“Probably not. He hit her with a car—that doesn’t say ritual. There’s never been anything else to suggest someone’s obsessed with the rock. But so what if the killer was inspired a little by it? Doesn’t change anything. Goldilocks is dead. Killed here. Killed by someone in Seven Hills.”
“After my dad was attacked, I got nightmares,” Harry said. “Always the same. I’m walking through the rear hall at school, like he was. I see the shadows on the bleachers by the soccer field and the red butts of cigarettes in the dark, and I go over, like he did. But then I hear a girl’s voice. In the dream it’s Goldilocks. I run up to the bleachers, but she’s disappeared and these faceless guys kick me bloody on the ground like they did my dad.”
I was silent, searching for a way to phrase what I wanted to without worsening Harry’s pain. “When we were talking about playing pranks on Seven Hills, you said the city deserves it. You were angry,” I said.
“I am angry. Don’t I look it?” In a moment of lightness, he growled. His jaw sharpened and his brows slanted inward. “What if my dad had taken a hit to the head? What if the guys hadn’t stopped when they did? The district said it must have been teenagers from another high school on our campus to party. My dad interrupted. Why would kids from Lovett or Arcadia drive forty-five minutes to drink on our soccer field?”
My fists were clenched under the water. “Who do you think it was?”
Harry stared intently at me, then shook his head. “Maybe some older college kids home for Friday night? But I believe they’re from here, just like the guy who hurt the girl. No one wants to look too hard because they don’t want to believe their neighbors or neighbors’ kids could be that messed up.”
The wind swooped down on us and I shivered at its invisible force. Its timing set us on a doomed course—how many people can say that about the wind? It made me think of the Order, our very own invisible force. Our power. How we could wield it. “We’re not just four dorks having pizza-eating contests anymore,” I said. “We’re the Order of IV. We cut down Bedford. We can find who jumped your dad.”
He blinked at me for a time, trying to work it out. “My parents want to move on. It would upset my dad if I did stuff to bring it up.”
I chewed my bottom lip. “Goldilocks, then,” I said. “We can make the police investigate her death.”
“How?”
“New evidence they can’t ignore.”
He raised a dubious eyebrow. “They ignored a dead body.”
“It’ll be loud and in their faces. And we’ll keep doing it—whatever it is—until they start looking for who hurt her.”
I waited as he blinked at me, something flickering in his eyes. “What?”
“You.” He gave the side of his thumb a nibble. “I wish the others would let you talk more.”
I didn’t shrink from the compliment; didn’t really take it as a compliment, actually. “I don’t need anyone to let me talk. If there’s something I want to say, I say it.”
“But Graham and Viv are loud and you’re a good listener.”
“You listen.”
We were silent except for the water slapping the porous walls of the pool. I swam for the ladder and hung there. Harry paddled and hooked his elbows so we were side-by-side.
I released one hand from the ladder and faced him. I was aware of every little drip of water needling his neck. I wanted to kiss them from his skin. A flicker of nerves in my chest. Yes, Viv had been right. At least about this. I noticed Graham and Viv, but I observed Harry in a different way. I wanted unfriendly things from him. I pictured sliding down the wall until our fronts met, wrapping my legs around his waist. Pressing. Whatever usually prevented these thoughts from rising to the surface had been undone by the absinthe. My hand moved from the ladder to the wall.
“I don’t know how to dance,” he admitted out of the blue. “I love music. I can’t move to it, though.” He shook his head, frustrated. “I can move to it, I have legs and arms, but I do this dying fish thing. Ugly. Humiliation for all.” Harry didn’t usually ramble. I became more aware of his expression rather than his body below the water. “Remember when you and Viv had dance parties? Even the way you walk is dance-y.” He gave me a sideways look. “Not in a bad way. It’s good. I’m a hundred percent sure that you are a much better dancer than I am, is what I’m trying to get out.” He laughed quick and nervous. “Do you want to go to homecoming with me?”
Yes, I thought. The answer caught in my throat. How long had I fought thinking of Harry differently? And what would happen if I admitted to myself, beyond this drunken night, that I wanted us to be more than friends? What would happen to the four of us? Then again, I had watched Viv and Graham kiss not too long before and nothing had changed. I hoped.
“Yes,” I said.
“Yeah?” His smile shone. “Even though my dance moves will do your rep unrepairable damage?”
“Even if the whole school laughs and points,” I said. He ducked under the water, sending up a surge of bubbles. I glided away from the wall, floating on my back, grinning up at the night sky.
I had my first ever homecoming date and I was glad the moon had witnessed Harry asking me.
Retrieved from the cellular phone of Harrison Rocha
Transcript and notes prepared by Badge #821891
Shared Media Folder Titled: IV, Sun., Sept. 29, 11:06 a.m.
Video start.
H. Rocha sits at his desk, one hand bracing his forehead.
“I’m breaking the rules—the implied rules, since no one said outright we couldn’t vent about other stuff on here. If I don’t talk about it, I’m going to explode.
“Yesterday, before the moon ceremony, I was with Simon. My mom has a patch of wildflowers in the front yard. She was as excited as Simon is over ice cream when she planted the seeds. She drinks her coffee standing over them. She refuses to pick them. What’s the point of flowers you don’t pick? She loves them, I guess. Simon loves the butterflies that come. Used to come.” He sniffs and exhales.
“I have to watch Simon out front with his net. Once he trailed a beetle and didn’t look up until he was six houses down. Yesterday Simon was catching butterflies and then all of a sudden he sprints to the porch and says, ‘I wanna go inside.’ I told him to go back for the net he dropped by the flowers. He wouldn’t. When I did, Conner’s car rolled up at our house.” A bitter laugh. “His house.