Her gray eyes cleared and she nodded adamantly. “Yeah. The Order of IV needs it to be dry. The Mistress of Rebellion and Secrets won’t let it rain.”
She threw herself onto my bed, piling the lavender throw pillows under her back. I removed the lid to my chai and took a big gulp. “Yum. So. How’s revenge going?” She furrowed her brows at me. “On Amanda. I can help, if you want.”
Her top lip twitched. “I haven’t decided on the how or when yet.”
“Ideas?”
She tipped her head, meaning anything.
“We could bribe someone in yearbook to delete her name under senior portraits. Oh.” I hopped up from the desk and sat on the bed. “We could get them to change her senior quote. Make it a really stupid one.”
A jaded smile. “Haunting. I’m sure Amanda will need years of therapy after that.”
“The whole initiates thing, us bossing them around, making them our pawns, isn’t that sort of like revenge?”
Viv’s smile spasmed. “That’s ordinary comeuppance for her being a brat—that’s Amanda’s whole group’s punishment.”
“You sound like Graham,” I said, meaning it lightly.
She crossed her arms at her chest, one hand toying with her hair as she frowned. “I sound like me. If I were Graham, you’d be going along with everything I said.”
Taken aback, I abandoned my chai on the bedside table. “I understand why you’re angry with Amanda.”
“Not angry, Izzie.” She swung her legs over the side of the bed. “Hate. I hate Amanda Schultz.” She stomped a boot. “I’m used to it. You and Graham. Brain twins. Partners in adventure and crime. You act like I wasn’t always your audience. You guys had your wild adventures and I was the one who carried bandages in her pockets for when you got hurt. Or a water bottle because we’d randomly have to disappear into the hills. Do you know I always had a granola bar in my purse in case you made me miss dinner—what eleven-year-old thinks that far ahead?
“All those stupid stunts. You never, ever told Graham they weren’t good ideas.” She was rigid, her knees reddening to match her boots. “But I can tell that you don’t really think I should go after Amanda. I see you,” she said emphatically. “I know you like Harry. I know part of you likes Graham. I know that finding Goldilocks messed you up. I know you look through pictures of missing girls. I know you have a sketch pad in your desk full of drawings of her. I know you think I’m a drama queen. But don’t you know that I’m that way because I’ve been competing with you and Graham? I want to take up as much space as you two do. I want you to notice me as much as you notice each other.”
Viv’s chest heaved. Her words upended what I thought of myself as a friend. How hadn’t I shown Viv what she meant to me? I stepped up on the mattress.
“You aren’t going to jump, are you?” she asked, hurt giving way to annoyance.
I reached for the large, rectangular basket on top of my bookshelf. “I don’t think the bed is high enough to end it.” I kneeled and dumped the basket’s contents onto the comforter. A few cootie catchers tumbled onto the floor. “Most are from middle school. I didn’t organize them chronologically. You made them, and how could I throw away our maybe-futures?”
She picked through the shapes, like white paper flowers of all sizes. “You kept all of them. You are a cootie catcher hoarder.”
“Guilty.”
She tucked her fingers in the folds of a catcher with different kinds of dogs we wanted to have on the outer flaps. “Remember the one with super powers, or the Halloween one with the grisly deaths, or the one we used to tell the first Broadway role I’d land?”
“Christine in Phantom of the Opera,” I said.
I scooped up about ten cootie catchers and let them fall into the basket. Viv studied the flaps of each before placing them away.
“Viv?”
She looked up.
“You are my drama queen.” There was a funny quiver to the words, but I meant them. Without judgment. To me, friendship meant seeing a person. Seeing their flaws. Loving them more for them.
She smiled drowsily, like she hadn’t slept well.
“Forget brain twin. You want to be my heart twin?” I asked.
Her red rain boot nudged my knee. “Shut up, sappy.”
I grew serious. “I am sorry. You take up space. No one else has a whole shelf dedicated to them in here.”
She toed one boot off the side of the bed, then the other, and squirmed back onto the pillows.
“So, I said you like Graham. Want to talk about it?”
“No.” I stared at the cootie catchers interrupting the violet pintuck comforter. There was one, somewhere in the pile, that we’d written Harry’s and Graham’s names as potential senior prom dates. “I like Harry.” It came out meek. “He’s the one I want to kiss and go on dates with. Graham is, I don’t know, maybe without Harry. But Harry . . . is.” I swept my arms encompassingly. That was wrong. I tapped my hand over my heart.
“I know,” Viv said. “But liking them both, in different ways, it wouldn’t make you bad. Not like my mom and your dad.” My eyes felt cornered by hers. She smiled. I couldn’t help returning it. “Okay. Harry.” She sprawled forward, a new lightness to her voice. “You went to homecoming together, but he didn’t make a move—granted, the afterparty hijacked the night.”
“I’m going to his house later,” I said, nerves strumming my throat.
“Is it like, an official date? Or a hangout?”
“The difference?”
“An official date means he’ll probably kiss you. A hangout makes it ambiguous, and if he kisses you on a hangout, it doesn’t mean as much as if on a date.”
“Says who?”
She smirked. “Says every magazine’s dating advice.” Viv was the only person I knew who subscribed to magazines that arrived in the mail.
“Then it must be gospel,” I said with an eye roll. “What if I kiss him?”
“Yes,” she said exuberantly. “Go for it. It took him five years to ask you out and I’m not waiting five more to find out how he is. But wear a pretty bra.”
She deflected the pillow I tossed at her. “I’m just talking about kissing him.”
“If only you were more scandalous. I want to live vicariously through you.” She sighed wistfully. “Do you think he’s done it before? Sex?”
“Uh. No.” My head wobbled in indecision. “I actually don’t know. Maybe.”
“There was that mysterious girl bagger last year.”
“True.” I bit my lip. “I want to know what it’s like.”
“Sex?”
I nodded.
“Me too. I mean, I think it’s different, depending.”
“On what?”
Viv’s brows angled together as she said, “Mechanics. Position. Formulas. Aerodynamics,” imitating Graham.
“Formulas?”
She nodded sagely. “Formulas that equal one sum. It’s supposed to feel really good. Especially for the girl, or I guess girls if there are two involved, but somehow I think it would automatically feel good if two girls were having sex since they have the same equipment.”
“Sound reasoning.”
“Graham hasn’t done it,” she continued. “Not with a human girl. He would have told us. Tried to make us jealous.” We sat lost in thought, until Viv added, “We’re all going to school separate tomorrow so we can deliver the rites before classes. Easier to be clandestine if we’re not rolling as a pack. We can each take one or two initiates theirs.”
“We have to decide what order the larger rebellions will come and on what nights,” I said. “Plus, we have to break them down and assign each initiate their rite.”
She nodded, saying, “We’ll finish tonight.”
• • •
In Harry’s front yard, I paused by his mom’s flower bed. All her pretty violet and orange flowers were mangled, their stems bent, buds brown and dry. The soil was upturned like someone had ridden a bike through it.
He craned to see. “Maybe moles.”
“Mutant moles,” I said.
His dad shouted hello from the kitchen table. Simon was sprawled out on the living room floor surrounded by flash cards with Italian vocabulary words on them. “Buon pomeriggio, Isadora,” he called as Harry led the way down the hall toward his bedroom.
“His accent kind of sounds—”
“German. I know,” Harry said.
“Isn’t it weird that Simon’s the only little kid we know? Eight-year-olds who learn Italian and build robots and act like tiny adults are our normal.”
“Normal Simon is not. He isn’t the worst, though.” Harry’s tousled hair stirred and resettled as he collapsed onto the carpet. “Remember when he’d tell jokes without punch lines? He’s getting funnier at least.”
I sunk to the ground in a gap between the records laid out over the floor. “I used to want a brother so bad when I was little,” I admitted.
“And then you met Simon and thought, forget it,” Harry said with a chuckle.
“Nah. Then I found Graham in kindergarten and it was better than getting a brother. It was like getting a twin.” I felt guilty for bringing Graham up, which led to feeling weird for feeling guilty. “What were you listening to?”
Harry grinned and lifted up on his knees for a stack of records on his dresser. “I’ve been searching for the perfect song.”
“And you think it might be hiding on one of these?” I tapped a black disk on its paper sleeve. He had hundreds, on shelves, in piles, on the floor—almost every surface covered in vinyl.
“Not anymore. I listened to them and it isn’t here,” he said.
I could imagine that all the light in his eyes came from listening to music, a fleck of gold added with each note. “How will you know it when you hear it?”
“Ummm.” He drummed his knees. “It’ll sound sort of familiar. But also really different.”
“The same and different,” I said. “Like the worlds you used to imagine in space.”
“Exactly like those.”
“You want to hear my perfect song?”
“I might not have the record.”
I pulled my cell from my pocket. “Is it blasphemous to play music on a phone surrounded by vinyl?”
He reached over and brushed a strand of hair stuck to my cheek. I felt his fingertips after they were gone. “I’ll give you a pass on the blasphemy.” He held up the inciting finger. “One time only.”
I was nervous and selected the wrong song. “Errr, definitely not that one.” I found the intended. Its beat quickened and segued into the initial chorus. The bedframe bit into the back of my neck and I stretched my legs out, absorbing the music.
Halfway through, Harry’s hand closed softly around my ankle. He leaned forward, peering at the cell between us like he could see the notes streaming out.
“Never heard this band before,” he murmured.
Goose bumps spread up my leg from Harry’s sustained touch. “They were on a soundtrack—best thing about the movie. But this one, it’s my favorite of theirs. You know how you can play a song so much it loses its effect?”
“Absolutely.”
“This one never does. His voice sounds about to crack because he’s sad but trying to get over it, and I always wonder if maybe this is the time it will crack. This is the time it’ll be too much for him. Just listen to it five hundred times and you’ll get it.”
“I understand,” he said. “It’s like you.” He exhaled, puffing out his cheeks. “You don’t lose your effect. On me.”
Harry crawled forward. His hand slid up my ankle. My perfect song began playing again, on repeat. Harry was up to my knees, smile scared but measuring as the distance between us closed. I’ll keep my eyes open, I thought. I wouldn’t miss any part of kissing Harry.
“Thanks for playing your perfect song for me,” he said, and I felt the words on my lips as much as heard them.
The doorbell chimed, trailed by Simon’s holler of “Harry” from down the hall.
Harry’s face hovered an inch from mine, his palms warm on my thighs.
Footfalls thumped louder. Harry sat back as the door slammed open.
“Har.” Graham was out of breath. “Oh, hey.” He focused on me. A stride into the room, he halted, appraising the scene. “Jesus. Are you listening to every record ever recorded?” I fumbled for my cell to stop the perfect song, like it would reveal too much.
“What’s up?” Harry said. There was a faint crease on his forehead as he watched Graham clear space to sit. Graham’s fingers hiked up his sleeves. He looked from my pink, blotchy neck to Harry’s flushed cheeks. I pulled a pillow off the bed and hugged it.
“Here it is.” He slapped a notebook on the ground. His handwriting ran across the page, coming up diagonal at the end of each line like it did when he wrote fast and frantic. “I’ve been working all day.”
“On . . . ,” Harry said, hands hooked around his knees rather than touching me. I wanted him to touch me again.
“Goldilocks. Her killer.”
The inebriated warmth of being close to Harry vanished. I threw the pillow aside and curled over the notebook with a jitter of dread and anticipation. “What are these?”
Graham had fifty or so bullet points on the first page.
“They’re the facts. Basics we know for sure, like someone who knew about the meteorite and the manner in which the birds were buried staged Goldilocks’s body, and she sustained two injuries, a large contusion to her front that might not have been fatal, and a bruise around her neck that suggested strangulation and would have been.”
I flipped the page.
“Those are the reasonable conclusions I can draw from the facts. For example, the person who knew about the meteorite and birds and staged Goldilocks is her killer, and the initial injury to her torso happened when they hit her with a car.” He paused only to take a quick breath. “She dragged herself away, tried to escape; they went after and finished her with their hands. Since it was nighttime, they were likely driving to their home in our neighborhood, or they were a guest leaving a house in our neighborhood.”
On to the next page.
“Questions I have for witnesses, informed by the reasonable conclusions and facts. Like, did you ever go to the window during the course of that night and see a car on the road? If so, did you recognize it? Were there any signs of prowlers or did anything go missing from your yard or home during the days leading up to the date in question? Were you aware of your neighbors having guests? Do you have a criminal record?” There were eraser smudges and dried water blots. It reminded me of the notes Graham left in the books we passed back and forth.
“There’s one more,” he said, brushing my hand aside to turn the page. “My theories. We’re operating under the assumption that the first injury was an accident, the second only to cover it up. What if the first wasn’t an accident, though?” I sat back on my heels to stare at Graham, as he spoke with untroubled curiosity. “What if it was to shut Goldilocks up, what if she saw something she wasn’t supposed to? What if she was running from her killer? Or what if her killer wasn’t rational and it was a kill for fun? What if we’re dealing with a predator? He tried to run her over and when that didn’t work, he went after her on foot.”
The night Graham conjured played in my head. Girl pursued. Run down with a car. She crawled toward a front porch, tearing the skin on her knees. Footsteps at her back, heavier, louder. A fistful of her hair and he’d stopped her. His hands fitted around her neck. Her lungs convulsed. Dead.
The bottom of the image dropped out as I had a premonition of Graham at our neighbors’ houses, demanding answers.
Graham saw a challenge where there was danger. It was jumping without looking all over again, except the bandages in Viv’s purse wouldn’t be enough.
“You can’t do thi
s,” I said.
He’d been nodding down at the notebook, as if affirming the rightness of his course. He met my eyes. “Yes, I can. I’m going to knock on doors and demand answers tomorrow after school.”
“No,” I said. “This is different from hiding behind IV. Different from targeting Carver and Denton, even the whole city. You’d be announcing to whoever killed her that you’re looking for them.” I snatched up the notebook, clapped it shut, and thrust it to his chest. “What about the unlikelihood of solving a cold case? You blabbed all these stats about the cops never doing it and the charges not sticking even if they do.”
“I’m not talking about getting the police to solve it. I’m going to solve it. The Order can deal with the killer.”
“Are you stupid? We’re the Order.” I shoved the notebook at his chest again, harder. He gaped at me, fumbled to accept the book, and climbed to his feet.
“Funny,” he said, going for the door. “I thought you’d call me brave.”
I closed my eyes for the barest second.
There was a muffled conversation once Graham reached the living room. A minute later, the front door shook Harry’s bedroom window.
He moved to sit beside me. The mattress gave at my back. “It’s okay. Graham will be focused on the rebellions by the time we go over there tonight.”
In my head I turned over the methodical way Graham had broken down the night of the crime and the killing itself. “I really shouldn’t have said he was stupid. All those notes were genius.”
“Going after a killer is dumb. Dumb and crazy,” Harry said, turning toward his records.
Two minutes before, I’d been dead set against Graham looking for Goldilocks’s killer. Letting his plan sink in emboldened me. Yes, Graham saw a challenge instead of danger. But so did I. I used to jump without looking right alongside him. I didn’t used to care about bandages any more than he did.
There was our escalating threshold for mischief. Perhaps there was also one for danger. I ran my finger along the ridge of the scar on my shoulder. Graham was just continuing what I’d started at twelve years old when I went looking in the tunnel.
First We Were IV Page 21