Four of our neighbors had kept secrets about Goldilocks’s death. Three of them had heard cries for help or the car crash. Two of them had destroyed evidence of the crime. None of them had come forward after her body was found, when they must have realized they’d witnessed a sliver of her murder. What they knew might have helped find her killer; it might have forced the police to investigate the residents of Driftwood. Who knew how many others might be guarding their own secrets? This was why we planned to hit every house on the block. By that logic, we were condemning our own parents. All but Graham’s mom had been home.
The Swintons, Holloways, Kirkpatricks, and Yus would receive indictments spelled out in letters cut from Viv’s magazines. Graham, Viv, Harry, and I had a note for each of them in our pockets, and we’d deliver them at the end of the night’s rebellion. We’d make sure they understood that the blood covering Driftwood was their punishment.
Graham would jog to Carver’s and Denton’s houses using the green beltways we took for the blood rebellion. Once he’d left our demand in their mailboxes, he’d sprint back in time to hit Kirkpatrick’s house and await the final stage of the rebellion in chorus with the rest of us.
It hadn’t been enough to make Carver’s and Denton’s front yards bleed. Where was Goldilocks’s pound of flesh? The Order demanded a sacrifice. The police chief’s and mayor’s authorities would be restitution. Our notes to them read Resign and it will stop. Perhaps the Order would be satisfied then. I hissed into my mask. Perhaps not.
Night sounds were muted, the gentle purr of the ocean like background static. Nothing, and then a rush of footsteps to my right that made me veer onto a nearby lawn. A figure in black charged by me. Conner turned halfway and tipped a hand to his masked forehead in salute. Harry was close behind.
He came to a stop. “Did he push you?”
“No. I was just startled.”
“Because if he just gives me another reason . . . ,” Harry said.
I laid my hand on his shoulder. “No time to think about him right now.”
Harry stayed trotting by my side until we reached Mrs. Holloway’s. I waved him off when he hung at the mouth of her driveway, reluctant to leave. He had his own houses to hit, though.
With the can of spray paint I made an X that spanned the length and width of her front door and a smaller X at the center of her front window. I painted a large IV on the welcome mat.
Next I moved on to the bird—two humps, the splayed wings, and a fringe of feathers under them. Same position as the birds’ and Goldilocks’s makeshift wings. It was nearly ten feet wide, slashing red across her driveway. There, Mrs. Holloway, try ignoring that like you did her cries for help. I improvised, sketching the outline of a dead body like at a crime scene on her flagstone path. Pausing a second, I gazed at the street around me. Faceless figures clad in black. The hiss of spray paint. One house after another was painted in garish red, morbid drawings.
The following two houses went faster. By the time I sketched the bird in my own driveway, my strokes were fluid and smooth; I imagined the can to be a knife, the cement cut open and bleeding. A buzzing in my pocket. It was one o’clock. The initiates who didn’t live close had their head start to get home before we woke the neighborhood.
I jogged soundlessly back to Mrs. Holloway’s. There were fifteen minutes until the louder phase of the rebellion began. Fifteen minutes to locate a rock, big enough to break a window, small enough to throw.
The neighborhood felt empty with almost half of us gone. Conner was up the street near his house; Trent down at the bottom by his; and four of us were stationed at the houses we needed to deliver letters to. Conner and Trent were told to pick any house close to theirs.
I found the perfect river rock and secured the letter with a rubber band around it. Viv already wiped the fingerprints from the glossy paper using art gum and a technique she learned on the Internet.
In a crouch, I tried to remain invisible behind a rosemary plant. The second buzz would come soon. I struggled to control my breathing. I’d need to be ready to flee.
There was the shattering of glass from down the street. Shit. I went to stand like I might see it; sank back down. Was it Viv? Graham? Trent? A second crash from far up the street. Too early. The heel of my sneaker caught the sidewalk and I fell, tailbone on the curb, spine finding the street. Shouts came from up the street. A porch light flickered on in my peripheral vision. I fumbled with my phone—six minutes early. The others wouldn’t wait. It was now or never.
As I threw myself to my feet and ran for the Holloway’s lawn, there were two loud, ringing clatters. I wound up and released the rock, hitting the high left corner of the window. At first only fissures spread, then came a tinkle like falling rain. The glass dropped out in segments. The rock hadn’t made it inside. I lunged forward across the grass, diving into a shrub. Searched the ground. Found it. Hurled the brick through the gap in the glass. I was running for my house when I saw the shard of glass sticking out from my palm.
My hand seized up as I groped for the doorknob. Someone’s security alarm wailed. More yelling from up and down the street. In the foyer I heard the floor above me creak. I ripped the mask from my face and stuffed it and the spray paint under the couch cushion as Dad came down the stairs.
I stood at the window, peering out, my gloved hands tucked under my arms, the glass digging deeper. “Daddy, what’s happening?” I asked. “Someone’s shouting.” It was nauseating playing innocent and scared.
He blinked sleep from his eyes, becoming gradually more alert standing next to me. Mom would have noticed that I wasn’t in pajamas. She would have heard the ragged pant of my breath as I choked down pain.
Dad told me to stay inside, he was going to check it out, make sure no one was hurt. Where had he been five years before when someone out there actually did need help?
The door slammed behind him.
My hands shook as I held them over my bathroom sink a minute later. A shard of glass stood from my left hand. An iceberg that pierced through the black fuzzy glove and my skin. The glove sponged blood on the white porcelain as I rested my hand, palm toward the ceiling.
My good hand trembled, knocking the cell from the ridge of vanity into the sink. I wouldn’t ask anyone to risk leaving their house. And showing up at the emergency room with glass in my hand wasn’t an option. There. I counted three distinct sirens.
Finally my finger steadied enough for me to video call him. Two rings and Graham’s spectacle-clad face appeared.
“Holy shit,” Graham answered. “Who threw seven minutes and forty seconds early? No. Don’t tell me. I know. Had to have been Conner.”
“Graham,” I croaked.
“I actually had to dive into a juniper bush to hide from the Horowitzes. With the bloody spiders, Izzie. Cobwebs in my face until they went back inside to call the police. You look pale.”
Shakily I held the phone so he had a view of the glass.
“Fuck.”
“It hurts.”
“I don’t know if I can leave the house without it looking suspicious.” I saw a flash of his ceiling, then his face again, peeking through his bedroom blinds. “I’ll figure something out, okay?”
“No,” I said. “No. My dad’s awake. Just stay on with me.” I tried to shove the pain away. Think. Stop feeling. “Should I pull the glass out or remove the glove first?”