“Rags,” Conner said, squatting beside Harry, “I got a problem. I’ve got this lunch tray and it’s full of soggy beef nachos and tofu curry that smells like old man runs. Take a whiff.” He raised the tray. Harry’s expression went flat. “I hit too many balls at the range last night. My arm’s trash.” He crooked his neck and grimaced. “I think I might drop the tray, spill the nacho cheese on the walls, and the tofu shit on the floor. But fuck, Rags, if that happens, who’ll clean it up?” His mock concern shifted to a sadistic smile. There was a thin scab on his bottom lip. Conner Welsh, always looking for an excuse to fight. “Oh wait, it’s your dad’s job to clean up my mess.”
“Harry’s father is the school groundskeeper,” Graham said sternly.
“Janitor,” Conner countered. “Or do they go by custodian now? All that PC shit. Can you help me out, brother?” I was sick knowing exactly what was coming. “If you take this tray off my hands, I won’t have to drop it. Your dad with his gimp leg won’t have to crawl onto his hands and knees to clean it up. Or should I say fuck it?”
Graham was up on his feet, reaching for the tray. “I’ve got it,” he said. He’d done that once before; the tray ended up in his face, chili dog mashed on his shirt, one spectacle lens broken.
“No, Spectasaurus,” Conner said, shaking his head with an impatient sigh. “Only Rags can help.”
“Conner, there’s a trash can right there,” I said.
Viv had curled up, her knees to her chest, her vintage sunglasses hiding her eyes.
Harry took his time wrapping up the leftover half of his turkey sandwich in its aluminum foil. He placed it neatly on his paper lunch bag and pushed up from the ground. “I’ll help you out, Con,” he said, nobody home behind his eyes. “No worries.” My eyes stung watching his long, bouncy gait to the trash can with Conner’s soiled lunch tray. Harry took his time scraping off all the bits of food before placing the plastic neatly on the designated rack.
Conner watched Harry, barely reacting. “Good man,” he told him as Harry rejoined us. “Thanks for your help.” He nodded, a customer thanking staff who’d waited on him. “I can always count on you, Rags.”
No one watched Conner go.
Viv sniffed loudly behind her sunglasses.
My nails bit into my palms.
Graham rested his elbows on his knees and after a heavy silence said, “I think it’s time we invent our secret society.”
7
Viv was on her knees, elbows on my hatchback’s center console, chin cradled in her hand, fingers thrumming the corner of her mouth. “What kind of secrets could the boys have?” she asked. The rear car doors were ajar and a gentle fall breeze crept in. I nuzzled my chin into the chunky collar of my sweater.
“Video game addictions. Porn on their laptops,” I mumbled through the cotton weave. Her nostrils flared.
It was the second Sunday since the slaughterhouse, and we’d been busy creating our secret society. We started where good students do: with research. Graham utilized the university library. Harry, Viv, and I scoured the Internet.
It wasn’t hard to uncover articles about groups like the Bavarian Illuminati, Skull and Bones, Freemasons, and the Bohemian Club. Even some of the habits of the groups rumored to be the most secretive could be uncovered. For example, membership to the Seven Society at the University of Virginia was so secretive that members were only indicated when they died, with a wreath of black magnolias in the shape of a number seven on their graves.
Telling fact from fiction in the accounts wasn’t necessary. Our search was for inspiration for our very own superclandestine group of pranksters. We didn’t care if what inspired us was conjecture or reality.
As far as we could tell, secret societies had a few things in common. The first was secrecy. Those who belonged adhered to a code of silence. The members usually worked in secret to achieve a hidden agenda, anything from drunken debauchery to world domination. Most secret groups had rules about who got to boss who around, who made decisions, how membership and recruitment worked. And many of those groups had rituals and ceremonies that made them unique, terrifying, bizarre.
Our Order’s structure would be democratic. There would be three rules: never tell, never lie, and always love each other and be friends. Our mission was mischief in Seven Hills.
The Order began as something out of my head, yes, but each of us gave it its shape.
Viv decided we needed a ceremonial holiday. Inspired by the crescent moon on the idol, she consulted a lunar calendar. It was fate: a blood moon in two Saturdays.
I added the secret-telling ritual. I knew almost everything about the others. I reasoned that learning more would make us even closer. I recalled the stories my mom had told about the midnight initiations of her girls’ school. They crowded around the lake and sent little slips of paper with their most guarded secrets onto boats sailed across the water’s glassy surface. They were lit on fire; the paper burned; the secrets were released into the night. Rather than send our secrets up into the universe, we’d trust them with one another. It would be declaring I trust you three more than anyone.
Graham and Harry liked reading about revolutions and they said we should call our pranks rebellions. And they were rebellions against everyone who wasn’t us, so we did.
There, on that first night we were out as the Order of IV, under the cloak of darkness, I felt rebellious. The car rocked and the boys finally returned from scouting our school parking lot. Graham’s head bobbed between Viv and me. A black beanie cut off his eyebrows.
“No cars in the lot. Good to go,” he said.
We drove down the lane used for the campus security golf cart squad and circled to the auditorium. The cart port was the best place to conceal my hatchback while we snuck through the halls. The clock tower a few blocks away in the knoll chimed to twelve as we slipped from the car and kept to the shadows along the rectangular building.
We were two blocks from the ocean, and waves beating the shore sounded like a million distantly whispered secrets.
The secret-telling ritual had been easy. Inventing our first rebellion, not as much. Sedition wasn’t boiling our blood—not then. When we tried to brainstorm, we drew blanks. Viv succumbed to giggles over our dumb silence. She rolled off her beanbag chair and landed unceremoniously in the tangle of her skirt, the fabric riding high on her tan thighs. I pounded my fist into the couch and yelled that she was a flipping genius.
Viv had been written up at least ten times for what our all-male school administration called indecent dress. Seven Hills High’s dress code only included policies for skirt length, heel height, and bra straps. It was sexist, but the code was also unevenly enforced. If you only got written up three out of ten times for letting your hot-pink bra straps show, the odds were in your favor. Don’t be a killjoy, let it go, girls would grumble if you complained. What if protesting the rule led to a crackdown on platform wedges? Everyone kept their mouths shut. I was done with that.
The Order of IV made our voices louder.
The four of us stalked into the one hundreds hall, beyond the courtyard and its amphitheater. We’d start there and plaster our flyers every few lockers up the halls. Graham and Harry tailed Vice Principal Bedford during lunch on Thursday and Friday. It could have taken weeks to get the evidence we needed; instead it took one and a half lunch periods. Harry snapped a photo of Bedford, twelve-inch ruler in hand, leering after two girls passing him in the corridor. His eyes were trained on their butts; then Graham, in a feat of bravery I was sure he’d exaggerated, slid down the hall on his knees, got right behind Bedford, and took a picture as he measured one of the girl’s sundresses.
I smacked the first flyer against a locker and Viv tore off a piece of tape with her teeth. She bared them and growled. I smothered a laugh, tasting latex dust from the gloves we wore. No fingerprints. No security cameras. No staff scheduled at night since Harry’s dad was jumped on campus a year before.
“I cannot wait to see Vice Pri
ncipal Pervert’s face,” Viv declared. “ ‘There are better things to measure. Stop ogling your students,’ ” she read the caption. Each flyer was signed IV. Four seasons, four directions, four chambers of a heart, four elements, and four of us. Before we’d left for campus, Viv gave us Sharpie tattoos of the symbol on our wrists, a IV, the official sign of our membership. I felt that IV tingling on my skin. Our secret order, its rebellion, was in my blood.
The prank made me feel more exotic than I was used to feeling. Our perfect universe had expanded from the barn and the orchard to include our school, a place where I mostly flew under the radar and focused on studying until the moment the day’s final bell rang and we could leave for our real lives. As we used up all five hundred flyers, our magic rubbed off in those halls and I was actually looking forward to returning to class on Monday.
When we were finished, Graham pulled a can of spray paint out of his pocket. The click-click-click as he shook it traveled the corridor. The crickets chattered in response. His arm cut a sharp line in the dark and we heard what sounded like air escaping a balloon. I remembered him telling Viv that we wouldn’t be breaking the law. Funny—I was usually better at detecting his bullshit. He stepped back to admire his masterpiece.
“Har’s dad is going to have to scrub that off,” Viv hissed.
Graham shook his head, but it was Harry who spoke. “They’ll just paint over it. Easy fix.”
As we dashed away, I turned and grinned at the IV like a bloody wound carved into the door Bedford and the other school admins would arrive to. No one would connect the graffiti to us, kids who never showed up to class hungover, never reeked of pot, and never got sent to the counselor’s office. We were as good as invisible.
And I thought each of us wanted to remain unseen.
• • •
“Your sip.” Graham passed me the bottle. There was a sea of tiny white candles in the barn, the flames turning the honey wooden planks of the walls to melted toffee. We sat in a circle on the floor with our backs north, south, east, and west. When Graham suggested the formation, I recognized it. The four sets of birds were buried around the rock this way.
We placed the idol at the center of our circle; she looked lit from within, soft, serene, an all-knowing fairy godmother. I took a nip of the booze, hissed like a cat at its fire, and passed it to Graham. He took a long sip, holding my eyes, and said, “What? I want to be in the right state of mind.”
Viv’s laugh was cut off by a hiccup. “Same, same,” she said. “Liquid courage.” She retreated to her place as Graham relinquished the bottle. “Who wants first?” she asked, perched on her folded legs. “Remember the rules? Never lie. Never tell. Always love each other.” She leveled a slender finger around our knot. “As friends forever. We tell secrets, something no one knows.”
Graham said, “What about chronicling it? We record ourselves talking about the rebellions or whatever else, and we’ll cut the footage together at the end of this year.” He was rolling up his sleeves, as if all this thinking was actual physical labor.
“Or save the recordings to a shared folder on our cells so all the videos are in the same place,” Harry said, pausing from chewing on the side of his thumb.
Graham tipped his head. “But we have to agree: No one watches it until graduation.”
A nod circulated. Viv placed a hand over her heart.
“In two Saturdays there’s a blood moon and the Order has ceremonial rites,” she said. There was a conviction behind those words, ceremonial rites. Her peasant blouse pooled at her waist and twin braids made a dark tiara on her head. “And everyone has to hold the idol when they’re sharing. The Mistress of Rebellion and Secrets will burn your hands if you lie.” Her eyes widened, showing their wild, glossy whites.
For a moment there was only the air winnowing through the gap of the sliding door.
“Now for scandalizing one another,” Graham said in a deep, melodramatic voice. His legs were kicked out in relaxed confidence. He wasn’t wearing glasses or squinting, so contacts. This wouldn’t be weird for a normal person, but Graham always said he wasn’t going to stick a finger in his eyeballs just so Conner would stop calling him Dr. Spectasaurus. Graham raised a brow. “You want first, Pendleton?”
I gave an uncertain smile, reached for the Mistress of Rebellion and Secrets, and sat with her between my crossed legs. “Here goes,” I said, and then I plunged in, scrunching my eyes closed. “I only got an A in Geometry because I programmed proofs into the calculator I used during tests. I cheated.”
I opened one lid at a time. Harry’s smile showed his square front teeth. Graham scowled and asked, “You’re kidding, right?”
“No, it was going to ruin my GPA and I just could not remember—”
“No,” Graham said, “I am saying that you have got to be kidding if you think that’s the kind of secret that’s going to make us closer.”
Viv crawled forward to give me this incredulous glare, the flame of a candle illuming one side of her face. “Izzie, grow a pair of boobs and try again.”
I took a breath, tightening my grip on the idol. An uglier secret waited behind this easy-to-share confession. Disfigured and deeply rooted. Saying the next words felt like scraping them free. “My parents fight.” The idol’s smile urged me on. “It’s worse than it used to be. Not just yelling. Mom throws picture frames. Dad stomps on the glass. Mom screams she wants a divorce. They swear at each other, name call. I turn music on so no one outside will hear. Dad leaves, sometimes for the night. When he comes back they close themselves in their office, then they act like they have amnesia. Like I didn’t sweep up the glass or hear what they said. They expect us to eat dinner. Be normal.” Viv had crawled back over to be close. I continued in a guilty whisper, “I wish they would get a divorce. I’d rather have two houses than one filled with shouting.”
Viv’s hand fit into mine. Harry’s warm eyes and Graham’s troubled frown steadied me. Resigned, I’d listened to fights or tried to escape them by hiding in my closet or telling myself that grown-ups squabble like violent toddlers all the time. The fights, beyond my control, made me feel trapped and spinning.
“I didn’t know they still freaked out on each other,” Viv said. Graham’s eyes went puzzled beyond her head. She squeezed my hand. “My turn.” I gave her the idol and she crawled back to her spot. “Boys always talk about jerking off.” She was gazing into the face of the idol, one corner of her mouth in dimple. “But girls do it too.” She glanced up, sooty lashes framing her round, innocent eyes. “I figured out how to get off when I was thirteen.”
My cheeks flamed. Viv’s lips made a perfect O. She couldn’t conceal that she was surprised at herself. Harry became engrossed in picking at his thumb’s cuticle. Graham’s mouth was ajar. He joked about it all the time. I rolled my eyes or ignored him. Viv talking about it made me feel stripped naked, and that made me disappointed, because why should I feel differently about Graham and Viv talking about the same topic?
Graham gave a shake to his head, snapped out of it, and said, “Good on you. Me now.” He waved for the idol; Viv traded it for the bottle. Shadows were rushing through his eyes and he had color under the blond freckles of his cheeks. “I’ve been in love twice.” He wore his smuggling-cookies smile. “Once with Viv and once with Izzie.” He snatched the bottle back from Viv and took a long, dramatic drag, eyes ceilingward. Viv chewed her bottom lip, staring at the same unexceptional spot in the rafters.
How hadn’t I noticed that it was a sauna until that moment? I pulled my sweater over my head and left my hair disheveled against my face.
“I’m not in love with either of you presently,” Graham said. “Was that clear?” Our eyes met; his looked hurt.
I flashed a reassuring smile. “A hundred percent.”
The silence stretched on until Harry saved us.
“My mom’s parents haven’t talked to her since she married my dad,” he admitted.
“You visited them last summer,”
Viv said, reluctantly turning to knit her brows at Harry.
He hooked his arms around his knees and shrugged. “I know. For a long time they didn’t have anything to do with us. Then they sent Simon and me letters and then cell phones so they could avoid calling the house. They’d invited us four years in a row. Last summer I was upset about my dad. I needed to get out of here.”
Viv’s head tilted a quarter revolution. “What did your mom do to make them so pissed?”
“Married my dad,” Harry repeated. “He didn’t go to college or know who his dad was. He wasn’t a doctor and he doesn’t golf.”
I choked on a noise of surprise.
Harry continued, “My mom met my dad while she was in college, and”—his voice became quieter—“she got pregnant. My grandparents wanted to send her away somewhere to have the baby, where none of their friends would find out. Then she’d come home and go back to school like it never happened. But you know my mom. No one makes choices like that for her. She didn’t want to have a baby yet, keep it or not. She loved my dad. She had an abortion and didn’t stop dating him. They kicked her out.” His expression was grave. “The actual secret I’m telling is that I like having grandparents, despite how they hurt my mom and pretend my dad doesn’t exist. I felt special when my grandpa took me golfing.” A cynical tick of his head. “I guess I’m more messed up than they are.”
“No, you aren’t,” I said forcefully. “You’re the kid. They’re the grown-ups.”
“I feel guilty anyway, like I’m betraying my dad and mom,” Harry added.
“You’re not,” Graham said.
“I’ll hate your grandparents for you,” Viv promised.
Harry rubbed his palms together, inhaled deeply, and exhaled, appearing less rigid and tense for it, which was strange because before, I hadn’t noticed he seemed that way. “I forgot to hold the idol,” he said with a sideways smile, hair flopping with a turn of his head.
“The Mistress of Rebellion and Secrets forgives you,” Viv said.
First We Were IV Page 5