Page 10 of Ignition Rites

“You look like you’re plotting world domination,” I say, dropping down beside her without asking, close enough that our shoulders almost touch.

“I’m plotting a nap. Big plans.” She squints at me, sun in her eyes. “You look like hell. Got a lot on your mind?”

“I do, and to be honest, it feels like too much sometimes.”

For a moment neither of us says anything. She picks at a loose thread on the hem of her shorts while I watch the bee finally give up on the rose and lurch toward the hedge. I rehearsed this all morning in a dozen versions, and every one of them sounded better before she was sitting here.

“Can I tell you something?” I ask. “And you have to actually let me finish before you decide I’m lying.”

Her fingers stop on the thread, and she turns toward me. “That’s an ominous way to start a sentence.”

“Well, it is kinda heavy, not gonna lie.”

I start with the part that sounds least insane. “The circuit isn’t just racing. They call it the Reaping. Every season, the family keeps score — wins, losses, claims, who follows the rules and who doesn’t. Alistair uses it to decide where people stand.”

Her eyebrows pull together. “Stand how?”

“Protection. Freedom. How much say you get in your own life. How useful they think you are.”

“So, ranks?”

“Basically.”

She stares at me for a moment. “And the masks?”

“So nobody has to own what happens afterward. You know the church downtown, the one with Alistair’s face on the banners?”

“The megachurch? He has me ushering there every time I’m home from campus.” She frowns. “That’s the same family?”

“That’s the version everyone’s allowed to see. Cameras, livestreams, a congregation that thinks he’s a rich guy who found God. The circuit is what’s underneath, same doctrine with the cameras off.”

“That’s insane.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s actually insane, Rafe.”

“I know.”

“No, you clearly don’t, because you said that way too calmly.”

Despite everything, I almost laugh. “I’ve had longer to get used to how fucked up it sounds.”

Her gaze drops to her hands. “What happens if somebody ranks badly?”

“People fall out of favor. Stop getting invited. Stop showing up. Nobody gives you a clean explanation.”

Lo’s face changes. “People disappear?”

“Sometimes people leave. Sometimes they get pushed far enough out that there isn’t much difference from the inside.”

She’s already shaking her head. “Lo — ”

“No. My mom wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t put me anywhere near something like that.” Her voice sharpens, and it feels like I’ve hit a wound older than this afternoon. “I get that this place is weird as fuck, but you’re wrong.”

“I’m not saying she knew.”

“You don’t know my mom.” Her knuckles go pale around her own shins. “She already did this once. She got out of something like what you’re talking about.”