The Bonding Ritual (Girls Wearing Black: Book Four)

by Spencer Baum

  Ryan too intended to attach a ring to one of his lanterns, but the ring he had for Jill wasn’t a diamond. It was much more special than that. The ring Ryan had was one that had been stowed away in his desk drawer for three years. It was a ring Jill had worn when she and Ryan were together.

  They were only three days into their relationship in freshman year when Ryan convinced Jill to skip school and spend the day with him. They hatched the plan while walking across the north lawn. They were both running late that morning. Neither of them had their driver’s licenses yet. Their relationship was too new for them to be riding to school together, and by lucky coincidence, or fate, they both arrived at campus a few minutes later than normal, and were alone as they walked the path towards Sullivan Hall.

  “What do you say we turn around right now and leave?” Ryan had said to her. The words were crazy to him, but he said them anyway. Never once in his life had he done something like this—just walk away from school before the bell rang and ditch class. Even now, three years removed from that day, the feeling of saying those words was still trapped in his mind. The damp, autumnal scent of the air, the sound of his shoes on the pavement, his whole world saturated in the blue and white hues of morning sun.

  And Jill. There was a light citrus scent to the hair product she used back then. Everything about her that morning, her red cotton shirt that hugged so tightly around her shoulders, her silver earrings that dangled playfully beneath her hair, her smile—God, she was so much happier, so completely unburdened back then. They both were. It was an amazing time to be alive.

  “Where would we go?” was Jill’s response. It wasn’t a literal question, but a playful one. Her eyes told Ryan she was all in favor of this idea. It wasn’t a question of if they would do it, but how daring they would be.

  “Come on, before the bell rings!” Ryan said. He grabbed her hand and they were off. They ran back down the path to the edge of campus, then across Academy Road and into the treeline that separated Thorndike from the rest of the city. They emerged in the Pineswood Grove neighborhood and could hear the bell ring faintly in the distance. First period had started and they weren’t at school. Standing on a bit of lawn between two mansions, having entered the neighborhood through somebody’s back yard, they kissed, and happiness came over Ryan with such force his knees buckled. He pulled her down with him, the two of them laughing as they fell to the grass.

  They might have stayed there all day had a gardener not come around the side of the house and chased them off. They walked through Potomac that morning, hand-in-hand. They had coffee and pastries at Dillywig’s, two fourteen-year-olds seated among the lawyers and lobbyists. Ryan was so happy he couldn’t believe this was his life.

  Later that morning they got on the bus with no idea where they were going, deciding eventually to get off at the Shady Grove Metro station. The rest of the day they used the Metro to explore the city, which was still quite novel to them. Funny what a difference a few years makes. As a senior at Thorndike, the idea of roaming all over greater DC on the Metro sounded mundane, even a bit nasty. But as a new freshman, ditching school with his girlfriend—it was pure magic. They roamed the Washington Mall with the tourists. They sat for twenty minutes and watched a street performer do an absurd juggling act, then they gave him twenty bucks. They went shopping downtown, and Ryan bought Jill a ring made of blown glass. Brightly colored and cheap, it was a garish, ugly thing that didn’t match anything else she had on that day and was hardly her style, but Ryan was fourteen and didn’t know any better, and Jill didn’t care. She put it on the ring finger of her right hand and said she loved it.

  They rode the Orange Line all the way to Landover. They found a secluded park not far from the station where they sat in the grass, Ryan’s arms around her waist. He pulled her hair aside and put his lips on the back of her neck. The afternoon drifted into pure bliss.

  Three weeks later, Kim Renwick came to Ryan’s house to present an explosive secret about Jill’s family, and the terms of Ryan’s surrender. The morning after that, in the back seat of his father’s town car, Ryan told Jill it was over. Knowing it had to be convincing, knowing he needed to make Jill believe he was done with her even though that was the last thing in the world he wanted, he left the car while she was still crying.

  It was the worst moment of Ryan’s life, made doubly so when Shamus picked him up in the same town car after school and Ryan found Jill’s glass ring on the back seat.

  When he got home from school that day, he put the glass ring in the top drawer of his bedroom desk. For the next three and a half years, he left that drawer shut.

  Now, with two completed paper lanterns sitting on the windowsill, one of them meant for Jill, Ryan opened the drawer and pulled out the ring.

  He held it tight in his hand, imagining himself letting go of years of sorrow. He and Jill were going to be together again, for real. There was no reason to pretend anymore. They had weathered a storm that lasted for three years and there was nothing keeping them apart.

  He lifted the lantern and found the canvas pouch he had attached to the underside of the aluminum tray. Slipping the ring into that pouch, he whispered words that had been true for years, even as circumstance had forced him to stay silent.

  “I love you, Jill.”

  *****

  Like Ryan, Jill was at home working on her paper lanterns for the festival. She set them aside when her mom came into her bedroom.

  “Mom? Is there something I can do for you?”

  Carolyn closed the door behind her and sat on Jill’s bed. Was her mother going to talk to her? When was the last time Jill’s mother left her own work to come into Jill’s bedroom and talk to her?

  “I believe these are yours,” Carolyn said. She held out her hand and dropped an assortment of tiny items on Jill’s bed. A laser diode, a wireless transmitter, and a pewter daisy charm.

  Jill picked up the daisy. It took her a second to realize what she was looking at. When it came to her, it came all at once. She saw herself hiding in the back of Daciana’s mansion. She saw Sergio kill Lena Trang. She panicked and started running. She charged all the way through the kitchen and back to the party.

  She forgot to pick up the daisy charm she had left on the wall.

  “Where did you get this?” she said.

  “Daciana found it last night,” said Carolyn. “She asked me to come over and look at it for her.”

  Jill looked over her mother’s shoulder, half-expecting a vampire to enter her bedroom.

  “I came to realize that the laser in this charm was a tool for hacking into the control panel in her house,” Carolyn said. “Our conversation about computer security led Daciana to confess to me that she had been getting some unexpected messages on her phone. She thought they were spam.”

  “Oh God,” said Jill.

  “When I told her the messages weren’t spam at all, but were in fact part of the two-step security I had pushed out on her banking software a few months ago, well, naturally, she became quite suspicious.”

  “Mom, please tell me Daciana doesn’t know what I did.”

  “She doesn’t know what you did.”

  “Then how do you know?”

  “She had me look at her computer, of course. I saw your fingerprints all over the operating system. You’ve got a distinctive style, Jill. You should work on that. There might come a time when it will give you away.”

  “Did you change anything? Do we still have control of her computer?”

  “Oh I changed things. Daciana was terribly spooked last night. She made me pull out the old computer, replace it with a brand new machine, and rebuild it with all our software. It took most of the night.”

  “What happened to the old machine?”

  “She threw it into the furnace,” said Carolyn. “She’s not entirely rational about technology.”

  “But you didn’t tell her I did it.”

  “No, and I must say, it was quite invigorating to lie to her l
ike that.”

  Jill closed her eyes and exhaled deeply.

  “Why did you do this?” Carolyn asked. “Was it that boy we worked for last month? Tarin? Did he ask you to spy on Daciana?”

  “No, Mom. Tarin is gone. We won’t be hearing from him again.”

  “Such a shame. I enjoyed working for him.”

  “You realize it’s dangerous for you to be so close to Daciana like this, right Mom? If she wanted to, she could look inside your mind. After what we went through last month, you know things about me, about what I do.”

  “Our circumstances are shared,” Carolyn said. “You and I both did work for Tarin.”

  “You understand that we can never tell anyone about Renata’s phone, right Mom?”

  “Of course I do. It was dangerous work. I think we should resolve not to do work like that again. You should not be hacking into a vampire’s computer without good reason.”

  “I know, Mom.”

  “And these…things,” Carolyn said, pointing at the disassembled daisy charm on Jill’s bed. “Gizmos like these are notoriously unreliable, Jill. It was only a matter of time before you were found out.”

  “It was a mistake to leave the charm at her house.”

  “Why on earth would you try to control the alarm system with a laser rather than simply disabling it?” Carolyn asked.

  Jill shrugged her shoulders. “It was the best idea we had.”

  “Daciana’s house is old, and it’s as far removed from the neighborhood as it was the day she built it. All the electrical and fiber optic wiring to that home comes in from the telephone poles outside. Just a few snips on the wires out there and the alarm would have been totally disabled.”

  Jill nearly started arguing the point with her mom. She wanted to tell her it was more complicated than that, that there was a party going on when she was doing this hack, that she had to worry about the security cameras as well as the alarm, not to mention the electromagnet on the door.

  She wanted her mother to recognize the skill it took to pull of a hack like that.

  But she knew she was being childish. At some point in her life, she needed to find a way to quit arguing with her mother.

  “I won’t make any more mistakes,” she said.

  “Good, because I didn’t enjoy spending my night manually loading software I’ve already installed once. Please be careful when choosing your activities to ensure it doesn’t interfere with my work.”

  “I will.”

  Carolyn stood up from the bed. Apparently the conversation was finished. Before she made it to the door, Jill said, “Mom, I need to ask you something.”

  Carolyn stopped in place but didn’t turn around.

  “What if Daciana did learn the truth about me?” Jill said. “And I had to leave town. Would you come with me?”

  “What kind of work would I do if I left town?”

  “I don’t know. More work for the Network, I suppose.”

  “I enjoyed the work we did for Tarin. I would consider doing work like that again. Good night, Jill.”

  “Good night, Mom.”

  Carolyn left the room and closed the door. Jill grabbed her phone and sent a text to Alvin.

  Daciana has discovered our hack and ended it. She replaced the whole computer. Sorry for wasting everybody’s time.

  She went back to her desk, and affixed two metal crossbars to the bottom of the lantern she was making for Ryan. She had just locked them in place when Alvin sent a return text.

  No apology necessary. Being a part of that hack was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done.

  Chapter 29

  Ryan arrived at Jill’s house at seven o’clock. He pulled the Lamborghini into her carport and rang the doorbell. Jill’s father answered the door, and came outside to admire the car.

  “I always wanted one of these,” said Walter Wentworth. “How does it drive?”

  “It’s like putting a cheetah on a leash and taking it for a walk around your neighborhood,” said Ryan.

  Walter laughed. “I bet,” he said. “Between the short streets out here in the suburbs, and the heavy traffic in the city, I bet you rarely get to see what this car can do. What can it do, anyway?”

  “The speedometer goes up to two-fifty,” said Ryan. “I’ve never brought it even close to that, though.”

  “Incredible,” Walter said. “Can you imagine going two-hundred-and-fifty miles an hour?”

  “My dad took it into the one-seventies on the test drive,” Ryan said. “According to him the car ran smoother at the high speeds than the low ones.”

  “Should I come back some other time so you boys can keep talking about this toy?” Jill said.

  She was standing at the doorway, a paper lantern in each hand. She wore a white jacket and tall boots over her skinny jeans.

  Ryan went up to her. “Hey there,” he said. He leaned in to kiss her on the lips. She gave him her cheek instead.

  They said good night to Jill’s father and climbed into the Lamborghini. Since there was no trunk space, or even a back seat, they had to place the lanterns between their chairs, right behind the gearshift.

  They didn’t speak much as they drove to Thorndike. Ryan’s mind was on the gift Jill would find attached to her lantern, and how she might react. Why had she turned her cheek at him when he tried to kiss her?

  Had he misread how she felt about him? The kiss at Daciana’s party, the dancing at Samantha’s—it felt so real to Ryan, but maybe it wasn’t.

  Maybe Jill was just good at putting on an act.

  They arrived at Thorndike and parked on the east side of campus. The rest of their class was gathering near the old cypress tree, admiring each other’s lanterns and waiting for the festivities to start.

  Ryan was a few steps behind Jill as they approached the others. Watching her move, he imagined their future together, away from all this. He wanted a future with her so badly.

  He wanted what they had during freshman year.

  How would she react when she saw the glass ring? Would she understand what he was trying to tell her? Or would it just bring back painful memories for her? Memories of a time when she gave her heart to Ryan and he crushed it?

  He found himself overcome with anxiety when the lighters started getting passed around. There was no turning back now. Small, contained fires, one in the tray of each lantern, were appearing throughout the crowd. The night air was glowing all around Ryan.

  And then Mattie passed a lighter to him.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” she said. “It’s going to be so amazing when they’re aloft. What a great idea to do this on Valentine’s Day, don’t you think?”

  Ryan took the lighter from her. “Yes,” he said. “It’s going to be a special night.”

  Setting his lanterns on the ground, he pressed the flame from the lighter into the powder in each tray.

  A minute later, the lanterns were ready to fly. They took to the air gently, like leaves floating across the stream. Ryan let his lanterns go, and watched as they began their slow ascent.

  “Yours is the purple one, in case you didn’t know,” Jill said to him, pointing at one of the lanterns she’d just released.

  “And the one I brought for you is pink,” said Ryan.

  “I know,” said Jill, looking up at the lantern as it rose into the sky. “What did you get me?”

  “You know that’s not how the game works,” Ryan said. “You have to follow the lantern, and be there when it comes down so you can find out.”

  *****

  As the crowd raced to follow the lanterns, Nicky stayed a few steps behind.

  None of the lanterns would be for her anyway.

  Even though Daciana’s safe had made it possible for any of the girls wearing black to win Coronation, the students were still marching in lockstep with Samantha. At least half the lanterns in the sky on this night were for her, and when they all came down again, Samantha would have a pile of checks to deposit in her Coronation accoun
t.

  Kim might have a few checks too. As far as Nicky could tell, Kim had managed to keep her stranglehold on a few of her classmates, despite Samantha’s commanding lead. Rosalyn and Andrea, Kim’s reliable sidekicks, had stayed close to her at school, and tonight, were running alongside her. Vince and Marshall had also remained in Kim’s sphere of influence, both of them tied to Kim because of secrets she held over their families.

  What about Dan Stearns? He too was beholden to the Renwicks. Where was he tonight?

  Nicky spotted Dan running just a few paces behind Marshall, very much in Kim’s crowd.

  And Art Tremblay? What of him, the boy who found himself the pawn in more than one game of chess last semester? Where was he?

  Nicky was far enough behind the others that she had all of them in her field of view, but she hadn’t spotted Art yet. In the darkness, with all this movement…

  Over there. Far to Nicky’s left. Hanging back almost as much as she was. Not very close to Kim at all. Not really close to anyone. Art had to bring two lanterns tonight like everyone else. Was one of his lanterns for Kim, or someone else?

  Nicky allowed herself to slow down even more, putting space between herself and Art. The wind was carrying the lanterns towards the middle of campus. The students were jogging to keep up.

  Nicky slowed further, and then stopped altogether. She felt so disconnected from the rest of them, almost repelled by the larger crowd. She didn’t want to be a part of the game tonight, not even as an actor playing the role the Network had laid out for her. Really, what act was there left for her to play? Nicky Bloom, the exciting new girl who took the school by storm? That story was dead. At school, Nicky felt like a ghost of that girl from last semester, floating through the days, sometimes seen by other students who thought back wistfully to when she meant something.