Temptation: A Novel (9 page)

24. The Card Game

Lily pours herself a diet soda, and I haven’t yet managed to say anything to her when the host of the party comes up.

“Having fun yet?” Ray asks me.

There it is again. That look.

Ah, now I get it.

This is a really weird déjà vu. At the last big party here, I was with Jocelyn. The girl he used to date. I never learned their history, but it was definitely a history.

Now Lily.

Not that I’m here with Lily, but I’m one of the few guys here she knows.

Lily turns around to look at Ray. Somehow she seems to move her lips to make them more pouty, more sexy.

“So who’s your friend?” Ray asks me, but as he speaks he looks at Lily.

Lily just laughs. “Harris pointed you out. This is your house, right?”

“Yes. I’m Ray.”

“Of course you are. Nice party.”

A stream of fireworks goes off in the back. The music changes to another loud, bass-heavy song.

“So you’re going to be a senior at Harrington this fall?” Ray asks.

“Looks like it.”

She’s not smiling anymore. Her eyes are cold and sharp. Something tells me this sort of scene has happened many, many times before.

“So I missed you by a year.”

“Ah, yes. The tragedy of it all. Otherwise, who knows what could have happened?”

Ray doesn’t seem to be getting her sarcasm. Or maybe he’s just undaunted by it. After all, he’s the prom king and homecoming king and blond king and all that stuff.

“College is a long way off,” Ray says.

“I’m even farther,” Lily says, then grabs my untucked shirt. “Come on, biker boy.”

I feel like she’s babysitting me. Yet as I follow her, I can’t help but feel a mild bit of satisfaction. Not that I hate Ray. He’s just—he’s just a guy I’ll never be. A guy I’ll never be best buddies with.

Lily is actually a little taller than me in her boots. More heads turn.

We get out of the main room where there’re the most people and the loudest sounds. In the next room a bunch of kids are sitting around a glass table, playing some kind of card game while another group stands around them, watching.

I know this.

They’re playing with cards that I recognize. The same kind I found at the mysterious cabin that belonged to Jeremiah Marsh.

At the other party, Jocelyn got angry when I asked about the cards.

Dial down the curiosity factor,
she told me.
Don’t go there. Those weren’t tarot cards, okay?

But this time I’m not the only one curious.

Lily moves past a couple of guys and looks over.

“What are you guys playing?” she asks.

The faces look at her but don’t speak.

“What kind of cards are those?”

Nobody says anything.

“Uh, hello? Anybody? Is this some kind of Solitary special club or something?”

I see the cards and their different designs, a stack of cards with black back sides on either side of the table. And there it is again. The ashtray with something glowing in the middle.

“You really want to play?”

The voice seems to surprise everybody. It’s Ray, who has followed us in here.

Lily looks at him, then nods. “What is this?”

“This—why, Chris didn’t tell you about this?”

I can feel my face start to turn red, but Lily either doesn’t see it or doesn’t care.

“No, Chris has more grown-up things to do with his time,” Lily says.

There are a couple of muffled chuckles. Ray smiles even wider, as if he’s holding some big secret.

“You
really
want to play this game, huh?”

“Yes, I
really
do,” Lily says in an exaggerated, mocking way.

Everybody else is watching us.

“Fine. Go ahead. Dave, get off the couch. You guys move too. Lily wants to play.”

“So does Chris,” she says.

I really would rather haul tobacco leaves than play this game, but there’s no way I’m telling Lily no. Or backing down from Ray. He only nods and then tells Lily and me to sit. He takes a seat right next to me.

He can’t keep his grin down.

“This game—it doesn’t really have a name. We just call it the cards. It’s only brought out at special occasions. Since these cards—well, they’re quite special.”

All the cards I’m looking at have different pictures on them. I see a small dog. A car. A candle. Other things I don’t immediately recognize.

“So how do we play?” Lily asks as she glances over at Ray and me on the couch facing her.

“You just pick a card and then hold—”

“Uh-uh-uh.” Ray interrupts a little dark-haired guy I’ve never seen before. “Let me explain, Doug.”

Ray looks at the cards, then back at Lily. It’s as if nobody else is in the room.

“Every now and then, I have the great privilege to play with these cards. They are—well, on loan, I guess. They’re what I call magical cards.”

“Magical cards, huh?” Lily asks.

“Don’t you believe in magic?”

“I believe there are men in this world who like to play games and cover up secrets,” she says. “Sometimes they call their little tricks magic. But that’s all they are. Little tricks.”

“You don’t believe in the supernatural?”

“Like ghosts and goblins?”

Ray just chuckles, shaking his head. She’s mocking him in front of everybody.

That’s fine,
he seems to say.
That’s quite all right.

I look behind us and see that more kids have gathered around to watch.

“A lot of people don’t believe the magic of the cards at first. That’s the fun. That’s their power.”

“Do they tell your future?”

Ray shakes his head. “They’re not those kinds of cards.”

“Then what do they do?”

Ray looks at the others sitting around us. “What do they do? The big question.” He reaches over and takes a card from one of the decks. He turns it over and shows Lily.

The card is blank. Just white and empty.

“Looks like you got a dud,” Lily says.

“Where are you from again?”

“I never said.”

Ray nods. “This is what you do. You take a card. Pretty hard, huh? They’ll always be blank at first.
Hopefully
just at first. You take your card and hold it a few inches above the ashtray.”

“And what’s in there?”

“Just part of the game.”

Lily glances at me and continues looking skeptical and amused.

Ray holds his card over whatever is glowing or burning in the ashtray. After a few seconds, a picture begins to form.

The image forming on Ray’s card first looks like a sun—it’s yellow—but then a smiley face appears on it. He puts the card down just like the others on the table.

“That’s it?” Lily asks.

Ray nods.

“Wow—that is absolutely captivating. A sunny face. What an amazing trick.”

“Are you always this, um, friendly?”

“I can be
very
friendly,” Lily says in a very adult manner that shuts Ray and the rest of the room up.

She goes to pick a card, but before she does, Ray holds out his hand.

“Let me just—jokes aside, okay—let me warn you.”

“Warn me about what?”

“This is serious. Even if you don’t believe the game, it’s serious.”

“What? Little pictures pop up on the cards. So?”

“They’re very real. And they’re always very different.”

“What are they supposed to mean?”

“The pictures say something about the person holding the card. About who they are.”

“That’s it?” Lily asks, sounding amused and annoyed in the same breath.

“The rules of the game go like this,” Ray says. “You only pick one card. The card represents you—here, tonight. If someone happens to pick up a card that has the exact same image as yours, you leave the party with them.”

“For what?”

Ray stares at Lily and just smiles. “I think you know for what.”

“Says who?”

“Says the cards.”

“Oh, now I get it. This is some silly way for kids to hook up.”

“It doesn’t happen often.”

“Why don’t you just get a bottle and spin it?”

Nobody laughs. Which is eerie because normally people—people my age—would laugh at this. Or at least at something a girl like Lily says.

“If your card has a number, that means there will be a task you are to perform the next week.”

Lily shakes her head. “Ludicrous.”

Ray isn’t finished. In fact, I’ve never seen him look this
serious. “If your card has nothing on it—if it’s just blank—”

“What’s that mean?” I can’t help asking.

“It’s not good. That’s all I’ll say.”

Lily rolls her eyes and picks up a card. It’s blank just like Ray’s card initially was. She places it over the ashtray. As she waits, she makes an “ooooooh” sound like a silly ghost in a movie. Nobody is smiling, however. Everybody is watching and waiting.

An image appears. First I see what appears to be a leaf. Then I see something spiky. Then an image of a flower forms at the top.

All the amusement and the color and everything drain out of Lily’s face.

What is it?

She looks at the card with surprise and almost horror. Then she looks back at Ray.

“How’d you do this?”

“Means something to you, right?” he says.

She curses at him and stands up. “Seriously—I want to know.”

“All I see is a picture of a rose. What do you see?”

Again, she swears at him as though he’s done something. She whips the card on the table and then moves through the crowd to get out of the room.

I look at Ray.

“She wanted to know,” he says.

“I’d better go get her,” I say.

“Wait. Pick a card, Chris.”

I don’t want to, but the others are looking like I’m about ready to do something dangerous for the first time.

Just do it man.

Peer pressure.

What’s the harm?

I pick up a card and hold it over the glowing rock in the ashtray. I wait. And wait. But nothing happens.

This isn’t good.

I keep waiting, and finally an image starts to form.

I see the same lines being drawn, the same leaves and thorns and then the same rose.

I’ve never seen Ray look more surprised. Not just surprised, but a bit pale.

“What’s it mean?” I ask him.

The others in the room all know. I heard what he said too, but I don’t quite get it.

So now I go home with Lily?

I don’t think it’s going to be that easy.

This time it’s Ray who curses in disbelief.

“What?”

“You lucky dog, you,” he says.

“What do I do now?”

“You follow her. And you show her the card. Take hers, too, or she’ll think you’re using hers.”

“But what’s this rose supposed to mean?”

He shakes his head, brushing back his blond locks. “I don’t know. But it sure means something to her.”

“What’s yours mean to you?”

“Uh-uh. You don’t tell. You
never
tell.”

I take the cards and then stand up to go find Lily.

Now that I know what the game is all about, I still feel like I know nothing about it.

Just like the town of Solitary.

25. Following the Rules

I don’t find her with Harris or Roger. I go through the house and out on the back deck and through the mob that’s laughing and dancing and drinking and setting off fireworks. Soon I head back out to the front of the house.

Lily is sitting on a lawn chair outside the three-car garage that’s open and full of people.

“You okay?” I ask when I reach her.

She shoots me a cold look. “Do I look okay?”

“Uh, yeah.” I think she does.

Not sure how I’m supposed to answer that question.

“I’d be a lot more ‘okay’ if I could be left alone.”

I nod, think about going back inside the house, then pull out the cards from my pocket.

“Here.”

I give them to her and she takes them, examining both.

The thorny rose on each one.

Again a look of surprise comes over her face. Not just surprise, but total speechless surprise.

“I’m sure it doesn’t mean anything,” I say.

Yeah, sure, then why are you showing it to her?

Lily looks at me and shakes her head. For a minute, she just looks at me. Studying me.

“What?” I ask.

“Is this some trick, Chris?”

“No.” Then I add, “I mean, yeah, I’m sure it’s a trick. But I don’t know how it works. I wasn’t part of it.”

“But you still had to show me the cards, right?”

She’s not stupid.

Those eyes look me up and down. Then she flings the cards onto the ground and holds out her hand.

“We have to follow the rules, don’t we?” she says. “Help me up.”

I take her hand and pull her out of the lawn chair. She looks at my face that surely shows that I’m nervous and don’t know what to say.

“So I’m supposed to leave the party with you. Let’s leave.”

“And go where?”

She smiles. “This time
you
drive. Just—wherever you go—I want it to be far away from this place.”

“Ray’s house?”

“This town.”