Graham held up his cell. He typed out a message. It traveled around the circle.
The cops are keeping the wraps on the letters for the same reason they denied the significance of the bloody animal prints. As long as they can avoid acknowledging a connection to past events, they don’t have to talk about one specific past event that if brought up could make them look bad. Potentially. If people in Seven Hills give two more shits now than they did five years ago.
“The letter’s pretty messed up,” Harry said without skipping a beat. “I’m printing the whole thing on the blog tomorrow, but the gist is ‘For your crime of indifference. You heard someone crying for help. You went back to sleep. You found her shoe on your lawn the next day. You threw it away.’?” Harry had recited the note verbatim. All the other notes took the same form, but each explicitly stated what the recipient was guilty of.
“When are you interviewing Lorin?” I asked.
“Tonight. After her lacrosse practice.”
I was deep in thought and almost didn’t notice the accessories a few upperclassmen were wearing. My eyes stuck to a junior boy with a bandana around his bicep. His T-shirt revealed a strip of tan midriff, the armband torn from its hem. IV written in black marker stared back at me, like a joke my eyes were playing. I scanned the throngs and circles of students. Five more armbands among them, one headband, and another few where IV was simply written on the fronts or sleeves of T-shirts. I socked Graham’s shoulder.
“Use your words and say excuse me,” he chided, nosing up from his book.
“Look,” I said, and pointed.
After a lot of sighing and fussiness over marking his spot, he said, “And what am I looking at, darling?”
I jabbed my finger at the air with subdued violence.
“What’s up?” Harry asked, removing an earphone.
“You guys aren’t letting me nap,” Viv complained, propping up on her elbow from where she reclined, one eye squinting into the light.
Word of the city’s official response to the vandalism on Driftwood Street soon came as breathless babble from Amanda. Our city had outlawed the display of the symbol IV.
Some of our peers had already adopted our moniker to sign their own mischief over the last weeks. These kids and others saw the symbol as a finger to authority. When they heard it was outlawed, some of them started penning it on T-shirts and backpacks. The protest got official when student gov became involved with their armbands. They considered banning the symbol a civil liberties violation. And then there were those classmates who just wanted to be a part of it because it seemed major. Not so different from kids who wanted in or were afraid of missing out.
Whatever you want to call them, they turned us into spectators that day.
Amanda and the others joined us on the top risers. One by one they sat alongside us. Companionable even, with Amanda passing out cupcakes from a large, pink pastry box after informing us it was her half birthday.
The members of the Order of IV had been thrown off the stage and into the audience. I felt like I was watching a play I’d spent the fall writing, and the version being performed was spinning off-kilter. Out of my control.
Retrieved from the cellular phone of Harrison Rocha
Transcript and notes prepared by Badge #821891
Shared Media Folder Titled: IV, Wed., Oct. 23, 1:35 p.m.
Video start.
H. Rocha stares at the lens. “I have to vent about Conner, the wizard of assholery. Fifth period. That’s where I’m supposed to be right now. But I’m here.” The phone pans to show school tennis courts. “I was going to explode in class. I had to get out. I thought he was giving all that Rags and Riches stuff a rest. Except no. Why would he? He’s a lying, sadistic . . . He’s inhuman. He texted me: ‘You think your dad needs extra cash? Mine wants to pay the gardener to clean up the graffiti from last night on the house, but I could tell him your dad’ll do it for a twenty spot or something.’
“No way is my dad cleaning up the graffiti he put on his house. Not after everything. I’d break both Conner’s arms before. Is he insane?” Harry drags his hand over his face.
“I can’t do this for much longer. The others—I don’t mind them. They’re not friends but they’re not enemies. Campbell’s okay; even Trent’s standable. But Conner. I just. I just can’t keep on. I tried. I’ve been trying so hard to let it go. Think about next year. But truth is, next year, best-case scenario is I get financial aid and go off to school and my parents still live in that house. Dad will still work here. There will be other Conner Welshes looking down at him like he’s nobody. They don’t know. My dad listens to me. We build stuff together. We laugh. He taught me to surf . . . before. He’s worth ten of them. No. A hundred.”
Video stop.
27
Graham had the skeleton from the attic laid out on his mother’s expansive desk in her study. We’d been at his house all afternoon. Harry was working at Hilltop Market and Viv was at school for rehearsal. Antigone was set to open in three weeks.
Graham stroked his chin, appraising the bones like he was considering reanimating them. From the swivel chair I drew the skeleton, with one modification: her torso and limbs remained bones, but her face was fleshed out and belonged to Goldilocks. The ends of her hair curled at her collarbone. “Won’t your mom find her in here?” I asked.
“Mom’s gone until Friday. I’ll bring the old girl to my room before then.” He touched its left foot affectionately.
He’d set me up for a so-you’ll-finally-have-a-girl-in-your-room joke. I shaded in Goldilocks’s hair. “You’re getting a little touchy-feely with the skeleton. Should I have Jess ask you out for her super-secret rite?”
“Izzie.”
I fluttered my eyelashes. “Yes, darling?”
“Please, do not.”
“I’d just be giving her an excuse,” I muttered. “I can tell. She’s into you.”
“I’m thinking I’ll have Trent draw a penis in marker on his forehead. Wear it to class,” Graham said.
I looked up from the fringe of bangs I’d given Goldilocks. “You can’t. Trent’s my initiate for secret rites.”
“I thought after the first round we’d reselect initiates?”
My head wobbled. By my design the rules had gone unsaid.
“Then I’ll have Rachel do it, if I’m stuck with her.”
“Be nice,” I said. “She’s so . . .”
“Grating. Obnoxious. Exhausting.”
I tried to scold him with my eyes. “Lonely seeming.”
“Okay. You’ve won her clemency.” I smiled at him. “I found my spy cam,” he added.
I tucked the pencil into the spiral of the sketch pad. “Good. I figured out the rest of my plan.”
Graham slouched against the deep jade grass cloth, leg bent, foot against the wall. “Tell me again why your plan is so much safer than mine?”
“Because your plan involves solving Goldilocks’s murder by asking lots of nosy questions. Mine doesn’t involve alerting the killer that we’re looking for him. It just forces him out of hiding.”