As soon as I spoke the words, the light was extinguished, and judging by the bustle that followed, they weren’t waiting around to relight it. Someone leaned in and hissed in my ear, “Remember well, but keep silent, concerning what you have heard here.”
By the time I stumbled to the wall and felt cool tile beneath my fingers, everyone was gone. I flipped on the light. I was standing in a bathroom, alone, with nothing but condom dispensers and mildewy grout to keep me company. So that was the smell. And it wasn’t even my entryway.
Um, hello? Weren’t they supposed to spirit me off to their stone tomb and introduce me to a life beyond my wildest dreams? I frowned, opened the bathroom door, and stepped outside.
About half a dozen students milled around the hall, watching me. One of those guys—there’s one in every dorm—who never did get used to the idea of Eli’s unisex bathrooms hopped up and down on the balls of his feet as if waiting for the girl to leave before he braved the toilet. “You done, or is there gonna be another party in there?”
I schooled my features into a neutral expression. “Anyone have a roll of toilet paper?”
See? I would be an expert at this secret stuff yet.
Ignoring the onlookers, I made my way back to my suite, where I assumed Lydia would be waiting to receive her blow-by-blow of the whole (truncated) experience. But Lydia was gone—tapped, perhaps, by another society in my absence. She wouldn’t have left for any other reason, right? Not tonight.
I waited in the common room for fifteen minutes, figuring that if her tap worked the way mine had, she’d be back in no time. I drank a Coke and tried to read a three-month-old copy of Cosmo that was lying on the coffee table. Brandon was right; the taglines were much more intriguing than yet another recycled article explaining that women have G-spots. I didn’t make it past the third perfume ad (none of which, I was chuffed to see, hawked anything called “Ambition”).
I got up and went to the window, but there was no sign of Lydia or of a bunch of robed figures. Half an hour later, I decided to calm my nerves by taking a nice stroll—down to High Street.
Now, aside from being home to the English department and the Art History lecture hall, High Street is also known for hosting the Rose & Grave tomb. (These “tombs” dotted the campus, their huge, mausoleum-like facades hiding interiors that were supposedly more like mansions. Remember, the Egyptian pyramids were tombs as well. But no one knew if the society tombs held actual…bodies.) According to rumor, there’s an intricate code for members that can tell them exactly what is going on inside the tomb based on the position of the low, wrought-iron gates guarding the entrance. I didn’t know what the code was, but I assumed that I’d find out. Sometime.
I walked past the entrance to two residential colleges, and then, as was common amongst all students, crossed to the other side of the street so I wouldn’t be seen walking in front of the Rose & Grave tomb. It was an unwritten rule on campus—the college equivalent of refusing to walk in front of a haunted house in our childhood neighborhoods.
The tomb was made of sandstone blocks and seemed somehow darker than the surrounding stone and slate buildings. A fence surrounded an unkempt yard spotted with patches of grass and a few late, struggling daffodils. Strange that the Diggers didn’t keep up the landscaping, though it added to the imposing nature of the property. The sodium streetlight nearest the tomb was perpetually out of order, meaning that the tomb itself stood in a pool of deep shade and long, sinister shadows. If I didn’t know better, I’d think they did it on purpose.
Maybe I didn’t know better. I sat down on the curb and rested my chin in my hands, regarding the building warily. The gate was half open. What did that mean? Someone was inside? Someone wasn’t? Someone was lurking in the shadows, waiting to pounce on me the second I came near? I looked both ways down the street, but it was deserted.
The niggling fear in the back of my mind rose up to taunt me. It wasn’t Rose & Grave who carried you into the bathroom. It was a prank, and you fell for it, hook, line, and hooded robe. Stupid Amy Haskel, you’ll be the laughingstock of Eli tomorrow.
Why hadn’t they taken me away with them? They’d tapped me, right? I was a member now, right? So if I wanted to go up to that gate, if I wanted to walk right through and pound on the door and demand to know what the hell they were doing—then I was entitled to. Right?
And if you’re not a member, they’ll cart you away to the dungeon.
I stood up, clenched my fists at my sides, and marched across the street, utterly determined for all of ten steps. As soon as I got to the gate, my resolve wavered and I stopped to check again. Still no one coming.
I held my breath and put my hand on the gate. Nothing. No one came to arrest me, or yell at me, or threaten to eradicate my existence from the planet for daring to infiltrate the society grounds without permission. I took a step inside. Then two. Somewhere around six steps, the gate clanged shut behind me. I yelped, jumped about two feet in the air, and rushed back to the fence.
The gate wouldn’t open. I fumbled with the catches, but if there was a release mechanism, my fingers weren’t finding it, and I couldn’t see a thing in the dark. Oh, crap. I’d been a member for all of fifty minutes and I’d already broken the fence and messed with the secret code.
And trespassed. Don’t forget how you trespassed. They’re going to get you. Run! Run, before anyone catches you.
The voice won, and I climbed over the gate, catching the flare of my favorite jeans on one of the spikes protruding from the top. For several seconds, I acted like a hopscotch player on crack while trying to free my leg from its wrought-iron trap. Then I saw a group of three students exiting Calvin College and heading toward Old Campus. I stopped hopping. Maybe they wouldn’t see me if I stayed perfectly still. Hey, it worked for those people in Jurassic Park.
Fortunately, the average college student has the environmental acuity of a beanbag chair. They don’t even look both ways before crossing the street. So they didn’t look down High Street at the girl who was stuck to the Rose & Grave gate.
I ripped my hem free, and then, torn denim flapping on the cement behind me, sprinted away from the tomb at a pace that would have easily earned me a spot on the Eli track team.
I didn’t slow to a jog until I was back inside my residential college courtyard. Eli University, kind of like Harry Potter’s Hogwarts, is arranged according to this British boarding school–style residential house system. We don’t use a magical sorting hat or anything like that, but when you matriculate, you’re assigned to one of twelve residential “colleges” that determines where you live, which dining hall you eat in, what allegiance you take during intramural sports, and which dean has the privilege of lowering the ax when you screw up. Every one of the twelve colleges comes supplied with resident faculty as well as its own dean, a sort of collegiate “principal” who serves as an academic advisor and resident disciplinarian, and a college master, who oversees our social scene and college-specific organizations. If you couldn’t turn in a paper on time, you went to your dean for help. If you wanted some funds to hold a Prescott College chili cook-off, the master was the go-to guy (or girl).
The worst punishment you can get at Eli short of expulsion is called “rustication”—which means that after a fun-filled period of suspension, you are welcomed back into the bosom of Eli but stripped of your college identity. From that point on, the rusticated individual can’t live on campus (all undergrad housing is based on college designation) and doesn’t have a college master or dean to turn to in the rough times. You’re merely marking time and classroom credits until the diploma. It’s named after a type of banishment popular during the Roman Empire, which says a lot about these schools’ puffed self-images. College identity is paramount, even to people with much more powerful affiliations—like Rose & Grave. If ever you meet another Eli grad, the very first question you’ll be asked is, “What college were you in?”
I was a member of Prescott College, which was named after one of the school’s founders. Other colleges are named after Connecticut towns (Hartford College, where Glenda lived) and famous historical figures, scientists, and religious leaders (such as Calvin College, next to the Rose & Grave tomb). Though nowadays your college assignment is mostly random (but you can choose to be in the same college as your sibling or parent was), it used to be that each college had a specific personality based on its members—kind of like secret societies. Prescott College was once known as the “legacy” college—it’s where the President lived while he was at Eli, as well as his father before that. It still has a lot of money in trust from alumni donations, and really big rooms. So I lucked out there, since I’m neither a legacy nor richer than Trump.
I looked up at my suite; still dark, which meant Lydia hadn’t come home yet. I thought about going to find some of my other friends, but knew that no conversation would last ten minutes before I blurted out, “Would a secret society tap a person then disappear? Hypothetically, of course.”
Oh, I was pathetic. After a thorough inspection of the courtyard (during which I stumbled across one puddle of vomit, one pile of unidentified books, and one fellow junior making out with someone who was decidedly not her boyfriend—but no sign of robed figures), I headed back to my room, utterly defeated and more than a little pissed that I’d torn my jeans.
According to every legend I’d ever heard, this is not what Tap Night was supposed to be like. What a letdown. I changed into my pajamas and padded into the bathroom to brush my teeth. Flossing, fortunately, gave me the opportunity for a good long observation of myself in the mirror. I didn’t look like a member of one of the most notorious secret societies in America. I didn’t look like someone who could claim brotherhood with the head of the CIA, the President of the United States, or the new CEO of Fox.
“Faeth it,” I garbled to my reflection through the floss. “Youffe been hadth.”
I fully intended to be out of the suite before I saw Lydia and was forced to tell her all about what hadn’t happened to me the night before. I even dressed for the part, in secret-mission dark jeans (not the ones I’d torn) and my fade-into-the-woodwork Eli University crest hoodie.
What I did not anticipate was that she’d be waiting for me in the dining hall, having staked out a spot right next to the cereal bar. This is the problem with best friends. They know exactly what breakfast you’re going to go for. If I’d been in the mood for a bagel rather than a bowl of Frosted Flakes, she never would have caught me.
“Nice outfit,” she murmured over her coffee cup. “You really look the part.”
I splashed some skim milk into my bowl and plopped down across from her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
She gestured with her teaspoon at my outfit. “Dark colors, mysterious hoods…it’s very subtle.” She smirked.
“I’ve worn this sweatshirt a hundred times.”
“Never when you were actually in a secret society.” Lydia was dressed in a pale pink blouse and a pair of khakis, and looked about as mysterious as a church picnic.
Okay, maybe I didn’t look coy, but I could sure as hell play the part. “What makes you think I’m in a secret society?” I asked, spooning up my flakes.
“The dozen robed figures who carried you bodily out of our suite last night.”
Ha! I took a deep breath. “How do you know they were a secret society?”
She gave me a look that said, I’ve got a 3.9 GPA, and you know it.
But all of a sudden, I very much wanted to hear her thoughts on the matter. “Seriously, Lyds, how do you know? How would any of us know that they weren’t a bunch of guys in hoods playing a practical joke?”
“I think the Rose & Grave letterhead is a good clue.”
“You looked at the envelope.”
“It’s pretty hard to miss, Amy. Little flower, great big coffin?” She eyed me warily. “Are you going to get up and leave the room now?” By all accounts, secret society members had to leave the room if anyone mentioned the name of their organization. Supposedly it was to protect them from entering into discussion about the society, but it always seemed like a raw deal to me. Say you were at a rocking party and some chick wanted you out of the picture so she could mack on your man. All she had to do was start listing societies until she hit on yours. I suppose this is the kind of thing you have to think about when you join one.
“It depends,” I said, setting down my spoon. “Dragon’s Head. Book & Key. Serpent. You going anywhere?”
Lydia said nothing. We sat there, staring at each other. Either she wasn’t following the rule, I hadn’t named her society, or she was just as unsure of what was going on as I was.
I tried turning the tables. “I came back to the room not five minutes after I left it, and you weren’t there anymore. And you didn’t come back for the rest of the evening. Were you tapped by someone after I left?”
“You know I can’t tell you that.”
“No, I don’t!” I noticed my raised voice had attracted some listeners from nearby tables, and leaned forward to talk to her more privately. Luckily, dining halls are mostly deserted during the breakfast hours—especially on Fridays. “I don’t know anything about how this works. I don’t even know if those guys in their robes were serious last night. As far as I know, I wasn’t tapped by anyone, Diggers or otherwise.”
At the word “Diggers,” Lydia flinched.
A horrible thought then came to me. Maybe Lydia had been tapped by Rose & Grave—the real Rose & Grave—and the reason she wasn’t talking was that telling me that my experience was a hoax meant revealing exactly how she knew. After all, she hadn’t reacted to any of the society names I’d thrown out earlier, but I hadn’t mentioned the Diggers. Still, she had, which she probably wouldn’t if she’d been tapped…my head started to hurt.
Am I paranoid, or what? If I hadn’t been tapped, they sure had missed out on a prime candidate. Smart, sexy, and neurotic enough to do any clandestine organization proud.
Lydia sat back and took another sip of her coffee. “It’s true there have been hoaxes in the past. Do you think that’s what happened to you?”
I shrugged. “How do I know? If it was a hoax, it wasn’t too high on the personal humiliation scale. You’d think they’d have at least tried for a fake initiation of some sort.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “So what did they do?”
I opened my mouth to tell her, but then shut it again. Why should I share anything with Lydia if she wasn’t willing to reciprocate? Besides, what was I supposed to say and what wasn’t I? On the off chance that this whole fiasco had been for real, what kind of trouble would I get in for reporting the experience? There were too many options to keep track of.
POSSIBILITIES
A) I was tapped by Rose & Grave, and so shouldn’t tell anyone anything.
B) I was either tapped or tricked, and telling Lydia meant I could figure out which one it was.
C) I was the victim of a practical joke and Lydia was a member of Rose & Grave and was just toying with me.
D) None of the above.
Too bad Lydia was the one who’d spent the semester doing logic problems in preparation for the LSAT. Ugh. As if I wasn’t under enough pressure. Why couldn’t a girl just finish War andPeace, rock her finals, whip out a kick-ass commencement issue of the Lit Mag, prepare for a summer in Manhattan, and enjoy a no-strings-attached relationship with a cute if slightly dorky boy who liked to buy her pad Thai? Was that too much to ask?
Actually, looking at it laid out like that, yeah. It was an awful lot. And now I may or may not have to add “join a notorious underground brotherhood” to the list.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Nothing like what happens in the movies, that’s for sure.”
“No pig’s blood or sacrificed virgins?”
“Where would they find a virgin around here?”
Lydia spit out her coffee. After she finished composing herself, she set her cup back on her tray and regarded me. “You know, if you really think it’s a hoax, I suggest you do some research.”
“What kind of research?” I certainly hoped she wasn’t about to propose another field trip to the Rose & Grave tomb. I was still scarred from last night, and I couldn’t afford to lose another pair of jeans.
“At the library. They have lots and lots of info on secret societies.”
“Really?” I raised my eyebrows. “But what about the ‘secret’ part?”
“A surprisingly recent development.” She leaned in. “They used to publish the list of Rose & Grave taps every year in the New York Times.”
“That can’t be true.”
“It is. Members put it on their resume. They were very open about it. Kind of at odds with the whole ‘leaving the room’ thing, huh?” She paused and looked down at her plate. “But that doesn’t make it any less valid.”
Her subtext was clear: She wasn’t going to tell me anything about her society. And it hurt me more than I expected. Lydia and I had always shared everything. We’d lived together for three years. I’d gone to visit her in London last summer. We’d rented that room in the beach house in Myrtle Beach our sophomore spring. She knew I had been dabbling in novel writing, I knew she’d had an affair with her sophomore year poli-sci T.A. Aside from the whole he’s-her-teacher-eww factor, it’s not as sketchy as it sounds. He was only twenty-four. Okay, you’re right, it’s sketchy, but I’m not one to judge—remember Ben Somebody? When I’d returned to our beach house the next morning, in equal parts mortified and terror-stricken—How could I have slept with someone I didn’t know? What was wrong with me?—Lydia never lectured me, just encouraged me to remember as much as I could about the incident (like, for example, putting the condom on, thank God!) and for the rest of the week happily stayed home from the party scene and played sober and boy-free Scrabble with me on the beach. She was my best friend.
But this was turning out to be bigger than ill-conceived one-night stands. It might even be bigger than our friendship.
Lydia glanced at her watch and groaned. “I’ve got to get up to Rocks for Jocks lab.” (All of the science courses, even the loser ones designed for history majors like Lydia who can’t tell a covalent bond from a computer chip, are located on the other end of campus. Does Eli have its priorities straight, or what?) “If you go to the library, could you take back two books for me? They’re sitting on the end of my bed.”
I nodded and Lydia departed, leaving me alone with my Frosted Flakes and a quickly dwindling appetite. Did I really want to spend my morning combing through the Stacks, only to find out that my whole Tap Night experience had been a hoax?
I’m evidently a sucker for punishment. On my way to Dwight Memorial Library, I swung by the suite to pick up Lydia’s books, some dusty history tomes with titles I could barely make out on the disintegrating covers. A piece of paper stuck out from between the pages of one, covered in Lydia’s careful, upright script. She’d forgotten her notes.
But when I pulled the paper out, I could see that it was a printout from the online card catalog, covered in check marks and other notations. I was about to drop it to the desk when one of the titles caught my eye:
Kellogg, H. L. College Secret Societies: Their Customs, Character, and the Efforts for Their Suppression. Chicago: Ezra A. Cook, 1874.
No wonder Lydia knew where to get the scoop.
As if to convince myself that I wasn’t obsessing about this whole secret society thing (after all, at least ninety percent of every Eli class never joins one!), I brought WAP with me to read in the library. It took me two hours to track down the five titles listed on Lydia’s printout. Dwight Library Stacks are about twelve stories tall, with enough hidden nooks and crannies for half the student body to hide in. It’s an old Eli tradition to have sex in the Stacks at least once before graduation. (And, no, I’ve never done it, not even with the faux beatnik Galen Twilo.)
I finally found one of the books tucked away in between the ceiling and the top of the bookcase where it was supposed to be shelved. Another old library trick: If you don’t want anyone to take out the books you need, you hide them. I often wondered how many volumes were forever lost in the morass of the Stacks because some student had decided to play nut-storing squirrel and lost track of his hiding places—or never bothered to undo the damage once the semester was over. (See, you’d think that Ivy League students were an honest, trustworthy bunch, but no. Some of the crap I’ve seen pulled on this campus is practically criminal. But I never thought Lydia was the type to engage in that type of behavior.)
I trekked down to the nearest reading room and set up shop at one of the carved wooden tables that ran from end to end. Giant burgundy leather wingback chairs and elegant reading lamps with green shades rounded out the décor, and the Friday morning sun shone in from the lead-veined windows and highlighted the Gothic stone arches vaulting high above my head. The Dwight Memorial reading rooms just reeked of high-class academia.
I immediately started to feel sleepy.
Which had more in common with the caffeinating qualities of a mochacchino: 1,472 pages of Russian historic literature extolling the exploits of the Napoleonic invasion, or dusty essays about 19th century collegiate frats?
Blecch. I decided to stave off boredom by switching back and forth on a regular basis. Natasha Rostov was up to her usual antics, but the society tome didn’t gift me with any useful info. Seriously, do I care whether or not Phi Beta Kappa started at William & Mary? I want to know what’s going on with Rose & Grave in the 21st century.
“Hi, Amy.”
I looked up to see Malcolm Cabot standing over my table. A senior, a popular party boy, and the son of a state governor, Malcolm Cabot and I didn’t run in the same social circles. My friends stocked up on popcorn and had Sex and the City marathons, while his crowd liked to drive down to “The City” for marathon sex weekends. He wasn’t in my college, we’d never been in the same class, and as far as I knew, we hadn’t exchanged so much as three words in my years at Eli. “Um, hi.”
Okay, four words.
“What’s up?” Malcolm craned his neck toward my reading material, which, luckily, was currently opened to page 834 of WAP. He was dressed in a spring green polo shirt with the letters “CC” printed in the corner, and a pair of very well-fitting blue jeans. His sandy hair looked like it had been ripped right out of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog. He wore his messenger bag slung across his chest and was thrumming his fingers against the strap. “Russian Novel class, huh? Which one did you like best?”
“Crime and Punishment,” I said. “It’s only 500 pages long.”
He laughed, which earned him dirty looks from at least three other people at my table.
Malcolm straightened then, but continued beating that tattoo on his shoulder strap. If you ask me, the rhythm, more than the whispered conversation, was what was distracting about his presence. And now we were up to two dozen words.
“The final’s a breeze,” he went on. “So don’t worry about it.”
“Thanks.” I guess. Thrum, thrum, thrum.
“Just don’t work too hard. You’ll need your energy.”
Huh? My eyes shot to his face. “What are you talking about?”
He grinned then, showing me a set of gorgeous white teeth. “Oh, I almost forgot.” He stopped thrumming for a second, reached into his messenger bag, pulled out three books, and set them down on my desk. “This might help you out when you’re stuck in class.” He pointed at each of them in turn. “Said was a post-colonialist critic, Levi-Strauss advocated structuralism, and Aristotle…well, he’s the oldest critic in the book. None of them is a New Critic. Get your facts straight, or I’ll think you deserved that B–in Ethiopian Lit.”
I stared up at that all-too-familiar smile, then down to his hands, which had started tapping on his shoulder strap again. Right next to the little gold pin stuck through the canvas that showed a rose inside an elongated hexagon.
Malcolm Cabot was the Shadow-Who-Smiles. And he was in Rose & Grave.
Which meant…
“Hey!” I said. Loudly.
“Shh!” The harsh rebuke came from a girl at the next table. I craned my neck around Malcolm’s torso to see Clarissa Cuthbert glaring at me over the rim of her Louis Vuitton bag. Clarissa’s gaze ping-ponged from me to Malcolm and back again, and then her ice blue eyes narrowed. Little wonder. She was probably wondering what Governor Cabot’s son was doing talking to me. Like Malcolm, Clarissa was part of the school’s über elite.
And Malcolm was taking advantage of my distraction. He ruffled my hair. “See you soon, babe.” Then he turned on his heel and walked off.
Ignoring Clarissa, and completely forgetting about both the society books and Malcolm’s favorite literary critics, I snatched up WAP (with both hands, of course, since the stupid thing weighs two hundred pounds) and dashed after him.
By the time I got into the main hall of the library, he was nowhere to be seen. Stacks? Exit? Ugh! I walked as quickly as possible to the front doors, all the while scanning down each bay for any sight of his green shirt or blond hair. No luck.
At the door, I went through the usual No-This-Is-My-Copy-of-War-and-Peace-That’s-Why-It-Doesn’t-Have-a-Library-Bar-Code-on-It rigmarole, then sprinted down the front steps onto the Cross Campus Green. No sign of him there, either.
What, did Rose & Grave members have a secret entrance to the library, too?
Fine, I’d beard the lion in his den. “CC” stood for Calvin College in Eli shorthand, and green was the college color. I’d follow him right back to his dorm room. I tried to look dignified as I power-walked across the Green and back onto High Street, but the weight of WAP kept throwing off my stride.
THOUGHTS THAT WENT THROUGH
MY HEAD ON THE WAY
1) Malcolm Cabot knew I’d been bullshitting at my interview but tapped me anyway.
2) Must be convenient for Malcolm that Calvin College and the Rose & Grave tomb are right next door to each other.
3) I wonder if the Diggers have the Russian Novel final on file.
I swiped my keycard at the entrance to Calvin College, and opened the heavy gate. A few steps later and I was in their small, sunny courtyard, empty but for one guy in a green polo shirt booking it toward one of the far entryways.
“Malcolm!” I shouted, and he stopped in his tracks. I ran to meet him. “You’re a Digger,” I said when I arrived, panting slightly.
He grabbed my arm and maneuvered me to one of the stone benches positioned farther away from the windows. “And you,” he hissed in my ear in a much lower tone than I’d been using, “are not exactly discreet.”
I rolled my eyes as we sat. “How discreet is that pin of yours?”
He snorted. “It took you about ninety seconds to notice it, and I practically had to jab you in the eye with the pointy end.”
“Thanks for restraining yourself.”
“Think nothing of it.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Now I want an explanation.”
He narrowed his eyes. “For what?”
“For what!” I looked around the courtyard. Still empty. But I lowered my voice anyway. “For last night, of course.”
“You seemed to understand the process at the time.”
“Yeah, but then you just left me there. In the bathroom.”
“Of course. We had to get to eleven other people, you know, Amy. We were busy.”
I digested that point while he glanced around. “Look, this isn’t the time to talk. Everything you need to know is in the—” He stopped and looked down at my hands, empty but for WAP. “Where are the books I gave you?”
“In the library, I suppose.”
“WHAT!” Now it was Malcolm’s turn to get loud. He jumped up from the bench and threw his hands in the air. “You just left them there?”
I blinked at him. “They were library books. And I already have a copy of Poetics back in my suite.”
“There was—urgh!” He spiked his hands in his hair. “There was something in the Aristotle. For you. From us.”
“Oh.”
“Oh?” He paced back and forth in front of me. “Oh?!? That’s all you have to say?”
“What am I supposed to say? Did you honestly think that after that little act of yours I’d be more interested in hunting you down or settling back for a little bit of Dead White Guy’s take on literary criticism?”
“Well, I didn’t think you’d just leave them there!” He plopped back down on the bench and put his head in his hands. “I told them we shouldn’t get creative. I said, ‘What’s wrong with the Post Office?’ But did anyone listen to me? No. And now look.”
I patted him on the shoulder, because it seemed like the only appropriate response, but inside I was already plotting my course back to the reading room.
Malcolm whipped up and caught me by the shoulders. He stared at me intently. “Listen, you can’t let anyone else see the letter I put inside those books. It could ruin everything. You have to get back to the library and get them back. Now. Understand?”
I nodded, a bit taken aback, and put my hands on his chest to push him away. And, naturally, that’s when the door to the nearest entryway opened and Brandon Weare walked out.
“Hey, Haskel,” he said in a voice that was anything but casual. “What’s up?”
Malcolm dropped his hands and stepped back and I tried to think of the least awkward way to respond.
Option One:
“Whoa, Malcolm, be careful on those uneven flagstones, you don’t want to trip!”
Option Two:
“Hey, Brandon. Malcolm here was acting out this scene I missed on The OC last week.”
Option Three:
“Hi, Brandon. Malcolm and I can’t talk right now. We have to go back to the library before anyone finds the top-secret Rose & Grave correspondence Agent Double-Oh-Cabot here left in a book I had no intention of checking out.”
But Malcolm took over, going from Bobcat-Goldthwait-freaked-out to James-Dean-cool in a flash. “Hey, man, how’s it going?” He held out his hand and slapped Brandon five before my friend-with-bennies could figure out what was going on. “I’ve been meaning to congratulate you on that last intramural badminton game. Have you thought about being team captain next year? I think Calvin is going to make a real play for the Tibbs Cup.”
Brandon played badminton? Live and learn. Of course, considering the guy’s obsession with paper airplanes, the aerodynamically designed shuttle used in badminton fit perfectly.
“Thanks,” Brandon said, and stood a little taller. “I have been thinking about it.”
Unbelievable. I looked at Malcolm with new appreciation. Brandon was completely distracted. “Are you doing anything right now?” Malcolm was asking him. “We can go talk to the Calvin Tibbs Coordinator about it.”
“Well, I wanted to chat with Amy….” Brandon cast me a quick glance, but before he could break out his Amy-smile, Malcolm stepped in.
“Oh, she’s headed off to the library.” Malcolm clapped Brandon on the shoulder and made some kind of complicated eyebrow gesture in my direction. “Let’s go,” he went on, guiding my Brandon away.
I stood there, alone in the Calvin courtyard, and began to question the veracity of Brandon’s ongoing Hopelessly-Devoted-to-You act. The man had just ditched me for intramural badminton.
On the upside, I was definitely on my way to becoming a member of Rose & Grave. So, boy, did I need to reclaim those books!
I hurried back to the library, crossing my fingers that the shelving assistants hadn’t made their rounds in the reading room yet.
But my luck didn’t hold out. I got to the table where I’d been sitting, and it was completely cleared. No society tomes, no volumes of literary criticism, no missive from Rose & Grave.
Crap. The next freshman who had to read Poetics was sure in for a surprise. And I’d already screwed up my first objective as a member of a secret society—actually getting initiated. (Though, seriously, I don’t think I’m entirely to blame for this snafu. How was I to know? It’s not like there’s a “So You Wanna Be in a Secret Society” brochure.) Okay, Amy, think. They wouldn’t have had time to reshelve them yet, so they were probably sitting on one of the book carts behind the circulation desk. I could just go up to the people at the desk and tell them I needed it back.
So there I was, standing in line, practically hopping with impatience and straining my eyes to see past the counter to the book carts, hoping that I’d recognize at least one of the volumes. The petite girl working the computer had a nose ring and two green stripes in her hair, and when I told her I needed my Aristotle back, she just stared at me and blinked. “According to the system,” she said, pulling the info up on the screen, “there are 215 copies of the collected writings of Aristotle in the Dwight Stacks alone.”
“I know, but I need the one I was just looking at.”
“And another 167 in the rest of the Eli University library system.”
“Right,” I said, pointing behind her. “But I need the one on that little cart back there.”
She looked over her shoulder, then back at me. “You want me to go digging through the cart to find a particular book, another copy of which you can easily retrieve from the shelves in 382 different forms?”
Nice math, bitch. I was still carrying the one. But my momma always told me you catch more flies with honey.
“Pretty please.” I leaned forward. “I left some rather sensitive health information in there, accidentally.” I gestured vaguely at my lower regions and whispered, “Test results.”
She retrieved the cart forthwith and started rummaging through the books. Unfortunately, Poetics was not among them, nor were any of the other books I’d had with me earlier.
“Sorry,” she said, then reached into her pocket and pulled out a card. She slid it across the counter, then laid her hand softly over mine. “You know, I volunteer at the Eli Women’s Center. If you need to talk about anything, we have a twenty-four-hour Crisis Help Line.”
I did my best to look somber. “Thank you,” I said, taking the card and stuffing it in my pocket. Okay, now what was I supposed to do?
“Hey! Psst, Amy. Amy Haskel.”
I turned in the direction of the voice and saw Clarissa Cuthbert seated in a leather armchair in a little reading alcove. Her Louis Vuitton bag was on her lap, a pile of library books sat on the table beside her, and between two of her French manicured fingers, she dangled a white envelope with a black border and a black wax seal.
“Looking for this?”