoming,” Viv replied brightly. She thumbed the heart tattoo, identical to mine, on her wrist. I smoothed the edges of its twin. I wanted it to last. We’d bought them together on our last trip to the mall.
“We should do something just for us,” I said. “Not a prank voted on by student gov. That’s weak.”
Viv said, “Senior prank night is legendary.”
“It’s not,” I blurted. She stopped tracing her heart tattoo. “Vivy, we’re not going to be reminiscing about driving a golf cart into the pool or putting a pig in the principal’s office in forty years.” I looked to Harry and Graham. “We’ll laugh about it for a night and then poof, we’ll forget. This year is all we have.” The words were final. I sunk up to my shoulders in the sofa cushions.
There was a shuddering skeleton of thought in my head and all it needed was vital tissue so it could dance. A sharp bit was poking me in the kidney; I tugged out the wooden statue Viv had flung aside.
I turned it over in my hands. There were tiny starbursts engraved in the fabric of the woman’s robe, her eyelids were closed, and her fingers were steepled. There was a quality to her that reminded me of those drawings we’d discovered on the ancient rock. The commonality: They made me think of invisible things. Of fear and love and belief. “I want us to have something that matters.” I was uncertain. Grasping. “Not matters to the world, but to us. I don’t want the world to know about it. And even if we haven’t talked for ten years—”
“That will never happen, Izzie,” Viv said fiercely. She stood.
“It will, Viv. It’s what happens. But not if we had more.”
“More?” she said with a scoff. “We are best friends. We are bonded. We spend every day together.”
“But we won’t see each other every day,” I said. “Not even once a week after this year.” I glanced at the idol—was she smiling? “What if we invented something? An event that was bigger than us. Something that would keep us together because we’d do things for it that no one else would know about.”
“You mean sex things?” Graham asked. His brow cocked and there was pink in his cheeks. He’d unbuttoned his shirt for a swim.
I frowned at the divot in his square chin. “Secret things.” The words tickled my tongue like a serpent’s hiss. Who didn’t want secrets? “Remember how our dares made it feel like we had our own world?” Where nothing could get to us, I almost added.
Up on the rock, I learned that wasn’t true.
Graham took his time answering. “Sure. When I wanted to escape from dinner with Stepdad Number Three, I switched my brain to thinking about beating you swimming to the sea lion rocks or down the dunes on cardboard.”
Viv was nodding. She’d been the frequent observer of our challenges. Harry’s eyes went back and forth between us. He’d missed our games. Most of our daring stopped with Goldilocks. “We should make up our own mischief rather than the unoriginal stunts the rest of our class is pulling,” Harry said.
“Exactly,” I said, bouncing in place, instantly giddy that Harry got it. “We do our own slaughterhouse Slumber Fest or we think of a better event.”
“Better how?” Viv asked, her eyes still narrowed.
“Better meaning not purposeless,” I explained.
“What’s our purpose?” Viv said. She’d moved to stand between the boys, one hand on Graham’s shoulder, swaying into him.
“What’s the point of sleeping in the slaughterhouse?” I asked.
“To get a really gorgeous boyfriend,” Viv said, nudging Graham’s hip with hers.
Harry shook his head. “It’s dangerous.”
“People think it’s dangerous,” Graham replied.
“What’s the point of pranking the principal?” I asked. “It isn’t even pretend dangerous.”
“The challenge,” Harry answered.
Graham said, “Spitting in perceived authority’s face.”
“Breaking the rules,” Viv sang.
“But Principal Harper is expecting a prank,” Graham continued. “It’s the only time students pay attention to him and teachers slap him on the back for being a good sport. He’s got a hard-on for it.”
“So let’s prank everyone,” I said. “Let’s be half as brave as we were in preschool.” I raised my eyebrows in challenge to Graham.
“I don’t think we’ll be able to steal every single cookie in Seven Hills,” he said. “Or fake a chicken pox epidemic.”
“Oh c’mon,” Viv moaned. “It wasn’t an epidemic. You just convinced your parents that you two had them so you could stay home, and I had to eat lunch alone for an entire week until your mosquito bites healed.”
“We used simple syrup to attract them,” Graham said to Harry.
“And Earth to Izzie, what about teachers and parents?” Viv went on. “If we do something big, we could get into trouble.”
Harry toed at the rug with his sneaker. “Only if we get caught,” he said softly. He opened his mouth to speak again, closed it, then said, “I think Seven Hills probably deserves a prank played on it.”
“We’re not breaking the law, Viv,” Graham chewed on the words. “Something that punks all of them, everybody who isn’t us, but ultimately isn’t without reason.”
“And why stop at one prank?” I said. “We do a sequence. We start a group dedicated to clandestine activities. We’ll have rituals.” I waved the idol at them. The good ideas were falling from the sky. “Ones that we swear to repeat. We confess our secrets.” It seemed a silly thing to say since what secrets could we have? “We form a secret society and it doesn’t end with high school.”
Graham said in his professorial tone, “Aren’t secret societies mostly a bunch of rich white men huddled around a campfire, colluding to rule the world?”
I flicked my bangs from my eyes. “Who says t
hey have to be? Lots of things started out as old white dudes because they made them that way. This is about our bond.”
“You sound so touchy-feely. Can we make this more badass?” Graham said. “Like we’re going to wreak havoc and undermine social order and end up anarchist heroes who get laid by Jess Clarkson?”
“She’s all yours,” Harry said.
“Okay.” I nodded enthusiastically. “So our charter is as follows.”
“Charter? How do you say that with a straight face?” Viv wondered.
“If we don’t take it seriously, what’s the point?” I asked.
“She’s right,” Harry cut in. “You guys talk about college and roomies and new cities. I’m getting the broke-as-a-joke version. Stuck going to community and living here until I transfer. If Izzie’s charter is going to keep us seeing one another and talking, I’m serious about it.”
Viv tugged at Harry’s T-shirt sleeve. “Har, you are not a loser. Even if you live at home until you’re forty.”
Graham bobbed his head, the cynical smirk gone. “I’m in. I’ll make our secret society as touchy-feely as Izzie and Harry want.”
“Yes, yes, yes.” I fanned the air with the idol, unable to sit still. “We have to swear allegiance.”
“Before we know what we’re swearing to do?” Graham said with a chuckle.
I sprang to my feet and held the souvenir to the rafters. “Swear on this, our most holy—”
“Not holy,” Graham said. “Not if this is about social change, mischief, and subverting the hierarchy of old white dudes.”
“Okay. Swear on”—I tapped the idol to my head—“swear to our irreligious idol of mischief, chicanery, rebellion, and eternal friendship that we’re now the Order of”—I looked around the group—“Four? There are four of us. And we’ll carry out clandestine rituals and pranks in the Order’s name.” And then I said this one last thing. “We swear that the Order doesn’t end, ever, not until one of us dies and we aren’t four anymore.”
“Izzie Pendleton.” Graham threw his arm over my shoulders.“You are a mad genius.”
6
The airy fizz of morning gossip and the timbre of the espresso maker met us Monday at Cup of Jo. Viv and I claimed a space at the front window. Harry and Graham joined the sea of high school students waiting to order.
Viv swiped through the feed on her phone. “The whole school went to Amanda’s after the slaughterhouse,” she murmured, scrolling down the band of photos for me to see. Amanda and her friends caught midair doing cannonballs into the pool. A series of Conner and a bunch of guys with a floating beer bong. Half-lidded selfies under the sunset glow of hanging lanterns. Candid snaps of a sing-along, vodka and beer bottles used as mics.
“Why were we the only seniors not invited?” she asked, thumbing back to Amanda’s profile where her pictures appeared professionally staged and shot.
I took the cell out of Viv’s hand, closed the app, and tucked the phone into her purse. “Most of them probably weren’t officially invited.” I read Viv’s emotions clear as if her skin were transparent. She knew what it felt like to be accepted and this wasn’t it. At performing arts camp, the theater kids wrapped her up in their cast circles like big group hugs. She got used to being applauded and admired. Anyone would. It made the silence at home deafening.
As they found us, Graham was in the middle of telling Harry, “No way, it was loaded. Weird. Cryptic.”
Harry passed around cronuts and said to Graham, “You’re being paranoid. She was smiling a normal barista smile when you paid.”
Graham lifted the first cup from its carrier and I saw that Icky, rather than Izzie, had been scrawled up the side. I winced taking it. He examined the next, a shadow passing behind his eyes. “Dr. Spectasaurus at your service,” he said grimly. “I knew the barista was trying not to laugh at me.”
Harry gave his cup with Rags written across it a long, protracted blink. “Sorry I called you paranoid.”
Viv held hers, displaying its Nobody to us. She rose up on her tiptoes. “I didn’t even see Conner here. How does he do it?” It wasn’t the first time Conner’s special nicknames had appeared on to-go cups.
“Pays off the barista,” Graham suggested.
“Or threatens them,” Viv muttered.
“But why?” I said. As far back as I could remember Amanda had it out for Viv, but my recollection of Conner in grade school wasn’t so sinister. I remembered Conner letting me win at tetherball the day I returned to school after my grandfather’s funeral; Conner being one of the only boys to give Valentines to every single kid, not just those who were his friends.
“Why does a scorpion sting?” Graham asked. “It’s in his nature. Last week he left a flaming paper bag of dog crap on the band room’s doorstep while the Brass Bandits were practicing. He’s a pathological bully.”
Viv’s free hand riffled through her purse. “Usually this would bum me out, but today it seems pathetic that he went to the trouble.” She freed a purple Sharpie, uncapped it, and scribbled on the cup. Then she traded hers for mine. The Nobody was blacked out, and IV was penned beside it. “Voila,” she said, “no more Icky, Nobody, Dr. Spectasaurus, or Rags. We’re the Order of IV.” She continued on with the boys’ coffees. “The Roman numeral is more badass, huh?” It was.
The simple, penned IV blunted Conner’s insult. We ate our cronuts, our only care in the world getting equal parts raspberry filling and chocolate ganache with each bite. Those IVs were beacons reminding us we had a secret.
I carried our secret with me like a shield all day. When Conner rapped his knuckles hard on my desk as he passed in third period, just like he did almost every day, I didn’t startle. When his best friend, Trent, who sat to my right, leaned over and chortled, “Hey, Icky, how was Cup of Jo?” I smiled and said, “Super.” When I wanted to speak in class, I did, unafraid of Conner’s or Trent’s usual barks of “Icky.”
We ate lunch on the rectangle of lawn between the band room and the auto shop. Other small groups ate there too, but like us, they were peripheral. Not outcasts per se, just gathered in the hinterlands where the lunch real estate wasn’t as contested as the courtyard.
Viv had a smattering of plays around her, picking them up at random, reading a few pages and tossing them to the grass with a disappointed groan. She was looking for a perfect audition piece for the autumn performance.
A sketch pad was open on my lap, ready for me to tackle the first plein air assignment of my first-ever art class. Instead of capturing the shimmer of light playing on the trees, the tip of my pencil was working on Graham, shading in all the shadows in his wavy hair. I’d already finished Harry bent over a textbook. He often worked on homework at lunch because a few afternoons a week he had shifts pushing carts and bagging groceries at Hilltop Market. I wished for my Polaroid, which was funny because I never felt comfortable enough at school to bring it along. Photos taken on my cell weren’t the same; they came out too forced and posed; they could be easily deleted.
Once I finished Graham, I planned to sketch Viv into the picture too. She was hard to get right; there was too much going on in her eyes and she was too pretty.
She looked up like she’d read my mind and craned to see the sketch pad. “You’re getting really good.”
I rotated the pad. “You were looking at it upside down.”
“Still. It looks just like Graham and Har.”
Harry closed his astronomy textbook. My cheeks were warm as I showed him. “I like it,” he said.
Graham tore his eyes from his book. “Remind me why you’re taking art this year?”
I frowned. “Because my transcript needs to be more well-rounded.”
“Said your parents,” he replied.
“Actually, it’s a direct quote from the school counselor. My electives are always history and gov.”
He held up one finger. “Those are your interests. They’re academic. Art is . . .” He waved his hand airily.
“Fun—
which is what electives are supposed to be,” Viv said. She yanked on a fistful of grass and tossed it in Graham’s direction.
He watched the green confetti fall on his pant legs. “It’s not too late to drop art and transfer into Mrs. Fisher’s genre seminar. This semester it’s Society and the Mystery Novel.”
I arranged my pencils in their case. “I’m going to stay in art.”
“You used to be obsessed with mysteries,” he said, growing more adamant.
“Used to being the operative phrase,” Harry said.
Graham pointedly ignored Harry. “But I think you still are, Izzie. It’s only because of the rock and what you—”
“Stop being bossy,” Viv told him, slapping his hand out of the air. He frowned but swallowed the rest of what he wanted to say. Graham knew why I’d stopped liking books with detectives and mysteries and crimes five years earlier. Books like that asked what if and how and why. Those questions were too real after Goldilocks. Someone should have been asking them about her and no one was.
Viv lifted the hair from her neck and fanned herself. “It’s as hot as July. Bring me one of those big mint chip ice cream sandwiches from work tonight, Har.”
“You guys want them too?” Harry offered.
“Absolutely,” I said. “Thanks.”
“Yeah.” Graham pulled a twenty from his pocket and handed it to Harry. “I love those.”
“I’ve got them,” Harry said. Graham watched the bill flutter in Harry’s hand for a second before accepting it back. Graham probably would have tried insisting, but a silhouette cast a shadow on the grass.
“ ’Sup, Rags and Riches,” Conner Welsh said.
The greeting managed to transport me back to middle school, the turning point in Conner’s evolution as a bully. Amanda and Conner lining kids up against the fence for social sentencing. Amanda declared us Rags or Riches; Conner pelted us with balls either way. If Amanda thought your sneakers looked shabby that day, you could have a pony at home and she’d still proclaim you Rags. But Harry, whose family rented a house that Conner’s parents owned, was consistently sentenced.
First We Were IV Page 4