When I stepped through the doors into the two-story Grand Library (room 311, since the Inner Temple had claimed the sacred designation of 312, according to the intelligence I gleaned from the two thirty-something alumni who showed me the way), everyone looked up and gave me a little toast with pomegranate juice–filled punch cups. There were already close to twenty people in the room—maybe ten college students and a handful of older men in suits.
“So you’re number eleven,” said a stocky black girl with hair the color of my Friday night date panties and a woven hemp shirt. “Welcome to our loony bin.” I knew this girl by reputation—I’d seen her protests and her rallies—Demetria Robinson.
“You’re Lydia’s friend, right?” A guy with reddish-brown hair stepped up next and glad-handed me. “I think we met once, sophomore year.”
I nodded in recognition. Leave it to Joshua Silver, political wunderkind, to never forget a face or a network connection. Only twenty-one and already the manager of several successful local election campaigns. To Lydia, he was both her hero and her rival in every Poli-Sci class they’d taken together. Joshua wore khaki pants and a rumpled white oxford liberally spattered with red juice. He gestured to the HELLO MY NAME IS sticker on his shirt. “I’m, uh, Keyser Soze.”
“Now, there’s a society name!” I wrinkled my nose. “I’m Bugaboo.”
“Could be worse,” Demetria said. “Some soon-to-be-dickless fuckwad thought it would be funny to christen me Thorndike.”
Josh/Soze sniggered and Clarissa Cuthbert materialized by my side, holding two silver punch cups. She handed one to me. “It’s a historical name. You should be proud of it. President Taft was a Thorndike.”
“President Taft was a fat white fuck,” Thorndike replied.
Clarissa clinked her glass against mine. Her HELLO MY NAME IS sticker read Angel. “Welcome, Bugaboo,” she said. “Glad to see you slumming with us after all.”
I flinched. Of all the secret societies in all the colleges in the world, Clarissa Cuthbert had to be tapped into mine. So that’s what she’d wanted to discuss with me.
But Angel didn’t seem interested in rehashing our earlier conversation. She turned to the others and said, “I guess there’s just George Harrison Prescott left now, huh?”
“Yeah,” said a short Asian guy joining the group. “But I hear they had to drag him into the tomb kicking and screaming.” He stuck his hand out at me. “Hey there, I’m Frodo.”
“At last, someone with a worse name than mine!” Thorndike sniffed.
“Do not go gently into that sweet night, GHP,” said a young man with a completely edible English accent. “But rather…make your daddy force you.” He winked at me. “I’m Bond…Barbarian-So-Called Greg Dorian. I hear you’re the writer.”
“Another creative type?” Frodo asked. “I’m a filmmaker. And Little Demon is a…singer, of sorts. This is one artsy class.”
I looked down into my punch cup. “I’m not really a writer.” Thirty pages of a wretched novel does not count.
Soze shrugged. “Then what are you?”
“The editor of the Lit Mag.”
They all exchanged glances.
“Why aren’t you in Quill & Ink?” Thorndike asked. “My ex-girlfriend Glenda Foster is in that one.”
TWO POINTS
1) Very good question.
2) Glenda Foster is a lesbian?!? You think you know someone….
“ ‘Girlfriend’ is a relative term.” A slender, stunning woman with waist-length red hair joined our group and extended a graceful hand toward me. Now, this chick I knew. But of course, you all know everything about Odile Dumas as well. She’d been tabloid fodder since she was 15. Her matriculation to Eli had been largely viewed by all to be an attempt to present herself as less Lindsay Lohan and more Natalie Portman. But to the media’s shock, she’d taken to collegiate life with gusto and all but dropped out of public view. Odile hadn’t had an album or movie out in three years, and the word around campus was that she was smarter (and less slutty) than anyone had expected (or hoped).
“Little Demon,” she purred, “but if I end up pursuing that hip-hop career, I’ll change it to Lil’ Demon.” The name rolled off her tongue with such ease that we all knew at once—hip-hop career or no—what we’d end up calling her.
“How droll.” Thorndike rolled her eyes and Lil’ Demon turned to her.
“Just because you get a poor girl drunk and seduce her once or twice does not make her your girlfriend. Bad as a man. Behavior like that is a disgrace to lesbians everywhere.”
Thorndike narrowed her eyes. “Are you including yourself in that number?”
“I’m pansexual,” Lil’ Demon said, with a shake of her hair. “Why settle?”
Bond lifted his punch glass. “I’ll drink to that.”
But Thorndike wasn’t finished. “And you, Odile, are a disgrace to women everywhere.”
Angel clucked her tongue. “Watch the barbarian names in here, kiddies.”
“Oh, get a room, you two,” Frodo said. Thorndike and Lil’ Demon looked at each other, sniffed in disdain, and turned in opposite directions.
This was one hell of a tap class.
Everyone chuckled, and I laughed uneasily to keep them company. Was it me, or did they all seem to know one another very well? I drained my glass and started back to the punch bowl, if only for something to do. I’d had my fill of pomegranate juice for one night.
Angel headed me off at the pass. “I looked it up,” she whispered. “Little Demon is also a traditional name, given to the smallest tap every year.” She cast a haughty glance back at the colorful Lil’ Demon. “Don’t you think I’m skinnier than she is?”
I ladled myself a glass of punch and resisted throwing it in her face. “I honestly”—couldn’t care less—“wouldn’t know.”
She shook her head as if shrugging it off. “That was some piece of luck today in the library, huh?”
No. I was never fortunate to run into Clarissa. “How so?”
“Me being there to find that letter before someone else did. Pretty cool trick of Lancelot’s—you know his society name is Lancelot, right?”
I nodded. Had Clarissa—Angel—already looked it up in one of the many leather-bound books lining the walls of the room? She had to be getting all her Rose & Grave trivia from somewhere. Man, she and Lydia were separated at birth!
I was about to ask her where she’d unearthed that bit of info when the doors opened and in shuffled George Harrison Prescott, sheepish grin plastered across his gorgeous face, zippered jacket and eyeglasses notably absent.
“Hey, guys. They got me.” While everyone lifted their glasses in cheer, George crossed to a table I hadn’t noticed before, scrawled something on a sticker, and slapped it against his chest. Then, with a flourish, he turned, presenting his society name sticker.
Angel’s mouth dropped open.
“Yo, Amy!” George waved. “Another Prescotteer, thank God! What’s your new handle?”
“Bugaboo.” I looked down at my stickerless chest, glad that I’d been able to pull off underwire after all.
Angel looked at me. “Right, you need a sticker.” A moment later she handed me one with Bugaboo printed in a curly, girly script. Good thing there were no “i” s in my name, or I was damn sure she would have dotted them with hearts.
“Thanks,” I said as she leaned close to whisper in my ear, smelling of Chanel, vodka, and pomegranate juice.
“You know what ‘Puck’ is, right?”
Well, let’s see….
Option One:
The little black disk hockey players fight over.
Option Two:
That annoying bicycle messenger from Real World: San Francisco.
Option Three:
“As an English major, I’m required by law to respond ‘the head sprite in Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ ” I said, sure she was about to give me another lesson in Digger lore. I was not disappointed.
“The name they give to the tap with the most sexual experience.”
I rolled my eyes. “Well, there’s a no-brainer. George Harrison Prescott probably has more sexual experience than the rest of us combined.”
Angel threw back her head and laughed, giving me a great glimpse of what must have been two-carat sparklers in her ears. Guess the no-metal rule didn’t apply to platinum earring backs. “I think we’re going to get along great, girl.”
Uh-oh. Certainly hadn’t meant to deliver that impression. I moved closer to George. “Hey, what was the deal with the matches earlier?”
“They’re tipped in sulfur,” he responded. “Diggers aren’t supposed to carry sulfur.”
Oh, that’s what they’d meant in the letter. Things a nonsmoker never thinks about. Probably didn’t want to accidentally ignite us in the Firefly Room.
He shrugged. “I was just screwing around with them. But look at you!” He beamed. “A Digger! What do you think?”
I glanced around the library, at the built-in bookshelves stuffed floor to two-story ceiling with leather-bound volumes, at the lead-veined windows overlooking a darkened courtyard. In one corner of the room, Frodo was giving an animated reenactment of his initiation to a knot of new taps, while in another, a group of half a dozen older men stood in stony silence, surveying the room as if grading us. A lone girl sat off to the side, fingering something around her neck.
“I’ll tell you when I know.” I cocked my head in the direction of the girl. “Let’s go say hi to her.”
She stood as we neared. “Hey,” I said. “You new here, too? I’m Bugaboo.”
“Jen—Lucky—Santos. Whatever.” She took my hand, dropping the crucifix she’d been clutching against her throat.
“I’m Puck,” George said, but the girl shot him a withering glance rather than take his proffered hand.
“I know who you are.”
So, his reputation had preceded him. George opened his mouth, but before he could engineer a response, the huge double doors of the library were flung wide and in strode the rest of the Diggers in a five-deep pyramid formation. The most outlandish of their costumes had been traded out for a uniform of simple, black hooded cloaks, but traces of the makeup some had worn in the Inner Temple or the tableaux remained around their hairlines and jaws. I recognized the Devil, Othello, and one of the Puritans. They were followed into the room by another dozen men, all bearing similar remnants from their costumes.
The one I knew as Poe, standing at the apex, lowered his hood and spread his arms wide. “Welcome, Rose & Grave Tap Class Anno Deae 177.”
My Latin was a bit rusty—okay, it was completely deplorable—but did he just say The Year of the Goddess? Everyone began clapping.
“Now that you have all been Initiated into our Brotherhood”—apparently, he hadn’t gotten all his capital letters out during my torture session—“we will spend the rest of the evening teaching you the Secrets of the Tomb and the Ways of our Order.”
“And partying,” added Lancelot.
Poe shot him a glare. “And partying,” he added with reluctance.
“Hear, hear,” Puck said, lifting his glass.
“Will our newest Initiates please step forward and join hands?”
Twelve people threaded their way through the burgeoning crowd to stand before Poe. The Rose & Grave seniors fanned out until there was one standing behind each of us. Lancelot put his hand on my shoulder.
“Three of the taps are absent this evening, owing to the fact that they aren’t currently on this continent.”
I bit my lip. Clearly, nothing short of an ocean would be an acceptable excuse for Poe.
“However, they’ve been Tapped and, through the miracle of modern technology, we might actually be able to witness one going through his own Initiation Rites—Right, Barebones?”
One of the Diggers in the back gave him a thumbs-up. “We’re a go.”
Poe nodded. “And now, to introduce the newest Knights of the Order of Rose & Grave…”
“Angel.” Clarissa stepped up.
“Bond.” Dorian took his place by her side.
“Little Demon.” Odile sauntered over and struck a pose.
“Big Demon.” A center from the Eli basketball team who’d been lurking in the corner with some of the suited alumni came forward.
“Bugaboo.” My turn. I stepped into the forming circle. Lancelot met my eyes and grinned.
“Graverobber.” Another man from the group of silent suits, looking like gold-plated Eurotrash.
“Frodo.” Mr. Young Hollywood practically bounced into place.
“Kismet.” A tall black man stepped up.
“Puck.” George strolled into the circle, hands in pockets.
“Thorndike.” Demetria rolled her eyes at Puck as she joined him.
“Lucky.” Jennifer Santos shuffled in, keeping a safe distance between herself and her nearest neighbor.
“Keyser Soze.” Josh completed the circle, taking Lucky’s and Angel’s hands in his own.
Poe lowered his head, as if in reverence. “Welcome, my brothers…and my first sisters. You have been granted a Sacred Trust. The Knights that stand before me will be legendary in the Annals of the Order, for you are the first to count women amongst your ranks. The five females before us are the only women ever to be Initiated into the Mysteries of Rose & Grave.”
So that explained it. I knew that Rose & Grave didn’t tap women. So, we were the first, huh? It’s about time they caught up to the modern world. I glanced around the circle at the other four. And these are the women they chose. I wondered if there was any rhyme or reason to the choices.
The older man I knew as “Uncle Tony,” now suited, stepped forward. “I would like to commend our departing seniors for having the strength and courage to drag this society into the 21st century. I know your path has not been an easy one, but I applaud your wills. You are truly a class of Brothers to be proud of.” Then he turned away from the hooded knights and toward the circle of taps. “As the presiding Patriarch of the Initiation Ceremony, I am honored to welcome you into our Order. I would like to take this opportunity to remind the ladies in the group that these boys have taken a great risk and a big leap of faith letting you in here. We expect you to be model women…so don’t blow it.”
Some welcome, schmuck! From across the circle, I saw Thorndike roll her eyes. “Go blow yourself,” she mouthed. Ha. Great minds think alike.
As if sensing that things were going downhill, Lancelot piped up. “I think we’ve got the hook up to Sarmast.” He gestured to another Digger, who released a projector screen from the wall, while a third fiddled with his laptop and an overhead projector.
“Behold!” said Poe with a flourish. “The Initiation of Harun Sarmast.”
“Right. Whatever.” Lancelot clicked the projector on.
The picture was grainy, pixellated, but I could make out half a dozen men standing in a drab, corporate, pre-fab conference room lit by yellowish fluorescents. Some were in military uniforms, the rest in suits. They circled around a tall, gangly Middle Eastern young man, clapping and hooting undecipherable, static-filled phrases.
“Where is this?” Soze asked.
“U.S. embassy in Saudi Arabia.”
Soze whistled through his teeth. “Wow! Who’d you have to kill to get that go-ahead?”
Poe was clearly an expert at the deadpan look.
The boy in the picture was blindfolded, and considering the current political climate, the scene would have made me very uncomfortable if I hadn’t noted the enormous, shit-eating grin on his face. I wondered if that was the standard Rose & Grave M.O.—politically incorrect hazing scenes. After all, they’d done the whole “Diggers’ Whore” act on me.
“Sarmast is doing language work for the government this semester. We pulled some major strings at the embassy to tap him before Dragon’s Head could.”
One of the hooded Diggers sniggered. “Their pockets just…aren’t as deep.”
“What about the other two?” I asked.
“They’ve been…secured.”
“I thought you said they were tapped.”
Poe shot me a look like a cobra ready to strike. “I’ve got it covered, Bugaboo.”
“Don’t mind him,” Lancelot said. “He gets sore every time he’s reminded that he’s a mere mortal. Rest assured, if Poe couldn’t track them down, no one else will, either. We’ll get to them first. And you’ll get to be in on the initiations.”
“What if they reject the tap?” I asked, but Lancelot merely blinked at me as if such a predicament was inconceivable.
Poe pulled out a cell phone and began dialing. A moment later, one of the marines on-screen answered.
“Is this real-time streaming?” Lucky asked, joining in on the party at last.
The Digger manning the keyboard smiled and beckoned to her. “Yep. Come take a look.”
Lucky took a place behind the computer, her look of fear replaced with one of rapture. Now I remembered—Jenny Santos, who at the tender age of seventeen developed some amazing software, sold it off, then donated every last cent of her eight-figure proceeds to her church. No wonder Rose & Grave wanted her on their team.
“Okay,” Lancelot said to the man in Saudi Arabia. “Begin.” He passed the phone to Uncle Tony and joined me.
“I knew we’d win her over eventually,” he whispered in my ear, nodding his head at Lucky. “Just had to find the right apple with which to tempt her.”
“Pomegranate.”
“Huh?”
“Didn’t you take the Bible as Literature class?” I asked, pleased I could get back at him for his literary critic crack. “No such thing as apples in the Cradle of Civilization. Closest modern translators can come is that Eve ate a pomegranate. Just like your Persephone.”
Lancelot slipped his arm around my shoulders. “Our Persephone, Bugaboo.”
I frowned. “And then they both got kicked out of Paradise.”
He sighed. “Don’t you get it yet, girl? This is Paradise.”
“Shhh!” said Poe. “They’re starting.”
I turned back to the scene being beamed in from the Cradle of Civilization as Harun Sarmast was presented with his own pomegranate. The sound blipped in and out, but I caught enough to recognize that it was utterly incomprehensible.
“Are they speaking—German?” Angel asked, incredulous. Not surprising to me, though, considering my run-in with the Reaper. Hadn’t Angel been subjected to that tableau as well?
Poe nodded. “Our Saudi contingent is a little old-school.”
“And what are you?” I muttered under my breath. “A freakin’ progressive?”
Lancelot leaned in. “By Digger standards? Hell, yeah. It was all in German prior to the Second Rose & Grave Council.”
I laughed, earning yet another glare from Poe. What a killjoy.
Harun Sarmast proceeded along the path to initiation, and even without the wild costumes and the midnight-sky domed ceiling of the Inner Temple, it looked impressive. The Saudi-based alumni executed their roles with the type of military precision to be expected, considering their professions. Now that I was no longer the object of attention in the room, I could fully appreciate the earnest enthusiasm and joy the knights felt at showing the neophyte the overseas versions of the initiation players and paraphernalia. Even without the trappings of the tomb, the knights all raved about Persephone! Persephone! Persephone! (or at least a photocopy from a mythology book) Connubial Bliss! Connubial Bliss! Connubial Bliss! (crude reproduction) and Uncle Tony (whose Saudi incarnation was not wearing the elaborate rose mask) Cthony Carpathian…oh, bother. I forget the rest.
Every Digger in the room stood transfixed by the scene before us. They mouthed the words of the oaths as Harun took each one, they cheered along with the Saudi knights as he passed every stage of the initiation, they laughed when he spilled his third skull-full of pomegranate juice down the front of his shirt.
And then—here’s the really strange part—something blossomed inside my chest. I know, I know, I’d spent the evening being carried around in a coffin, tricked into thinking I was drowning, forced to drink fruit juice out of human remains, vowing to worship an ancient Greek goddess and to never tell a living soul about the whole shebang, and this was the strange part? But yes, it was. The feeling was akin to an adrenaline rush, but not unlike that first swoop of pleasure when you jump in a hot tub. I watched the faces of the knights, laughed every time Lancelot gave me an encouraging nudge, and even managed to temper somewhat my hostility toward Angel. Now that I was on the inside, Rose & Grave seemed to hold little in common with its formidable and mysterious reputation. Okay, so there were dead bodies (skeletons, at least) in this tomb. So what? They had them in the biology lab as well. And divested of their hoods and freaky-ass makeup, the other knights looked less like a satanic cult and more like a bunch of college kids playing dress-up. Even the tomb itself seemed welcoming from within. The skull sconces were a little unnerving, but the light they cast upon the wood-paneled walls and towering bookshelves was rosy and inviting. I spotted a darling cushioned window seat in one corner, perfect for curling up with a novel. I might be able to get used to this. I might like it a lot. They picked me, out of all the students in the school, to join their ranks. To be one of the first women. This was way cooler than Quill & Ink!
As I watched another knight be brought within the Society of Rose & Grave, I could feel the circle being drawn, and I was inside of it. Camaraderie took over, and—dare I say it?—brotherhood. They became we.
Lucky ran her fingers across the keyboard and suddenly the picture got ten times better. I didn’t even want to know what she’d just hacked to pull it off.
I watched Harun stumble over the oath of fidelity once, say it again with a strange, subtle flicker of his gaze toward something off-camera, and then, with a deep breath, capitulate and say it a third time with such sincerity in his eyes that it shone through even the pixellated, grainy image. Was that what we all looked like at that moment, when we promised to love, honor, and protect the society?
The Saudi Digger playing Uncle Tony lifted a scimitar. “From this moment on, you are no longer Barbarian-So-Called Harun Sarmast. By the order of our Order, I dub thee Tristram Shandy, Knight of Persephone, Order of Rose & Grave.”
Someone off screen struck a drum thrice, once, and twice again.
And from deep inside it welled up, and all together, we shouted, “DIGGERS!”
What is there to say about the rest of the evening? What salacious, luxurious details can I confess? Should I reveal how we were herded into a fleet of white stretch SUVs and driven to a Connecticut country mansion (belonging to one of the alums, or “patriarchs”)? How we drank champagne at midnight and feasted on broiled lobster at 2 A.M.? Even I was shocked that they had a chef up at three in the morning to caramelize the tops of the crème brûlée we had for dessert.
In between all of this, we had a crash course on the inner workings of the society, and enough history lessons to qualify for half a credit. The lore of Rose & Grave stretched back almost two centuries. It’s not particularly exciting (and it didn’t help that we were all exhausted and tipsy). Seems this kid Russell Tobias got into a tizzy over not being invited to join Phi Beta Kappa, huffed off to Germany, met some Masonic or Templarian, or whatever kind of brotherhood folks, and got it into his head that, like the founder of every other Eli institution, including the university itself (which was started by a bunch of folks displeased with how they were running things at 17th century Harvard), if they wouldn’t let him play in their club, he’d just start his own. So he did, and because he came from this ridiculously rich family with their fingers in every Victorian moneymaking scheme there was—agriculture, import-exports, early industry (here’s where Soze leaned over and whispered, “Drugs”)—he was able to devote a big chunk of change to his new little boys’ club, and Rose & Grave was born, as was the Tobias Trust Association. The Tobias Trust Association (or TTA, as Poe proceeded to refer to it) is the closest thing to a ruling body that Rose & Grave has. It’s presided over by a board voted in by the living members, and all monetary and other requests made by the seniors who comprise the active campus body of Rose & Grave have to be approved by this board of trustees.
“Like what?” Angel asked around a mouthful of champagne.
Poe exchanged careful looks with Lancelot. “Funding. Changes to the, um, bylaws.”
Lancelot shrugged. “We had to do some art restoration work last year, and we had to get permission to pay for that.”
One of the other knights cracked up. “Yeah. ‘Art restoration.’ You put a football through an oil painting, Lance.”
He blushed and ducked his head.
All of the early 19th century brothers were similarly well heeled, and the Tobias Trust grew in wealth. They invested in a chunk of prime campus real estate, built themselves a massive stone tomb, and filled it with a wealth of antiques, artwork, curiosities, and college knickknacks crooked from every other organization at Eli.
Aside from the property on High Street, the Tobias Trust (a tax-free non-profit, apparently) owned a lovely little set of suites at the Eli Club in midtown Manhattan and a private island down south, where the members went on retreats.
“How much is the trust worth?” Soze asked. I was quickly learning that Josh could always be counted on to get to the meat of any equation.
Poe quoted a number teetering on eight figures.
Personally? I was impressed, but a quick glance around the room showed a mixed bag of reactions. Angel looked like her last sip of champagne had gone to vinegar, and Soze appeared to be biting the inside of his cheek.
“Is that not…enough?” Lucky asked, speaking up for the first time. Small wonder. Her similarly large income had probably paid for a fleet of churches. But it most likely didn’t equal Angel’s trust fund.
Poe backpedaled. “Our actual operating budget’s pretty large, so the cash value of the trust itself is not indicative—”
“We’ve got plenty of money,” a patriarch interrupted, as if the discussion was closed.
I raised my eyebrows at him. “Are we still on a need-to-know basis?” I asked. “Even now that we’ve been initiated? Secrets within secrets?”
“Wrapped in riddles buried in enigmas, babe,” Lancelot added, lifting his champagne glass in an impromptu toast.
“Look, Ms. Haskel—” the patriarch said, then bit his lip suddenly, his reproach forgotten. He dug into his pocket, pulled out his wallet, and handed two dollars to Poe.
“Barbarian names,” Poe explained as he stuffed the money into the pocket of his robe. “Penalties go into our personal till.”
“Two down, nine million to go,” Soze said.
The point of this whole barbarian business was to separate our society lives from everything else. Inside the tomb and during official society events outside the tomb (like our lessons in the mansion), we used society names for each other, and society terms for various objects and events. We swore by Persephone rather than our professed religious figures. Time even ran differently; the Digger clocks were set five minutes ahead of the outside world and Diggers counted years from the time of the society’s inception. Anything that happened in the normal world, even if it happened to society members, was referred to as “barbarian matters.”
The party broke up soon afterward (and without any further elucidation on our financial standing, much to the new taps’ chagrin), and we followed the seniors into the atrium, where there was an indoor swimming pool—a real one this time. I trailed along at a safe distance and watched them strip to their skivvies and splash around in the heated water. Mist rose from the surface and swirled toward the glass ceiling, and their shrieks and shouts echoed off the stone walls. My brothers, screaming their heads off in see-through BVDs and—oh, Lord, Clarissa!—lacy white thongs.
I collapsed on a cushioned lounge chair and poured myself another glass of champagne from the near-empty bottle of Veuve Cliquot I’d been toting around. My mind could not absorb the events of this evening. The crazy initiation, the new class of taps, the tour of the tomb, the history, the songs, the protocol—it was like cramming for a history exam and a lab practical all at once. There was no way I’d remember all the formulas, and they’d already outlawed crib sheets. There had been dozens of secret passwords and combinations and hiding places and handshakes—yes, we learned a secret handshake, too, can you believe it?
This is how it goes:
OFFICIAL ROSE & GRAVE SECRET HANDSHAKE
Step One: Giver extends hand as if giving a regular handshake, but before clutching, tucks index finger underneath and presses it against the other guy’s palm. That’s how you tell them you are in.
Step Two: Receiver taps thrice, once, and twice on the giver’s ring, middle, and index finger knuckles, respectively. That’s how you make sure you’ve separated a Rose & Grave member from some other organization that also uses the palm-tickle trick.
Apparently, it’s derived from the Templars, or the Masons, or someone, and so a lot of other secret societies do similar things.
“Everyone copies us,” Lancelot had said with his signature grin.
“Why don’t you just do the part that’s specifically Rose & Grave?” I had asked, and immediately regretted it, as I saw the other taps’ eyes raise heavenward. Every time I opened my mouth, it seemed, I got myself in trouble.
Only Lancelot seemed immune to the annoyance. “Because, Bugaboo, some of these guys are eighty, and you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”
“We’ve been using the shake for centuries,” another Digger explained. “And we aren’t about to change just because some idiots caught on and decided to copy.”
I leaned back in my chair and practiced the secret handshake on myself, doing my best to make it look as subtle and unobtrusive as possible, so that nosy onlookers wouldn’t notice all the fancy fingerwork. It was trickier than it looked, especially given the fact that one of my hands was upside down.
Maybe there was someone else around here to practice with. I looked up, and sure enough, Jenny Santos was sitting by herself again, watching the swimmers with a mixture of amusement and confusion on her face. She was the only one who hadn’t been drinking tonight. In fact, of all the taps, she’d been acting the most aloof. Maybe it was time to break the ice.
“Don’t you like swimming, either?” I asked, sitting down on the end of her chaise lounge.
She snapped out of her reverie. “I love it. But I’m not taking my clothes off.”
I checked out the various swimmers. And their underpants. Good point. “Want to try the secret handshake?”
I stuck out my hand and she proceeded to do the handshake with such ease and casual skill that my mouth dropped open. “Wow, how did you do that? Did you already know it?”
Jenny shrugged. “No.”
Maybe it was a computer dork thing. Like she was so skillful at manipulating the keyboard, flitting her way around the finger work of a secret handshake was no problem. I felt around for another conversation topic, because it didn’t seem like Jennifer here was going to introduce any. “So I hear you’re a big-time computer genius. What did you invent?”
“It’s complicated.”
“I’m a smart girl. Try me.” At least try with more than two words, honey.
She sighed, loudly, as if she was tired of explaining it. “I wrote the kernel for a desktop search program that avoids the repeating context search polling thread queries that invalidate the translation lookaside buffers and avoids the bogdown of CPU resources. It got picked up by a software company, and they integrated it into their new operating system.”
Okay, maybe I’m not that smart. But I’m sure I could understand the monetary part. “And they paid you a pile of money for it?”
“Not exactly. They didn’t know how much they would like it until they started using it, so they made the mistake of paying me by commission instead of buying the program outright.”
“That’s awesome! So now you get a commission for every copy of their new operating system?”
“Yep.”
“Which software company was it?”
“One of the big ones.”
By this point, I was getting a little annoyed by her coy attitude. “We’re Diggers now. We shouldn’t have secrets.”
Jenny looked at me, eyebrows raised. “Is that what you think? The Brotherhood of Death has many secrets, Amy. We’ve only just scratched the surface.” She reached up to caress the cross around her neck. “Though, to tell you the truth, I think I was expecting something more”—she gestured weakly at the swimmers—“devious.”
I thought about what Malcolm had said about finding the right apple with which to tempt Jenny. Maybe she wasn’t as tempted as they thought. I opened my mouth to ask her more about this “Brotherhood of Death” (because I’d certainly never heard the Diggers called that), when a bunch of soaking-wet Diggers descended upon us, trying to drag us to our feet.
“Come on!” they screamed, laughing, lifting Jenny in the air.
“Wait! Wait!” she yelled, giggling. “I have to get my BlackBerry off!” A few moments later, sans BlackBerry, they tossed her in the pool. She surfaced, splashing water on her captors and smiling so broadly, it was as if I’d just been talking to a different girl.
“You’re next!” Thorndike yelled, grabbing my arm.
“No, wait!” I said, as the girl tugged me to my feet. “I don’t swim.”
She let go, and I fell back on the chaise. “At all?”
“Oh, please!” Josh said, grabbing my other arm. “She just doesn’t want to get her clothes wet. Get her!”
Crap! Not again!
“Guys,” said Malcolm. “Forget it. She’s already had a dunk tonight.” He put his hand on my shoulder and everyone let go. This is the effect that Malcolm Cabot has on people. They just listen to him.
“My hero,” I said.
He shrugged. “Do me instead,” he offered to the mob as he peeled off his shirt. A moment later, they picked him up and marched him to the water’s edge. He didn’t fight it, probably thinking that, if anything, it was good practice for when our class had to tap our own group next year.
I wondered how they went about choosing the class. High achievers, obviously—people like Josh, Jennifer, Demetria, and Harun didn’t come around every day. Nothing I’ve ever done could hold a candle to those guys. From what I’d heard in the library, it was clear to me that George Harrison Prescott was a legacy (his daddy dragging him in, etc.), and I’d bet just about anything that Clarissa was, too. Mr. Cuthbert had just looked like the kind of guy who’d be in Rose & Grave. I didn’t know the rest of them that well, but I bet their C.V.s were every bit as impressive from both a merit-based and a genetic perspective. And they all knew it. Except me.
Why aren’t you in Quill & Ink?
Why indeed?
I started practicing the handshake on myself again. A few droplets of water dripped on my elbow. I looked up. Malcolm stood over me. His artfully tossed hair was slicked back from his face, and water dripped down his Abercrombie & Fitch abs and ran in rivulets from the legs of his clingy, soaked boxer shorts. He must have taken off his pants when I wasn’t looking. Shame. Malcolm had clearly gotten into the poolside fun, though from what I could tell, Jenny was splashing around still hampered by her cargo pants and a white T-shirt that, sorry, girlfriend, ain’t hiding nothing.
“You’re kind of in my light,” I said, squinting up at him.
“You really don’t swim, do you?”
Malcolm Cabot was incredibly hot. And he’d been paying me a lot of attention all night. At first, I’d just been writing it off to his desire to make the new initiate feel welcome—especially after the way that Poe guy had treated me. But even after it was clear that I’d gotten over it and was more than ready to party, he stuck close. Uh-oh. Did Brandon have competition? If so, he’d better watch out—Malcolm was way out of his league.
(Oh my God, did I just think that? I’m such a bitch! Like it matters! How could I have entertained such a petty, worthless, small-minded thought? Was I already turning into a snob; I was in a secret society, therefore I was better than someone who wasn’t? Was Lydia right? And to think it about Brandon, too—Brandon, who was so sweet to me, so good. I liked him. A lot. I wasn’t in love with him, but…)
Actually, truth be told, Malcolm was way out of my league, too. So the idea that he was interested just didn’t compute, even in my champagne-addled mind.
But, considering the above addling, I didn’t really care if it made sense. He was here, wet and nearly naked.
“No, I really don’t swim.”
“Why?”
I winked at him. “It’s a secret. I can still have secrets from you, can’t I, Lance?”
He sat down beside me. “It’s frowned upon, but technically, yes. Come on, Bugaboo, tell me.” He grabbed my thigh and jiggled it as if to shake the truth from me.
I blinked in what I hoped was a seductive manner, but the movement of my eyelids seemed to take much longer than strictly necessary. Note to self: When it looks like you might get the chance to hook up with a hot senior, go light on the bubbly. Then again, this probably wasn’t all champagne knocking me for a loop. After all, it was near 5 A.M., and I’d never been good with all-nighters.
And I was sitting here, outclassed by an Adonis in a pair of wet boxer shorts.
Of course, “outclassed” had basically been the theme of the evening, hadn’t it? I was wracking my Eli-educated brain trying to figure out where I fit in this world. Even the Christian computer nerd seemed a more appropriate ingredient.
“Please?” He batted his blond eyelashes at me. “I’ll tell you a secret, too.”
“Is it a big one?”
He smiled and leaned in. “The biggest.”