“But if it’s not?” Graham asked. “If they’re punking us and if we don’t prove to them how serious we are, then what?”
“So keep it simple,” I said. “Have a story about the Order, how we discovered it, and why they should follow its rules. Just use what’s right in front of us.”
“Chocolate-covered peanuts,” Viv said, sinking into our circle.
“No.” I side-eyed her. “The meteorite, the drawings, the birds, and Goldilocks.”
“I mean, communism.” She opened and closed an outstretched hand.
Graham slid the bag of chocolate in her direction. She caught it, ignoring an escapee peanut that dropped off the stage. Viv had reserved the auditorium to practice her blocking and lines, but when I stopped by to say good-bye after Monday’s classes, she was on her back, kicking the red velvet curtain and swiping through pictures on her cell. “I can’t concentrate on Antigone when there’s a better performance to plan,” she’d whined. And there we all were, on the stage, an appropriate place to reinvent the Order of IV.
“Hmmm. Use what’s right in front of us,” Graham murmured to himself. To us he said, “But we have to start out with a demonstration of conviction. Blood. Guts. Something so they know how serious the Order is. Too bad we already cut our hands.”
“I am not doing another blood offering,” Viv said, thumbing her freshly healed palm. “One scar is character; two’s deformity.”
Graham kept brainstorming. Viv struck down each of his ideas. I clicked over to my web browser; it was already open to a missing persons database. I scanned the photos that were new in the last week. I couldn’t imagine a scenario where her family failed to notice that Goldilocks was missing for five years. Where was this girl’s version of Graham, Harry, and Viv?
All those eyes of the missing inhabited my computer screen. I gave each a perfunctory glance. Don’t let them in. Nothing familiar about any of the girls, except the sense that they could be in the back row of any of my classes. Regular girls. Biting their nails, twisting their earring studs, and singing off-key.
Viv reclined on her back beside me. The gold buttons on her black dress were the shape of scarab beetles, marching up her front. “All we need is for Amanda and Conner to play along. The rest are lemmings,” she stated matter-of-factly to the stage lights. “I wish I knew how they all became friends. How Conner and Amanda became king and queen.”
I smiled at the Viv classicism.
If she vanished, what would I do? There were hands in my stomach turning it inside out. What if there was someone out there who’d been able to help her, and instead they pulled indifference and their comforters over their heads to go back to sleep? Threw out her shoe. Washed away her blood. Rage brought tears to my eyes. Screw indifference. What would I do to her killer? Goldilocks had one, a fact I kept glossing over. It was difficult to grasp. The adults weren’t interested in holding anyone accountable for her death, and even if I didn’t like it, their thinking influenced mine. I had to remind myself there was someone to blame above all the rest. Someone who deserved punishment far more than Denton, Carver, and our neighbors did.
I closed the browser. A mere few weeks before, leaving my friends for college seemed like a tragedy. How privileged, flimsy, and naive of me.
? ? ?
? ? ?
On Wednesday afternoon, Viv delivered instructions to Amanda and Conner. With their four friends, they were to arrive at the barn without cell phones, dressed in white, at midnight on Saturday. All would be revealed. Viv warned them that if a hint of this arrangement was whispered to anyone outside the six who were invited, the invitation would be revoked.
As instructed, they came, ghosts slipping through the orchard. Graham, Viv, Harry, and I were in our places, backs facing north, east, south, and west. We’d cleared the furniture from the center of the barn to make room for the formation of white candles we surrounded.
The muffled laughter outside grew louder. Viv clutched the idol to her breasts, the cut of her black dress low, a lace choker at her thin neck. We were in dark-colored Victorian-era costumes that she’d pieced together from the wardrobes in her attic. My lace collar was high and tight, curling like flower petals under my chin. Viv’s black fingerless gloves accentuated her red talons. Graham stood tall in a vest under a long, unbuttoned jacket. There was a vampiric quality to his stiff posture, pale skin, and ruddy mouth; only the needlepoints of sweat gathering at his brow gave him away. Harry had left his jacket behind in the attic, his shirtsleeves were rolled up, and a watch chain ran from a buttonhole to the pocket of his vest.
“We have to shock them into submission,” Viv had told me when she presented the costumes. “It has to be a production. We have to commit.”
The initiates filtered into the barn, wide-eyed, whispering, wearing white. The girls wore slightly old-fashioned dresses, either by coincidence or Viv’s direction.
Graham took charge. “Jess and Trent, stand between Viv and Harry. Amanda and Conner, go between Harry and Izzie. Rachel, you’re here, and Campbell, you’re between me and Izzie.” They filled the gaps of our circle around the burning candles.
Their eyes had the glassy strain of holding back laughter. Only Campbell met my gaze with curiosity. If one of them burst, we’d lose the rest. Forget the ridicule; if they laughed, left, there’d be no reason for them not to out us as IV.
Viv lifted the idol above her head. The initiates struggled to smooth their expressions. “Before we can welcome you into our ranks and share our secrets, there are a series of initiation rites. The first will be administered tonight.” The conviction in her voice was a hypnotic lullaby. “If you complete the initial rite, we’ll tell you about the Order.”
Breathy echoes of “the Order” traveled the circle.
“The first rite is a show of good faith,” Harry said. “Because these traditions are built on the secrets of the land we’re standing on, we require each of you to share a secret with us.” Somehow his staring uncomfortably at the wall worked, making him seem captivated by an unseen presence.
Graham’s arms were crossed high on his chest and his voice was commanding, kingly. “You’ll wait outside for your turn and then one by one you’ll take a sip of our truth-telling serum and offer us a secret. We will either accept or deny your bid to join us. We swear on the Order that we’ll keep your confidence so long as you keep ours.”
“Objections?” I asked. I expected there to be, which was why I was about to follow up the question with a threat: If they chose to leave without sharing a secret and told anyone about the Order, Harry would reveal their friends’ secrets on the school news blog.