You won’t tell anyone what happened, I could hear Uncle J.D. saying. You have as much to lose as I do if the truth about that body comes out.
Right after the Lady of the Lake had washed ashore, Aunt Olivia had gone on a strike against weekend trips to Regal Lake. She’d filled our days with crafts and togetherness and left zero time for us to follow up on what we’d stumbled into. That wasn’t suspicious per se.
Not in isolation.
That body…
I hoped Lily was having an easier time outrunning her thoughts than I was having with mine. Barring that, I was cautiously optimistic that whatever the White Gloves had planned for this evening would do the trick.
It was still light outside when Lily and I made it to King’s Cove. We stayed out on the water until the sun started its descent. As daylight began to give way, we cut our engines and waded into the shallows, throwing the entire weight of our bodies into pulling the Jet Skis up onto the shore.
King’s Island wasn’t more than a hundred yards across. There was no dock and only one crumbling building, made of siding and wood. The closer we got to it, the more apparent it became that, at some point, there had been a fire here. Parts of the house had burned and had never been replaced.
There was no roof.
“What time is it?” Lily asked me.
I wasn’t wearing a watch, so I made my best guess based on the sun’s position, sinking down past the horizon. “Eight thirty, eight forty-five?”
“That gives us another hour to kill.” Lily placed her hand on the wall of the abandoned house. She stared at it for almost a minute, then headed inside. I followed. “If I asked you to fight me,” she said softly, “would you?”
My stomach dropped, like an elevator whose cables had been abruptly cut, and a chill crawled up my spine. I’d thought that I’d been forgiven. I’d thought Lily and I were us again. Even when she’d been giving me the silent treatment, I’d never thought she wanted to hurt me.
Not physically.
“What?” I managed to say.
“I’ve never fought anyone before.” Lily sounded far too reflective for my liking. “Never really gotten physical—unless you count that time you ended up turning the hose on Campbell and me.” She laid her hand lightly on the wall, and then, before I could stop her, she pulled the other arm back, curled her fingers into a fist, and drove it into the charred wood.
Hard.
She reared back and did it again. I checked the impulse to grab her and keep her from punching the wall for a third time. Walker had told me that she was angry, but this was fury. Rage.
It was hers.
“All these years,” she gritted out, plowing her hand into the wall again. “I thought my family was perfect.” Another hit. “I thought I had to be perfect for them.”
She was scaring me now. The silent treatment hadn’t been pleasant, but it had been in character. This was something else.
“If I agree to fight you,” I said, eyeing the blood now dripping from her fist, “will you stop hitting the wall?”
Lily let her hand drop to her side and turned to me. “Mama likes for things to be perfect. And Daddy…”
She couldn’t finish that sentence.
“I was mad at you for them, Sawyer.” She shook her head. “But now? I think I’m mad for me.” She swallowed hard, bringing her hand up and resting a bloody knuckle against her mouth. “You didn’t even give me the chance to choose you. And maybe I wouldn’t have. Maybe you were right not to trust me, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less.”
She turned back to the wall. Her entire body shook, then tensed.
“I’m not good at trusting people,” I said. My voice came out ragged and low. “That’s not your fault. This whole situation? It’s not your fault, and it’s not mine. It just is.” I could have left it there, but then she reared back for another hit. “Put your thumb on the outside of your fist when you punch,” I advised. “Otherwise, you’re just asking to break it.”
“Advice for the ages,” a voice commented behind us.
Lily froze, then let both hands drop to her sides. I turned sharply and saw Campbell standing in what had once been the doorway.
“Don’t let me interrupt you,” she said airily. “Please, go on.”
Lily cast a sidelong glance at me. “It’s not her fault, either, but perhaps a flying tackle would not go astray?”
“Bring it on, blondie.” Campbell smiled. “I’m an Ames. We’re taught how to fight dirty from the crib.”
Lily was not at a loss for a response for long. “Speaking of Ames family members and cribs—I understand that Sawyer isn’t your sister and that your real half-sibling is still out there somewhere.”
“Adopted, presumably,” Campbell replied smoothly.
Sadie-Grace chose that exact moment to stick her head in through the doorway. “I can’t talk about adoption,” she said solemnly. “Greer told me that I’m not allowed to say that word.”
y the time the rest of the White Gloves and Candidates arrived, the four of us had made our way out of the remains of the house and around the perimeter of the island. Three-quarters of it was walkable, but the northmost stretch featured a series of steep drop-offs and a heaping ton of debris.
It was like Mother Nature had been using the island for her castoffs: dead wood and decomposition and trash dredged up from the deep.
“Candidates, there are half as many of you as there were a month ago.” For once, a White Glove other than Victoria took the lead. Hope let her gaze linger first on Campbell, then on me. “And there are twice as many of you as there will be a month from now.”
The Candidates are many. The Chosen are few. I waited for someone to chime in with the phrase, but not one of the White Gloves did.
“Do you know why you’re here? Why you’ve made it this far?” Hope let the question hang in the air. “Do you know what the White Gloves really are?”
“Maybe you’ve heard rumors,” Nessa chimed in. “But you’ve only heard what we want you to hear.”
“You’ve heard,” Hope continued, “that we come from a certain kind of background and a certain kind of family.” That would have elicited an eye roll from me—and possibly a gagging sound—except that she followed that sentiment with these words: “Maybe you think that makes us powerful.”
“But you’re not here because you’re powerful.” Victoria didn’t bother trying to project her voice, and it was almost lost to a sudden gust of wind. I felt, as much as saw, the Candidates pulling in tighter, closer together as she continued. “You’re here because you know what it’s like to feel powerless. Everyone you see here has been given every privilege that money can buy, but at the end of the day, there are some privileges that money can’t buy. Money doesn’t keep people from telling girls who look like me to go back to the other side of the border. And no matter what your family name is, or how white your skin, I’m willing to bet that there are still people who tell you to smile, because you look so pretty when you smile.” She paused, just for an instant. “We all play by rules our brothers will never even have to know.
“You want to know why we go cliff-diving and off-roading and drag you out to abandoned islands in the night?” Victoria’s voice was no louder, but her delivery was suddenly crystal clear. “Because we can. Because when people say that well-behaved women rarely make history, they leave out the little tidbit that the women who do make history rarely do so alone.”
If they’d pitched the White Gloves to me this way from the get-go, I might have been in it for more than the distraction and the opportunity to cross-examine Victoria Gutierrez. Forget tradition and secrets and symbols. All they would have had to do was send me a note scribbled on scrap paper that said Smash the patriarchy? Circle one: yes or no.
“The reason that you’re still here isn’t just that you take risks.” Hope took over again, where Victoria had left off. “It’s not just that you’ve stepped up to the challenges we’ve handed down. You’re he
re because we believe that there’s more to you than meets the eye.”
“You’re here because you have secrets,” Nessa elaborated.
“You’re here because, on some level, in some way, you want to keep up appearances and burn it all down.” Victoria gave some sort of signal with her hand. There was a flurry of movement on either side of her, and within a heartbeat, flames exploded into the air.
Torches? Check. Abandoned island? Check. Highly flammable ruins? Check.
“In a moment, you’ll receive three cards with your name on them and a pen.” Victoria’s features were lit by torchlight. “Tonight’s challenge is simple: three secrets, one on each card. I’m not going to tell you that you have to push down the urge to hold back your deepest and darkest. The secrets you choose are up to you. But what I can and will say is that this is a sisterhood. This is real. And what you choose to write down on those cards? It matters.”
t’s official.” Julia smiled. “The boys will meet us at the lake.”
Charlotte bit her tongue to keep from pointing out that Julia wasn’t the only one who’d made a phone call, thank you very much. Charlotte was the one who’d called J.D.—for Liv.
“Are they meeting us at your family’s house or mine, Jules?” Liv was sprawled across the passenger seat of Julia’s car. Charlotte had been relegated to the back. She told herself that didn’t matter, just like it didn’t matter that her family didn’t have a house at Regal Lake.
Just like it shouldn’t have mattered that Julia had somehow gotten credit for calling all the boys.
“Who says we have to meet at someone’s house?” Charlotte was almost surprised by how steady her voice sounded.
In the front seat, Liv turned around to look at her.
Charlotte popped on her sunglasses and leaned back against the window, mimicking Liv’s posture with her own. “Let’s have the boys meet us at Falling Springs.”
year ago, I wouldn’t have had nearly so many secrets to choose from. Even just a few weeks ago, I probably wouldn’t have been tempted to put any of them to the page. But there came a point when secrets just didn’t seem worth keeping anymore.
I wrote down my first, in all capital letters: I AM THE RESULT OF A TEEN PREGNANCY PACT.
Was admitting that discreet? No. Would Lillian be happy if the truth got out? Probably not. Oh well.
The second secret was harder to choose. The identity of my father and everything Lily and I had heard on John David’s recording—those didn’t feel entirely like my secrets to tell.
So instead, I went with a fraction of the truth for secret two. I CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT THE LADY OF THE LAKE.
More specifically, I couldn’t stop thinking about the way Lily’s father had said that body on the recording. That might have nothing to do with the Lady, I told myself, but I struggled to believe it.
On either side of me, I could hear Lily and Campbell writing on their cards. Someone farther away from us shifted, snapping a twig under their feet.
“If you’re not finished yet,” Nessa called out, “consider this your fair warning that it’s time to wrap things up.”
I needed a third secret. My thoughts went to Nick. To the texts I’d sent that he hadn’t replied to. And then I thought about my mom. I’d always prided myself on being a straight talker, but there were certain truths everyone struggled to admit, even to themselves.
I don’t know how to stay mad at my mom. I’m not sorry Lily’s my sister. I’ve always wanted a family. I’ve always wanted a place to belong.
I want Nick to text back.
I glanced over at Lily. I could barely make out her face in the dark, but her eyes caught the torchlight. She was staring straight ahead, an odd half smile on her face, like this whole exercise had been therapeutic.
Like some part of her was hoping Victoria had been speaking literally when she’d mentioned the possibility of burning it all down.
I chose my third secret.
I wrote it down.
The White Gloves collected the pens, but they let us hold on to our secrets—for the moment.
“Take your first card,” we were instructed, “and turn to the person beside you.” I was sitting between Lily and Campbell. My instinct would have been to turn to Lily, but she was already turning to her left.
To someone else.
“Trade secrets,” Victoria said. “One of yours for one of theirs.”
“Well, Sawyer?” Campbell said beside me.
In for a penny, in for a pound. I held my first card out to her, anticipating her reaction. She plucked the card from my grasp, then hesitated before allowing me one of hers.
I saw the exact second Campbell processed the words pregnancy pact. “Your mama and Ana?” she murmured. I nodded, and her eyebrows nearly disappeared into her hairline.
Knowing I’d probably get an earful about having held back that information once we weren’t surrounded by Candidates and White Gloves, I looked down at the card Campbell had handed me. The torches the White Gloves had lit all around us only provided so much light, but I could still make out every word.
If I could undo it all, I would.
I looked from the card back up to Campbell. Her expression never changed. I knew without asking that the card was referring to what we’d done last spring. She’d been the driving force behind bringing her father to justice. She’d needed, on some level, to take him down.
And if she could take it all back? She would.
“Don’t say a word.” Campbell’s tone was pleasant enough, but I recognized a warning when I heard one. I wasn’t sure if she was telling me not to comment on the secret I’d just read or not to share it.
Either way?
“I won’t.”
All around us, the world settled into silence. There seemed to be an understanding among the Candidates that the words we’d written on our cards weren’t meant to be spoken out loud.
“Now take your partner’s secret…” Victoria said. I waited for her to order us to share them. “Fold it in half.”
Hope walked the group, gathering the cards, one by one. “Some secrets,” she told us, “should stay secret. No matter how many cliffs we jump off of or dares we issue and fulfill, society will always have its rules, and our power will always come, in part, from knowing when to break them and when to play along.”
“There’s a time for telling secrets,” Victoria translated. “And a time to bury them deep.”
Someone brushed past me. My eyes had adjusted enough to the dark to recognize Nessa. She was wearing a scarlet robe now, the hood pulled up over her head.
She was carrying a shovel.
hey put our secrets in a wooden case. Each one of us took a turn with the shovel. The ground was harder than I’d expected, the digging grueling, but eventually, we had a hole: two feet by two feet and three deep.
The case was lowered in, and one by one, the eight White Gloves took possession of the shovel and started covering it with dirt.
“Choose another secret.” Victoria waited for her voice to break through the odd reverie that had settled over the group. “And find another partner.”
This time, Campbell ended up with Sadie-Grace, and I found myself face-to-face with Lily. I looked down at the second card I’d written, the one about the Lady of the Lake. Before I could decide to hand Lily my third card instead, she took the second from my hand and offered me one in return.
I can’t stop thinking about the Lady of the Lake. I watched Lily read those words. It was hard to tell if they resonated with her, if she was remembering and thinking about and obsessing over two little words her father had said on the recordings.
That body…
“It’s nothing,” Lily told me. “It has to be nothing.”
For God’s sakes, I could hear Uncle J.D. saying, it was an accident!
All too aware that the discussions around us were minimal and quiet, I didn’t press Lily further. Instead, I looked down at the card she’d handed me.
I recognized her handwriting from the Secrets blog—tiny and evenly spaced and perfect.
SOMETIMES, MY BODY FEELS LIKE IT BELONGS TO SOMEONE ELSE.
I tried to wrap my mind around that, tried not to find it eerie. Sometimes, as in when she was punching her fist into a wall? Or sometimes, when she wrote other people’s secrets on her skin?
No clarification was forthcoming.
“Take your partner’s secret, and fold it in half.”
I did as I was instructed, and so did Lily. This time, Hope was the one who came around to gather the cards. “Some secrets,” she said wickedly, “are explosive. Sometimes, all a White Glove needs is to bide her time, and then…”
The two White Gloves who’d lit the torches earlier dipped them toward the ground now. I realized, belatedly, that while we’d been writing, they’d been assembling brush and debris.
Flammable was an understatement, enough so that I wondered if there had been gasoline or another accelerant involved. Flames flickered through the air, the sound and smell and heat reaching me in waves. I’d spent a few weeks in childhood fascinated with flint and trying to bang various stones together to make fire.
I hadn’t realized, until now, how many more colors there were in a flame than orange and red.
One by one, the White Gloves took turns tossing secrets into the bonfire. They never opened them. They didn’t read them.
They burned them.
And then they invited us to sit. Even without the heat of the bonfire, the summer air would have been sticky and warm. With it, I felt like we were all under some kind of blanket—or inside a pressure cooker, vents closed.
“One to bury,” Victoria said. “One to burn. One for all.” I waited for her to tell us to pass our cards in, or instruct us, one by one, to read them out loud. But what she did was produce a card of her own. “Three years from now, those of you who become White Gloves will come back to this island and do some digging. That’s the thing about buried secrets—they don’t stay buried forever.” She looked down at the card she was holding. “Three years from now, it will be your turn to choose a new location for this ceremony. You’ll gather your Candidates to bury and burn their secrets. And before you ask them to share the third with everyone present, each of you will share the one you buried years before.”
Deadly Little Scandals Page 13