Page 51 of Deadly Little Scandals
“Take your first card,” we were instructed, “and turn to the person beside you.” I was sitting between Lily and Campbell. My instinct would have been to turn to Lily, but she was already turning to her left.
To someone else.
“Trade secrets,” Victoria said. “One of yours for one of theirs.”
“Well, Sawyer?” Campbell said beside me.
In for a penny, in for a pound.I held my first card out to her, anticipating her reaction. She plucked the card from my grasp, then hesitated before allowing me one of hers.
I saw the exact second Campbell processed the wordspregnancy pact. “Your mama and Ana?” she murmured. I nodded, and her eyebrows nearly disappeared into her hairline.
Knowing I’d probably get an earful about having held back that information once we weren’t surrounded by Candidates and White Gloves, I looked down at the card Campbell had handed me. The torches the White Gloves had lit all around us only provided so much light, but I could still make out every word.
If I could undo it all, I would.
I looked from the card back up to Campbell. Her expression never changed. I knew without asking that the card was referring to what we’d done last spring. She’d been the driving force behind bringing her father to justice. She’d needed, on some level, to take him down.
And if she could take it all back? She would.
“Don’t say a word.” Campbell’s tone was pleasant enough, but I recognized a warning when I heard one. I wasn’t sure if she was telling me not to comment on the secret I’d just read or not to share it.
Either way?
“I won’t.”
All around us, the world settled into silence. There seemed to be an understanding among the Candidates that the words we’d written on our cards weren’t meant to be spoken out loud.
“Now take your partner’s secret…” Victoria said. I waited for her to order us to share them. “Fold it in half.”
Hope walked the group, gathering the cards, one by one. “Some secrets,” she told us, “should stay secret. No matter how many cliffs we jump off of or dares we issue and fulfill, society will always have its rules, and our power will always come, in part, from knowing when to break them and when to play along.”
“There’s a time for telling secrets,” Victoria translated. “And a time to bury them deep.”
Someone brushed past me. My eyes had adjusted enough to the dark to recognize Nessa. She was wearing a scarlet robe now, the hood pulled up over her head.
She was carrying a shovel.
hey put our secrets in a wooden case. Each one of us took a turn with the shovel. The ground was harder than I’d expected, the digging grueling, but eventually, we had a hole: two feet by two feet and three deep.
The case was lowered in, and one by one, the eight White Gloves took possession of the shovel and started covering it with dirt.
“Choose another secret.” Victoria waited for her voice to break through the odd reverie that had settled over the group. “And find another partner.”
This time, Campbell ended up with Sadie-Grace, and I found myself face-to-face with Lily. I looked down at the second card I’d written, the one about the Lady of the Lake. Before I could decide to hand Lily my third card instead, she took the second from my hand and offered me one in return.
I can’t stop thinking about the Lady of the Lake.I watched Lily read those words. It was hard to tell if they resonated with her, if she was remembering and thinking about and obsessing over two little words her father had said on the recordings.
That body…
“It’s nothing,” Lily told me. “It has to be nothing.”
For God’s sakes,I could hear Uncle J.D. saying,it was an accident!
All too aware that the discussions around us were minimal and quiet, I didn’t press Lily further. Instead, I looked down at the card she’d handed me. I recognized her handwriting from theSecretsblog—tiny and evenly spaced and perfect.
SOMETIMES, MY BODY FEELS LIKE IT BELONGS TO SOMEONE ELSE.
I tried to wrap my mind around that, tried not to find it eerie.Sometimes, as in when she was punching her fist into a wall? Orsometimes, when she wrote other people’s secrets on her skin?
