She served me chamomile tea and we sat on either side of the oval table. I chatted about the school news blog and the bullshit article I was writing on the spree of vandalism. I rounded it out with, “My friend was at this party in the railroad tunnel—you know the one, right? Up in the hills behind my house? Well, there was a woman there saying she saw the car that hit Jane Doe five years ago and that she’s not leaving until she figures out who was driving it. My friend thought she was maybe camping up there? Isn’t that all just bonkers?” I spoke fast and blinked too much from nerves—how often did honest people blink?— and was it suspicious I was hiding my hurt hand in my lap?
I left my tea untouched; the dredges settled at the bottom of its pool. Practically fell down her porch steps I was so eager to get away from the seed I’d planted, like it was a magic bean a moment away from sprouting to crush me.
The air was full, leeching moisture into my hair. Maybe Graham wasn’t paranoid for worrying over rain. Viv would be home from play practice and I needed to talk to her about the secret rites for the initiates. None had been delivered, as far as I knew, since that first day with Campbell eating cat food, Trent doing a pole dance, and Rachel’s speech in her and Graham’s history class. We had been busy with the rebellions and we’d agreed not to let these smaller rites overshadow what mattered. But I’d seen the hurt in Campbell’s eyes over the cat food, and I worried about the storm gathering for Amanda. Not worried for Amanda, per se, but the possible fallout.
Through the glass door of the barn, Viv sat cross-legged, palms on the floor. The lights off. A candle flickered on the book that lay open in front of her.
I tapped the glass. Her face snapped up. Shiny with tears.
“Hey,” I said, closing the door behind me. “You reading something sad?”
“Hi. No.”
I hung at the outskirts of the candle’s glow, which fell softly around her. She pulled a tissue from a skirt pocket and blew into it. I went to sit across from her and waited until she was ready.
“I failed.” Her voice was low, holding back. She took a steadying breath. “You’ve got to understand that Amanda, Jess, and Rachel—they’re not all equally friends. Anyone can see it.” Viv’s hands trembled. “Amanda only ever asks Jess to do stuff. Jess brings Rachel or Rachel just shows. Amanda does sneaky shit. Every time Rachel talks, Amanda winces and holds her ears like Rachel’s too loud. Or she’ll tell Rachel not to be rude or obnoxious right before they go into stores to shop, as if Rachel doesn’t know how to behave.
“Amanda always has stories about how wasted Rachel got once, or how she’s so sloppy and desperate. Rachel denies it, but Jess says, why would Amanda lie?” Viv huffed nasally in disbelief. “Because she’s evil. I bet that’s why Rachel actually started drinking too much. She became the lie. There are holes in their little triangle. I tried to stick my fingers through them.” Viv gave a scathing bark of laughter. “As if destroying Amanda could be as easy as getting her to fight with her friends.”
“Why make them fight? If Amanda and Rachel already have issues.”
“I wanted them to have their last fight. The fight that would end the group. Their fights were never so major that Jess had to pick a side. So . . .”
“So?”
“I started repeating what the other said. Not when Jess was around. Stealthy, like, Oh, Rachel, Amanda said you keep a flask in your backpack. Can I have a sip if you do? Or, Hey, Amanda, I don’t want to get her in any trouble, but Rachel was reminding a bunch of kids about when you lost your hair.”
Viv let out a long sigh, deflating. “It didn’t work. Rachel got sulky. Amanda didn’t care. She’d shrug or laugh or say, Whatever, she’s probably drunk. I failed. I had this unicorn of an opportunity to destroy Amanda, and I barely made her frown. Once Amanda lost Jess, the boys would have gone too. They like her way more than Amanda. Then Amanda would be alone, like a lame animal forgotten by her herd. No one to protect her. Then IV could have cut her down.”
I looked away as she wiped her runny nose on her shoulder.
“Maybe it’s okay, Viv? This year’s going to be over like that.” I snapped. “You’ll never see Amanda again. The Order did what it was supposed to—it gave us all these one-of-a-kind memories.” I grabbed both her hands and held them tightly. “We’ll be friends forever.”
Her eyes flitted from our joined hands to my smile. “Hold on to this feeling, Izzie—the ‘we’re going to be in each other’s weddings, live next door and have a thousand cats, and celebrate holidays together’ rush.”
I crinkled my brow. I liked but didn’t understand where she was going. She pried her hands free. “I failed at my first plan. I have another. More diabolical.” She was fraying the hem of her dress. I watched for a minute or two, until she looked up, determined, and said, “You promise you won’t stop loving me?”
I pulled on a thread she’d been working to free; it began to unravel the hemline. “I promise.”
“I recorded them telling us their secrets,” she whispered as one blast of dishonest air. Her eyes ticked to the armoire. “My cell was on top. At first I was doing it to keep us safe. Like if one of them betrayed us, we’d post their secret on the news blog. And maybe, maybe, a little of it was because I thought Amanda might say something I could use against her.”
Viv had called trying to incite a fight between the girls for her first plan. But recording the secrets had come before the rebellions and rites. Mere days after homecoming. How hard had Viv really tried to make their group explode knowing the ace she kept in her back pocket?
“But then Amanda’s confession,” she said. “Sex with Conner’s brother, right after Conner broke up with her, and while his dad creeped through the crack in the door. It’s . . .”
“Gross. Awful,” I said.
“Yes. Disastrous, too, if it got out.”
“But Viv. That would be—”
“Slut shaming. I know. I would never make a girl feel bad for having sex with whomever she wants. Really, I wouldn’t normally. But this is Amanda.” Her shaking hands appealed to me. “This girl has tried to ruin my life.”
“Viv—this—it’s beneath you.”
She wagged her head. “Maybe I’ll be doing her a favor? The secret is just as much Bowden and Sebastian Welsh’s. Everyone will know.”
“Bowden lives at school. I guess it might get his dad in trouble, which he deserves. But when celebrity sex tapes come out, the guys get high fives and the girls get called names. That’s what you’re counting on. If people weren’t going to say nasty things about Amanda, it wouldn’t be worth doing. You’ve already thought it through.”
She dropped her head, nodding. “I have.”
“So why haven’t you done it yet?”
She peeked at me, avoiding facing me head on. “If I post the video, even though I’ll do it anonymously, she’ll squeal about the Order because she’ll know it came from me. Maybe she’ll tell people all about the Order. Maybe only the parts she didn’t have a role in. But we’ve been signing all the rebellions—we go down for one, we go down for them all. Even the stuff we didn’t do, like the beach curfew signs and Harper’s car.”