First We Were IV

by Alexandra Sirowy

  I made a funny face at him. “No, freakazoid. I was thinking how nice Harry was to dance with her and what a mean bean you were not to.” I pinched his plump earlobe.

  “Ouch,” he said without meaning it. “Maybe I was going to dance with her?”

  I gave him an are-you-shitting-me look.

  “Okay, mind reader, what am I thinking now?”

  Without glasses his eyes had too much glitter. They suggested what I didn’t want to think about. “Stop it.”

  “You want me to stop thinking?”

  “Stop being a troublemaker.”

  He made a comically sinister face and said, darkly, “It’s the night. The flask. Them wanting in. I’m power mad.”

  “Jess looks really pretty. You should ask her to dance.”

  “Ha,” he huffed.

  “She’ll say yes,” I said, peering beyond him. “She keeps looking over here. She’s interested.”

  He snorted. “Don’t hold your breath.”

  “Come on. Ask her to dance. You aren’t the worst dancer.”

  He kept his eyes turned away. “Thanks for the self-esteem boost, but I’m talking Jess and me, the whole love story, not going to happen.”

  “W—”

  He hushed me sharply and made steady eye contact. “Sorry—really. Just don’t, okay? Not now.”

  I lifted one arm off his shoulder and pushed a corner of his frowning mouth up with a finger. He grinned big and fake. “You’ve liked Jess all of high school,” I whispered. “Go. For. It.”

  Graham’s complicated face looked stricken while he was at a loss for words. At last, his cheeks dimpled. “Haven’t you ever ordered mint chip ice cream just to realize what you actually wanted was strawberry? There’s no improving upon strawberry ice cream. I could have strawberry every day until I die.”

  “Are you actually comparing a girl to a flavor of ice cream?”

  “What? I’d be salted caramel. Wait, that’s your favorite, isn’t it?” He grinned without it touching his eyes and held me a little closer. “Are you having fun? With Harry. He’s my best friend, other than you. You’re my favorite.”

  I chuckled, pretending I thought he was joking

  Graham’s bluster drained from his face. He was watching me too carefully. Waiting. I wanted to say it back to him. To make his smile warm with sincerity. Out of the four of us, we were most alike, and loving him felt most like loving myself. Some hunch kept me from saying it, though. Some tiny rodent inside my head clawed its message: I wouldn’t mean it as he had.

  Graham didn’t want to dance with Viv. He refused to ask Jess to dance. Graham was dancing with me. He’d returned to paying me more attention. That selfish pit in my stomach tingled.

  “You are my favorite,” he said, his eyes growing large and wounded, “but on our rock you told Viv that you loved her more than anyone, ever.”

  “I was trying to cheer her up,” I said.

  “You tried cheering up your friend by telling her how much more you liked her than your other two best friends, in front of them?”

  “Guys?” Harry said, likely not for the first time. He’d been standing there, I don’t know how long.

  “That’s messed up,” I said to Graham.

  “You are.”

  Harry brushed my arm. “Don’t fight. You want to try the macarons?” Graham’s hands still cupped my waist. They dropped away. Their heat lingered in the fabric of my dress.

  I couldn’t taste the chocolate of the first cookie. The second, vanilla and lavender, was sweeter. By the raspberry I was happily accepting sparkling lemonade in a plastic champagne flute from Harry.

  We didn’t rejoin Graham and Viv. We danced and talked, and it never felt like wrestling for control. There was no sharp edge to Harry. No scrape to him. No hidden meaning to what he told me.

  I laughed and he laughed and we talked about space again—and music and Simon and where we’d go first if we were backpacking across Europe, and how we should make a plan to travel the summer after our first year of college—and by the time we walked to his car, our hands were hot because they’d been clasped for so long. I was smiling, blissed out, strappy sandals hooked on my finger, unembarrassed that my dress had a lemonade stain.

  It was simple, sweet, and smooth with Harry, like the summer breeze that had blown him through the orchard to the barn in search of us five years before. I decided that he’d come not in search of us but in search of me. And for a little while, I forgot how the summer breeze that brought Harry had also stirred Goldilocks’s hair.

  20

  Harry and I took a roundabout way to our neighborhood. The car was parked on the street and we walked through the orchard, stalling. Harry carried me on his back, a closeness that gave me goose bumps down my front so that I didn’t need to put my shoes back on.

  I liked the way he smelled, of grown-up aftershave but also of crayons because Harry had been helping Simon with an art project before leaving for the dance.

  Harry was slightly winded, the echo of his breath in my ear even after I’d slid down his spine. “You sure you wouldn’t rather get pizza and eat on the beach?” he asked.

  I looked up the path, beyond the trellis. The barn, usually diffused with warm light, our real home and clubhouse, had lights and music blaring.

  “This place is ours,” I said. “How can we not be here for a party? How can we not be here when you-know-what comes up?”

  He inclined his head, understanding.

  We hovered over the glass slider’s threshold. The barn looked under attack. Our sleeping bags and blankets had been booted out of the loft. They were on the wood floor in a confusion of color, faux fur, and nylon sheen. Amanda, Rachel, and Viv had arranged themselves on the piles. The effect reminded me of a photograph of Victorian explorers camping with Bedouins in the Arabian Desert, but with a lot more tan thigh and cleavage revealed. The girls were midgiggle attack, but Viv’s eyes were open now. Sobered. Darting.

  Conner stood on our couch, wing tips gouging into the satin, his smile bored, one hand strangling a bottle of cider by the neck while he shouted at Trent, who was raiding our fridge.

  Graham sat at the edge of our table, ankle propped on his knee, spinning our ceremonial dagger beside him. Campbell and Jess were listening with upturned faces like they were kids at story time.

  Our idol considered our potential recruits from her throne on the antique armoire. Hands palmed, eyes closed, a wolf’s smile. The stars on her cloak darkened, coming into focus, until I saw them as a harbinger. Harry and I were preoccupied with space as kids. Our meteorite came from the stars. Goldilocks was placed at its altar. The day we discovered her, Harry found us. Me. What were the odds that Graham’s mother picked up an idol in the Mekong Delta covered in stars? Without the Mistress, would the Order have occurred to me? Without the Order, would we have ever put together what we knew about Goldilocks? The idol smiled like it had been her plan all along. Mistress of Rebellion, Secrets, and Dead Girls.

  That smile said, Let the others join us. Let me have them. Let us fill the streets with blood.

  I took a step into the barn with an understanding that faded as I tried to seize it, grow it. This was not random but a cosmic weave.

  “Last chance for pizza.”

  I started a little, pulled back to the present.

  “We can’t leave Viv and Graham to the wolves,” I said, mimicking the idol’s smile.

  Really, we were the wolves. Neither Graham or Viv appeared swept away in the tide of attention. Viv’s eyes were probing.

  Graham was in the middle of a story. “The Ancients believed in ritual madness. Not madness like you’re mentally ill but madness as in losing your mind as a release into the universe, and”—he waved hello without pausing—“you’re consumed by the rush of it.”

  “What’s that?” Conner called out from where he’d sat on the couch. His finger indicated the idol.

  Graham and I met eyes. Yes, let’s make them our initiates. We we
re dressed for homecoming, but I felt costumed for the stage.

  “Nothing,” Graham said too harshly. “Who wants another drink?” Exactly the right amount of forced cheer and nervous bumbling as he offered around a bottle of cider.

  “Amanda?” Conner called. “Hey.” He snapped for her. She turned from the girls, begrudgingly. Our Mistress was staged on a leather-bound book, her pedestal, and white pillar candles surrounded her. I imagined Viv scheming: invite over a bunch of kids suspicious that you’re up to something, ply them with cider, and wait for someone to notice the mysterious statue on an altar.

  Amanda’s eyes landed on the idol. She wobbled to her feet, yanking down her short hemline from riding up as she went. Her hands closed on the bottom shelf for a steadying moment.

  “Don’t touch her,” Viv said. The barn went quiet.

  “No one who isn’t a member is supposed to touch her,” Harry explained. Hands in his pockets, he strolled over to the armoire, worshipfully gazing up at the idol. “It could be dangerous.” Graham hissed for him to be silent when it was too late to actually shush him.

  Viv wrung her hands. “Maybe we should just tell them. Izzie?” Her stage voice flooded the rafters, perfectly inflected with anxiety. “Amanda’s already half guessed.”

  That’s how it was decided. No talk. No vote. The four of us working in symphony, invisible threads lengthening from our brains, linking to conspire. We would win the Order its foot soldiers and appease Amanda’s lot into silence.

  I shook my head hard, faking alarm. “Vivy, you know there’s a process. The initiation. It’s against the rules just to tell.”

  “The rules are there for our safety—your safety,” Graham said, pointing to Jess. Her lips parted. “It would be too risky otherwise.” He plucked one of his suspenders over and over, pretending to rack his brain. “You’d all have to swear to follow the rules too. You’d have to prove”—a brief pause—“no. Forget it. Dangerous idea. The initiation would be too much for you guys.”

  “Way too much,” I muttered, grabbing the dagger off the table and indiscreetly slipping it on top of the armoire with the idol. I fought a smirk turning around to face them.

  It was possible they’d call bullshit. Amanda, fellow actress, would recognize theater.

  “An initiation wouldn’t be too much,” Amanda pleaded.

  “We’re game to follow the rules,” Jess promised.

  Viv had reclined, adopting a blasé posture and an evasive frown.

  “Yeah,” Conner said. “I’d be dope as fuck at whatever you guys have going on. I’m a badass getaway driver and Campbell knows how to pick locks.”

  Campbell coughed, surprised. “Only the lock on my door when one of my sisters locks me out of my own room. But I know a dude who sells fireworks.” He sounded relieved to have something to offer. “The illegal ones from China that can blow out walls and set stuff on fire. I’ve never used them myself.”

  Graham stroked his jawline, encouraging them, Convince me.

  “Once I used a wire hanger to unlock my car,” Trent offered eagerly.

  Rachel huffed. “Forget that. I can lift a wallet.”

  Harry snorted.

  “She can,” Jess said. “She lifted three wallets off guys at the Harvest Festival. Ghost hands.”

  “I brought the wallets to lost and found,” Rachel said with a toss of her hair. “I don’t need the money or anything.”

  Amanda, not to be outdone, claimed, “I’m the stealthiest. We TP’d a hundred houses in middle school and never got caught.” She flushed, possibly remembering she’d hit our houses. “And I mean, that’s kid stuff . . . Conner and I broke into one of his dad’s developments and trashed a house.”

  “Amanda,” Conner said, standing suddenly, knocking an empty bottle over on the floor.

  “Relax. We busted the bathroom mirrors and Con broke the counters in the model home.”

  My pulse raced. Our initiates were trying to convince us of their worth.

  “And we all know you’ve got street cred,” she continued, leveling a finger around at the four of us. “IV. You guys are seriously twisted.”

  We traded dramatic stares. Took our time. Deliberated. Harry was all hands in his hair. Graham had retrieved his spectacles and was polishing them on his shirt, looking deep in thought. I worried the gold necklace at my throat. At last, I whispered, “Okay. But we need a few days before telling you how this will work.”

  “Thank you,” Amanda murmured with so much reverence I nearly laughed myself to the floor. Viv drew me over to sit with her on the blankets. The mosaic of green cider empties expanded on the table. I participated halfheartedly in a debate about pledging to a sorority next year. Harry and I caught each other’s eyes as he went for the fridge. He motioned to a bottle, then to me. I shook my head and was about to mouth that we should go when Conner blocked Harry’s path from the fridge.

  “Hey, sport.” I strained to hear Conner over the other conversations. “You and me calling a truce. That shit is something. It’s cool though, I guess. I don’t mind that you’re poorer than dirt.” Conner cuffed Harry’s neck. “Or that if this were medieval times, I’d basically own you and your family. Feudalism was boss.”

  Harry removed his car keys from his pocket, angled one, and popped the lid off his cider. He took a sip and licked the bubbles from his upper lip. Conner’s hand stayed on him. “Sure, Con. I’ll try to forget that you’re an arrogant, privileged waste of space.” He took another sip. “And that if this were medieval times, the rest of the serfs and I would jump you and probably leave you disemboweled in your father’s field. But I’ll make you a deal.”

  Conner’s face pinched between amusement and scorn. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Don’t put your hands on me again.”

  “What’re you offering?”

  “I’ll keep mine off you.” He left Conner staring after him. Harry winked at me as he perched on the table by Graham and Campbell.

  • • •

  • • •

  A little while later, Graham tapped me on the forehead. “Walk?”

  Graham and I emerged into a black-and-white world. The ’90s hip-hop faded behind us. He was a timeless portrait, hair lifting in the breeze, shirtsleeves hiked up past his elbows, one black suspender swinging at his thigh, the other hooked on his shoulder,

  “Not anachronistic,” I whispered.

  His head dipped. “Come again?” There was a trace of his dimple.

  “Not anachronistic, exactly,” I told him. “You look timeless, like you could always exist and you always have. Like a vampire.”

  He tipped his head back and barked a laugh. “You’re yammed.”

  “Am not.” I rubbed my stomach. “Delirious with hunger, maybe.”

  He unbunched the jacket in his hand and offered it. I waved it off.

  “We can sneak into Viv’s kitchen,” he said.

  “Nah. I’m fine.” The barn’s door was a tiny caramel rectangle behind us. “What are we going to tell them? I mean, all that in there, it was brilliant.”

  His mouth pursed and then he shook his head. “No idea—yet.”

  The trees along one side of the pool bowed in the wind. Viv’s house was lightless. Graham settled on a poolside lounger and I sat next to him. He tried to pluck my hand from my thigh. I wouldn’t budge it. Holding hands right then wouldn’t have felt friendly and innocent.

  “You’re pissed,” he said.

  My thoughts staggered backward and I remembered our dance and what he’d said about Viv and the kiss and my secret. “I’m not.”

  “You’re angry that I kissed Viv, which is selfish.”

  I faced him. “Excuse me?”

  Clouds blew across the sky, muddying the light. “You hate that I was both of your first kisses,” he said, his voice having lost some of its chilliness.

  “You were not her first kiss,” I said, loud and clearly. “She was confused or kidding or—I don’t know what she was—but you were n
ot her first kiss.”

  He smirked. “You think I don’t know about her theater camp trysts?”

  I shot up, flushed and surprised. “Why tell me that you were both of our first kisses then? Just to bring mine up?” I turned away from him. I marched past the pool. The stone path was wet and slippery as I rounded the corner of the house.

  Ninth grade, right before Thanksgiving, Harry and Viv were out of town. Graham and I ended up at a classmate’s house party. We were standing too close to a game of truth or dare. At Graham’s turn, he said “dare” with his typical bravado. The junior dared him to kiss me. Graham asked if it was okay, whispered and in front of the other players in the circle. I nodded, dumbstruck. I’d never kissed anyone before; he hadn’t either. It was gentle. His braces nipped my lips. Kids watched, joking, critiquing our form.

  I made it to the front porch swing as Graham emerged from the other direction.

  “Izzie,” he said.

  “Go away.”

  “I’m redacting everything. I put my foot in my mouth. I shouldn’t have brought our kiss up. I shouldn’t have kissed Viv at all. It was the night, the rock, our ceremony, the way you both looked. You were in your underwear. I wanted to kiss someone.” He fisted his hair. “The opportunity presented itself.”

  It had. I crossed my arms, blinking at him.

  “Why do you mind?” he asked.

  Graham and I had crossed an invisible line freshman year and I worried at the time that we wouldn’t be able to return to the side where we were best friends. My worry was for no good reason. “You kissing Viv could have ruined everything.”

  “But you and Harry dating couldn’t?” He held his arms up, agitated. “I regret kissing you that way. On a dare. I’d do it over.” He was breathing like an asthmatic.

  I couldn’t settle on what I wanted from him. To apologize more for kissing Vivian. To never kiss anyone again. Jealousy contracted my stomach. Graham belonged to me. He was my oldest friend. I wanted to keep him from kissing other girls, but I didn’t want to kiss him myself.

  I took his hand, warm and familiar, soft scar on his palm from the blood moon ritual. I thought about the tattoo scabbing over on my ribs, identical to his. I cupped his palm and pressed my lips to the scar. I tasted salt and cider. “There. Do-over complete,” I said. “I’m sorry.”