First We Were IV

by Alexandra Sirowy

  I may have indulged in other plans to nudge Dad and Ina’s affair into my mother’s purview. My father getting caught—even if the evidence was fabricated, the crime was not—was better than me telling my mother about the affair. Better for me.

  But then came the Thursday before homecoming and the night of our blood rebellion. All of my restless energy could once again be channeled into the Order.

  Directly after school, Harry and I drove to the butcher shop in Berrington, an hour south. We paid cash—as anonymous as we knew how to be.

  Harry and I tore out of the shop, each holding a white plastic vat of blood. The metallic scent swelled in my mouth and nose until I tasted it. The heavy liquid sloshed inside the buckets, slapping the top, a red glaze leaking out to streak my fingers. I gagged halfway to the car. Harry held his vat far away from his torso, his whole body weighted forward with its anchor, a look on his face of comic determination.

  After we strapped each vat in with a rear seat belt, I was laughing hard, a stitch in my side, elbows on the car roof. We stood there, smiling across at each other, winded. The magic of a new rebellion was zinging through me and bringing out golden prisms in Harry’s eyes.

  We trudged into the dark at midnight, about the time Goldilocks left the Ghost Tunnel for chips and, unwittingly, to die. Ours was a coffee-colored night, murky with fog. Difficult to see more than fifteen feet ahead of us. The flashlights were unreliable, the fog bending the light.

  Three of us in black. One of us in white. Rangy and stretched shadows overlapping in the beams of light. If you caught us from the corner of your eye, we looked like villagers marching a virgin off to be sacrificed. Except Viv carried a water bottle filled with blood, a can of stolen red spray paint, a second skin of leather gloves, and a mask. All of us did.

  Seven Hills’s long, crescent lanes ran parallel to one another, on either side of the knoll. Backyards didn’t touch. Instead, green belts with trails separated them. A dirt path in the belts connected the orchard with parklike open space two streets removed from our targets.

  Insects were out in full force. I felt a winged critter land on my shoulder and flicked it away, its ping off my nail loud. The air fizzed and dampened as we sloped downhill, closer to downtown and the ocean. Our shoes were cushioned by the dirt that became fine and sandy.

  We reached the first canal of black, glittering asphalt and paused at the edge of a tall fence to peer around its corner. I listened. Nothing. One by one we flitted across the street to rejoin the jungle of brittle grasses. A few yards into this new ribbon of green space a scamper of rocks had us swinging around. The light caught in the obsidian eyes of a cat. It raked its calico body along a fallen eucalyptus branch.

  “Shoo,” Graham whispered.

  It meowed.

  Viv kicked the tip of the branch, sending its silver leaves juddering like diamond fish scales. The cat shot into the fog.

  We crossed one more street and came up behind the pastel rainbow of Seven Hills’s oldest homes. Victorians that had been built by the founders, way back when isolated towns were like fiefdoms, their founders royalty. Normal families lived in most of them now, all except for two the town kept, for the mayor and the police chief.

  Harry and I followed a thin reach of yellow grass in between neighboring houses to Landmark Lane. Viv and Graham continued on the belt until the Carvers’, three houses down. Where the sidewalk began, I disguised myself. The black plumes fringing Harry’s mask twitched in the breeze. His belonged to Viv’s grandfather, the silver vines, delicate and diverting as veins, were hand-painted in Venice. Mine was thick with dust from Viv’s attic, but it also smelled of her grandmother’s leather trunk, a trace of the Chanel No. 5 she taught us to dab behind our ears, and the sourness of old wine.

  The fog boxed us in. Nothing beyond the luminance of lampposts, each diminished from the last. I inched to the center of the street, turning slowly, straining to see through its layers for witnesses.

  In both directions the gables of second stories ran like mountains peeking through the fog. I licked the salty mist from my lips.

  Harry pointed to me, to himself, to Denton’s driveway flanking the left side of his house. I inhaled the ocean air, held it in, and nodded. Low to the ground, careful where my shoes landed, I tiptoed. We skirted the police cruiser parked by the garage. Near the bottom of the flagstone staircase I withdrew the gray cast from my hoodie. It was dense and pliable like a rubber stamp.

  The stream of blood from the water bottle wetted the pads. I coated the paw and stamped the prints in the pattern of an animal hunting in the yard. Coated the paw again. From the lawn to the flagstone stairs to the white planks of the porch, it stalked. Meanwhile, Harry painted the porch in blood. The nozzle of his water bottle skated the white banister. Red trickled down the white pickets in a charnel candy cane stripe.

  Never had I smelled that much blood. My knuckles were weak at the scent; stomach roiled; nose twitched. It was not completely unpleasant. Closer to the moist potting soil of the vegetable garden than the chemical emergency room.

  The animal pawed at the sunshine-yellow front door. I bared my teeth, unable to resist falling into the character of a beast. Blood smeared in determined streaks. Harry was working on the windows by then, squirting the blood in zigzags that ran to cover the panes.

  I leaped down the front steps, crouched on the narrow path that meandered to the sidewalk. The animal left a trail down it. It cut onto the grass and took up its bloody mission by the mailbox. I made it rain, transfixed at the path each scarlet drop cut, wanting to dance to the pitter-patter on the cement. Harry doused the windshield of a white sedan parked on the street and the animal joined him, leaving its tracks on the car’s hood.

  Harry and I paused to take stock of what we’d done, of each other. He was rounded over, his elbows bent like the bowing front legs of a prowling beast, his hair locked into place by a blackening splash, and a bloody pendant at his throat. My chest heaved. I straightened up from my animal hunch. Had to consciously will myself to smile like a girl and not a dog baring its teeth.

  We’d dressed Denton’s porch in death. Painted in blood like it was finger paint. My chest rose and fell faster at the rush. A manic giggle escaped. My fingers played with their slippery coat of blood.

  The mechanics of the plan had seemed tidy and remote. A series of supplies to be gathered. A night to show up. A message to send. My chest tightened with hope that Denton would get that message. Her blood is on your hands.

  The ambush of blood our plan created was art. A forsaken, animal art. Like revenge. Like hunting prey. And now that we’d painted in blood, was there anything taboo or forbidden?

  Graham and Viv met us in the waist-high grasses behind Denton’s. Viv spun as we approached. Giant black pupils latching onto us, yet no recognition registered in them. Her white dress, slick and glistening with red, clung to her chest. A thumbprint of blood had dried on the corner of her mouth and both knees were capped in red like she’d been crawling. Graham’s sleeves dripped on the dirt. The tip of his mask’s long-hooked nose was black and wet.

  None of us spoke. In hindsight, how bizarre not to compare notes or to check that all went according to plan. My tongue pushed against the back of my teeth as we jogged. I drew loud, openmouth breaths. Pants. Words didn’t exist. We were wolves, bounding, the scent of blood on us driving the insects louder.

  Not until we reached the Orchard did Izzie click on. I was shivering—how long had I been cold? Viv had disappeared from my side—when?

  I cut off from the boys and sprinted in the direction I sensed her in. I burst upon our street. There was no more fog, only houses watching with their gaping black eyes. I know what you did stares. I went to retreat for the orchard. But there she was, materialized in the distance, down the street. I let my mask sag at the base of my skull, the ribbon taut on my throat as I ran. Viv was covered in blood. We both were. Anyone peering from between their curtains would call the police. I laughed,
because would they? Would the neighbors who didn’t give a shit about dead Goldilocks worry for us?

  I closed in on her as she stood from the sidewalk and stared, spellbound by something on the roof. I checked behind me for Graham and Harry. If they noticed we were gone, they hadn’t caught up with us.

  “Viv,” I attempted whispering, her name coming out a formless sigh.

  I crept up on her like she was an animal that would startle. Or strike. She didn’t react as I took her limp hand. “What?” I murmured.

  “Mr. Kirkpatrick’s house,” she said, and I winced at the clarity and scrape of all those consonants.

  “So?”

  “He hoses off the sidewalk every morning. I always see him.”

  I could picture it. Mr. Kirkpatrick, hose in hand, wearing gardening gloves and clogs, power spraying the sidewalk. I’d seen it often enough.

  “There was blood on it the day before we found her. He washed it off.”

  I closed my eyes and opened them like you do after a sneeze. Tingling. Dizzy. The whole night scene changed, though I couldn’t say how. Words were easy then. “That’s the morning after Goldilocks left the Ghost Tunnel for the gas station. Blood on the sidewalk that coincides with her time of death.” I glared at the dark recesses of Mr. Kirkpatrick’s house. No curtains or drapes. A sleeping, middle-aged man lying unconscious somewhere inside.

  “He found blood and Mr. OCD freaked that it soiled his pristine sidewalk,” she said, and then spat angrily at the ground.

  My hands fisted around the plastic bottle, acutely aware of the lightness of the remaining blood. “It’s not enough.” Perhaps I meant the blood I had left or her spitting or both. I poured the blood onto Mr. Kirkpatrick’s mailbox. The water bottle gave a last, wet gasp aimed at his living-room window. “Not fucking enough,” I muttered.

  “What are you doing?”

  Graham and Harry were in the street.

  “What the hell?” Graham whisper-shouted. Harry’s hands were frantically waving; the spirit of the night still mystifying him.

  One last look up at the dark, unshuttered windows of the second story and I said, “C’mon,” to Viv.

  She yanked her hand away.

  “No,” she said, eyes panicked. “There’s worse.”

  “Worse what?”

  “They heard her, Izzie. They heard the girl crying and they ignored her.”

  “Who are they, Vivian?”

  17

  Viv wrung her hands free of blood as she stood before us in the barn. It stained her wrists and forearms like a rash. The mask’s ribbon at my throat rubbed the skin raw. I let it abrade the softness there. I focused on the manageable burn. It was easier waiting for Viv to explain with a distraction. They. They heard her crying. Goldilocks made noise. I had often wondered what kind. A tiny moan caught in her throat because she didn’t see it coming. A harsh scream full of despair and understanding.

  That people were asleep in their beds as it happened, and that one or more of them might have heard her noise, stirred, gotten up to investigate, never occurred to me. There’d be a 9-1-1 call. A witness account. A search party. Efforts made to find who was hurt. Goldilocks wouldn’t have waited on the rock for me.

  “There’s stuff I’ve never told. I should have said it earlier. I—I didn’t want to think about it,” Viv whispered, knitting her fingers in the dirty, torn hem of her skirt. “I wasn’t allowed to leave the house the day after. I tried to guilt my dad into bringing me to Izzie’s by playing dead on the porch swing. I fell asleep. There were all these neighbors on our lawn when I woke up. Mrs. Holloway, Mr. and Mrs. Yu, Mr. Swinton, a couple more. They talked about two nights before the girl was found.”

  I shook my head impatiently. “We already know. You tried to eavesdrop and they caught you and left.”

  “If you couldn’t eavesdrop, how do you know when they were talking about?” Harry asked. I dropped the empty bottle I’d been clutching and it rolled away from my feet.

  Viv’s fingers froze in the tatter of hem. “Because I lied.” She took a beleaguered breath. “They didn’t see me. I heard most of it. Confusing. Like, they couldn’t agree on details. Mr. Swinton said it was two in the morning but the Yus thought more like midnight when—when—”

  “When what, Vivian?” I jumped at the stern grown-up voice that came out of Graham.

  “When they heard it. Mr. Yu said first there were squealing tires.” Each word was shot from her mouth, over enunciated, like she learned to do in speech therapy for when she was nervous. “Mrs. Yu told him to take his hearing aid out and go back to sleep. Not to wake Lorin. Mr. Swinton said it wasn’t squealing tires but a crash, like kids knocking over recycling bins on the curb. He heard a girl’s voice. Mrs. Holloway only heard the animal.”

  “The animal,” I murmured.

  Viv kept going. “She said it was closer to three when the animal started moaning.”

  “Moaning.” My voice shook.

  “It moaned for a long time. Mr. Swinton thought it was a girl and that she was drunk and crying for no reason.”

  “For no reason,” Harry whispered, rubbing at his eyes.

  “Because girls just go around crying in the middle of the night all the time,” I said, hands fisted.

  “Did anyone go outside to see?” Harry asked.

  Viv shook her head and said into her hands that now covered her face, “Mrs. Holloway turned on music to block it out and Mr. Swinton went back to sleep. This isn’t the worst part.”

  Harry made a choking noise of disbelief.

  “The Yus found a shoe in their front yard the next morning. A white sneaker. They threw it away.” Goldilocks’s shoe with its wilted sole flashed in my memory. Its mate had been missing. “And Mr. Kirkpatrick told them about the blood on the sidewalk. Grumbled about how it must have been roadkill and how there was too much wildlife in the hills. He called the cops. Told them they needed to get animal control on it.”

  There was a knob in my throat keeping me from breathing.

  “He told the police the placement of the blood was weird for roadkill. It started in the shoulder and then just disappeared after a few feet on the sidewalk. Did the animal drag itself and then just fly away?”

  “When?” I asked.

  “He called them after he sprayed it down with water.”

  “The day before we found her,” I said. “Denton got called out for her body and the day before a neighbor told the cops there was blood on the sidewalk. Yet they still tried saying she was killed in another town.”

  “Kirkpatrick told the cops about the blood. What about the other neighbors? What about the Yus and the shoe? The noises and all that?” Harry asked.

  “No.” Delayed, Viv shook her head. “Even after they knew about the blood on the sidewalk and the shoe, none of them told.”

  Graham pointed at Viv. “Not you either.”

  “My dad was there.” Her eyes dilated. “He didn’t tell. How could I? I was a little girl.”

  Graham’s chin tilted high as he regarded her disapprovingly. “Twelve-year-olds can speak. Act. I slipped a photo to the newspaper. I did what I thought was right. Izzie went to the tunnel by herself. You knew how to dial a phone, right? You could have taken your bike to the police station. Walked.”

  “My dad knew,” she said again, pleadingly. “I thought he’d get in trouble for not telling.”

  Graham’s head descended to the table where he sat, and his voice came muffled and weary. “Someone got away with murder, first hitting the girl with a car, then strangling her. Why would there be consequences for not volunteering information?”

  “It’s easy to be logical now. But not everybody thinks like a scientist at twelve.” She stared at the blood splatter on her hem. “I’m not the only one who made a mistake. You left the paw prints. Izzie got stabbed at the tunnel.”

  “You’re right,” I whispered. “Everyone but Harry kept secrets about Goldilocks.”

  “We were kids, you know,”
Viv went on. “Scared. Mixed up. What about the grown-ups? They ignored a girl crying for help or crying because she was dying. They threw and washed away evidence. They could have saved her.”

  There was stunned silence. The dark night through the glass slider beckoned me. I wanted to wade into the night, become a predator as invisible as the wind slipping through our neighbors’ flower beds. Through their keyholes. Invade their houses. Our neighbors, people who baked special Halloween treats for the block’s kids, were horrible. Selfish. The kind of indifference that pulls a pillow over its head to sleep through cries for help. I looked to the idol’s face up on her perch. Her smile was bitter. I yearned to grab all the blood we had left over in the fridge. I’d hit the entire length of Driftwood Street—all forty or fifty houses. I’d paint them red.

  “This is why the cops let it go,” I said. Understanding fired in my brain like a limb coming awake after falling asleep. “The blood was in the road. They knew about it. A body was found. She had a bruise, from here to here.” I ran a finger from my neck to the waistline of my jeans. “Even without knowing about the loud bang or the animal moaning or the girl crying, it sounds like a car hit her first. Connect the dots. It was someone who lived on our street. Had to be. Driftwood doesn’t get through traffic, and after Conner’s house there’s his dad’s last development that’s just sitting there, no one living there yet.” I swallowed. “Someone who lives here did it. Hit her with their car. Strangled her.”

  “Maybe Denton didn’t want to look for who killed her because he was afraid it was someone he knew,” Harry said.

  I was up and pacing. “We’ve got to do something.”

  “We are,” Graham said. “We will.” A dangerous flicker in his eyes.

  “Come sit,” Viv said, patting the sofa beside her.

  I pulled the end of my ponytail. “Can’t. I just . . . I can’t.”

  “We’ll think bigger,” Graham said. “Spare no one.”

  I stopped short and held his stare. “Yes. Promise.”

  “I swear it.”