“I’m done,” I heard Campbell say, more to himself than anyone. “I am done.”
I held my finger to my lips.
He bent down to whisper into my ear. “What does this have to do with the murdered girl, Izzie? How is that rabbit helping her? What about the goat? The bird?”
He drew back, and his sad expression became harder.
The top of a ladder bobbed to my left. Security was on its way over.
Viv clutched my arm. “Look what’s written on it,” she whispered. I caught a flash of red. The bunny pirouetted on its leash. I kept losing sight of whatever side bore the mark. Security stomped up the ladder. A razor sawed through the rope. The bunny thumped against the top rung. Security shoved the bunny into a black garbage bag. An upside down IV was visible for a fleeting second, then gone.
Campbell hurried away. I opened my mouth to call his name, but Jess was already gliding past me. “I’ll talk to him,” she said, giving me a meaningful look. “Don’t worry.”
? ? ?
But I did. Campbell had said so much to me in that last glance of his. He looked at me like he didn’t just consider me a monster. He thought me the maker of monsters.
Conner and Trent going off book, the sense that I was somewhat culpable, Harry’s and my fight, the increased patrols, and the school administration’s promise to find and prosecute whoever had been responsible for the death of the bunny made the day feel like it was closing in on me.
“They’re not satisfied with sitting in the wings,” Viv explained at lunch. “Who wants to be an understudy when you can have a starring role? Jess and Amanda say Trent and Conner are sorry. They thought we’d be happy.”
Harry choked on a sip of water. “Happy?” he coughed.
“After we use them tomorrow night, we’re going to need to put the fear of the gods in them,” Graham said. “We need them to back off the Order. Convince them it’s a necessity because of increased police activity.”
“How are we going to do that?” Viv asked.
When I’d thought about the end of our rebellions for Goldilocks before, disengaging the initiates had seemed easy. But the Order had its claws hooked in them all, except for Campbell, who was eager to be done.
We four went our separate ways after lunch. A text came in silently to my cell in between sixth and seventh periods. It was from Harry, asking if I’d meet him in the parking lot after school. I didn’t respond, but when I was halfway to Viv’s car I veered to where I could see Harry waiting under a palm tree. I couldn’t ignore him.
His smile was sweet and shy. “Will you go with me to the beach?”
I tugged open the passenger door of his car and climbed in.
He took my hand as he steered with the other, but it was a loose, friendly grip. Out on the sand he cleared away the driftwood. I was biting back tears. Were we about to break up? Had we already ended things the afternoon before? Had we ruined our friendship?
After we sat and watched the whitecaps of the waves for a while, Harry spoke. “We shouldn’t have started, not with everything that’s going on. It was too soon.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It took us five years. Way too soon.”
Harry’s stern expression faltered. “Graham.” He nodded and drove his sneaker into the sand. “Graham would be better for you. He’s liked you forever. Don’t play like you don’t know. You have to. You and Graham.”
“Graham. Do you realize what a paternalistic jackass you sound like? It’s not your job to tell me who would be good. Girls aren’t just hungry for boyfriends, like any boy will do.”
“I know that. Maybe—listen to me, Izzie.” He freed his shoes. “Maybe someday when we’re out of here and older, you and me—we’ll talk on the phone and we’ll meet up and it will be the right time and it’ll work.”
“It was working now.”
“Graham and you.”
I laughed meanly. “That’s what you keep saying.”
“I just—don’t you think you like him a little? You guys have all this stuff in common.”
It was beyond insane. “We have stuff in common.”
“I know we do.”
I held my hands up. “I’m not going to talk you into being my boyfriend, Harry. I shouldn’t have to convince you. But you can’t talk me into being with Graham, so stop trying.”
I threw myself up from the sand and drove my feet into the white puffs like they were snowbanks. I never looked back. If I had, I’d have seen him pull out his cell phone to record the video.
I walked home, checking over my shoulder the whole way that Harry wasn’t about to pull up and offer me a lift. I held myself against the crisp autumn edge of the day. The tang of rotting leaves settled in the back of my mouth. Their rust-colored, slippery skins made my sneakers shoot out, tipping my balance.
What Harry said about Graham snapped over my eyes like lenses. I peered back at the last month through them. Saw the altered reality—reality itself. Graham was methodical, even in his missteps. Didn’t say anything by accident. Bringing up our kiss, kissing Viv; confessing to having been in love with Viv and me hadn’t been accidents at all. They were hints aimed at my head. He’d been talking about liking Jess for years, and then once he actually had a shot with her his interest dried up. He wouldn’t say anything explicit, except she wasn’t what he really wanted. All this struck me with a force that sent me careening to Viv’s, where I sat on her bed, talking and crying as her skilled hands braided ribbons into my hair.
How to say what unfolded in our final rebellion the following night?
The original four met at the barn.
I threw every inch of my focus into the rebellion. When the sight of Harry threatened to make me cry, I thought about how the Order would keep going. We’d pick up a new mission. Turn back time to tell secrets, though surely we didn’t have any left, and dance under the moon. Eventually I would stop remembering how Harry’s hands had skated under my shirt to press against my back as we kissed. I would forget the taste of Harry’s skin as I kissed his neck. I would be able to listen to my perfect song without it slashing open my chest. Wouldn’t I? We’d return to loving each other as friends forever.