The Sixes

***

A GIRL WHO lived across the hall from her was the one who gave her the first clue to what was wrong. They were in the laundry room one night, folding clothes side by side as the wind howled outside, and the girl complained about a friend who’d been passed over for a role in the musical.

“It’s Fortuna,” the girl said. “They made sure the part went to who they wanted for it.”

“What’s Fortuna?” she had asked. The girl’s comment had begun to trigger an unease in her, but she wasn’t sure why.

“You don’t know?” the girl had said, wide-eyed. “They—they control everything here.”

Fortuna, she said, was made up of the rich, pretty girls. They guaranteed, the girl said, that their own members—or girls they approved of—won elections, starred in the plays, ran everything that mattered. The administration turned a blind eye because the parents of Fortuna members were the biggest donors to the school.

They were named, the girl said finally, for the goddess of fortune. Their symbol was fortune’s wheel. She suddenly remembered that one of the girls in her former study group always wore a charm bracelet with a single silver wheel.

“I don’t care,” she had said to the girl. “I’ll make my own fortune.”

“Don’t ever let them hear you say that,” the girl had told her. “Because they’ll make you pay for it.”