“Oh. Yeah. I forgot you didn’t know. Sometimes we hang out in Iran.” I’m so matter-of-fact that it takes a moment for her to hear what I’m saying.
Lila is a blur as she whirls on her brother and starts shouting at him in a steady stream of Hebrew. But Noah throws his hands in the air — the universal signal for don’t blame me — and fires off a reply.
It might go on forever if not for the dark shadow that appears in the stairway, the deep voice that says, “Is someone going to tell me what has happened?”
And just that quickly Lila forgets all about her brother and runs to Alexei as fast as she can. He throws open his arms and practically swallows her whole.
“I was so worried,” she says as Alexei speaks softly near her ear, his voice so low that I can’t hear it. And the whole scene makes me feel … angry. And sad. And guilty.
But mostly it makes me want to pull Lila out of Alexei’s arms and toss her in the pool.
I have no right to feel this way, but that’s the thing about feelings. You never get what you deserve.
When Megan clears her voice, “Ahem!” Lila peels herself off of Alexei and turns back to us. Her mascara is smudged and her cheeks are too red.
“Now, will someone explain where the two of you went?” Noah points to Alexei and then to me. “And what the two of you” — this time he points between me and his sister — “have been keeping from us?”
“Grace,” Lila starts, my name a warning. We should talk about this, it says. We should think. We shouldn’t throw a thousand years of secret sisterhood out the window just because one of us is having a really messed-up summer.
But this isn’t my summer. It’s my life. And I don’t know how much more I can take.
“You can leave if you want to, Lila. You can go tell your mom or Ms. Chancellor what I’m doing right now. You can. It’s your right, and I won’t try to stop you. But don’t try to stop me.” I look at my friends. “They’re already involved with this, one way or another. They have the right to know.”
My mom was obsessed with something once, if Ms. Chancellor and the prime minister are to be believed. Just a few weeks ago I was obsessed with the Scarred Man and justice and proving to the world that I’m not crazy. I was wrong, of course, about so many things. And I may be wrong about this. But if there’s something worse than knowing an awful thing, it’s knowing nothing at all.
I look at my friends and then to Lila.
“Go ahead,” she says. “I won’t stop you.”
Maybe this means she believes me. Maybe she trusts me. Or maybe Lila is just smart enough to know that, given enough rope, eventually, I am bound to hang myself.
“Okay,” I say. “Get comfortable, and I’ll explain.”
It’s chilly in the basement, and we’re all still wet, but we settle on the hard tiled floor. We wrap towels around our shoulders and huddle around like there’s an old-fashioned campfire. Then it’s time for me to tell the story.
“A thousand years ago, the knights of the Crusades settled Adria.”
“Feel free to skip ahead a millennium,” Noah tells me, but I shake my head.
“No. I can’t. Because a thousand years ago men founded this country, but their wives and their daughters and their granddaughters formed a sort of … society. Or so they tell me. And that society still exists today.”
“I’ve never heard of it,” Megan says.
“It’s a secret,” I say, not realizing how foolish it sounds until the words are out of my mouth.
Noah doesn’t look impressed. “What do they do?”
“I don’t know,” I say. My towel is fraying and I pick at the edges. If I pick long enough and hard enough, eventually I might find the thread that makes it all unravel. “Ms. Chancellor said that my grandmother was a part of it, and my mother, and that that might be why someone wanted to kill her.”
Noah glares at his sister. “You knew about this?”
Lila shrugs. “Mom told me a few —”
“Mom is a part of this?” Noah stands up and starts to pace.
“Yes!” Lila says. “It’s why she wanted to be posted in Adria. She wanted me raised as her grandmother was raised. She wanted me to know my birthright.”
“Your birthright?” Noah asks, indignant.
“It’s a girls-only kind of thing,” I explain, but I’m not helping.
“I don’t get it.” Rosie leans back, totally unimpressed. “So there’s a really-old-lady society. That doesn’t seem like such a big thing.”
“To be fair,” Megan corrects, “I don’t think it’s a club of old ladies, merely —”
“The Society is a thousand years old,” I blurt. “A thousand years. The Society is as old as Adria itself. It’s older than the wall.” I let that fact sink in. “In fact, they’re the ones who decided to build the wall. This thing is ancient and powerful. We don’t even know how powerful.”
“So there’s a club,” Megan says. “That’s nice. I’m sure it’s —”
“It’s not a club,” I say. “It’s bigger than that.”
“Okay. Of course. I’m sure it’s very prestigious and —”
“Ms. Chancellor shot the prime minister!”
The only sound is the steady plop, plop, plop of the rainwater that leaks through the ceiling and drops into the pool. I can’t tell if they don’t believe me or if they’re just too shocked to argue. I no longer care. I just start talking.