Poor Little Dead Girls by Lizzie Friend

all for some stupid high school charade.
    First hood looked to her left and right, then all three spoke as one. “The oath has been made.”
    Right hood, the one who called herself “the inevitable,” spoke next. “If you break this oath, you will be punished — harshly and without mercy. Know that no matter where you are, or how long from this day, if you betray us, we will find out.” She paused, and the room filled with menacing silence. “And we do not forgive oath breakers.”
    “The device you are hooked up to is a polygraph machine. The truthfulness of your answers will be recorded, and if we are not satisfied, there will be repercussions.” She looked back to first hood. “Clotho — you may begin.”
    “What is your name?” she said. The bellow was back.
    Sadie cleared her throat, forcing herself not to answer in the same ridiculous baritone. “Sadie. And yours?”
    “Watch yourself,” the voice hissed in her ear.
    “Where were you born?”
    “Portland, Oregon. It’s fantastic this time of year.”
    This time his voice was harsh, biting: “Last warning, Sadie.”
    She clenched her teeth and leaned as far away from him as the ropes binding her would allow.
    “How old are you?”
    She sighed loudly. It was the middle of the night. She was cold, and the ropes around her wrists and ankles were starting to chafe. The cuff on her arm was making her hand go numb. And she didn’t want to be in some stupid secret society, anyway.
    “I’m twelve — I skipped a few grades. Is that a problem?”
    The light above her head went out, and suddenly there were hands around her neck. She froze, eyes wide in the sudden darkness. The hands squeezed tighter, and she felt her lungs start to strain. The voice was there again, closer — hotter — against her neck.
    “I warned you.”
    She felt beads of spit spraying against her earlobe. One of the hands slid forward until a thick arm was wrapped around her neck. As the grip circled tighter, it forced her chin upward until she was blinking at the ceiling, her mouth breathlessly pumping the air like a fish.
    The terror was back now.
    It squeezed harder, slowly crushing her throat until the blood was screaming in her ears and her whole face felt like it might explode through her eye sockets.
    “No matter what you think you know about us — who we are, what we’re capable of — know that you know nothing,” the voice whispered.
    She was getting dizzy, and the pressure was fading. She thought about her dad at home in their kitchen, and she was just starting to feel herself drift away when the voice whispered again, softly this time.
    “Don’t you ever forget that.”
    And then, as suddenly as they had come, the hands were gone and she could breathe. She drew in breath after breath, leaning forward and gasping into her trembling knees. The light above her head flipped on again, and she buried her face further into her lap. She clenched her eyes shut and willed herself to wake up back in her bed in Portland, realizing that the last two months had all been just a horrible dream.
    Instead, first hood spoke: “We will begin again now. That was your only warning. Fail to show respect for this tribunal again, and you will be punished.” She spoke the last word carefully, as if she relished its taste.
    “Are you a virgin?”
    Sadie should have been shocked, but at this point she was too far past that. She squinted in the dim light and tried to make out something, anything about the Moirae’s faces, but all she could see was darkness beneath their black hoods.
    “No sex.” She felt the blood pulsing around the cuff that was still strapped around her arm. “Other things, though.”
    “What things?”
    Sadie felt herself start to fold, the roomful of eyes boring into her like leeches.
    “I dated a guy for a few months. We hooked up, just not … never all the way.”
    “Why not?”
    “I wasn’t ready, I guess. I didn’t want to.”
    “Did he?”
    “I