“It’s not like that,” I say at her knowing tone. I don’t add: I wish it were.
“He has a girlfriend. Anyway, he came over tonight to try to convince me to stay away from this guy.”
“Tucker St. Clair.” She says his name like it’s an institution. “Yeah, everyone’s talking. So how did that happen?”
I decide I’ll be mortified later. “He asked me to be his partner for this assignment. I said yes.”
“And you thought you’d work on a little extra credit together,” she teases.
I punch her in the arm, and she laughs.
“It’s really new,” I say. I want to add more, but I start to feel like I’m making something out of nothing.
“Well, have fun with it,” she says.
“You sound like my sister. She wants me to invite her over to his house. Like I’m sure he really wants a thirteen-year-old to come over.”
“I wish I could say I relate. My sister is a year older than me, and I spent my whole childhood trying to hang out with her and her friends. When I was seven, I tried to join her slumber party, and she told me to go away, so I told her friends that she still wet the bed sometimes.”
“You didn’t!”
She laughs, still delighted with herself. “She didn’t talk to me for three weeks.”
“You deserved it! Does your sister go to St. Beatrice?”
She frowns unexpectedly. “No, actually. She was being bullied, so she had to drop out. My mom started homeschooling her.”
“Oh my God. That’s awful.”
She nods, and I notice that her eyes are shining.
The radio comes into focus. I desperately reach for something to say, but by the time I think of anything remotely appropriate, the moment has passed and the warehouse looms before us.
It’s my second time here, and I’m not alone now, but the place is just as foreboding as the last time, heavy with expectation. Years of overgrowth choke the building, as if it grew right out of the earth. Or was expelled from it like a tomb.
“Hartley’s here,” Lyla says, nodding at the bike parked outside. But no Farrah. No Nikki.
Lyla grabs on to the chain-link fence, and I follow her lead. This time I climb over without horrifically embarrassing myself.
It’s weird entering the warehouse awake this time. I crane my neck and squint to make out my surroundings. We enter the main room. Exposed pipes climb walls tagged with graffiti. There are faded red storage crates everywhere, and a thick coat of yellow powder—wheat, maybe?—dusts the cement floors.
My eyes stick on the jar sitting on an upturned box in the center of the room.
Just then, Hartley saunters in from the shadows of a darkened hallway, hiking up her baggy, low-slung jeans.
“Where were you?” Lyla asks. I don’t miss the note of suspicion in her voice.
“Taking a little tour to see if anyone was hiding somewhere. If you must know.”
“And?” I ask, glad she was brave enough to wander off in the dark.
“Place is empty. The floors I checked, anyway. I only went up to the first three, but there was dust everywhere like no one had been there in a really long time. Only footprints I saw were my own. No cameras I could find either. If the Society is watching us, it’s gotta be some high-tech FBI-type shit they’re using.” She rakes her hand through her spiky black hair. “No Farrah?”
“No Farrah,” Lyla and I confirm together.
“Figures. All right. Well, it’s midnight. Let’s do this.”
We circle around the jar. Hartley does the honors and pulls the top off, plunging her hand inside to pull out a single folded paper. Just like last time.
“Hey, bitches.”
We spin around as Farrah flounces into the room in a strapless emerald-green baby doll dress that shows off miles of sleek, golden leg. She could walk onto a runway in Paris and not look out of place.
“Could have waited for me.”
We blink at her for what feels like minutes, until Lyla says, “You came.”
“Of course I came. The rules were pretty clear on a few points, participation being one.” Her boots clack across the floor, and then she yanks the paper out of Hartley’s hand. She scans it, then raises her eyes to Hartley. “They can’t be serious.”
Lyla grabs the paper.
“Read it out loud,” I say.
“?‘One down, four to go. Ready for the real fun to begin?’?” Lyla reads. “?‘Go to Honey Island Swamp and look for the sign. You’ll know the one.’?”
She looks up.
The Honey Island Swamp is a marshland in St. Tammany Parish that’s famous for its alligators, wild boars, bears, and snakes. Getting in that water would be a death sentence, and no sane person would do it, not even the New Orleans natives who take pride in not being scared of gators.
“This has to be a joke,” Farrah says.
“I don’t get the feeling the Society has a sense of humor,” Lyla answers.