First We Were IV

by Alexandra Sirowy

  Seeing Dad as a zombie in the dark got me thinking about how hard Viv would take it. I was afraid; I couldn’t admit to her that I’d set my dad up. So I faked shock and called her, then I recorded myself talking about it. I was a liar. Lying about the truth in which I tried to tell the truth. It was complicated.

  I watched the line curl around the corner at Holy Bagels. Tons of middle school kids standing beside their bikes and trying to look older by acting busy on their cells. If I shouted, they’d all look my way. I stood up on the bench that ran the perimeter inside the gazebo and inspected the rafters of the roof. The gazebo was a better stage than our rock.

  I texted Graham. Do you still have that spy cam?

  Graham’s reply dinged. Think so. Inspecting train tracks.

  Where?

  Ghost Tunnel to knoll.

  How?

  Walking them. Will be late for class.

  I lobbed the chai into the wastepaper basket and went to stroll around the square, on the lookout for security cameras. A girl was taking out the recycling in the alleyway between Holy Bagels and Cup of Jo. She’d worked the counter for at least a few months at Holy Bagels.

  The recycling lid slammed shut and she was wiping her hands on her jeans when I reached her. “Hey,” I said.

  She whirled around, mouth open in surprise.

  “Could I ask you something?” She checked over her shoulder to the back door of the bagel shop. “I’ll be quick,” I added.

  She crossed her arms and gave a beleaguered sigh. “What’s up?”

  “I was studying in the gazebo yesterday and left my bag while I went into Cup of Jo. I didn’t notice until I got home, but my cell was missing from inside. Do you know if the bagel shop or anyone has cameras up? I could watch their tapes to see who took my phone.”

  “Don’t you remember crap-ageddon?” She laughed at my confused face. “A few months ago. Someone let their dog crap all over the knoll. Kids kept stepping in it. They stationed a cop after the third week or something. Like a cop literally sat in the gazebo all day to keep the crapper away.”

  “Oh yeah. So no cameras.”

  “No. Sucks. Sorry.” Her thumb jerked over her shoulder. “I gotta go.”

  “Thanks. Bye,” I called, walking backward up the alley.

  • • •

  Perfection that the first funny rite happened when Viv and I were in the same third-period classroom, along with Trent, Jess, Conner, and Campbell. Of course, perfection happened by Viv’s design. It began as rustling. A sharp intake of breath. A pop that made me jump in my seat. A smell. I’ve never had a pet, but there is something all-at-once recognizable about the repulsive scent of canned cat food. I was convinced that if Harry’s boy from another planet, a catless planet, had been in that room he would have named the smell instantly like I did.

  “Oh my god,” I heard Jess say.

  I swiveled around. Mr. Novak muttered something about keeping the chatter down, barely taking his eyes off the whiteboard.

  Campbell, at the desk behind me, was fixing the newly opened can of cat food with a doomed stare. A top layer of gelatinous goo reflected the fluorescent light. A mauve processed meat jelly peeked from under it. A can opener lay abandoned. Viv stood at her desk for a better view.

  “Oh shit,” Jess said, up on her knees, staring over Campbell’s knit beanie.

  “Duuuuude. That is rough,” Trent said. He extended a fist across the row for a bump; Campbell left him hanging.

  A gag burped up from Campbell’s throat. He withdrew a spoon from his pocket. I covered my mouth with a hand. The spoon cut into the jelly meat. I wanted to look away. The spoon disappeared inside his mouth; it came out clean, except for a few streaks. His eyes went red and teared. There was a gurgle from his stomach. His hand shook putting the soiled spoon into his pocket. He took two audibly deep inhales and exhales.

  Trent and I exchanged a look of revulsion. “You’re a champion, man,” he told Campbell.

  “I’m going to puke,” Campbell said weakly. Trent grabbed the can, held it far from his body, and speed walked to the trash at the back of class. When he returned to his seat, Campbell had his forehead planted on the desk.

  The rite had been unmissable. Every kid in that classroom had watched in confusion and disgust. Presently I think our whole plan hinged on Campbell and his courage without us realizing it. If he had refused, chucked the can in the trash, told his friends, it would have been too easy for the rest to bow out also. Campbell had done the disgusting without complaint. He was a champion. The rest of our initiates would carry on.

  For the rest of third period I couldn’t shake the feeling that Campbell had deserved the cat food rite less than any of his friends. And I wondered, had Campbell’s secret, that he was once a kid a lot like us but had shed that old identity for a shinier, popular one, made Viv angry with him?

  Word of one more rite reached me by the start of lunch. Rachel stood up in the middle of the history class she and Graham shared. She told Mr. Rooney, their teacher, that his curriculum made her want to puke because it glorified the colonizer and ignored the slaughter of indigenous nations who were already here before here became the United States. She ended declaring that America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, in fact was a country built on stolen land and the corpses of indigenous peoples and slaves. She was ordered out of the class for the rest of the period.

  Even if I hadn’t known that Graham had chosen Rachel, it was undeniably his work.

  Viv insisted we eat lunch in the courtyard’s amphitheater, on the top cement riser. We had good seats for when Trent stripped down to his boxers and humped the flagpole. Students crowded around. Whooped and hooted. Trent continued for longer than I’d told him to in the embarrassing rite’s instructions. There was a furious whistle, signaling the arrival of campus security. They hauled Trent off the flagpole. He held his clothing against his chest, a victor’s grin causing a few kids to ask if Trent was on antipsychotics.

  It was better than I’d imagined.

  Viv lazily tossed a grape into her mouth, chewed, and then waved to the sky. “Behold, we are the masters of the universe.”

  Harry snorted.

  Her words bounced around in me for the entire afternoon.

  • • •

  • • •

  Our initiates met us at the western corner of the apple orchard, two rows of trees in, along the dirt lane. It was half-past midnight. Concealed by the trees, we distributed black beanies with two holes cut for eyes and mouths. Graham gave out cans of red spray paint and I recapped the plan.

  “Everyone knows which houses they’re hitting? Good,” I said.

  “Don’t deviate,” Graham warned.

  “Keep your masks and gloves on at all times,” Harry added.

  “At one a.m. exactly, Jess, Amanda, Rachel, and Campbell will run home using the green belts,” I said. “Conner and Trent will stay to finish breaking the windows with us because we all live on this street.” Each of us had been assigned the houses nearest to our own to help with a fast getaway.

  “Won’t it be suspicious when none of your houses are hit?” Jess asked.

  Graham said, “Who says we’re not hitting our own houses?”

  “You guys think you can re-create the drawing?” I pressed.

  “It’s not exactly a Picasso,” Amanda said snidely.

  “Good. Then you shouldn’t have a problem making sure it looks like a bird,” I retorted.

  “Everyone set their cell alarms so they vibrate at one,” Harry said. “Masks on. Gloves on, and—”

  Graham cut him off. “Move out.”

  Our formation broke apart as we hit the sidewalk, each of us splinters aimed at our targets. I flew uphill in the direction of my house. The neighborhood would be transformed into a nightmare landscape within minutes. All the oblivious, selfish families on our street would wake up to red, red, red. We would make them feel a fraction of the fear Goldilocks must have felt. They de
served it.

  Four of our neighbors had kept secrets about Goldilocks’s death. Three of them had heard cries for help or the car crash. Two of them had destroyed evidence of the crime. None of them had come forward after her body was found, when they must have realized they’d witnessed a sliver of her murder. What they knew might have helped find her killer; it might have forced the police to investigate the residents of Driftwood. Who knew how many others might be guarding their own secrets? This was why we planned to hit every house on the block. By that logic, we were condemning our own parents. All but Graham’s mom had been home.

  The Swintons, Holloways, Kirkpatricks, and Yus would receive indictments spelled out in letters cut from Viv’s magazines. Graham, Viv, Harry, and I had a note for each of them in our pockets, and we’d deliver them at the end of the night’s rebellion. We’d make sure they understood that the blood covering Driftwood was their punishment.

  Graham would jog to Carver’s and Denton’s houses using the green beltways we took for the blood rebellion. Once he’d left our demand in their mailboxes, he’d sprint back in time to hit Kirkpatrick’s house and await the final stage of the rebellion in chorus with the rest of us.

  It hadn’t been enough to make Carver’s and Denton’s front yards bleed. Where was Goldilocks’s pound of flesh? The Order demanded a sacrifice. The police chief’s and mayor’s authorities would be restitution. Our notes to them read Resign and it will stop. Perhaps the Order would be satisfied then. I hissed into my mask. Perhaps not.

  Night sounds were muted, the gentle purr of the ocean like background static. Nothing, and then a rush of footsteps to my right that made me veer onto a nearby lawn. A figure in black charged by me. Conner turned halfway and tipped a hand to his masked forehead in salute. Harry was close behind.

  He came to a stop. “Did he push you?”

  “No. I was just startled.”

  “Because if he just gives me another reason . . . ,” Harry said.

  I laid my hand on his shoulder. “No time to think about him right now.”

  Harry stayed trotting by my side until we reached Mrs. Holloway’s. I waved him off when he hung at the mouth of her driveway, reluctant to leave. He had his own houses to hit, though.

  With the can of spray paint I made an X that spanned the length and width of her front door and a smaller X at the center of her front window. I painted a large IV on the welcome mat.

  Next I moved on to the bird—two humps, the splayed wings, and a fringe of feathers under them. Same position as the birds’ and Goldilocks’s makeshift wings. It was nearly ten feet wide, slashing red across her driveway. There, Mrs. Holloway, try ignoring that like you did her cries for help. I improvised, sketching the outline of a dead body like at a crime scene on her flagstone path. Pausing a second, I gazed at the street around me. Faceless figures clad in black. The hiss of spray paint. One house after another was painted in garish red, morbid drawings.

  The following two houses went faster. By the time I sketched the bird in my own driveway, my strokes were fluid and smooth; I imagined the can to be a knife, the cement cut open and bleeding. A buzzing in my pocket. It was one o’clock. The initiates who didn’t live close had their head start to get home before we woke the neighborhood.

  I jogged soundlessly back to Mrs. Holloway’s. There were fifteen minutes until the louder phase of the rebellion began. Fifteen minutes to locate a rock, big enough to break a window, small enough to throw.

  The neighborhood felt empty with almost half of us gone. Conner was up the street near his house; Trent down at the bottom by his; and four of us were stationed at the houses we needed to deliver letters to. Conner and Trent were told to pick any house close to theirs.

  I found the perfect river rock and secured the letter with a rubber band around it. Viv already wiped the fingerprints from the glossy paper using art gum and a technique she learned on the Internet.

  In a crouch, I tried to remain invisible behind a rosemary plant. The second buzz would come soon. I struggled to control my breathing. I’d need to be ready to flee.

  There was the shattering of glass from down the street. Shit. I went to stand like I might see it; sank back down. Was it Viv? Graham? Trent? A second crash from far up the street. Too early. The heel of my sneaker caught the sidewalk and I fell, tailbone on the curb, spine finding the street. Shouts came from up the street. A porch light flickered on in my peripheral vision. I fumbled with my phone—six minutes early. The others wouldn’t wait. It was now or never.

  As I threw myself to my feet and ran for the Holloway’s lawn, there were two loud, ringing clatters. I wound up and released the rock, hitting the high left corner of the window. At first only fissures spread, then came a tinkle like falling rain. The glass dropped out in segments. The rock hadn’t made it inside. I lunged forward across the grass, diving into a shrub. Searched the ground. Found it. Hurled the brick through the gap in the glass. I was running for my house when I saw the shard of glass sticking out from my palm.

  My hand seized up as I groped for the doorknob. Someone’s security alarm wailed. More yelling from up and down the street. In the foyer I heard the floor above me creak. I ripped the mask from my face and stuffed it and the spray paint under the couch cushion as Dad came down the stairs.

  I stood at the window, peering out, my gloved hands tucked under my arms, the glass digging deeper. “Daddy, what’s happening?” I asked. “Someone’s shouting.” It was nauseating playing innocent and scared.

  He blinked sleep from his eyes, becoming gradually more alert standing next to me. Mom would have noticed that I wasn’t in pajamas. She would have heard the ragged pant of my breath as I choked down pain.

  Dad told me to stay inside, he was going to check it out, make sure no one was hurt. Where had he been five years before when someone out there actually did need help?

  The door slammed behind him.

  My hands shook as I held them over my bathroom sink a minute later. A shard of glass stood from my left hand. An iceberg that pierced through the black fuzzy glove and my skin. The glove sponged blood on the white porcelain as I rested my hand, palm toward the ceiling.

  My good hand trembled, knocking the cell from the ridge of vanity into the sink. I wouldn’t ask anyone to risk leaving their house. And showing up at the emergency room with glass in my hand wasn’t an option. There. I counted three distinct sirens.

  Finally my finger steadied enough for me to video call him. Two rings and Graham’s spectacle-clad face appeared.

  “Holy shit,” Graham answered. “Who threw seven minutes and forty seconds early? No. Don’t tell me. I know. Had to have been Conner.”

  “Graham,” I croaked.

  “I actually had to dive into a juniper bush to hide from the Horowitzes. With the bloody spiders, Izzie. Cobwebs in my face until they went back inside to call the police. You look pale.”

  Shakily I held the phone so he had a view of the glass.

  “Fuck.”

  “It hurts.”

  “I don’t know if I can leave the house without it looking suspicious.” I saw a flash of his ceiling, then his face again, peeking through his bedroom blinds. “I’ll figure something out, okay?”

  “No,” I said. “No. My dad’s awake. Just stay on with me.” I tried to shove the pain away. Think. Stop feeling. “Should I pull the glass out or remove the glove first?”

  “Does moving the glove move the glass?”

  I propped the phone so it was standing against the water faucet. Delicately I pinched the fabric near the glass and pulled up. I cried out.

  “Affirmative. Shit,” he said. “How deep do you think it is?”

  “Deep.”

  “Bend your fingers.”

  “Can’t.” With my good hand, I reached under the sink. “There are lots of towels.”

  “At least you won’t bleed to death.”

  “How comforting.”

  “Be careful not to break off the tip when you pull it
out.”

  I gave my head a shake; even the small reverberation stoked the pain.

  “Okay,” Graham said, maddeningly calm. “Do it fast. Pull the glass. Rip the glove off. Stop the bleeding. It’ll be easy. One, two—”

  “Three,” I whispered, wrenching the glass. The wound spurted blood. I panted at the pain shooting up my fingers. I dragged the glove off and dropped it with a wet thump in the sink.

  “Let me see.” Graham’s voice came from down a tunnel. I couldn’t keep the phone steady as I held him up. “Put pressure on it. Izzie. You hear me? Put pressure on it. Now.”

  With a bath towel and my hand clutched to my chest, I curled up against the bathtub. I tried to focus on slow breaths in and out. Graham sat near my shoulder on the tub’s ledge; he appeared to be perspiring.

  “Distract me,” I whispered.

  “Tell me”—a pause as he stalled to figure out what to say—“Pendleton, would you smile or frown in your mug shot?”

  My laugh turned into a blubbery cry.

  “It’s your left hand, right?”

  I grunted.

  “You’re going to have near identical scars on both hands. The stories you’ll be able to tell. All that character. I just may copy you.”

  We said good night, and I fell asleep on the cold tile floor. Five years after the girl with the glass in the Ghost Tunnel, there I was, another piece of glass, another scar, all in the name of Goldilocks.

  Retrieved from the cellular phone of Vivian Marlo

  Transcript and notes prepared by Badge #821891

  Shared Media Folder Titled: IV, Wed., Oct. 23, 2:07 a.m.

  Video start.

  V. Marlo is in her bedroom. Sirens can be heard in the background.

  “I, Vivian Marlo, belong in a Greek tragedy. I have a fatal flaw.” She takes a deep breath. “Once upon a time, despite everything Amanda Schultz had done to me for eons, I was willing to let it go and be her friend.” Her eyes close for a beat.