Henrietta's car crept forward, inching its way toward its destination. Inside, Dylan and Evan were crouched down on the backseat floor as Henrietta hunched over the steering wheel with her brow furrowed in concentration. Fetal Libido, a marginally cool band from North Park, provided the soundtrack to their mission.
The song changed, and Dylan scoffed. "This one's so overrated. I mean, last time we saw them people were going crazy, and—"
"God, shut up," said Evan, whacking him halfheartedly on the arm. "Does the phrase 'stealth mission' mean anything to you?"
"No," Dylan whispered back sullenly, even though they'd been planning this for hours. Not for the first time, Henrietta wished for slightly less useless partners in crime.
"Give it a rest," she said, rolling to a halt a few feet away from a cheery-looking two story house. There were lights on inside that lent the place a cheerful glow. Henrietta couldn't even look at it without wanting to throw up. "We're here."
"What now?" Evan whispered.
Henrietta just sat back in her seat, taking care to stay out view through the window. "We wait."
Dylan shifted uncomfortably, sagging against Evan and settling in for a good round of complaining. "This is so lame. My knees hurt. This is so lame."
But his complaints faded to background noise when Henrietta spotted a top-floor window being jimmied open. A dark figure climbed out of it after giving the ground a glance that seemed way too cursory, in her opinion. The figure shimmied across the gutter until it was able to grab onto a trellis overgrown with pretty red-and-white flowers, wrecking a pretty good number of them in the process. Finally, it dropped to the ground and snuck down the gravel driveway, taking care to stay away from the warmly lit windows.
-Varigo-
Executing a highly unnecessary stunt roll, Georgie approached the passenger-seat door to Henrietta's car and climbed in. "Drive, drive, they think I'm in the bathroom or some shit but I made a shitton of noise getting across that drainpipe and I think someone's looking through the window—"
Obligingly, Henrietta floored it. As they peeled out of the nauseatingly picturesque tree-lined cul de sac and back onto the main road, Evan and Dylan popped back up from the floor and slouched back into their respective seats.
Dylan nodded at Georgie. "Did you get it?" he asked, trying and failing not to sound excited.
Georgie unzipped the plain black backpack slung over his shoulder and reached inside, pulling out a small object wrapped carefully in two pink gingham dishtowels. He passed it back to Dylan and Evan, who set it down on the seat between them, and were just about to unwrap it when Henrietta sailed over a speedbump.
"Shit, Hen," Dylan said reproachfully.
"Cut me some slack, I haven't had a smoke in like four hours."
"Whatever," said Evan as they carefully unwrapped the object. Henrietta kept a close eye on it in the rear view mirror. This was arguably a lot more important than any oncoming vehicles. The last layer of violently pink checkered fabric fell away, and the object of Georgie's theft was finally revealed—a cat skull in a glass case. It was fine-boned and delicate looking, old enough for the bone to have crumbled in places, leaving tiny holes and hairline cracks in the dome of the skull.
Dylan let out a low whistle. Evan studied it intently.
"It was hard as fuck to steal," Georgie bragged, reclining the front seat back and digging in his pocket for a cigarette. "They had it in this display case, right, in the living room where anyone could see me."
"Impressive," Henrietta remarked, managing to keep most of the sarcasm out of her tone.
Georgie just nodded in a manner that indicated he totally knew it. A second later he leaned across the console and gallantly held out his cigarette for her to get a drag while she drove, however, so she couldn't hold it against him too much.
Evan and Dylan passed the skull back and forth in the backseat, taking turns cradling it in their hands and studying the delicacy of the bones. Henrietta wanted to look at it too, but she knew there would be plenty of time for that later on.
"This is exactly what we needed," Dylan marveled, finally putting the skull down and beginning the arduous process of wrapping it up again. "It's kind of weird that your conformist aunt just had one right there on display, right?"
Henrietta sped past a stretch of road that was empty save for an abandoned liquor store, considering. She'd been working on a new song when she'd gotten a call from Georgie, who'd taken refuge in the bathroom of his Aunt Elle's house during one of their annual family reunion dinners. She had a cat's skull on display in her china cabinet, sticker of authenticity and all. Normally, that wouldn't be anything to freak out over, but this time it was different.
Just a few days ago, during one of their periodic online dabblings in the occult, they'd come across instructions for some kind of repelling ritual. The website had seemed innocuous enough, boasting the usual walls of white text on a dark background with a badly photoshopped banner presiding over it all. The instructions for the ritual, however, had definitely been different than the Wiccan or Druidic stuff they usually looked at. If done properly, the ritual would apparently make every unwelcome person in their immediate vicinity want nothing to do with them. The black clothes and crucifixes took care of all but the most adventurous, but they'd agreed that reinforcing the sentiment with weird pseudo-voodoo was always a good way to go.
At least, it had seemed like one until they checked out the list of materials, which included a whole bunch of shit that was either so creepy or so arcane that they had to put the idea out of their minds for the time being.
Except, starting the next day, they'd been stumbling across everything they needed. At first it was only little things, like the right kind of candle or a bundle of sage in the spice rack, and Henrietta had attributed it to the same thing that made people suddenly hear a new word all over the place once they learned it. Once Georgie had called from his aunt's house, though, she began to wonder. Maybe they were meant to do this after all.
Georgie shrugged. "I saw an opportunity, whatever. We still need that old fucking coin or whatever it was; how are we gonna get that?"
"Right," Evan agreed. "Let's try not to be total bonerjockeys about this, yeah? That's how we ended up in a cult."
Henrietta rolled her eyes at the mention of the cult. It definitely hadn't been one of their finest moments. But bygones were bygones, and as she pulled up in the driveway of Dylan's house, she felt something almost akin to optimism about the ritual. If by some miracle it actually worked, they wouldn't have to deal with any more jackasses for the rest of high school. As far as she could tell, it would even work on the teachers. Total bliss.
Dylan climbed out of the car, giving Evan a sideways kind of look. Evan's eyes darted towards him and then resolutely forward. "Bye, or whatever."
Henrietta fought the urge to roll her eyes. Georgie didn't even bother.
They rode in relative silence the rest of the way to Evan's house, and then Georgie's, each lost in their own thoughts.
"Tomorrow, right?" Henrietta asked Georgie as he got ready to hop out of the car, cat skull once again shoved deep into his backpack. He had been charged with taking care of it until they were able to set up everything.
"Bright and early," he said sardonically, offering her another puff of his cigarette. She smirked and watched him go, catching herself making sure that he got safely all the way to the door before leaving. Probably a bad idea. She knew that Georgie hated to be babied, but he was the youngest, and he'd just jumped out a window to help them with a questionable ritual. Really, she couldn't help it. It had always been sort of a mystery to her how Evan and Dylan managed to careen through their lives so carelessly, especially now that they were weird awkward boyfriends, or whatever was happening with that.
On the short drive back to her house, Henrietta kept one eye on the windshield and the other on the radio, waiting for the part in the CD where it started skipping so badly that she always had to fast-forward manually.
Just as she was about to turn into her own block, she noticed something out of the corner of her eye, glittering in the dirt by the side of the road. Normally she'd just assume that it was a piece of litter catching a streetlight or something, but what with everything that had been going on recently, she found herself stopping off by the side of the road and getting out of her car. She walked over to where she'd seen the object sparkling and searched the ground with the aid of her headlights, and it only took a few seconds for her to find it again.
It was a piece of gold, severely tarnished but still recognizable as a coin. She didn't even have to rub off the dirt to read the year, because she already knew that it would be from 1900. Just like the ritual required.
Henrietta stood there for a few moments, gazing at the placid bust on the front of it and running her finger over the ridges of the stars. Eventually, she pocketed the coin and climbed back into her car, barely noticing the cold. That was definitely enough to convince her.
Tomorrow night, they would go for it.
-Varigo-