I watch myself lift Grandmother Adeline’s crystal vial overhead for the others to see. My hand grazes the greenery of my crown. I imagine what the wilted petals must feel like against the heel of my hand. They likely leave a slimy residue. In this version of the loop, my crown is rotting.

  I go through the vow and my speech about sand. I’ve given it a few times now. It’s a helpful reminder, even to me, especially as I know it really is starting to take hold of me. I didn’t tell Blythe and Caitlin that I was going to dose before the initiation. It’s a habit I got into once my bigs had graduated and it was time for me to step up and lead. Being on sand while the new littles go through their first trip into the loop helps me feel closer to them.

  “Once you do this . . .” I say to the room. I listen to myself and my breath catches. My heart begins to sprint ahead of my words. “Once you pass this test—you’ll have proven yourself . . .”

  My words seem to speed up and run together, like an old video tape on fast-forward.

  “. . . you will have shown everyone that you have what it takes—”

  The loop skips and zooms ahead, my voice takes on a Minnie Mouse pitch as the memory continues to distort.

  “Whatittakes. Whatittakes. YouwillhaveshowneveryonethatyouhavewhatittakestobearealLily.”

  I watch myself spring into frenzied action, doling out doses of sand to Blythe, Courtney, and Caitlin to give to each initiate. It’s happening faster than I remember. I continue at a frantic pace until Blythe turns to me. Her hood slides back far enough for me to see the tears streaming down her face. She reaches out for the last time.

  One more dose.

  One more initiate.

  This one is for Charlotte.

  I watch myself pour the sand into Blythe’s hand knowing what will happen . . . knowing what happened the first time . . . what keeps happening again and again in my mind. Blythe doesn’t look closely at the doses I give her. Each one pours out of the vial like a tiny sparkling waterfall. The particles move in slow motion. Each one is a little orb, a world unto itself.

  At this dosage, sand has the power to carry each Lily away into another time, back to when they—when we—were first broken.

  “Wait . . .” Charlotte says. She hesitates and then . . . “Never mind.”

  She inhales her dose and chokes just like all the others, except I can’t hear her coughing. I can only hear that strange buzzing noise of the bare bulb back in the closet, even though I know that I’m not trapped there anymore.

  I’m here. In a memory of a memory.

  The sound intensifies into a bright, deafening ping, like some kind of alarm clock from hell. And then it stops and the initiation keeps going. Charlotte is no longer coughing.

  Anita steps forward and takes off Faith’s blindfold. Her pupils are so impossibly dilated that her eyes are almost entirely black. Surely this wasn’t how she looked the first time. The loop must be warping her face. Her gaze is vacant and blank when I prompt her to speak.

  She is the first to dive in. Each will take a turn.

  Faith tells the room of crowned and hooded figures her secret. It’s a story we’ve all heard before, too many times from too many other Lilies. The kind of story where a relative or a neighbor or a so-called friend gets a girl alone. The kind of story where she’s too young to know what is happening to her and too scared to call for help. And Faith is there in front of us, telling it all like it happened yesterday, even though her story takes place when she’s barely out of elementary school.

  I remember her crying the first time. And maybe she’s crying now, but I can’t tell, not with those eyes like that. Not with that blank stare. Is this what the Lilies do to people? Is this what it looks like to steal a secret? To extract someone’s story in order to bind them to you?

  My stomach lurches as the next initiate’s blindfold is removed. I watch as I prompt her to speak. It’s her turn now.

  Alice’s eyes look just like Faith’s. I hear the tears in her voice this time. She’s afraid, but she tells us her secret anyway. This one is about what happens when you leave children alone. Alice and her sister were playing. Alice got jealous of her sister’s toy. Alice grabbed her sister by the neck and squeezed until she couldn’t breathe anymore. And finally, she let go when she realized what she could do, the power she had in her little hands. She could really hurt somebody. And, when there was no one around to see, and when her sister was too small to have the words to tell on her, Alice could have really gotten away with it. And she did! No one knew what happened. They just knew that Alice’s sister was left wheezing and crying.

  Nausea spreads from my gut down through my legs. My knees threaten to buckle. Is that the story Alice really told? And Faith too? I don’t remember them being this horrible. I don’t remember feeling like I was watching the specter of these memories play out in front of me. I don’t remember feeling like I was living what the initiates were revealing. This is beyond what I can take.

  But the cycle repeats. The memory moves forward. I have to keep prompting each Lily to speak, otherwise we’ll have to start all over again, and I’m certain that, if we do, the loop will cave in on us all. I try to force myself to watch me as I do it. Never take my eyes off me. But I can’t. I glance at the floor and see my saddle shoes peeking out from underneath my green robe.

  I hear choking again. Gagging. I know the sound. I’ve heard it before.

  We all watch as Charlotte falls to her hands and knees. It isn’t her turn yet, but something has taken hold of her mind. Something is trying to force its way out from inside of her. She vomits, blood pooling on the floor in front of her. I remember her blood was red, redder than her hair. But in the memory, the blood is black and oily. If I were to touch it, I feel like it might be sticky. What is it? I don’t have to ask. I know.

  It’s shame.

  Charlotte vomits again. The sand Blythe gave her is too much for her little body. It was like this the first time. I knew it would be. Blythe didn’t look closely at the dose. And now . . . watching it again, I don’t know what to make of it. All I can do is stare and watch myself bark orders to somebody, who stoops down and drags Charlotte out of the circle.

  I motion to the door, telling them not to take her upstairs. She just needs a minute to breathe. The sand needs to work through her system. Time needs to run its course. They take her into the next room. The door snaps shut.

  I watch as my crown begins to seep down my face. It’s falling apart, just like the memory.

  Bong!

  The room begins to dissolve and I start to come apart with it. At least the others have now all seen what Blythe did.

  Bong!

  And even though it hurts, it’s a relief to be expelled from this room and launched into nothingness for one brief moment.

  Bong!

  19

  Drew

  What happened to Lillian? And what happened to her story? It wasn’t that she was forgotten. People remembered her name, but it seems like that was maybe all that they remembered. And is it enough to just remember someone’s name?

  At Dundalk High, we had an assembly every year on the Trans Day of Remembrance. All of us in the Prism Gender and Sexuality Alliance would line up on the floor of the gymnasium and hold little battery-powered candles in paper cups. Someone would go up to the mic and read off all the names of the people who were murdered that year for being themselves. Some of them were like me. Some of them weren’t. It didn’t matter either way. They shouldn’t have died. Someone should have protected them.

  Out of the memory and back in the closet, I stare at Lillian’s blood-stained gown and I wonder if the same thing happened to her. Did someone try to hurt her because of who she was? Is that why her story was erased? It’s not enough to remember her name if we don’t also remember her story. The whole story.

  The wildest thing about all of this is that Lillian’s story would’ve stayed under wraps if Charlotte had not also vanished on the same day nearly seventy years later.

  People still don’t know Charlotte’s whole story either . . . It’s one that I wish I had nothing to do with. But there’s no denying that I am linked to it. I suppose, in a way, I’m tied to Lillian’s story too . . .

  Both of these girls disappeared without a trace.

  Both of these girls haunt me in a way that the others will never understand.

  Mom says there are no coincidences, only synchronicities.

  Something tells me that this particular tie—the one between Charlotte and Lillian—might be the key to our escape. But that’s not what these girls want to talk about right now, not with me anyway. They’re too angry to do anything but point fingers at each other.

  “So, what caused the reset this time?” Veró demands. “Blythe, did you do something again?”

  “No! That wasn’t a reset!” Blythe insists. “That was the end of the night. The last thing I remember was watching them take Charlotte away.”

  “But we don’t know necessarily if this was your memory,” Rory cuts in. “I was there too. I saw what you did. We all did.”

  “But . . . but I did what you wanted me to, I let the memory play through all the way. That was the end of my loop.”

  “How are we supposed to trust you after we saw you do something like that?” Veró’s voice has gained a new edge. She didn’t like what she saw in the loop, any more than the rest of us, and she’s not letting Blythe off the hook. “What did y’all do to Charlotte? Where did you take her?”

  “I don’t know where they took her,” Blythe insists. “Rory was the one who told them to get her out of the circle.”

  Veró’s fury kicks back from Blythe and over to Rory. “Of course! You were the one leading this whole thing.”

  Rory holds up her hands, innocent. “I may have led the Lilies Society this year. But Blythe was Charlotte’s big. She’s the one who gave her the sand.”

  “You gonna throw me under the bus now? That is low, Rory, even for you.” Blythe’s ire is quiet and venomous. “Don’t try to pretend you weren’t involved. Not after all this shit you’ve put me through.”

  “Where did the Lilies take Charlotte?” Veró insists. She’s in full-on interrogation mode, face flushed in anger. A lump rises in my throat. We’re veering too close to the truth of what happened. Too close to my worst moment, my biggest regret.

  Veró hammers on at Rory and Blythe. “Did y’all let her OD? Did you let her die?”

  “No!” Rory shouts. “The Lilies are a sisterhood. We would never do something like that.”

  “A sisterhood that makes girls disappear,” Veró snarls.

  It’s almost like I’m not here. Like I’ve finally dissolved and have achieved invisibility. Good. I don’t want any part of this. I don’t want these girls knowing what I know.

  I turn toward Lillian’s white gown, still hanging off the side of the shelf, and run my finger along the lacy fringe. Rory’s not looking, she’s too wrapped up in the argument to yell at me for touching it again. Plus, it may be a family heirloom, but it’s something else too: proof. Proof that queer people have existed and survived in oppressive places for a long time. I look at the bloodstain and consider how that may be proof of something else as well. Something wrong that can never be made right again.

  I feel Death’s hot breath close to my ear. They’re going to find out, Drew, it says. They’re going to see exactly what you did.

  My shoulders meet my ears, my hands clench. I hate that this feeling keeps dogging me.

  But I don’t have to listen to Death. Not yet. Not as long as we stay in this closet and out of my memory.

  The others continue their bickering, focusing on the more obvious villains.

  “Do not lump me in with Rory,” Blythe cries. “I don’t know what happened to Charlotte after initiation. I don’t know why she disappeared. And neither of us knows why Lillian Archwell disappeared. That’s not Lilies Society shit. That’s Rory Archwell shit.”

  “Right. So you’re implying that I coordinated my great-aunt’s disappearance, before my birth,” Rory blurts. She’s got a point there. It’s not the fairest accusation ever made. But then Rory shoots herself in the foot. “It’s not like I’m some kind of mastermind!”

  A telling silence follows her outburst. None of us would put it past Rory to orchestrate all the terrible things we’ve seen. I’m pretty sure if I looked up mastermind in the dictionary I’d find a picture of her. Still, she continues to protest. “I’ve told you everything I know. I’m not hiding anything. Not anymore. I don’t know what happened to Lillian and I don’t know what happened to Charlotte. Now can we please move on? We don’t have much time. You saw how corroded things are getting out there. What if the loop turns to dust?”

  “Have you lost your damn mind?” Blythe’s words are a spray of bullets. “I already told you. The memory played out just as I remembered it. It’s over. I didn’t see what happened to Charlotte. And you know what? I don’t want to see.”

  “Forget y’all,” Veró sneers. She turns to me for a brief moment, but it feels like she’s looking right through me.

  Maybe it’s because I’m not here. Brain separated from body—dissociated.

  I can’t hold all of this. I cannot hold back the void that is Lillian’s story. It’s a black hole that is swallowing me.

  Meanwhile, Veró takes flight. She launches herself at the gowns, yanking them from their hangers. She pulls back the curtain of robes, diving deeper into the back of the closet.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Rory rushes to right Veró’s path of destruction, but the girl is a tornado.

  “We keep ending up back in this damned closet. There’s gotta be something in here that explains all this!” she cries, flinging cabinet drawers open and shut. Alarm clocks clank to the floor. A velvety tray of diamond rings is knocked to the ground. The little infinity symbols go flying everywhere, rolling across the floor, knocking into the foot of the silent grandfather clock.

  “Stop!” Blythe shouts. “Something’s gonna get lost.”

  “Something like what? Like a whole person . . . completely vanished?” Veró retorts. She pulls a stack of little leather-bound notebooks out of one of the drawers. Then she lets them fall to the floor and covers her face in her hands. Blythe is stooped, trying to collect the diamonds from the floor. She’s crying by now. Rory is on her knees in front of me, frozen over a pile of rumpled gowns. Her expression is corkscrewed. She’s stuffing something down. She’s always pushing something away.

  My face is cold. No, it’s wet. Oh. I realize now that I am also crying. Maybe it’s time to stop dissociating.

  “I want out of all this,” I mutter.

  “Me too,” Veró says.

  “Yep,” Blythe adds.

  “Definitely,” Rory croaks, barely audible.

  Slowly, Veró stoops and picks up one of the notebooks. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I just . . . want something to make sense again.”

  “We’re on the same page. We all get it,” I say.

  There’s a sense of relief in the closet. Veró’s outburst was a pressure valve, bleeding some of the tension out of everyone.

  We’re all barely making it in here. We don’t know how to stop what’s happening. Not one of us is sure we’ll survive this.

  Veró opens the notebook slowly and leafs through the first few pages. “Looks like someone’s journal.”

  “Might be,” Rory says. “Lilies don’t keep any official records.”

  “Whose journal is it?” I ask.

  “I don’t see a name on the inside cover,” she says. “There’s no year in the dates either. I’m looking for names in the entries but . . .” She flips through a few more pages. “They write about a new Ray Charles record here,” she says, flipping forward a few more pages. “There’s a reference to President Eisenhower?”

  “When was Eisenhower president?” I ask, peering over Veró’s shoulder.

  She frowns. “Where’s Google when you need it?”

  Grandma Simmons—Meredith—was involved in all this. I’m half hoping it’s her journal. I want to know what she was thinking when she wrote to the Archwells about Adeline and Lillian. I want to understand how my blood got mixed up in all this. But the handwriting is irregular and jagged, nothing like my grandmother’s. Still, something tells me she’s in these pages somewhere.

  Veró keeps thumbing through the journal as the others gather with us. Maybe it’s just another distraction. Or maybe Veró’s instincts will lead us to . . .

  “Look,” Rory says, pointing at one of the pages. “The name is right there.”

  Veró narrows her eyes and reads aloud. “‘Evelyn is probably the only other sophomore with comparable grades. She’s my only competition, so I’ll keep my enemies close.’” Veró holds the journal away from her slightly as if it’s dirty somehow. “Ugh. Sounds like something an Archwell girl would write . . . no matter what time they live in.” She points to a scribbly L-word on the page, one I can’t quite make out. “Does that say ‘Lillian’?”

  We all squint at the lettering. “What’s the rest of the sentence say?” I ask. “I can’t really read the handwriting but maybe the context will . . . you know . . .”

  Blythe begins to read. “‘Mother and Father have always favored Lillian . . . They don’t know about her and Evelyn . . .’ Something, something . . . ‘I can use it to my advantage . . .’” She looks up at Rory. “Remind me. Evelyn was friends with your great-aunt Lillian?”

  Rory nods. “But the way that’s written makes it seem like there was more to it,” she admits. “Grandmother Adeline never mentioned anything romantic there. She knew I like girls. I feel like she would’ve told me if I had a relative who was also queer.”

  Blythe shrugs. “Could be a generational thing. My grandma gave a lot of advice, but she was never really specific about stories from when she was growing up.”

  Veró’s eyebrow arches. “The person wrote, ‘Mother and Father have always favored Lillian.’ Does that mean—”