When I finally got home that night, Brandon was—wait for it—not sitting on my couch. Probably a good thing, too. Though I knew that eventually he’d see my new body décor, I figured it was best to wait until:
1) The onion-peel scabs began to heal.
2) It stopped stinging like a bitch.
3) I figured out a way to explain it without breaking my vows.
My parents were going to have a fit when they saw it. Luckily, I wasn’t much for wearing bathing suits. It’s not like anyone would get a good view unless they caught me in my skivvies. Which, now that I’d solidified a status with Brandon, really limited the options. (Not that I was complaining.)
I tried to go to bed, but I was way too wired to sleep, and seriously considered skipping down to Calvin College and giving Brandon a midnight wake-up call. Instead, I buckled down and started studying. I’d been neglecting my schoolwork since the day the first letter came from Rose & Grave, and I needed to reverse the trend. Exams were in a week and a half, and I had a slew of papers to write before finals.
I managed sixty-four pages of WAP before I fell asleep. (On my stomach, of course.)
The next morning, I was awakened by the sound of persistent thwapping at my door. I opened it to find Lydia holding a black cardboard coffin sized for a member of the terrier family.
“What died?” I asked, rubbing my eyes.
She turned it in my direction. “For you, Bride of Dracula.” Inside the coffin-shaped box lay two dozen phenomenal scarlet roses and a small card in creamy, off-white linen. I opened it.
Good job, Boo.
—Your brother
George. Tiny thrills coursed through my body before my higher brain functions could tamp them down and remind them that my boyfriend’s name was Brandon and that he would never send me such a macabre, if perfectly suited, gift.
I looked at Lydia. “Can I borrow your vase?”
She shook her head. “Hon, I’m only going to say this once, and then we can go back to our ‘let’s not talk about it’ treaty, but your people have very strange taste.” And then she went to fetch the vase. (Like she should talk? It wasn’t two weeks ago that there was dried blood on our doorknob. Her society people were, if possible, even stranger.)
When she returned, we took to arranging the flowers together, and wouldn’t meet each other’s eyes.
“Lydia?” I said, and she glanced at me over the top of a blossom. “Is this going to destroy us?”
She swallowed. “God, I hope not.”
“It’s not fair, you know,” I said. “You at least know the name of my society. I don’t know anything about yours.”
She smirked. “Yeah, but who said life was fair?”
“Hmph.” I swatted her with a piece of greenery.
“Buck up, Amy,” she said in consolation. “Who needs revelations when you’ve got roses?”
Good point. I marveled at the blooming perfection of each gorgeous rose and tried in vain to ignore the stubborn thrills that persisted in tripping down my spine as if I weren’t in a committed relationship.
They clearly knew something I didn’t.
Brandon didn’t show up at the Lit Mag office all afternoon, and three messages on his voice mail failed to produce a single callback. At dinnertime, I finally tracked him down outside his dining hall.
“Where have you been?” I asked as he exited the building with an enormous sandwich clumsily wrapped in napkins. He spared me a glance, then turned toward his entryway. I tried again, hoping he’d just—I don’t know—been struck with sudden hysterical blindness? “Brandon?”
He took a closer look at his sandwich (See, maybe he was losing his eyesight!), then dumped it in the nearest bin and gestured to me. “Not here.”
Oh, God. More secret society crap? How the hell could those bastards have gotten to him, too? Brandon was…untouchable. He didn’t give a shit what they said. Right?
I followed him into his room, and he sat down on his high-backed, obviously single-serving-only computer chair and surveyed me carefully. “Where were you yesterday?”
“In New York,” I replied. Somehow standing there before him made me feel as if I were reporting to a judge. Even the Diggers had let us sit at our meeting. “Remember how I told you a few days ago that I was going down there on…business.”
He nodded, then took a deep breath. “I was talking to some friends, and they said they saw you in a bar on Sunday, making out with some guy.”
I dropped to the bed. Crap. Crap crap crappity crap. I knew this was going to happen. I just hoped it would have waited until our relationship had fully gelled.
“The thing is,” Brandon said, leaning forward and putting his hands together until all his fingertips lined up exactly, “I think I know what you’re going to say.”
“That it was before…?”
“Yeah.”
See? Told you he was a genius. “It was.”
“Hmmm.” He studied his hands, made little twisted figures out of his fingers. “I thought so. I wanted to talk to you straightaway, but you weren’t around last night, so instead I got to spend the evening thinking about it. A lot.”
A strange nausea blossomed in my stomach. “Thinking too much isn’t a good idea, though, right?” I laughed, nervously. “That’s what you’re always telling me.”
“Maybe I’m wrong.” He looked up. “Because what I finally settled on is that even though I don’t really have the right to be upset about it, since it happened before we made our agreement to be monogamous, I’m still upset about it. Does that make sense?”
I nodded, since my mouth was too dry to speak. Me, I’d be furious to discover that Brandon had hooked up with someone else milliseconds before sleeping with me. But then, I’m a lot less reasonable than he is. Right?
“And last night, I was hoping that when I asked you about it, you’d say, ‘Why, Brandon, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. They must be thinking about some other girl. I only have eyes for you.’ ” He pursed his lips. “But you wouldn’t have said that, would you?”
No, because it happened. “I can’t lie to you.”
He nodded, slowly. “Right. That’s what I thought. So, first I was angry, and then I thought that I didn’t have any right to be angry, and then I thought that that was stupid, and why do I need to be logical about whether or not I’m going to be angry, and then I was angry at myself for thinking that I had the right to be angry without firm logical footing…as you can see, it was a while before I had it all worked out.” He shrugged, sheepish. “So the thing is, I don’t think I’m going to get over that. It would be nice to, and that would be the technically correct thing to do, but underneath all this logical applied-math exterior, I’m…” He trailed off. “Even if you hadn’t made me any promises, Amy, I still wanted to believe that you were coming around to my way of thinking. Not believe that if you’d gotten just a little bit luckier at that bar, you wouldn’t have come home at all.”
All these imperfect verbs. As if it was a done deal. I swallowed the enormous lump in my throat. “Would it help to know that’s what made me understand that I wanted to be with you?”
“Kissing someone else?” He considered it. “Yes, it makes me feel a little bit better about myself. But, Amy, it’s not enough. Because it’s not just that, you know? You’ve been so distant all week. As if now that we could say that we were together, you’d placated me for a while. And I know”—he held up his hand—“you’ve had stuff going on, and I know that it’s not something you’re ‘allowed to talk about,’ but when I woke up in your room that morning, you were crying so hard.” His brow furrowed, as if he was remembering it with pain. “And you wouldn’t even tell me what had happened. You just disappeared. You lost your job, but it wasn’t me that you turned to for comfort. That’s not a good sign.”
“I wasn’t looking for comfort then, Brandon,” I tried to explain. “I was looking for action. I did come to you, later. You were wonderful.”
“I really don’t want to be your afterthought.”
I closed my eyes, and the tears that had been building up crashed down my cheeks. “Brandon…”
He turned away then, probably because he wasn’t willing to let himself see me cry. “Here’s the thing, Amy. What all that thinking made me realize was that I’d been kidding myself last weekend in your bedroom. I didn’t just want a title slapped on our relationship. I wanted a relationship. I hoped that if we called it one, then you’d start treating it like one. But from that very first morning, you didn’t. And maybe you never will. You may not kiss other guys at bars now, but that alone doesn’t make you my girlfriend.”
And then he told me that he didn’t want to see me anymore, and that though he’d always care about me, and hoped that we could someday be friends, he couldn’t let our relationship continue in any of the permutations it had enjoyed since February 14th.
Sorry for the summation. His actual words were too brutal to keep in my mind. I excised them that night with large amounts of Finlandia Mango. Lydia held me while I cried, and I believed then that all the secret societies in the world wouldn’t really come between us.
The thing is, I think I knew it would come to this. Brandon could only put up with my bullshit for so long.
Okay, on to happier things. As it turns out, the seniors managed to mobilize the patriarch population much more swiftly than anyone expected, and by the middle of Reading Week, we had our answer: Girls were in.
Understandably, the new taps spent the rest of the week camped out in the tomb, which helped me put Brandon and the rest of my barbarian life out of my mind. I learned all of the tomb’s nooks and crannies, secret rooms and hidden staircases. I combed through the library, and figured out the exact pattern that would make the “clappers” installed in the second-floor skull sconces flicker. (Diggers have a very bizarre sense of humor.) And of course, I crammed for finals, and found that the exam collection in the Rose & Grave library was as helpful as promised.
A secret society tomb during Reading Week is truly a sight to behold. Everywhere, the Diggers had set up little camps from which to corral their troops and prepare for battle. You’d wander through the rooms on a fifteen-minute break from studying, and see tiny microcosms of academia in every corner. Every flat surface, from an empty teak china cabinet to a glass case holding rusty Civil War swords, seemed to sprout families of spiral-bound notebooks, photocopies, textbooks, and laptops whose endless extension cords snaked through the hallways in search of the elusive unused power outlet. The ground around headquarters would be littered with empty pop bottles and cardboard coffee holders, sandwich wrappers and deflated bags of chips. Nearby would be a student’s sleeping-spot, identifiable only because it usually encompassed a slightly more comfortable flat surface and a makeshift pillow (usually a sofa and a balled-up sweater, though Greg Dorian very creatively utilized a stuffed mongoose and a billiard table). My little home was the aforementioned window seat in the Grand Library (no body parts, just books) that looked out onto the well-tended courtyard. The outside yard of Rose & Grave may have looked neglected and uninviting, but the inside was paradise. Funny how so many things worked that way.
A week later, I took my seat in Professor Muravcek’s lecture hall, three number-two pencils in my hand, and a fair dose of serenity in my brain. I’d do fine, even though I’d left a good 500 pages of WAP unread.
I didn’t yet understand that my position was even better than I’d thought.
The T.A. at the lectern lifted several stacks of exams and started up the steps, handing out a dozen or so at the end of each aisle. I lifted my exam packet from the proffered stack and passed the rest along. Once he had finished handing out the materials, he returned to the front of the hall, wrote the time on the chalkboard, and said, “Begin.”
I opened the packet, and a tiny white card fell out.
Dear Initiate,
I sincerely hope you’ve taken careful note of the 1985 final.
It will probably be coming in handy right about now.
Yours in 312,
Shandy, D171
I glanced back at the T.A., who was shuffling papers at the lectern and very determinedly not meeting my eyes. Another Shandy, just like Harun. I wondered if someday there would be another Bugaboo. Forty-five minutes later, I finished my exam, packed up my things, and headed toward the front desk.
“Done so soon?” the T.A. asked.
“Nineteen-eighty-five was a very good year,” I said. It was the year I was born. Of course I’d pick it out of the Diggers’ hefty collection, if only to see what kind of questions they thought were important then.
“I knew you’d think so.” He smiled. “We’re all very impressed with you, you know.”
I blushed. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Oh, yes you did. You put one of your own first. Next to punctuality, that’s the best quality to have.” He cleared his throat. “Too bad you weren’t in my section. I give all my students a pizza party at my house. You could have seen my, ahem, atomic grandfather clock.”
I cannot believe that story got out. “You’re teasing, right?”
“I’d tell you,” he said with a wink, “but then I’d have to kill you.” He pointed at my exam. “You’re sure you have nothing more to tell me about Kitty and Levin?”
I shuddered. “No offense, but I don’t think Russian lit’s my thing. Besides, there’s something I need to do.” I had one of my own who needed me. “Barbarian matters.”
He gave me a mock salute. “Carry on, then, sister.”
I made straight for the offices of the Eli Daily News. The EDN, unlike my own lowly publication, occupied a veritable Gothic castle of a structure on campus. Once upon a time, the building had been home to a rival secret society, which had long ago given up the ghost and relinquished its property to the university, who had added windows and turned it over to their illustrious student media outlet.
Genevieve was at her desk in her tiny private office, and, to her credit, managed to hide the majority of her shock when I barged in. But not all.
“Hi,” I said. “We need to talk. May I sit?”
“Wha—what are you doing here?”
“I’ll give you one guess.”
Her eyes flickered toward the door behind me, as if I were concealing a troupe of hired killers.
Best to nip that fear in the bud. “I’m here to talk about a feature you’ve proposed for the EDN’s commencement issue.”
“Oh?” She raised an eyebrow.
“I’d like to offer an alternative.” She brightened, but I held up my hand. “Not the one you suggested. I’ve never been a fan of blackmail. However, I must admit that I’m not entirely insensitive to your situation.”
“You have no idea what my situation is,” Genevieve snapped.
“On the contrary,” I replied calmly. “I think I understand it better than you do. And I don’t think he’s entirely blameless in this affair.”
“Get…out…of my office.”
“Not until you hear me out.” I waited, but she made no further objection. “Okay, let’s talk. You want to write an excruciating piece of muckraking tabloid fodder about a very dear friend of mine, with the full understanding that the article would do irreparable damage to his interpersonal relationships while not revealing any insufficiency of character. I think this is a Bad Idea.” (When needed, I can swing capital letters with the best of them.)
“Like I said, you don’t understand my situation.”
“I do.” I leaned forward. “I think you’re holding it over his head because what you really want to do is try for a sharp little piece that will assure you a neat job as an investigative journalist at the Post or the Times or the Tribune.”
She was silent.
“And I’m here to tell you that you aren’t going to get either. What I can offer you, however, is a source—an anonymous source, it must remain—but one that will happily share with you the real reason behind that little disturbance outside the Rose & Grave tomb on High Street two weeks ago.”
A fire lit behind Genevieve’s eyes. She was a reporter to the core.
“The name you’re looking for is Deep Throat.”
“Anything I want?”
I shook my head, ever so slightly. “This story. And I promise you, it’s good enough to go on with.”
Her mouth became a thin line. “Not enough. It’s not enough.”
“Very well.” I sat back in my seat. “However, I must warn you that if you persist in threatening my friends, I will ditch the short stories I’ve planned for the Lit Mag’s commencement issue and go non-fiction. I promise you that my small-circulation magazine will scoop the hell out of your rag and publish the story instead.”
Now her mouth did drop open. “You can’t do that.”
“I’ve got the printer lined up.” I stood. “Let me know what you decide, Genevieve.”
“You think you scare me?” she shot at me as I walked toward the door. “You think I’m frightened of your stupid little frat?”
I paused at the door. “If you aren’t, then you should be. I’m a Digger. I don’t make promises I can’t keep.”
And then I left. Two hours later, she e-mailed me that we had a deal.
Damn, that felt good. A girl could get used to this kind of power.
Considering everything that had happened, actually assembling the commencement issue of the literary magazine was far easier than I’d ever expected. Brandon and I arranged our schedules with the express purpose of spending as little time in the same room as possible. He took over the artwork, while I focused on the actual submissions and organizing the way the pieces fit together into a meaningful whole (or as meaningful as a bunch of overeducated David Foster Wallace wannabes could get in the middle of exam week). I left a lot of the layout work to the rising sophomores, and, despite the fact that my hours at the Lit Mag office were filled with much less mirth and far fewer paper airplanes, I’d never had a better time there. Perhaps I relished the opportunity so much because I feared it would be my last. After all, I still didn’t have a summer job. I was pretty sure the next few months would see me plying khakis at the Shaker Square GAP.
The night before commencement, the first copies of “Ambition” arrived, hot off the press, and I flipped through it, surprised at how foreign each freshly minted page appeared to my eyes. Unlike other issues, I hadn’t pored over the font size of every running head, nor labored over the arrangement of the advertisements. Even the cover art had been chosen by Brandon, and, as if sharing some final inside joke, he’d picked a shot of a young man silhouetted against an urban backdrop, looking longingly over the city. It looked, as I’d suspected it would, like a perfume ad. However, I thought it was perfect for the melancholy, stark tone of most of the pieces. Brandon, as always, displayed excellent taste.
I had planned on staying for commencement, both to oversee distribution of the magazine and to attend Glenda Foster’s graduation. Since the dorms were closed, I camped out in the tomb, and found that I was not the only Digger who’d had that plan. The night before, no one got any sleep, as a gaggle of patriarchs who’d shown up early for the following day’s commencement exercises took the opportunity to teach the Digger students the time-honored tradition of Kaboodle Ball, the rules of which, I’m sorry to say, are far too complicated to relate without the aid of charts, graphs, and small, many-jointed marionettes. It’s kind of like hide-and-seek by way of rugby, golf, and Calvinball.
The morning of commencement was clear and surprisingly chilly for the season. I busied myself directing three underclass Lit Mag staffers to the distribution centers, but made sure that I picked up a copy of the Eli Daily News as well. Surprisingly, working with Genevieve hadn’t been the chore I’d anticipated. I think my original assessment was correct. She wasn’t an evil bitch—just ambitious, truly heartbroken, and desperate for payback. I had no expectations that her story would be flattering to the society, but then again, it was a lesser evil.
I was in the third column of the feature when someone cleared his throat in front of me. I looked up to see two figures in black gowns and hats: one tall, slim, and pale, with angry gray eyes; the other tan and blond with an enormous smile he was unable to hide.
“Are you the secret source?” Poe blurted.
I blinked at him. “I assure you, I’m just as shocked to see this piece as you are.”
Malcolm bit his lip, but his eyes transmitted gratitude.
“This story is a scandal!” Poe shouted. “It reveals everything about our inner workings!”
“Come on,” Malcolm said, finding his tongue at last. “All it really says is that Rose & Grave has finally opened its ranks to women.”
“And that there was some inner turmoil about it,” Poe snapped.
“A fine piece of investigative journalism,” I pointed out. “I think the writer lives below Malcolm. She probably heard us at the meeting that night.”
“I wouldn’t make a big deal out of it.” Malcolm clapped Poe on the shoulder. “It’s not the first story that claims to bust open our secrets, and it won’t be the last, either.”
“It really doesn’t get into specifics, either,” I added. “Except for this bit about how some of the more age-addled patriarchs staged a little protest outside the tomb. If anything, I think it does a pretty good job of swerving around the real heart of the matter. That source—whoever they are—played this writer like a piano.” I looked at Malcolm, whose eyebrows informed me not to press my luck.
The three of us headed back into the throng of graduates and their families. “Malcolm!” a blond woman shouted, pointing a digital camera in our direction. Must be Mrs. Cabot. The two boys leaned close to me and we all smiled for the photo op, but as soon as the flash went off, Poe’s expression went dour again. When Malcolm trotted off to see how the snapshot turned out, Poe turned to me.
“I wanted to thank you.” No one had ever sounded less grateful.
“For?”
He closed his eyes for a moment, as if steeling himself. “For speaking up in New York. I don’t know what I was thinking. Mr. Gehry just had me convinced…” He trailed off, then shook his head. “I’d forgotten some stuff. You reminded me.”
“Oh. You’re welcome.” We stood in awkward silence for a few more moments, before I came up with a neutral topic. “So, what are you doing this summer?”
“Not working for the White House.” He smiled mirthlessly.
“I’m sorry,” I said. So, maybe not so neutral, but at least it explained why Poe of all people would betray his brothers. Ambition, I thought, can be a dangerous thing.
Maybe I was glad I hadn’t yet determined the exact shape of mine.
He shrugged. “It’s okay. At least I can look at myself in the mirror every morning. I’ll probably be down in D.C., though, doing…something. You?”
I shrugged. “Trying to decide between two brilliant offers, at Starbucks and T.G.I. Friday’s.” And, because I didn’t see a reason for this interview to drag on any longer than necessary, I added, “Well, congratulations on graduating. I wish you the best of luck with Eli Law next year.” And I hope I don’t see you any more than strictly necessary.
“Good luck to you, too,” Poe said, looking past me toward the tomb on the corner. “I have a feeling you’re going to need it.”
He loped off and I rolled my eyes. Good riddance. What the hell did Malcolm see in that guy?
Malcolm returned soon after. “Did you guys have a chance to talk?”
“We exchanged thinly veiled insults, yeah.”
He sighed. “You know, Amy, you should really give him a chance. He’s not as bad as you think.”
I cocked my head at him. “Malcolm, is he…?”
He threw back his head and laughed. “No, Amy. He’s a little twisted, but otherwise straight as a rod.” Then he tapped the paper in his hand. “Thank you. I can’t—I can’t ever thank you enough for what you did. I don’t know how you did it, how you thought of it, but…you’re amazing.”
“What are little sibs for?” I nodded toward his parents. “Are you going to tell them?”
Malcolm took a deep breath, and his expression turned somber. “Yes. Sometime. Sometime soon. We go up to a cabin in the mountains every summer. My dad and I like to go hunting. I think I’ll tell them then. Away from the press and all.”
“Good idea. But if I can make a suggestion? Make sure the guns aren’t loaded.”
He flashed his pearly whites. “Yeah.” Already I could see relief etched on his face. Whatever Malcolm might say, he was tired of lying to his folks. I hoped it all worked out, but I wouldn’t hold my breath for a happy Cabot family vacation.
Soon after I left Malcolm, I was met by one more Digger—the man who’d been next to me at the Eli Club, taking notes. His auburn hair, liberally sprinkled with gray, shone in the morning sunlight.
“Amy Haskel!” he said brightly, pumping my hand up and down. “I’m so glad I caught up with you. Gus Kelting.” He leaned in. “Horace, D142.”
“We meet again,” I said. And this time, he was talking to me. Good, because I still had a few questions from that afternoon. “I wanted to ask you, why weren’t you standing up for us in New York? I saw the notes you wrote me.”
“I’d been outvoted,” Kelting admitted. “I wasn’t allowed to talk. And believe me, it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. But I think you nailed them. I told all my Digger friends. We were very impressed with you. I was very impressed.” He pulled out a copy of “Ambition.” “I read this last night,” he said. “Very impressive…also.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“And, as you can probably tell by my limited vocabulary, I’m not much of a word guy. I’m into economics.”
Okay. “That’s nice.” Where was he going with this?
“Here’s the thing, Miss Haskel. I understand you have a bit of an employment problem, and I know that the Diggers are…to blame for it. I want to make it up to you. I do work for a think tank down in D.C., and we’ve got a project this summer that we need some help on. We’re trying to establish a rehabilitation program for exploited women, and as part of our bid for funding, we’re putting together a book of narratives. Some of these stories—they’d break your heart. But these ladies aren’t writers. Some of them aren’t even literate. I think a person with your editorial skills would come in handy.”
I stared at him for a moment, incredulous. “You’re offering me a job?”
“It doesn’t pay much more than a stipend, but we’ll find you housing, too. I know this isn’t in New York…”
“An editorial job?”
“Yes. With a good deal of responsibility attached.”
Somehow, I managed not to tackle him. This was way cooler than xeroxing form rejections! And Lydia would be in D.C. this summer. (Also Poe, but really, who cares? It’s a big city.) “Wow, Mr. Kelting. Thank you!”
“No, Amy. Thank you. Besides, you’re a Digger. What, we’re going to let you spend the summer pumping gas?” He smiled. “Come here, I want you to meet someone.”
He took my hand and led me across the lawn to a young woman with long red curls and post-grad-style robes. “Amy Haskel, this is my daughter, Sarah Kelting. Dr. Sarah Kelting. She graduated from med school today.”
“So I see,” I said.
Sarah laughed, and shook my hand. “Dad, are you going to introduce me like that from now on?”
“You bet!” he said, beaming. “Or at least until I’ve got it paid for.”
“So, in other words, from now on,” the woman teased.
“Sarah, Amy has just agreed to come work for my company this summer.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” She winked at me. “Do you have a place to live in D.C.? I’ve got a friend who is trying to sublet her studio in Adams Morgan. You’d love it.” She looked at Mr. Kelting. “Your company is paying, right?”
He put his arm around his daughter. “She’s such a smart-ass, Amy. Comes from not having anyone else to compete with growing up. It was just the two of us.” He leaned in and dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Back when she was at Eli undergrad, I wanted her to—you know. But I knew it wasn’t going to happen. That’s why I was so happy to see you girls. It’s about time. And when you stood up in there…” He laughed. “You reminded me of my Sarah. I wanted you in, for all the Sarahs.”
Sarah rolled her eyes and shrugged Kelting’s arm off. “Da-a-ad,” she said. “Would you stop talking about the you-know-whoggers?” She looked at me and shook her head in consolation. “Is he boring you with tales of that silly little boys’ club?”
But I exchanged glances with Gus Kelting, whose Rose & Grave pin, age-burnished to a deeper gold, glinted from the collar of his shirt. “It’s not a boys’ club,” I said. Not anymore. “It’s one of the most powerful secret societies in the world.”
I should know. I’m a member.