Whenever Patch found that his world was closing in on him, he liked to go to the Metropolitan Museum to help clear his head. There were little nooks and crannies that he knew about, away from the tourists, among the more obscure collections. European Decorative Arts was one of his favorites-it was basically a fancy word for antiques. There was something cool about thinking that people had sat on these chairs, eaten on these tables, conducted their affairs and intrigues. And that we, today, would never know what had transpired.
It was such a universe apart from his own problems, it made him forget them momentarily. On Sunday afternoon, he could almost forget everything he was thinking about the Society, all of his questions. A Society meeting had already been called for the following evening at the town house. Would he go? Would Nick and the others? He didn’t know.
Patch’s phone buzzed as he was examining an antique harpsichord. It was a text from Phoebe, confirming the details of a meeting at Lauren’s that night with just the five of them. It made sense that they would do it there; Lauren was the only member whose parents didn’t have any connection to the Society. Phoebe had told Patch about Daniel Fullerton, the guy her mom was dating, who was in the Society; Nick’s parents were involved, of course; and Patch’s grandmother, Genie, would likely overhear whatever they were planning and have an opinion on it. This new guy, Thad-they didn’t know much about his family, but Patch imagined that Phoebe figured he was too recent a friend to take a risk on. Patch had learned that trusting people hadn’t been so easy these past few months.
A few hours later, Patch arrived at Lauren’s apartment. Despite the nap she said she had taken, Lauren looked exhausted, her hair messy and matted. The five of them stood around her kitchen, and at her urging, helped themselves to the refrigerator full of food. It was stocked, which surprised Patch; it seemed welcoming, like a normal house, not that of a fashionable socialite, which was Lauren’s mother’s reputation. He and Nick and Thad dug in.
Lauren, who wore jeans and a baggy sweater, carried her cup of tea into the living room. Nick accepted a beer, and Patch decided he would have one, too-just one, to help him relax. Phoebe sat protectively next to Lauren on the sofa in front of the windows with the gauzy curtains that faced Park Avenue. What had happened in the past few months had been hard on all of them, but Lauren was particularly feeling the blow right now. Though Patch had heard her admit that she didn’t even know if things with Alejandro were going to last, he imagined that it still burned, to have someone in your life disappear like that, as if they had never existed at all.
For a moment, he realized that this was how he felt about his parents. He had been too young when his father died to have any clear memories of him, and his mother had been hospitalized since Patch was six.
“How are you holding up?” Nick asked Lauren.
Lauren shrugged. “As well as can be expected, I suppose. I haven’t done any of the winter reading, I feel like I’m going to be floating through my classes tomorrow. Sebastian wants me to come up with new jewelry designs-I guess he thought it might distract me or something? All I want to do is sleep and watch stupid movies.”
“Do you think…” Patch paused, not wanting to say anything inappropriate. “Do you think it might help for you to talk to someone about it all? Like a professional?”
“Not that Meckling freak,” Phoebe said, jumping in. “He’s like the Nurse Ratched of shrinks. I still can’t believe my mom took Daniel’s recommendation. I guess she didn’t know that he was part of it all.”
“I know someone good,” Thad said. “He helped my older brother when he was going through a lot of stuff.”
Lauren nodded. “I guess so. I don’t know. I just want it all to go away.”
“I’m not sure we can make it go away,” Nick said. “But I think we can get out of it.” He looked at Phoebe. “My grandfather gave me a challenge yesterday to search for something.”
“To search for what?” Thad asked.
“We don’t know exactly,” Phoebe said. “I’m worried it might be a trap.”
“We might as well try,” Thad said. “And you think this would get all of us out of the Society?”
“He said that if we solve this, ‘you and your friends will never hear from the Society again,’” Nick said. “The search starts at the beach.”
“Which beach?” Patch asked.
“That’s what we don’t know,” Phoebe said.
“Phoebe and I will start this coming Friday,” Nick said. “For now, we need to figure out what to do about these meetings, right?” Nick said. “In particular, the one tomorrow night.”
“Honestly, I don’t know what we have to meet about,” Phoebe said. “Like they couldn’t just let us digest everything that’s happened so far?”
“I’m not going,” Lauren said. “I can’t go on any longer with it.”
“Me, neither,” Thad said.
“Pheeb, what about you?” Lauren asked.
She looked at Lauren and Thad. “I’m with you guys. I’ll skip.”
“Maybe Patch and I should go,” Nick said. “You know, so they don’t think something’s going on?”
“I guess so,” Phoebe said.
“I’m just so angry about it all,” Lauren said. “I think we should go to the police. What could the Society do to us? We could tell the cops everything we know. I don’t even care if I don’t get into college, if they bust us for being drunk that night. We weren’t responsible for Alejandro’s death. We were partying with him. It wasn’t that part that killed him.”
Everyone looked uneasy.
“Do you really think the police would believe us?” Nick said.
“They would have to believe something,” Phoebe said. “Don’t you think? I mean, we’ve made this mistake before. We should have gone to the police the night that Alejandro disappeared.”
“We didn’t know what was happening. We didn’t know how bad it was going to get,” Nick said.
“Honestly, inside the club, most people didn’t even see him,” Thad said. He turned to Patch. “What do you think?”
Patch shrugged. “I, um, I don’t really know. It’s hard for me to say, since I wasn’t there.”
Patch realized, at that moment, that this was part of his uneasiness. Even though he should have felt like a real member, he didn’t. He would never feel like as much of an insider as they did. Even though they all greeted him warmly and treated him as a friend, he still felt like an interloper. They were the chosen ones, and that was the way it was always going to be.
And why, he wondered, did he want to feel like an insider to this group that he and his friends were now trying so desperately to escape?