The authorities had separated Viv, Graham, and me by then. They had one shiny new piece of evidence that we were IV, or that at least Harry was. The doctors at the hospital emergency room reported the IV tattoo on his rib cage. Then, at midnight, the video of Amanda sharing her secret posted on the school news blog from an anonymous user.
In the restroom of the police station, Viv said that logging onto Harry’s news blog account had been easy. Two days before she’d borrowed his laptop at lunch. We were all sitting there, without a clue. Harry’s username and password auto-populated as soon as Viv loaded the blog. She uploaded the video clip of Amanda from her e-mail, saved it as a draft, selected that it would post anonymously, and set it to publish at midnight on the night we had planned to tell the initiates that the Order of IV was dissolving for a time.
She cried that she’d only uploaded the video to make herself feel like she had the upper hand over Amanda. Only set it for publication so she felt closer to revenge. She wasn’t going to go through with it. She would have told Harry to delete it in time. At least that’s what she swore to me as I shook my head silently at her in the bathroom stall.
“You had Conner and Trent kill a goat. You weren’t satisfied until there was death on display for the whole town to see,” Viv said. “Why are you acting like you don’t understand? I needed to hurt Amanda. She deserved it just like the rest of them did.”
I dropped to my knees in the bathroom, and threw up into the toilet.
So there. The police had a video, shot in the Marlos’ barn, showing all four of us surrounding a sea of candles and Amanda holding the same strange wooden doll they’d found us with up on the rock.
They went after us. Tried to play us against one another. Swore to me that Viv and Graham had confessed to being IV. That they were cooperating. Lines straight out of true crime television. I remained silent. Arms folded on a table. Head resting on them. Tears falling intermittently. Not one word slipped from my lips from the time they split us up to the time a lawyer my parents hired came in to say I was going home. Eight hours. Never for a fleeting second did I worry that Graham and Viv were in rooms somewhere betraying Harry’s secret. If we told about IV, even just confirmed what the police suspected, Conner might not be held completely responsible for Harry. Harry might be made to share the blame.
None of us would ever hold Harry accountable.
When we arrived home, in my bedroom, I told Mom everything about the Order of IV, Dad’s affair with Ina, and how Dad fell into our trap at the Ghost Tunnel. I shared every detail but one: Harry’s rite to Conner. After I finished, she stared out at the waves like she was waiting for answers to wash ashore.
She confronted Dad in their office but with the door open. A little over five years ago, he and Ina had gone to dinner up the coast; it was her first time eating out after surgery. Dad met her behind her clinic; they went in her car. They both drank at dinner. Champagne. Ina had medication and painkillers in her bloodstream. Still, she wanted to drive. Wanted to feel in charge, alive, normal. So she was the one driving up Driftwood when Goldilocks came flying out of the orchard. She was the one who mistakenly hit the gas rather than the brakes. They got out of the car. Ina assessed her injuries. She didn’t feel a pulse.
Dad didn’t share the conversation they had. What transpired, though, is clear. They decided that their lives, all they had to lose, was more important than the helpless girl who lay before them. She was dead—whether they believed this or not, I’ll never know. Ina drove home to hide the car with its dented front bumper in the garage. Dad ran up the street to our house to get his car. They needed to move the body. Dump it far away from Seven Hills. But when he got back, the girl was gone. He idled slowly down Driftwood, killed the engine when he heard a cry.
Goldilocks was strong. Determined. She’d dragged herself a ways before collapsing in front of Mr. Kirkpatrick’s house. Blood bubbled from her mouth. She convulsed. Dad believed she was dying. How could he call 9-1-1? There was evidence all over Ina’s car. I heard my mom begin to cry. He had thought about himself, his family, Ina, the Marlos. He didn’t consider what he’d be doing to Goldilocks’s family. At that point I heard Mom, voice shaking with fury, “Don’t ever say you did this for us again.”
Dad wrapped his hands around Goldilocks’s thin neck. Closed his eyes. Squeezed. He had realized the folly of loading her up, driving her when he could be stopped by a traffic cop on the highway, where a camera could catch him, where campers on the beach might spy him. He threw her in the back of the car, drove to the Marlos’ house, carried her through the orchard, placed her on the rock, and made her look like some cult fetishist’s kill. No one would ever look at Viv’s family. No one would ever look at anyone on Driftwood.
“Izzie found her. Our baby found her dead body,” Mom said.
“Ina was supposed to find her. Ina was supposed to go up there in a day or two, after she’d taken the car out of town to be repaired. The girls were supposed to be at the beach that day.”
I hadn’t remembered that. But yes, originally Graham, Viv, and I were going to throw the watermelon out to sea, to see if it could float.
The days that came after were confusing and numb. My senses were off—vision poor and ears ringing, like I’d survived an explosion. I’d catch the gentle roar of Harry’s last breath every now and then. Whip around, expect to see him. It hurt too much to be with Graham and Viv. The three of us in the barn was too nightmarishly diminished.
Despite our refusals to confess, the authorities’ investigation moved forward. Graham’s fingerprints were found on the skeleton. The butcher who sold us the blood recognized Harry’s picture on the news and called the police. A home surveillance camera caught what was clearly the bottom half of Viv’s face. I burned the damning Polaroids. Conner, Rachel, and Trent fingered us for the four who’d started it all. Jess and Campbell continued to deny that there was any such secret group. Amanda’s lawyer wouldn’t allow her to comment.
There were many police interviews, though after that first night I don’t remember much from my time with Seven Hills’s illustrious officers. When I wasn’t considering the irony that the cops were working so diligently to solve our case when they hadn’t done anything for Goldilocks, I sat thinking about Harry. Wondering what he’d do in the situation and, unable to guess, I drifted off with my eyes open. They weren’t sure what to make of me. The police strongly suspected us of grand collusion. They treated us as idiot kids and then as evasive masterminds. The reality lay somewhere in the middle.
A secret society, an idol, iconography, blood rituals, sacrifices, bonfires, pranks, arson, damage of private property, and all that blood. It was a lot to attribute to a bunch of kids who’d never been in trouble before.
There are parts of my time spent with the police that stick with me. The bitter, burnt coffee they poured in Styrofoam cups. I stopped drinking chai and took my coffee with honey the way Harry had liked it. How exhausted I was despite spending most of my time asleep at home or asleep at the police station or drinking coffee. I was delirious, had trouble with basic questions like, You hungry for lunch or can we keep going? I never shared our secrets; I never said a thing about the Order. It was all I had left of us. My eyelids were in a perpetual slow drop like Harry’s were in my memory. Unlike his, mine wouldn’t just close for good. I went to sleep, I woke up, I remembered that my universe was short.
Dad moved out during that time. Mom said it was best we not tell anyone about what he and Ina did. I kept his secret, not because I agreed, or because I thought I wouldn’t survive losing him, but for Viv. I would never take Viv’s mom away from her.
Mom sat quietly alone a lot, but there was a hopefulness to her sadness, like she could see the end of it up ahead. Not me. Food lost its flavor, all but the metallic taste of coffee. Music lost its relevance; they were never lyrics for me, but a kind of secret language meant for people whose lives involved happiness, or even sadness that could be quantified. Contained in a t
hree-minute song.
The videos we’d been taking came close to being our undoing. The police got permission to confiscate our cell phones. Graham had the wherewithal to delete the videos from the shared folder before they came for his, but a tech officer was able to find them on the cloud. I thought about Graham’s obsession with watching the clouds for rain—he’d been so close.
The police printed up transcripts of each video and confronted us with them. They expected a prisoner’s dilemma scenario where the three of us raced to confess in hopes of garnering good favor and leniency before the other two could. We kept silent. No comment. Heartbroken tears over Harry in the interview room.
Things were looking bad even still.
The threat was nebulous. Different days, different shapes. Our parents were scared we’d be charged with something serious—conspiracy, manslaughter, arson. What did we care? The last laugh Viv and I had was over whether or not they’d send us to the same prison. Maybe we could convince them that we were mentally unfit and end up sharing a padded room forever?
Then Graham left the country. His mother took a position teaching in Beirut; they were gone within twenty-four hours of him telling Viv and me.
“I don’t deserve to know anyone—to know anything,” Graham told me, “but I especially don’t deserve to know you. To love you. Not when Harry can’t.” Good-bye.
Graham was in Beirut when we learned we weren’t going to be charged with any crimes. Seven Hills had received too much negative attention. For weeks, reports of suspected teenage vigilantes going by the alias of IV had tantalized high schools everywhere. After Harry’s death, accounts of Conner’s harassment were shared by other students. A lot of people had witnessed Conner’s cruelty against Harry.
The story of Goldilocks’s death was everywhere. National news organizations alleged a coverup and corruption in Seven Hills. Charging a bunch of kids who’d drawn attention to the murder wasn’t going to help make Seven Hills PD look innocent. They dropped it; they dropped us. Instead they pursued Conner for Harry’s death.
Viv and I will be called to testify by the prosecution. It will be the first time in nine months that we’re in the same room. Viv was accepted to UCLA’s performing arts department. I heard that she decided that school would be a waste and instead is auditioning for work in Los Angeles.
The last time we spoke was a week before Christmas of senior year.
“Maybe someday the sadness won’t feel like it’s chewing us up? Maybe someday I can use it, like some actors use traumatic experiences?” she sighed wistfully over the phone.
Something in my chest tightened until it snapped. “I love you, Vivian,” I said, feeling all at once hollow. It was not difficult hanging up on her, and each time the old urge to call her again sent me reaching for my cell, Vivian wondering if someday she’d be able to use Harry’s death in her acting was in my head. I thought of how she’d revealed Amanda’s secret so that others would call her slut or whore or find a way to shame her.
I had enough credits to graduate a semester early. I took the necessary finals, told them to mail me my diploma, and was done with Seven Hills High School before the year ended.
Graham and his mom are in Amsterdam now. Graham writes letters, although they are short and too generic to be from him to me. No lectures on what he’s learning. Impersonal notes about the weather. There was once a haunted I miss him most when I’m breathing.
For a full week after I read that, I obsessed over using my graduation checks from my grandparents and buying a ticket to Graham. In the end, I couldn’t do it. Graham loved me, wanted me. I hadn’t wanted him enough in return. And losing Harry made every thought of Graham feel stolen and wrong.
I was accepted to the University of Southern California in the history department. Imagine, me and Viv in the same city. I deferred a year. I’m still in Seven Hills. I live with my mom; Dad is in San Diego. I see Ina at the farmers market. She tells me to come over, to have tea or take a swim with her. She reminds me that the barn is still mine if I want it. I nod and pretend like I might come. Like I don’t hate her. Like I don’t imagine the reckonings she and my father deserve. I wonder who would be alive if Dad and Ina never met.
For a while I blamed the Mistress. Calm, immortal apathy rolled off her after she’d been returned to me by the police, once the investigation into IV was closed. We’d pledged our blood and swore an oath to her—in pretend, I kept needing to remind myself. I couldn’t find a place to keep her, so she sat on my desk. Mistress of Death and Sacrifice. Lay your lovers and friends at my feet so I may devour them. I’d catch her out of the corner of my eye, maw dripping with Harry’s blood. I’d turn to see that cruel, cold, unchanging smile gleaming at me. So I burned her on a pyre of sticks. Watched the jaundiced smoke spiral into the night. I hummed that eerie little snippet Viv liked from her play about witches.
And then I turned on our meteorite. Not ours. Never again. Another universe’s. It had drawn Goldilocks in. Planted a writhing little whisper inside our heads, Wonder, ask, search, imagine. I climbed on top and took an ax to its crown. Ax blade collided with stone, sparking, sending violent jolts through me. Three swipes and I was done. Breathless. Muscles crimped in my neck until I cried. Pathetic.
I needed a softer surface to scrub our history from. Make it like it never happened. I raced home, ax deserted in the sleeping orchard. I pushed through the clutter of a kitchen drawer. Selected a box cutter and ran for my bathroom. There, IV was inked on the left side of my ribs, under my arm. The tattoo seemed to pulse in the mirror. Alive. I held the tip of the blade to the V. It pricked my skin. But those tattoos bound us together. Wherever we were. The blade clattered into the sink. The tattoo remains untouched.
I spend most days driving to record stores, where I hunt through albums. I buy what Harry’s collection is missing and then rush home to listen. I won’t stop until I find Harry’s perfect song. Once or twice a week I go over and build robots or practice Italian with Simon. It comforts me to think that in a way he has an older sibling. Someday, when I feel music as well as hear it, I will likely be happy to have Simon, a little more family.
There is so much to rage against.
I will never know Goldilocks’s real name. Never be able to tell her family that I tried to make things right for her. I’ll be sorry for the rest of my life for the actions of my father and Ina, and for what they took from Goldilocks.
I wonder how things got so out of hand. We invented a secret society. We invented its history, rituals, and rites. We never wanted to say good-bye. We were sick of being told what to do, what was important, what to care about. In this we were not alone. All those IVs scrawled on backpacks, armbands, T-shirts, and bathroom walls were proof. To see a broken world through young eyes and to not rebel would have been madness.
Was there a better means to an end than revenge? Would it have been so hard just to say, We care about what happened to the girl on the rock? Goldilocks had no voice; we felt like ours was too quiet. The Order of IV got people’s attention in the only way it could; in a language of blood, bones, and fire. Did we give it its power or did it bestow invisible power on us?
In the end, we weren’t so different from those cult members that Graham and I had read about. We pushed one another, none more than I. Our fiendish grins fed fiendish deeds. There had to have been another path.
Harry had that name buried inside him. Conner, Conner, Conner. He’d shoved it down deep like a sleeping monster, until it awoke, snapped its jaw in rage, and destroyed him. I am angry with Harry. I wish he had told me what he knew. I wish we’d been able to hold Conner accountable together. Harry made a sacrifice I don’t believe he should have.
I wonder at what point the secret rite for Conner wormed its way into Harry’s head. Was it the night we strung up the goat? Did my secret rite prove to Harry that Conner would follow through with ugly tasks? It was easy deciding a goat would be sacrificed. No pause. I needed an animal. I would have killed it with m
y own hands. Sweet Harry told me never to apologize for doing what I believed needed to be done. Did I blow that dark thought into his head?
I am furious with myself. Not with Izzie, Icky, at the mercy of her parents fighting, so afraid she’ll lose the three people who know and accept her. I’m angry with Izzie who had power to aim: Princess of the Night; Inventor of the Order; Master of Mischief, Rebellions, and Blood; and Acolyte of Revenge. I’ve spent months locking that girl up inside of me. I shoved her down into a place that looks a lot like the Ghost Tunnel. She’s hunched by a fire. There are other girls crouched around it too. Lost girls, surviving. I am more like them now than I used to be. Warming my hands, gripping a shard of glass if ever I need to fight again, and I’m worried I’ll let her loose someday. I’m worried I’ll let the anger blind me. The world probably needs someone like the girl inside of me, avenging all the nameless girls. Fighting for those who are thrown violently by the world, just as Harry was thrown violently from the rock.
I want to believe there’s a way to change the world without burning it.
I still think about the invisible forces that make people collide. I will always believe that the strongest things we do not see are friendship and love, their evidence as tangible as they are not. When I forget this lesson, I need only to think three names.
Harry. Graham. Vivy.
However much you think I loved them, I loved them more.
And because they are not here to share my final secrets with, I’ll share them with the universe and hope that wherever my three soul mates are, they’ll sense the invisible forces swirling around them.
I have never written a love letter. I have never written a hate letter.
I find that this is both.
These words are for my three best friends. One who is certain never to see any of us again, and the others, who may be able to come together someday, when it hurts less, when we’ve forgiven, who might read this if I ever work up the nerve to send it.
First We Were IV Page 32