The Bonding Ritual (Girls Wearing Black: Book Four) (38 page)

There was a pause at the table while the rest of the group took in this information.

“That’s not her number!” said Mattie. “Thirteen is my number!”

Jill smiled. “
I know,” she said. “But does anyone outside of this group know that thirteen is your number?”

Mattie looked around the table. “I don’t think so,” she said.

“Precisely,” Jill said. “And we’re going to keep it that way. We will know the truth, but we’ll make the rest of the school believe a lie. Quietly, in a way that doesn’t make anyone suspicious, we need to spread the word all over school that Samantha’s number is thirteen. If any of us get called up to the safe on Friday night, we will turn the diamond knob to number thirteen to reinforce the illusion. Everyone who tries to open the safe will start the combination with an incorrect number.”

“And the safe will remain closed no matter what other numbers they’ve figured out, because they’ll all get my number wrong,” said Samantha. “I love it! But what happens if Daciana pulls number thirteen and Mattie has to go up? Everyone will know that we were trying to fool them.”

“Then we choose another phony number to spread. The one thing we never do is let anyone know what Samantha’s real number is.”

Jill looked at Samantha to emphasize the point. “Ever.”

Samantha didn’t hesitate to agree. “I’m keeping my number a secret from everyone,” she said, “even my parents.”

Everyone except the one person you told at Daciana’s party
, Jill thought.

“That’s good,” said Jill. “So long as that safe stays closed, you win the Coronation contest.”

“And as long as everyone is confused about my real number, the safe can’t be opened,” Samantha said.

Jill got a text from Alvin that afternoon.

I’ve got the blueprint for the chapel open in front of me. I’ll send it to you.
There isn’t much on the other side of that back door. A little hallway and what looks like a storage closet.

That’s where the Ping-Pong balls are,
Jill thought.

Sounds good
, she wrote back to Alvin.
Send me the blueprint, and tell Eve we need another agent up here. Someone who is capable of breaking into the chapel through the back door without making a sound.

Are we stealing something?
Alvin wrote back.

More like borrowing
, Jill responded.

After school, Ryan drove Jill back to her house. Once they were safely removed from campus, he said, “I like this idea of making sure there’s confusion about Samantha’s real number. But none of this does any good for us if I get called to the stage before we’ve cracked the combination. We need Mary and Kim’s numbers soon. You’ve already had your chance to guess at the safe. If I get called up before we’re ready, we don’t have anyone else who will give the money to Nicky.”

“I’m already working on that,” Jill said. “And I think I’ve got a solution.”

“Are you going to tell me what the solution is?”

“There are two numbers in that vat of Ping-Pong balls that we don’t want Daciana to call anytime soon. One of them is your number. The other is Mattie’s, since we’re using her number now to keep the rest of school confused.”

“The odds of our numbers being called are the same as everyone else’s,” said Ryan.

“Not if we break into the chapel and remove the Ping-Pong balls that would call you to the stage.”

The dirt lot outside the Red Rocket. A chance encounter with a girl named Jill. Coffee and conversation at Marty’s diner. For a short time in the wee hours of a Sunday morning, Zack was sure the emptiness was gone. When he sat across from Jill at Marty’s diner, his feelings were a confusing blend of curiosity, nostalgia, and happiness. Yes, happiness. Being with the girl brought him back to a time when he wasn’t perpetually sinking.

It was no surprise to him that the girl disappeared. She was a visitor from a foreign land and the natives chased her out.

Lana chased her out.

Lana arrived at the diner that night, blitzed on the pills and booze that occupied a typical Saturday. Zack went to shoo her away. When he came back to the booth, Jill was gone. Zack’s first response was a desire to fall to his knees and shout to heaven about the injustice of it all, but he was able to shut down that impulse, and in doing so, he understood that Jill had changed him. Less than an hour with the mystery girl and Zack was a different man, one who could control the darkness inside him.

He knew what he had to do.

“We’re breaking up, Lana,” he said.

“What? Fuck you. We’re not breaking up. Come home. I’ll make you forget about that skank you were sitting with.”

He pushed her aside and walked to the front door of the diner, getting out to the front
step in time to see Jill’s car drive away. He watched her turn on Preston Avenue. She was headed west.

She was from Potomac.

That night he locked the front door to his apartment, turned off his phone, and put on his noise canceling headphones. The headphones didn’t silence the world, but they muted the sounds of Lana banging on the windows and screaming at him to let her inside. He slept soundly that night, without pills. When he woke up the next morning, Lana was gone.

He drove to Potomac that day and roamed through the subdivisions. One giant mansion after another, all with perfectly manicured landscapes, even in the dead of winter. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in Potomac, but strangely, he felt like he knew the place. The street names were more than a little familiar to him. Sorel, River, Doster—sometimes he knew which street he was on even before he saw the sign. He recognized Burbank Drive by the submarine-shaped mansion on the corner. And as he drove down the street, he knew he was coming up on Rosary Lane, where he’d want to turn right.

Why do I want to turn right? Where am I going?

After the right turn, Zack followed Rosary Lane beyond the cul-de-sacs and gated communities, all of which felt familiar.
Maybe he’d done a gig here once. Strange that he couldn’t remember it. But he definitely knew which way to go. Yes, there was a destination pulling on him. The woods. The big houses were on the edge of town, butted up against the woods, each home surrounded by acres of land. That’s where he wanted to go.

A few minutes of driving and he was there. Sprawling castles hidden far from the road—that was the neighborhood, and he felt like he was coming up on something. On someplace he wanted to be.
Getting closer now. It’s just…it’s right…is it up here?
With each estate he drove past, he felt like he was nearing something important, until…he wasn’t.
I’ve passed it. How could that be? I don’t even know what
it
is. But yes, now I’ve gone too far.

He turned around and doubled back, and again got the sensation that he was almost there, yes, nearly there, but then, too far.

It was as if the place he wanted to go wasn’t there anymore. As if he was drawn to empty space that used to mean something, but no longer did.

Back and forth for more than an hour he drove, each time missing the
mark. It made him think of the calculus class he took at community college, the limit as x approached y, a line getting infinitely closer to another line, never to actually touch. That’s what this place was he was trying to find. He’d get closer and closer and closer to it, and then he’d cross over to the other side, the mystery place somewhere behind him. When he tried to identify where it was, he’d come up empty. Just more gigantic mansions pressed up against the woods. All of them familiar in a distant sort of way. All except one.

There was one mansion that brought him no feelings at all. A towering Victorian with white walls and a huge driveway, maybe the largest mansion in the neighborhood. Was it new? Must be a new place, because this mansion, and this one alone, did nothing for him. It was new to his eyes. And after what had to be his tenth pass at least, he decided this mansion was the reason he felt so confused.

The sensation of lost memory pulled him towards this mansion, but when he arrived, he found nothing at all. Whatever he was looking for must have been torn down and this mansion was erected in its place.

He left Potomac feeling disappointed but determined. The idea of searching for Jill woke him from what felt like a months-long slumber. It was meant to be this way.
I’m meant to work for it.
It would have been too easy for a girl to just show up in his life and fill all his empty spaces. It was better that he had to go out and find her.

And even though he had no idea where to go next, he felt alive with purpose.
I will find you, Jill, and this time, I won’t let you get away.

Two hours before the class was scheduled to gather again at chapel and witness eight more attempts to open the safe, Jill met with Eve in a park on Henderson Avenue. Eve gave her two Ping-Pong balls.

“Number sixty and number thirteen,” Eve said, announcing the printed numbers on each stolen plastic ball.

“Were there any difficulties with the break-in?” Jill said.

Eve shook her head. “Daciana is going to great lengths to protect the treasure in the safe, but hasn’t given the same consideration to her bucket of balls. The alarm on the chapel isn’t armed during the school day. Getting these for you was as simple as picking a couple of locks.”

Jill rolled the balls around in her hand. Number thirteen: Mattie’s number, but soon to be known to the rest of the school as Samantha’s. Number sixty: Ryan’s number.

Neither would get called up to the stage tonight, or any subsequent night until Jill had figured out the safe.

“I’ll be asking you to do the break-in a second time when I’m ready to return these,” Jill said.

“I’ll be ready,” said Eve. “This was one of the easiest jobs I’ve ever done.”

*****

The invitations were propped on a music stand just inside the front door of the chapel. There was a sign on the music stand inviting each student to take one.

Jill, having arrived at the chapel just moments before Daciana took the stage, was in such a hurry she walked right past the stand without grabbing a paper. Her mind was still on the Ping-Pong balls, which at present were locked away in the glove box of her car.

It wasn’t until she got to the pews and saw that everyone was holding a piece of paper that she turned back and checked the music stand. There were only a few invitations left. She grabbed one.

A celebration of love and immortality
was the headline on the paper. Underneath was a paragraph of neatly centered text.

We will have a lantern festival on the 15
th
lunar day of this, the first lunar month of the new year. Participants will arrive with two lanterns: one for their loves, and one for their masters. Gather on the north lawn at dusk.

Like everyone else at Thorndike, Jill had learned to master the lunar calendar, which was Daciana’s preferred means of tracking the days. On this year, the lunar new year was January 31
st
, meaning the 15
th
lunar day was February 14
th
.

But it would have been too simple for Daciana to call the gathering a Valentine’s Day party.

Holding her invitation in her hand, Jill went back to the pews and took a spot next to Ryan.

“Did everything turn out how you wanted it to?” he whispered.

Jill nodded her head, and Ryan visibly relaxed. He had been nervous all week about this business of breaking into the chapel to remove two Ping-Pong balls from the mix, but hadn’t argued with the idea. He knew as well as Jill that the best way to control the uncertainty of this game was to cheat.

Daciana entered a minute after Jill took her place. She greeted the students, acknowledged the invitations on the music stand in the back, and invited everyone to take a seat while their game continued. Then she reached into the globe and removed a Ping-Pong ball.

“Number forty-eight,” she said.

Heads turned, people whispered nervously, and ultimately, Vince Weir stood up and walked to the altar. He spun the first dial, the diamond dial, to number thirteen.

From the pew in front of her, Samantha turned back to Jill and smiled.

Vince failed to open the safe. As did Beatrice Small, who was called up next. Karmela was the third student called to the stage. Confidently, she turned the diamond dial to number thirteen,
then took random guesses on the other three.

The safe didn’t open for her either.

Hannah Drummond, Patrick Randall, and Claudia Gallegos were the next three called. None of them were in Samantha’s core group, but all of them tried thirteen on the first dial.

“Nicely done,” Ryan whispered to Jill after Claudia failed to open the safe. With his words, he gave a quick squeeze on her hand.