The Bonding Ritual (Girls Wearing Black: Book Four)

by Spencer Baum

  A few minutes of driving and he was there. Sprawling castles hidden far from the road—that was the neighborhood, and he felt like he was coming up on something. On someplace he wanted to be. Getting closer now. It’s just…it’s right…is it up here? With each estate he drove past, he felt like he was nearing something important, until…he wasn’t. I’ve passed it. How could that be? I don’t even know what it is. But yes, now I’ve gone too far.

  He turned around and doubled back, and again got the sensation that he was almost there, yes, nearly there, but then, too far.

  It was as if the place he wanted to go wasn’t there anymore. As if he was drawn to empty space that used to mean something, but no longer did.

  Back and forth for more than an hour he drove, each time missing the mark. It made him think of the calculus class he took at community college, the limit as x approached y, a line getting infinitely closer to another line, never to actually touch. That’s what this place was he was trying to find. He’d get closer and closer and closer to it, and then he’d cross over to the other side, the mystery place somewhere behind him. When he tried to identify where it was, he’d come up empty. Just more gigantic mansions pressed up against the woods. All of them familiar in a distant sort of way. All except one.

  There was one mansion that brought him no feelings at all. A towering Victorian with white walls and a huge driveway, maybe the largest mansion in the neighborhood. Was it new? Must be a new place, because this mansion, and this one alone, did nothing for him. It was new to his eyes. And after what had to be his tenth pass at least, he decided this mansion was the reason he felt so confused.

  The sensation of lost memory pulled him towards this mansion, but when he arrived, he found nothing at all. Whatever he was looking for must have been torn down and this mansion was erected in its place.

  He left Potomac feeling disappointed but determined. The idea of searching for Jill woke him from what felt like a months-long slumber. It was meant to be this way. I’m meant to work for it. It would have been too easy for a girl to just show up in his life and fill all his empty spaces. It was better that he had to go out and find her.

  And even though he had no idea where to go next, he felt alive with purpose. I will find you, Jill, and this time, I won’t let you get away.

  Chapter 27

  Two hours before the class was scheduled to gather again at chapel and witness eight more attempts to open the safe, Jill met with Eve in a park on Henderson Avenue. Eve gave her two Ping-Pong balls.

  “Number sixty and number thirteen,” Eve said, announcing the printed numbers on each stolen plastic ball.

  “Were there any difficulties with the break-in?” Jill said.

  Eve shook her head. “Daciana is going to great lengths to protect the treasure in the safe, but hasn’t given the same consideration to her bucket of balls. The alarm on the chapel isn’t armed during the school day. Getting these for you was as simple as picking a couple of locks.”

  Jill rolled the balls around in her hand. Number thirteen: Mattie’s number, but soon to be known to the rest of the school as Samantha’s. Number sixty: Ryan’s number.

  Neither would get called up to the stage tonight, or any subsequent night until Jill had figured out the safe.

  “I’ll be asking you to do the break-in a second time when I’m ready to return these,” Jill said.

  “I’ll be ready,” said Eve. “This was one of the easiest jobs I’ve ever done.”

  *****

  The invitations were propped on a music stand just inside the front door of the chapel. There was a sign on the music stand inviting each student to take one.

  Jill, having arrived at the chapel just moments before Daciana took the stage, was in such a hurry she walked right past the stand without grabbing a paper. Her mind was still on the Ping-Pong balls, which at present were locked away in the glove box of her car.

  It wasn’t until she got to the pews and saw that everyone was holding a piece of paper that she turned back and checked the music stand. There were only a few invitations left. She grabbed one.

  A celebration of love and immortality was the headline on the paper. Underneath was a paragraph of neatly centered text.

  We will have a lantern festival on the 15th lunar day of this, the first lunar month of the new year. Participants will arrive with two lanterns: one for their loves, and one for their masters. Gather on the north lawn at dusk.

  Like everyone else at Thorndike, Jill had learned to master the lunar calendar, which was Daciana’s preferred means of tracking the days. On this year, the lunar new year was January 31st, meaning the 15th lunar day was February 14th.

  But it would have been too simple for Daciana to call the gathering a Valentine’s Day party.

  Holding her invitation in her hand, Jill went back to the pews and took a spot next to Ryan.

  “Did everything turn out how you wanted it to?” he whispered.

  Jill nodded her head, and Ryan visibly relaxed. He had been nervous all week about this business of breaking into the chapel to remove two Ping-Pong balls from the mix, but hadn’t argued with the idea. He knew as well as Jill that the best way to control the uncertainty of this game was to cheat.

  Daciana entered a minute after Jill took her place. She greeted the students, acknowledged the invitations on the music stand in the back, and invited everyone to take a seat while their game continued. Then she reached into the globe and removed a Ping-Pong ball.

  “Number forty-eight,” she said.

  Heads turned, people whispered nervously, and ultimately, Vince Weir stood up and walked to the altar. He spun the first dial, the diamond dial, to number thirteen.

  From the pew in front of her, Samantha turned back to Jill and smiled.

  Vince failed to open the safe. As did Beatrice Small, who was called up next. Karmela was the third student called to the stage. Confidently, she turned the diamond dial to number thirteen, then took random guesses on the other three.

  The safe didn’t open for her either.

  Hannah Drummond, Patrick Randall, and Claudia Gallegos were the next three called. None of them were in Samantha’s core group, but all of them tried thirteen on the first dial.

  “Nicely done,” Ryan whispered to Jill after Claudia failed to open the safe. With his words, he gave a quick squeeze on her hand.

  The next person called up was Michael Exeter. He spun the dials randomly, seemingly without looking. But the final person called up that night, Devon Monk, went back to number thirteen for the first dial on the safe.

  Even though no one got the safe open, it was clear that, in the minds of the Thorndike senior class, the first number of the combination was settled.

  Daciana dismissed the students, assuring them they would return again at the same time next week. Jill accepted an invitation from Samantha to go party at a rental house Samantha’s parents owned, a house that was presently unoccupied. Three hours into the party, she found herself dancing with Ryan, the two of them still pretending, but Jill feeling more comfortable in the arrangement. The plan was working. All the plans were working. Ryan’s cover story, Jill’s idea to dole out a phony number for Samantha, Winnie’s confidence that Jill could find a way to pull it all together so Frankie could have a shot at Sergio.

  She was unaware that, while she and Ryan danced, their bodies getting closer and closer together, the bliss of the moment blurring the lines between reality and pretend, the landline at her parents’ house was ringing.

  While she was in an empty rental house, allowing her hands to grasp Ryan around the waist, the two of them acting out the role of couple they had been playing for weeks now, across town, in a different neighborhood, her father was rolling out of bed to answer the phone that had woken him late in the night.

  While Jill and Ryan put their faces close together, allowing their foreheads to touch, Jill’s father began speaking on the phone with Daciana, who had called him late in the night because it was an
emergency, because she needed Walter and Carolyn to come to her mansion right away.

  While Jill and Ryan kissed again, just like they had at Daciana’s party, and Jill didn’t know if this was part of the act or something more, and didn’t care, Walter and Carolyn Wentworth got in their car and drove to Daciana’s mansion.

  While Jill allowed herself a few minutes of fun, a time when the mission wasn’t dominating her life and she was just being herself, her lips pressed against those of her ex-boyfriend, her fingers swirling around on the back of Ryan’s head, exploring the thick, soft hair, just like she did on so many dreamy afternoons freshman year, Daciana was inviting Walter and Carolyn into her house, and leading them to the kitchen, where a tiny daisy made of pewter was stuck on the wall.

  A daisy that seemed to be shining a laser at the control panel that operated the alarm system for Daciana’s house.

  *****

  “What does it mean?” Daciana said. “I’m not crazy, right?”

  “Of course you’re not crazy,” said Walter. “I’m sure there’s an explanation. Isn’t there, Carolyn?”

  Carolyn Wentworth was waving her hand back and forth in front of the daisy, allowing the red light coming from it to shine on her palm. Such a strange bird, this one—Daciana’s feelings towards Carolyn had always been a mix of fascination and disgust—but on this night, she needed the woman’s brilliant mind to tell her that she wasn’t crazy.

  That this tiny silver daisy wasn’t supposed to be here.

  Carolyn walked across the kitchen and inspected the control panel on the wall.

  “Does it have an optical microprocessor?” Carolyn asked.

  “What is she saying to me?” Daciana asked Walter.

  Walter cleared his throat with a disgusting, phlegmy sound. “Carolyn, darling, Daciana doesn’t know what kind of processor is in the control panel.”

  “Am I supposed to know this? Who the hell knows what kind of processor is in something? Or what a processor is?”

  “I can find out, if you bring me a screwdriver,” Carolyn said.

  “Would someone get the woman a screwdriver?” Daciana shouted.

  Chester ran from the room and returned twenty seconds later with a toolbox. Carolyn started digging through it. She picked up one screwdriver after another, and put them down again.

  “What’s the problem?” said Daciana. “Do we not have the right screwdriver?”

  “I need one that is very small,” Carolyn said, still rummaging through the toolbox. “Like this one.”

  She retrieved a tool that looked more like a pen than a screwdriver. A little sliver of metal coming out of a plastic cylinder. The logo of Walter’s company was printed on the handle.

  “Ha! I knew those blasted screwdrivers would come in handy for something!” Walter said with a smile. He looked around the room for someone to laugh at his joke, but got nothing.

  Carolyn used the tiny screwdriver to remove the face of the control panel on the wall, exposing some mess of wires and metal inside. She stepped back and looked at the ugly monstrosity she had just exposed on the wall of Daciana’s kitchen, then she said, “Yes, an optical processor. The laser in this tiny silver daisy is speaking with the control panel on your wall.”

  Carolyn used her finger to point a line from the head of the daisy all the way to a glass circle inside the control panel.

  “So you’re saying it’s part of the system?” said Daciana. “Will I break it if I take down that daisy? I swear, that little daisy wasn’t there before. I don’t remember it and neither do my servants.”

  “It’s not part of the system,” said Carolyn. “It would be a terrible design to put a controller so far away from the processor.”

  Carolyn went up to the daisy on the wall, and flicked at it with her fingernail. It came off the wall and she caught it in her hand.

  “You’ve been hacked,” she said.

  Daciana felt violated just hearing the words.

  “What did you say?”

  Carolyn was using the small screwdriver to pick at the tiny daisy now in her hand. With a little grunt, she managed to pop open the head of the charm. Then she shook it over her hand and several tiny components fell out of the daisy and into her palm. Using the screwdriver as a pointer, she told Daciana the name of each component.

  “This is the laser,” she said, pointing at a tiny metal canister. “And this little thing here is a wireless transmitter.”

  “A wireless what?”

  “This little daisy that was on your wall was in fact a tiny computer, and the laser coming out of its head was sending information to the optical processor in your control panel. What systems does this control panel operate?”

  “It’s…everything,” Daciana said. “That’s why I bought it! The manufacturer said it was the latest in home innovation! We control the heater, the lights, the alarm, even the circuit breakers—he said I could even control it over my phone, not that I’ve ever…Jesus Mary and Joseph my phone! Chester, grab my phone!”

  “Is there something wrong with your phone?” Walter said.

  “I’ve been getting these messages!” Daciana said. “I thought it was more of that computer garble…what do you call it? Spam! But maybe it’s related. Do you think it could be related?”

  “I would need to learn more about how your phone and this control panel interact,” Carolyn said.

  At that moment, Chester returned to the kitchen with Daciana’s phone.

  “Right here,” Daciana said, going to her messages. “I haven’t gotten one in a few days, but for awhile there, they were coming in every night.”

  She pulled up the last text message she received about the verification code.

  “This one!” she said, pushing the phone at Carolyn. “What do you think? I thought it was spam. It is spam, right?”

  Carolyn looked at the phone. “This is different,” she said. “It’s not spam.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s the two-step verification security on your computer.”

  “My computer? How is my computer involved?”

  “Were you not trying to access your computer when these text messages arrived?”

  “I don’t think so. No. I’m sure I wasn’t. The messages have arrived at strange times. This one came in when I was out in the city. I was nowhere near my computer!”

  “Then it has been hacked as well.”

  Chapter 28

  Paper lantern festivals had a long history at Thorndike. Daciana, who had spent the better part of two centuries in China, insisted on at least one night a year when the sky was filled with colorful, lighter-than-air creations. To her, lantern celebrations were not only beautiful, they also brought good luck. They were a symbol of the relationship between humans and immortals. Hundreds of glowing specks in the sky, all of them fleeting and quick to burn out—the lanterns were the humans, and the bright, eternal moon was the immortal, sitting above them all, shining down on them before they died.

  With the next paper lantern festival falling on Valentine’s Day, Daciana had modified the traditional event to make it a celebration of love as well as immortality.

  Every student would arrive at the event with two lanterns: one lantern for a girl wearing black; the other for the person they cared about most. Immortality and love. That’s how Daciana described it for the students.

  To Ryan, it was a comforting idea. Honor a future immortal with one lantern, and the person you love with another.

  Nicky was the next immortal; Jill was the person he loved.

  Not that he didn’t love Nicky too. He loved her so much he would help her achieve her destiny. Ryan was doing everything he could to help Nicky win the Coronation contest so she and Sergio could be together.

  With Nicky’s destiny already determined, Ryan was able to open up his heart and give all his love, much of which had been aimed at Nicky these past few months, to another.

  His love for Jill was different. He had never stopped lovin
g Jill. It crushed him when he had to break up with her during freshman year, but he did it anyway. He did it because he loved her. And now, after weeks of pretending to be her boyfriend, he wanted her to know that his love was more than an act. He wanted to let a lantern go for Jill, one that would find its way to her and let her know in no uncertain terms that he had always loved her, and always would.

  The week before the contest, Ryan set to work making two lanterns. Hot air balloons, really—that’s what the paper lanterns were. A cylinder or cube made of paper, with two thin metal crossbars at the bottom. In the center of those cross bars was an aluminum tray that held a slow-burning, flammable powder. When the powder was lit, hot air filled the paper, and the whole structure became lighter than the surrounding air. It floated in the night sky until the flame burned out.

  Per the instruction sheet that was handed out to every senior at Thorndike, Ryan decorated his paper lanterns in a distinctive way, and included a name on the lantern as part of the decoration. At the end of the festival, as the lanterns came back to the ground, students would scramble to find the lanterns marked with their names. Those lucky enough to get a lantern from someone, as Jill was going to get from Ryan, would find a present attached.

  For the girls wearing black, the presents were simple and predictable. A check for a large amount of money, written out for the girl’s Coronation account. For everyone else, the gift could be anything that worked, so long as it wasn’t too heavy for the lantern.

  Love letters were a popular present to attach to lanterns for the people you cared about. Small pieces of jewelry also worked. Ryan overheard Wesley saying he was attaching the title to a new car he was giving to his girlfriend. And much of the school was abuzz with speculation that at least one boy would use the paper lantern as a device to deliver an engagement ring.