“He needs another surgery,” Harry said.
A divot formed between Graham’s brows. “More physical therapy after that, probably. The nerves will heal. He’ll get better.” He gave a decided nod, which Harry mirrored and looked a little less lost for it.
I wasn’t like Graham. When I was overwhelmed, emotions swarming me, I didn’t know what to say to make things better. I wanted to cry, and since that wouldn’t help, I changed the subject. “Tell us about tomorrow night, Viv.”
She whisked our attention away, expert at being a diversion. She waved the Mistress and said, “She’s who we’re celebrating tomorrow night. She inspired Izzie.”
My heart beat gradually faster as I listened to Viv describe our blood moon ritual. There would be ceremonial costume, a fire, a chant, a dagger, a blood offering, and we’d end telling secrets. It had all the elements of a grand performance, and Viv the perfect director.
The more I considered it, the more I was certain that Graham was right. Rebellions alone weren’t going to keep us close forever. We needed to let the meteorite enter our atmosphere, to hit us. I’m not saying that the four of us would forget that our idol came from Graham’s mom or that our Order was made up. We just needed to suspend disbelief.
Did I think about it in precisely those terms at the time? Can’t say.
I wanted to keep being more than Izzie. I wanted to extinguish the helplessness returning inside of me the more I thought of Goldilocks. I wanted my voice to count. I wanted to believe in what was bigger than me, which is not such a terrible thing, except when others are hurt by what you invent. We were together, tripping with words and laughter, giddy to play mad scientists to our monster.
This is how I didn’t notice the beginning of the end.
11
We formed a circle on the rock, the four of us and the Mistress of Rebellion and Secrets. At the center, in the spot Goldilocks had rested, we built up a pyre of sticks. The full moon was a single white eye peering down, unblinking.
It was past eleven, a few minutes before the eclipse. We were mostly trading uncertain glances. Everyone showed too much eye white and apple-red cheeks. We knew the way to begin; we’d outlined the steps, but none of us, especially paralyzed with awkwardness over what was to come, was exactly certain how to set the thing in motion.
Viv had detailed the Order’s ceremonial rites after she had performed her monologue the previous night. Maybe Ophelia’s madness hadn’t released Viv, because her descriptions had come in swollen gushes. She wound her fingers in the hem of her white dress, her brown irises overtaken by coal-black pupils. The boys nodded their heads, mesmerized. Of course they were; boys are always for, as Viv put it, a ritual disrobing.
We came dressed in white, including the underthings we planned to strip to. Graham clutched an emerald bottle of absinthe, a green fairy with hair like Medusa’s snakes on the label.
“It’s the real stuff, straight out of Amsterdam from when my mom smoked pot and complained about capitalism while she pretended she wasn’t a bougie undergrad from Boston,” Graham informed us. “It’ll alter our states of consciousness.” A dangerous grin revealed his eagerness. “It’ll fuck us up.”
At the present moment he was knocking the bottle against his side, looking furtively at Harry, who held an actual dagger—a bronze-handled antique from Graham’s trip to Jordan. Harry’s bottom lip was between his teeth and the dagger looked about to clatter to the rock. Even Viv was a statue.
I glanced to the moon. The sky was leeching into it; Earth’s shadow beginning to encroach. Someone needed to begin or the eclipse would end before we were done.
I shook my hands out at my sides and picked up the lighter fluid and the box of matches. I squirted the liquid over the sticks. The harsh odor stung my eyes. I discarded the bottle. I met Viv, Graham, and Harry’s stares, and with a solemn nod struck the match and tossed it into the sticks. The fire caught and spread, flames unspooling at the sky with the look of bolts of glittery fabric.
The four of us made an involuntary “Whoa.”
Everything moved. The flames and their shadows ran over the surface of the rock, giving the illusion that we were wading in running water. The tops of the apple trees feathered to one side, the wind playing with the orchard and Viv’s hair, which looked like a lion’s mane. “And now we shed our secrets and lies with our clothes,” Viv said in a velvety voice.
From afar we were four white smudges as we undressed. My hands shook as I pulled my sweater above my head and my ankles from my shorts. The night air smacked my skin.
Graham took the first sip of absinthe and passed it to Viv. Her laugh was cut off by a hiccup. Harry coughed, his eyes pinkening as they blinked at the burn. I was folded in a thick fur coat after the bottle’s third round. The rock was buzzing under my feet, tapping out a message.
“The stars are on fire,” Viv said, gaping at the sky.
The shadow slid over the last sliver of moon. The black apple turned strawberry. I stared. I opened my mouth to swallow it. Instead I howled. Silly and shrill, then wolfish. The others joined in. I stopped to catch my breath as the howling gave way to the chant we’d memorized the night before.
Blood runs north, east, south, west.
Rebellions burn summer, winter, fall, spring.
Secrets bind north, east, south, west.
Each repetition came faster until the words were lobbed from our mouths, breaking apart as they hit the rock. The shine of the red moon gave Viv a halo. Fire danced on Graham’s lenses. My eyes slid to Harry, from crescent mouth to chest, to flat stomach to wrinkled white boxers. He watched me watch him. I smiled. He smiled.
Viv came forward. Harry placed the dagger in her open hand. She held its glinting tip to the moon. “The Order of IV offers a blood sacrifice to the Mistress.”
Vaguely I thought too late, though Goldilocks’s blood hadn’t seeped onto the rock. She was posed, a dead ornament, left to the elements with vicious indifference.
Viv pierced the flames with the dagger. We’d agreed to prick our fingers, so when Viv dragged the tip along her palm, I gasped. She cut a diagonal line.
“Blood for the Mistress’s blood moon,” Viv said with feral delight. She bent and left a smear of blood on the rock.
She passed the knife to Graham, who stuck the blade into the flames. He let out a sharp exhalation when it broke skin and left a smaller black smear by his feet. “For the Mistress.”