I hereby confess:
Paranoia loves company.
I’ll be the first to cop to a certain affinity for overthinking. Most of the time, it’s served me well. (Cf. academic success culminating in admittance to and continuing high GPA at Eli University.) Occasionally, it’s gotten me into trouble. (Cf. habit of constantly attributing mysterious occurrences to the shady machinations of misogynist Rose & Grave patriarchs. But sometimes, it really is their fault. After all, they tried to ruin my life last semester, so a little healthy wariness isn’t a bad thing.)
But if every girl in the club got a mysterious e-mail, I sat up and took notice. When the club convened before the straggler initiation a few days later, we discussed the bizarre rhyming e-mails and what they could mean. Each Diggirl had received a two-line message sent from her regular Eli account to her Digger-mail; the time stamps showed each e-mail had been sent two minutes apart. When assembled by order of the time stamps, the couplets formed the following ditty:
YOU THINK ITS OVER BUT ITS NOT
FROM WITHIN DOTH PERSEPHONE ROT
THEY WONT LOSE THAT FOR WHICH THEY FOUGHT
PRETTY SOON THEYLL SNATCH YOUR SLOT
TO SEE WHAT KIND OF DOOM YOUVE BROUGHT
CUT THROUGH THE WEB IN WHICH YOURE CAUGHT
LEARN OF THE THIEF WHO CAN BE BOUGHT
FOR THEY HAVE FOUND YOUR ONE WEAK SPOT
BEWARE OF POISON IN YOUR DRAUGHT
OR IGNOBLE DEATH SHALL BE YOUR LOT[2]
“What do you think?” Thorndike asked, after pasting the lines together on her laptop.
“That whoever it is needs to brush up on diction,” I said. “‘Draught’ is pronounced like ‘draft.’ Totally wrecks the rhyme scheme. And don’t get me started on the lack of punctuation.”
“Plus,” Lil’ Demon added, pointing at line four, “this part sounds kind of dirty.”
Thorndike slapped Lil’ Demon’s hand away from the screen. “Can you get sex off your mind for one second?”
Lil’ Demon pursed her full lips and winked saucily down at Thorndike. “Oh, come on, you thought it, too. Snatch? Please.”
Lucky blushed. “Moving on, what do we think it means?” For the moment, at least, she’d dropped her derision in favor of helpful discourse.
“Haven’t the foggiest,” Angel said. She turned to me. “Really? Draft?”
I nodded. “Who could have sent this? It had to be another Digger, right? Someone who knows our society names and e-mail addresses?”
“Great,” Clarissa said. “That narrows it down to about 700 living patriarchs.”
“Well, probably fewer than that who know anything about computers,” Jenny said. “I wouldn’t credit this to anyone older than D150 or so. If it even is a Digger,” she added under her breath.
“Or it could be a patriarch willing to pay off some geek in the IT department,” I said. “Honestly? It could be anyone.”
It was a sobering thought, but Lil’ Demon was rarely one for sober. “All right, ladies. Let’s discuss this with the guys after the initiation. Costumes, places, let’s get moving.”
Little did we know that, post-ceremony, a badly written poem would be the last thing on any of our minds.
The tomb kitchen on the lower level had been converted into a makeup trailer, which had rendered our aged caretaker, Hale, a quivering mess. “Hollywood types invading the tomb,” he was muttering from his place outside the entrance to the kitchen. “Never would have stood for it in the good old days.”
“There, there, Hale,” I said, checking out my costume in the ancient, diamond-dust mirror hanging floor to ceiling at the dead end of the downstairs hall. The Rose & Grave tomb housed the coolest stuff. The mirror’s gorgeous carved wood frame featured various scenes from the tale of Persephone and was crowned at the top with a giant carving of a rose. Its reflection was a bit on the wavy side, but that was to be expected in such an antique. Almost a shame they kept it down here in the basement.
“They’ll be gone in an hour or so,” I said. “And plus, it’s not like they’re seeing anything important, just hanging in the kitch—” He glared at me from under his bushy gray eyebrows and I shut my lip. Probably wouldn’t do to characterize our caretaker’s main domain as the least important part of the tomb. Hale took extraordinary pride in being the Diggers’ caretaker, as his father had been before him. No one in the society knew who we would hire after he succumbed to the ravages of age, since Hale had no kids and the position wasn’t exactly one we wanted to advertise for on Craigslist.
“Oh, Hale,” I said quickly, walking toward him and putting my hand on his shoulder in a gesture of comfort. “I meant to mention this to you: Apparently Lancelot, D176, got a huge catch of halibut in Alaska. He’s sending some down for our deep freeze.”
“You heard from him?” asked a voice behind me, and I turned to find myself face-to-face with Death.
Or Poe, in Grim Reaper makeup. Same diff, as far as I was concerned. Damn, where had he come from? He’s an Olympic-class lurker, this one.
“Yeah, the other day,” I said.
Poe frowned (or maybe it was just the spirit gum) and jammed his hand in his pockets. “Oh. How’s he doing?”
Poe hadn’t heard from him? “Good. He, um, told me to say hi.” Actually, that wasn’t what Malcolm had written at all, but I have my limits when it comes to Poe. After all, four short months ago, the guy standing before me had stuck me in a plywood coffin and threatened to dump me in a pool. (I don’t swim.) No love lost around here.
“He owes me an e-mail.” Now Poe crossed his arms over his chest. “So, how was your summer?”
“Good,” I said. “I was in D.C.”
“Yeah. Working for that patriarch.”
Oops, bad topic. Poe had lost his own patriarch-bestowed internship at the White House after (eventually and reluctantly) siding with me and the other active Diggers in our battle last spring. I wasn’t sure what he’d been up to this summer. (Though whatever it was, judging from his arms, he’d gotten a tan. Looked good on him, actually.)
“So, how’s…law school?” Last I heard, Poe had been scheduled to start as a 1L at Eli Law this fall, which meant this campus was stuck with him for three more years. Bummer.
“Fine.”
The conversation was going swimmingly. We stood in silence for a second or so, and then Poe, in a misguided attempt to jump-start the exchange, said, “Lil’ Demon asked me to play the Reaper tonight. Guess she couldn’t find anyone in the current class she liked enough to take on the role.”
Yeah, because insulting my club would definitely warm me up. “Or maybe she thought no one else had the requisite air of depression and desperation.” I smiled. “Planning on drowning anyone this evening?”
He matched my grim smile, and this time it wasn’t the makeup. “Only if you get close enough, Bugaboo.”
Asshole. I opened my mouth to respond, but Angel interrupted me. “Bugaboo, your turn in the chair,” she called, and I shot Poe one last, withering glare and departed.
“Who was that?” she asked me as the makeup artist started in with the airbrush. “I couldn’t tell under the goop.”
“Poe. Remember?”
She looked back at him. “Really? Jeez, what did he do over the summer? Take up bodybuilding?”
“Don’t know, don’t care. He should have spent the time getting a personality.”
“He’s got a personality,” Thorndike interrupted from the chair next to mine. Her artist gave her a warning glance and gestured dangerously with the palette knife. “It’s just not a pleasant one.”
The girls all laughed, and I noted Poe shrugging into his robe in the opposite corner of the kitchen, back turned. He hunched his shoulders at the sound. Oh, damn.
Whatever, Amy. He’s a jerk. Save your sympathy for someone else.
Lucky dropped by as I was tying the hood on my robe. “Hey, Bugaboo, I already talked to Soze, but I wanted to tell you that my—um, friend…he didn’t mean what he said at the bazaar. It just came out wrong.” She looked down at her hands. “He sometimes doesn’t realize how it sounds. I hope you don’t think I—”
I put my hand over hers, my earlier annoyance for her lack of commitment vanishing. “Of course I don’t. You’re one of us. I trust you. And we can talk about it more if you want.” I checked the swiftly emptying kitchen. “After the initiation.” She was always so much friendlier inside the tomb than when I saw her in the barbarian world. Better take advantage of it while I could.
Half an hour later, we were at “places,” waiting for the show to start, which meant I was back to crouching in a dusty corner with my bag o’ glitter, wishing I’d done more thigh workouts at the gym.
“Yo, ’boo,” Puck whispered across the way. “See anything yet?” He’d had been given the role of Quetzalcoatl in the festivities, proving perhaps that Lil’ Demon’s true talent lay in casting choices, because the shirtless-loincloth outfit was an excellent look for the boy. Feathered headdress, scale makeup, and all.
“No,” I whispered back.
“Good.” He slithered over to my side of the hallway (and I say that literally, as those FX guys had somehow applied a long tail to his outfit—which was, no, still not a turnoff) and slid down the wall next to me, crossing his legs beneath him. I spotted gym shorts beneath the loincloth. Damn. “About last night—”
Oh, no, please don’t ask about Brandon! “Yeah?”
“I wanted to apologize.”
Huh?
“For my mom. She’s not usually like that.” He fiddled with some of the beading on his ceremonial bracelets.
“Oh. That’s okay.” I cocked my head to one side. Was that the chanting in the Firefly Room starting up?
“We got some news.” He took a deep breath. “My dad’s pregnant. I mean, his wife. They’re having a baby. And let’s just say he’s known for a lot longer than he’s been acting like it where my mom’s concerned.”
I couldn’t even work up a token expression of surprise. Disdain, however, was available in surplus.
“Romantic, huh?” Puck said.
“Depends on your definition of romance.”
“I try not to have one.” He leaned into me, and let his voice drop to a low, husky timbre. “I find it’s better for everyone involved if I keep myself open to…new interpretations.”
“How magnanimous,” I said. “And kind of kinky.” Which would have sounded a lot smoother if my hands hadn’t gotten all clammy at the thought and dropped the bag of phosphorescent dust.
He looked down at the glitter scattered across the floor, then at me. “Slick move, Amy.”
“Ooh, best stick with ’boo, at least in the tomb. That will be two dollars.”
“Stupid fines,” he whispered against my hood.
I shifted my face ever so slightly toward his. “Tell you what, I’ll say ‘George’ and then we’ll be even.” But then neither of us said much of anything, what with the fact that our mouths were busy and all.
Now, you’d think cold tomb floors are not the most pleasant place to lie, but if you’ve got George Harrison Prescott—I mean, Puck—on top of you, you’d be wrong. Even with the random jabs and pokes from the quills on his costume, I was chock full of pleasure. Every time I kiss him (which has been twice now) I’m struck by the puerile nature of all the silly games men and women play. Why the coy drama? I want him and he wants me; who needs subtext?
Everything was going along beautifully in the first base department, and we were blithely and completely irresponsibly (considering the timing) headed to second when the explosion happened.
We froze at the din, and stared at each other as the floor of the tomb shuddered beneath us. Puck bit his lip. “’Boo, your face—”
“Get up,” I said, yanking my robe out from underneath him. “Get up now!”
Together, we rushed toward the balcony and looked down to see billows of smoke emanating from the Firefly Room. Several figures stumbled out, coughing, and Keyser Soze rushed down the hall, wielding a fire extinguisher. “Outta my way! Outta my way, folks! The last thing we need is the fire department up in here.”
“What happened?” Puck shouted down as we rounded the stairs. From what little I could see of the room, there appeared to be no raging inferno inside, but that had been one hell of a bang.
“Pyrotech issue,” Lil’ Demon gasped. “It’s okay, it’s okay. The grips got it out.”
“Bugaboo,” Thorndike said, pointing her pitchfork at me. “What’s all over your face?”
“Whatever it is,” Lucky said, waving her hand around to clear the smoke out of the air, “it’s the same stuff on Puck’s chest.”
I looked at Puck, whose body was smeared all over with phosphorescent dust. It was streaked on my robe and my hands as well, an obvious testament to my backstage activities.
Thorndike raised an eyebrow in my direction, and her disapproving expression was helped enormously by her devil costume. Playa, she mouthed in warning.
“Move it, girly,” Hale cried, shoving Thorndike aside to join Soze on extinguisher duty.
“Dear Lord,” came a voice through the haze. “What kind of show are you people running here?” I saw a curly head emerge from the smoky darkness. “I’d never expect the Diggers to be so sloppy!” Mara Taserati surveyed Lucky, Lil’ Demon, Thorndike, and me clustered at the foot of the stairs. “So the rumors are true,” she said.
Um, what did she think? She was a girl, too.
“Apparently they’re all true,” said Angel, joining us and crossing her arms over her chest. The rubber asp forming the bulk of her Cleopatra costume slipped down one shoulder, exposing more than just her tattoo.
Soze clapped his hands. “Okay, guys. Fire’s out. Let’s go back now.”
Mara snorted inelegantly. “Right, more endangering of my life? I’m not up for that, thanks.”
“I’m with her,” said a boy I assumed must be Howard First, another straggler. “I don’t know if I want to be a part of this until you guys get your acts together.”
The Grim Reaper glided up and placed hands on both of their shoulders. “The Play is in progress, Neophytes. Come this way.” Figures Poe would be able to stay in character throughout the crisis.
But Howard shook him off. “Forget it, dude. I have strict standards when it comes to the protection of my body.”
“Is that what you were doing in that Colombian jungle last spring?” Thorndike asked. “Adhering to your strict standards?”
“Actually, no,” he replied. “I was inoculating children.” And with that bit of rampant holier-than-thou-ism, he made a beeline for the door.
Poe raised his eyebrows at me. Okay, so the scene did remind me a lot of what I’d done after he’d hit me with the water guns at my own initiation, but how was I supposed to defend the society in this case? Poe had been tricking me with super-soakers. I don’t think that explosion was a trick.
Here goes nothing. “Howard, wait!” I cried, running forward. “Look, don’t go. It’s just part of the initiation game—all of it. You should have seen the crap they pulled with me in April. They threatened to drown me, they threatened to rape me—”
“And this somehow endeared them to you?” he asked.
“Well, no, not as such but—”
“Look—uh, Glow Girl, or whatever part you’re supposed to be playing—this isn’t really my type of gig, okay?”
“Then why did you accept the tap?”
“Jungle fever?” he suggested.
Well, Kurtz, welcome to a whole new heart of darkness. “Look, I didn’t think it was my thing, either.” And my enemies would agree with that. “But it’s been—”
“Get out while you still can, man,” interrupted Graverobber. “Before any vows are taken. I wish I had. These cats don’t have the same cachet they used to.” He leaned against the wall. “Word is, the endowment’s drying up as well.”
Like Mr. Greek-shipping-heir Graverobber needed any extra dough! “Back off,” I hissed. I turned to Howard. “As you can see, we’d really love some new blood in the brotherhood.”
“As you can see,” Graverobber echoed, “the word ‘brotherhood’ is a bit of a misnomer.”
“Both literally and figuratively. You two are at each other’s throats.” Howard shook his head. “I don’t have time for this drama. I’ve got MCATs to study for.” And with that, he turned and walked out the front door.
Everyone stood and stared with their mouths open. I turned to Poe. “What do we do now?”
“Same thing I did last year. Go beg.”
“Me? I didn’t even start the fire. Where’s his big sib?” Weren’t there any other patriarchs on campus, or were we only blessed with this creep?
“Cutting up cadavers at Berkeley,” Poe said flatly. “Oaths of loyalty clearly don’t cross the Continental Divide.”
Oh, for Persephone’s sake! I grabbed Graverobber’s arm and yanked him after me in pursuit of our stray straggler.
“Howard!” I cried, as we sprinted down the steps and through the (open) gate. “Come back! Let’s talk about this.”
A bunch of freshmen at High Street Gate gave us weird looks, so Nikolos grabbed Howard’s elbow and pulled him into the alley next to the tomb leading to the sculpture garden. Once we were well hidden by building shadow and the drooping branches of a willow, I pushed back my hood. “Look here,” I said. “You accepted the tap. We put you on the list we sent out to all the patriarchs. You’re in. How can you go back on it now?”
“That was April.” He shrugged. “I’ve had a long summer to think it over, and with all of my commitments right now, I don’t know how much I can devote to you people.”
But he hadn’t decided that until he’d gotten inside and took a good look at us. Why did I have to be the one begging this jerk to come back? I didn’t care how many third-world children he’d inoculated.
I elbowed Nikolos, and he sighed, but rallied. “Your commitments? You’re the one senior on campus who’s still involved in activities? Can you not spare a little time for us? We will definitely make it worth your while.”
Howard chuckled. “A little? You’re a senior, right? Totally new to all of this. You don’t know how much time we’re talking about.” He began ticking things off on his fingers. “I’m a freshmen counselor, I’m doing my biochem thesis, I’m on the board at the Jewish Students Center, and I volunteer at a lab downtown a few nights a week. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until I was inside that tomb that I realized how much more those things matter to me than a bunch of strangers in weird costumes.”
“We don’t always wear the costumes,” I pointed out, to little avail. We wouldn’t always be strangers, either.
“Look, sweetheart, I know the guy who was grooming me to fill his spot in Rose & Grave, and he was a mess last year. Something happened where he almost lost his place in school…. I didn’t get the details.”
“So you think you’ll avoid that by denying us?” Nikolos asked.
“Getting out before I get in too deep sounds good to me,” Howard replied. “These meetings of yours are going to start taking up a couple nights a week—all night long. Wait and see. And then, when you’re struggling to finish your thesis on time, ask yourself if it was worth it. I’ll be seeing you. Or,” he added, giving my black robe the up-down, “maybe not.”
And then he was gone. I rubbed my temples in frustration, then glanced in dismay at my glitter-covered hands. Great. More mess to deal with. “Now what?” I turned to Nikolos. “Should we keep following him?”
Nikolos pulled at the tie on his robe and slipped it off his shoulders. “I’m not going to do it in this outfit,” he said. “I feel somewhat responsible. I probably shouldn’t have said those things to him back at the tomb. Let me try to catch him and make this right.”
I nodded, glad to see Nikolos was willing to shoulder some of the responsibility. Still, I didn’t have much hope. I watched him take off after our straggler, though he still hadn’t caught up by the time they turned the corner off of High Street and onto Elm.
Stunned, dejected, and yeah, a little concerned Howard First might actually be onto something, I returned to the tomb, to find Mara holding court.
“Don’t you find it disheartening?” she was asking Poe. “So many of our brotherhoods have fallen by the wayside, been gobbled up by the PC police. If you ask me, it’s these newfangled organizations that are truly the elitist ones. For all that students rail against the secret societies, who is really the one propagating racist doctrine on our campus?”
“Your newspaper?” Thorndike suggested.
“The administration is more intent on founding yet another alliance of people based on the color of their skin and cultural heritage—the Southeast Asian Alliance, the Muslim Student Alliance, the Northwestern Nepalese Students’ Union—rather than on what brought us all here in the first place, intellectual meritocracy! A fervent desire to drink from the fountain of knowledge.”
“You know, that’s an interesting point,” Soze said.
Lil’ Demon frowned. “Isn’t it the fountain of youth and the lamp of knowledge?”
Lucky shrugged. “That sounds about right. At least, there’s a lamp on the seal of my Eli throw blanket.”
Mara droned on. “There’s such a lack of respect for the traditions of this noble institution.”
“Rose & Grave?” I whispered to Angel.
“No, I think she’s still talking about Eli as a whole.”
“Well, there’s plenty of respect-lacking going on for Rose & Grave right now.” I hung my head. “I think we lost Howard.” All eyes turned in my direction. “Graverobber is still working on him but—”
“Because he’s such a good advocate,” scoffed Thorndike.
“He’s the only person who volunteered,” I argued.
Soze raised his hands. “Hey, I was on extinguisher duty.”
“So what do we do now?” I asked. “If we really lost a straggler. If he chooses the ‘new’ organizations—as our neophyte here so carefully elucidated—over us.”
Mara waved her hand in the air. “Excuse me, miss? I’m not a neophyte. They just initiated me. I’m Juno now.”
I looked at Poe. “Come on. You’re the one who knows all the policies and procedures of this outfit. Tell us what the game plan is.”
But Poe just laughed. “Right, because after that spectacular display of spitting all over my advice last spring, I’m going to completely relinquish all rights to say ‘I told you so’.” He pulled off his robe, and began to peel the Death’s-head makeup from his face. “You guys made this bed; I hope you like lying in it.”
Quoth Juno: “Where’s the party? There’s supposed to be a party after this, right?”
Quoth Lucky: “From within doth Persephone rot.”
Quoth the Middle-Eastern-guy-I-later-recognized-as-Harun-Sarmast-our-last-straggler as he stuck his head over the balcony: “Um, guys? I’ve been waiting up here with my blindfold on for a while. Anything wrong?”
All [sic], naturally.