by Rachel Shane
I clutched the candle at my breastbone and followed the curving hallway until a flicker of candlelight danced in the crack between the floor and a doorway. I twisted the knob and stepped inside. Only a few candles flickered but it was enough to see the candle in my hands was red red red. Panic climbed my spine and made me shiver. Shit. I was screwed. But one of the rules was you had to stick with what you chose, so I lowered my wick into one of the burning candles and a flame popped.
I turned again to continue through the room, the floorboards squeaking below my stilettos. Behind me, the other member’s feet padded along, rocking the floor like an earthquake. A glimpse behind me revealed the guy following me had chosen the coveted purple. Asshole.
The soft flow of wailing piano and singing drew me to a third room. Squeezing the candle tight to keep my hands from shaking, I pushed open the door with my elbow to find about thirty or so people standing in a ring. Each one wore all black and each one clutched a candle of a different color. I found an empty spot between two big guys and stood as still as possible, waiting for the ritual to begin. My heart continued to race inside my chest, but I focused on the candle flame instead of what the hell I’d gotten myself into tonight. Those holding blue and green candles let out heavy breathes that pushed into the air. They were exempt tonight, their only role now to watch rather than participate.
At Rho Sigma, all our rituals were traditional. Standard. Expected.
But the ones at Key and Lock always brought something new and created suspense just for the very idea of them being unknowns.
Like Keane himself.
He hovered around the outskirts of the circle, waiting for everyone to arrive. When he brushed by me, he left behind an intoxicating musky cologne scent.
Harrison was wrong about one thing. Keane wasn’t exactly single.
Part of the secrecy of the secret society meant that no one, not my roommates, not my brother, could ever know I belonged. Only the president made his membership public. Even the students who worked at the actual Key and Lock front were mostly work study hires and not part of the society itself. Because we had a very strict membership requirement: you had to be great. Or at least on the verge of greatness. You had to have connections. My interviews with Taylor Swift and other celebs in high school earned me my spot. And I suspected my podcast with Clever Trevor would bump me in the ranks. You couldn’t be one of the leaders without doing something impressive.
And nothing that could be done at Throckmorton alone counted as impressive.
Keane’s Instagram brags weren’t to show off to girls. They were to continually solidify his position as president.
A few more members filtered in and then Keane dropped the heavy metal bar along the doors, sealing us in. And sealing out anyone who was late.
In Key and Lock, being late meant being locked out. Permanently.
I shuddered at that thought.
Keane cleared his throat and then strutted into the center of the circle, swaggering with a kind of confidence only someone truly amazing could pull off.
My skin buzzed with excitement as he lifted his candle to his lips like a microphone. Though the rituals always ended in different ways, they always began the same. With secrets.
“Reds.” Keane said it in a blah, clipped way, but the word had enough power to send shivers right through me.
Still, I forced myself to stand tall. Not to whimper or cower. This was a test, and I couldn’t afford to fail.
But it wasn’t those holding the red candles that moved. It was the purples. They stepped out of the circle in what seemed choreographed right out of a music video. They set their candles down on black pillars spread inside the circle and each grabbed a square of black cloth wrapped around the base of the pillars. They folded the cloths in complicated origami like napkin folders on a cruise ship. The boy who came in after me stood behind me now, his hot breath moving the strands of my hair back and forth. Goose bumps scattered on my neck. His hands came up around me until he settled the black cloth over my eyes. He pulled tight, robbing me of all light.
My pulse amped as the darkness clawed at me. Scents magnified without my use of sight. Rose water. Lavender. And something else. Something spicy. Dangerous. Thrilling.
Someone plucked the candle out of my clenched hands and I felt naked and exposed with nothing to hold onto. But I didn’t go empty handed for long because he pulled my hands behind my back and tied a silk scarf around my wrists. Tightly. I sucked back my whimper.
This was the part that was always the same.
But what came next was anyone’s guess.
Once, the purples instructed the reds to strip down to only their underwear. They shivered in their knickers, knees knocking together, fearing some kind of sexual exploitation or worse, something a sorority might do, like circling the fat jiggling when poked. But instead the purples marched the reds swiftly out of the house and into waiting vans. They packed into the back, sliding across the floor, no seat belts to protect them, as the van bumped along the highway and then dirt roads. When the van came to an abrupt halt, the purples dragged the red to a lake and instructed them to tread deep in the center. The water was frigid. The air just as cold. But the reds dutifully waded into the water, their teeth clattering, their lips turning blue. The purples tossed them flimsy rubber snorkel masks that they dove for in the dark and quickly secured over their faces. And then they were instructed to get under water. And stay under. Just as the last one sank below the surface, his breathing tube the only thing popping up in the air, BB guns shot across the surface right where their heads would have been. No one got hurt. That time, anyway. Because they had played the game, obeyed the rules. And they were respected by the other members all the more for it.
Another time the reds were taken to a secluded eight by eight room, the size of a jail cell, and locked inside with nothing but air and each other. At first they waited, assuming they were in holding while Key and Lock set up the next part of the task. But no rescue came and eventually they realized they would have to escape themselves. There was no food. No water. No light. For two days we waited for them to emerge, those of us safe on the outside growing antsy that they’d never make it out. A few of us begged the previous leader to set them free and on the third evening, he agreed. He freed them…by expelling them from the society. Their secrets acted as his collateral. They’d never tell about anything that happened because if they did, the world would know the thing they most wanted to be kept private.
If I failed tonight, the world would know mine.
So when my purple sponsor pressed his finger to my back and instructed me to walk, I bit my tongue and placed one foot in front of the other, keeping my back rigid, my body poised. Resisting the urge to whimper. In my three years here, I’d always been the one to lead or one to avoid, never one to perform. Right now Keane would be passing out slips of paper into each of the purple’s hands with instructions. With spoilers. With the horrors in store for me. I tried not to gulp.
My purple tilted my shoulders, directing me to the right, and I bumped into the red in front of me. His back was slick with sweat, his nerves evident. That would earn him a demotion. I forced myself not to react, not to cringe, and not to freak out even as my pulse amped. We marched in silence out of the room, our purple guides readjusting our positions if we strayed from the formation as we twisted through the halls of Key and Lock.
“Stop,” Keane said. The shuffle of feet came to a halt. Heavy breaths thundered in its place.
The creak of a door opening was my only clue and the rush of traffic sounds another. Cold air blasted in. There was a rumble and then the metallic scrape of a car door opening.
“In the van,” Keane yelled. “Enjoy the ride.”
One by one the reds crawled inside. My knees scraped the cold metal of the truck bed, sinking into dust and grime. An elbow rammed me in the skull and I toppled onto someone’s leg, who let out a whimper. My purple tugged me backward when I tried to keep going
, so I settled along the spot, my back against the van wall, and folded my legs as close to my chest as possible.
I concentrated on my breathing—in and out, in and out—as the others settled in. The door slammed shut with a finality that made my teeth snap. The tires scraping beneath the truck sounded like the lull of music before the sickening crescendo in a horror move. With a lurch, we moved forward, our bodies skidding and sliding into one another.
“So, got any plans for tonight?” someone said and a few of us laughed. A few more whimpered.
“Shhh,” one of the reds said. The rest of the society would be trailing us in a Charter bus, plush seats to cushion them.
“Oh come on, this is part of the fun. The guessing.” The voice sounded familiar, but high pitched in a way I couldn’t place.
A few more snickers erupted before another shh.
We rode for twenty minutes, which I counted off in my mind as a way to keep myself calm. My breath rattled in and out of my lungs, and as each second passed, my stomach squeezed and my pulse grew faster. Wherever we were going, it wasn’t close. Which meant if something happened, it was possible no one would find us. There were rumors about rituals held deep in the woods with the members turned loose, never to be heard from again.
The van jerked to a stop and another girl let out a little yelp.
“Let the fun begin,” the same guy said.
The doors open and one by one our purples pushed us out of the van. I stumbled forward, my feet crunching on gravel rocks that poked at the soles of my stilettos. My purple reached out a hand to steady me.
A door creaked as it opened and we entered into a drafty building that made me shiver. If my arms weren’t secured behind my back, I would have rubbed them over my shoulders. Goosebumps popped along my flesh as feet pounded through the echoey building.
Inside, everything smelled like mildew and cedar, a distinct musty smell associated with disuse. My nose twitched from the dust flying in the air, felt but not seen. The floorboards creaked with the moans of haunted houses. Everyone’s breathing grew pronounced, sharper, scared.
“Up,” my purple said to me but a moment too late. My toe slammed into something hard that reverberated through my feet like a metal pipe clanging with vibrations. I bit my tongue rather than crying out. Crying out would mark me. Crying out would be seen as a weakness. And I had to prove I could handle anything.
Heavy stomps guided me to lift my foot and place it down again on the step in front of me. With a breath, I climbed another step and another until my calves ached from the fifteen-step climb. But my reprieve was brief because I only had two feet of solid ground before my purple demanded I walk up again. Even he was panting behind me as we ascended another story. And then another. And another.
Up up up we went and with each climb, my mind raced. Why were we climbing? Where were we climbing? A blast of frigid air from above made me suck in a breath before my purple nudged me in the square of my back to walk forward. Outside. Onto the roof. Six stories above ground if I’d counted correctly.
Frigid air seized me, forcing my teeth to clatter against my better judgment. Bitter wind bit at my cheeks. It was mid-February in Upstate New York, at night, which meant temps were in single digits if we were lucky. I’d come into Key and Lock in my heavy winter coat but dropped it in the coat room with the others. Now my dress swished around my wobbling legs, billowing in the wind. Still, I tried to stay as rigid as possible, military erect, while I waited for the next set of instructions. My ears locked on clues. The whoosh of a car somewhere far away, far below. The hushed whispers of the purples hashing something out a few steps away. The task at hand, which couldn’t just be this. It would be far worse.
The last of the feet shuffling ended and silence fell upon the group for a moment, indicating all the reds were now in a row, lined up for the firing squad. The pop and fizz of beer cans opening indicated the blues and greens were here too, seated somewhere nearby to watch the festivities. Their voices gave away no clues. They knew better than the reds to keep their mouths shut.
“In case you couldn’t count, we’re six stories above street level,” Kean said. “At the roof’s ledge, we’ve placed a thin beam of plywood that stretches from the top of this building to the top of the one next door where your blues and greens wait.”
My stomach dropped straight through my gut, past my toes, down six stories where it splattered on the ground. Around me, people gasped and cried out as they figured out what tonight’s task would be.
“You’re task tonight is to walk across the six-foot beam.”
Six feet or six story fall. The sobs I was holding back piled in my throat, clogging it.
“Your hands will remain tied. You must rely only on your balance. No tricks.”
Someone scoffed. He must have been thinking about scooting across while hugging the plank.
“Those that succeed remain. Those that fail…well, like I said before. It’s a six story drop.”
Cold panic raced through my spine, making my teeth chatter. My insides squirm. I could die.
But wasn’t this the exact reason I practiced yoga nearly every night? Why I stayed lithe and limber in the gym? In case I was ever put to a test and didn’t want to gamble my life on failing.
“Do we have any volunteers?” the voice asked with a cocky lilt.
Volunteering granted a rank change. An instant improvement. A promise for the future you could cash in on whenever. Members of Key and Lock stretched far and wide. There were famous Oscar winning actors in our ranks, which only won thanks to the number of fellow members in the industry who voted for them. We boasted twelve US Presidents among us. We were CEOs in the biggest companies. We founded the most important life changing technologies. We were everywhere.
A favor from Key and Lock could mean an in for eternity. A favor that could be cashed in for the podcast, just like Harrison suggested.
And so I felt my throat clearing before I could even make sense of what I was doing. “I’ll go.”
MY PURPLE NUDGED ME forward, guiding me. I flinched at his freezing hands but forced myself to suck in a deep breath. To find my Zen center the way my yoga instructors always taught me. To stay calm.
One foot in front of the other.
I ignored the people fidgeting, the sharp intakes of breath, the sizzle of space heaters on the other roof, the fizzing beer and swallows from the onlookers.
“It’s in front of you, whenever you’re ready,” the new ritual host said.
I tapped my toe and came in contact with the edge of the plank. It stayed in place, not shifting. And then I kicked off my stilettos. This act may earn me a frown but I didn’t care. I placed one bare foot on the flat plane of the soft beam. My toes were so cold they burned.
I closed my eyes even though my whole being wanted to turn around. Run away. Show my true colors of being a coward and let them hold it over my head for eternity.
Because the problem with so many powerful people being a member of Key and Lock was there were just as many people to ruin your life than to help you succeed. If I didn’t walk the plank, so to speak, this would be the end of my hosting career forever more.
So I pulled my other foot up, my knees wobbling. I managed to find my center before I toppled over the edge of the roof on my very first step.
There was a single clap of accolades from my purple, the only one still allowed to guide me, but only verbally. My feet pointed forward but my body faced to the side, like I was riding a surfboard on the waves.
I waited a moment for my body to stop shaking violently before I scooted one foot a centimeter forward and then the other. When I didn’t wobble or fall, I let out a breath. I could do this. Six feet across wasn’t that much. Hell, I’d already covered one foot just be the length of my soles.
I inched forward a few more steps, each one earning a collective breath from the crowd. Every time I started to wobble, I stilled my chest and found my center.
But then a strong g
ust of wind whooped around me, knocking me off balance. On instinct, my arms flailed, but they were still tied behind my back. My torso bobbed back and forth, my feet teetering off the edge. A scream ripped from my throat a moment before I lost my battle. My stomach careened toward the ground six feet below. Wind rushed beneath me, my heart lodged against my tonsils. I didn’t think about falling or how I was about to die but of all the accomplishments I’d never achieve, all the things left undone.
And then I slammed into the ground with a crash that knocked the wind out of me. But not hard enough that my bones instantly snapped into two and my body flattened from impact. My leg throbbed, but I could move it. I could move all my limbs. How was that possible? Grass tickled my bare skin.
Hands reached down and pulled me to my feet. My legs shook, both from the cold and the uncertainty of being able to stand. My throat came out raw and scratchy but I didn’t dare speak as the person untied my blindfold.
I gasped, finally understanding.
I did walk up six stories and I did fall off the top of the roof, but the building had been erected into the side of a hill. The roof jutted against the top of the hill, which was flat for a long stretch of land. I’d only fallen three feet, if that. The beam that was supposed to stretch between buildings only stretched from the edge of the roof to a wooden box placed on the grassy knoll where the rest of the Key and Lock members huddled around portable space heaters. I hadn’t failed. I’d done exactly what they wanted me to do: try. Falling wouldn’t count against me, they’d expected it.
Keane strode forward and wrapped a thick blanket around my shoulders. “Thanks for trusting us,” he whispered in my ear, his scruff scraping against my cheek.
And then he handed me a beer.
Thank God the darkness hid my blush as he grabbed my hand and led me to a spot on the grass surrounded by space heaters. Warmth blasted away the cold. I settled on the plush blanket he’d set out, my body finally starting to heat back up to reasonable levels. “That one was cruel,” I said, keeping my voice low. We were far enough away that our whispers wouldn’t carry to those still scared out of their minds, but close enough that we could see the next guy step up onto the plank before hopping right back down and shaking his head emphatically. He had one more chance to take the challenge or his no would be a no forever.