Secret Society (21 page)

T
he ride in the semi took eight hours, including a meal at a truck stop off Interstate 95. The driver hadn't been terribly chatty, but had agreed to drop Patch off outside Portland.

After reviewing the materials he had intercepted, Patch decided he needed to find a way into the retreat. He kept listening in on the Bell household's phone calls and was finally able to get a location, something the packet didn't specify: a place called Isis Island, off the coast of Maine. He would pack what he could, bringing his video camera, warm clothes, and as much money as he had.

The useful details he had overheard were scant; it was mostly information about presentations and meetings and a ceremony on the last night.

He had kept listening in until the day before Christmas, when suddenly the connection went dead.

Patch knew he had no choice but to go. He had to find out what had happened to Nick, what had happened to Jared Willson and Alejandro Calleja, what had happened to his mother.

And he had to get more material for his show. Simone had made that much clear.

Patch had spent one night in a fleabag motel off the interstate outside Portland, and then he had managed to hitch another ride with a couple who were driving up the coast to visit their family. They agreed to drop Patch off at the ferry landing that went out to the islands.

The couple was already driving away by the time Patch was able fully to comprehend the schedule that was posted on the harbor master's announcement board; it was totally different from the information he had found online. A ferry ran to Caribou Island, which was five miles away from Isis, but no ferries ran directly to Isis. In the winter months, the service to Caribou Island was limited, operating only twice weekly.

Patch estimated that the next ferry would run—to the wrong island—three days from now.

He trudged the mile back to town, dejected and annoyed with himself for believing it would be this easy to get into the retreat. It was freezing out, he was hungry, and his fingers were numb. There was a diner, so he decided to grab a sand
wich and some coffee.

It was one of those old-fashioned diners in a former railroad car, where all the booths are really close to one another. A few tables down from Patch, a group of guys was eating burgers and talking fishing.

Patch couldn't help eavesdropping; he gathered that they were going to take a lobster boat out. When he went to the restroom, he passed their table, trying to figure out a way to get their attention without being intrusive. While washing his hands, he looked at himself in the mirror. A day earlier, before leaving the apartment, he had cut off almost all his hair with a pair of clippers, leaving himself with a classic crew cut. He had put a Band-Aid over the tattoo of the ankh so it wouldn't be visible. After his second transformation in two weeks, he hoped no one on Isis Island would recognize him—assuming he ever made it there.

On the way back to his table, he decided to ask the guys where they were going. He figured he had nothing to lose.

“Why you want to know, kid?” the oldest man said to him.

“I—um, I'm looking to get to an island.” He perched himself on the counter stool that was across from their booth. “It's nearby. Do you know it? Isis Island.”

The four of them burst out laughing. There were two older guys, probably in their forties, and two younger ones. One of them looked like he was around Patch's age.

“What's so funny?”

“Isis Island—it's like a legend around here. I mean, it exists, but no one ever knows what goes on there. Rich people stuff.”

“So how much would it cost for you to get me there? I know my way around a boat.”

“Oh, do you, now?” The older one laughed again.

The kid who was his age spoke up. “Look, he knows
something.
He wouldn't be out here alone if he didn't.”

“Come on, kid,” the other old guy said. “Sit down with us. Maybe you can buy us lunch.”

T
he morning that they were to leave Manhattan, Lauren packed carefully for the retreat. The instructions had said that most of the events would be casual and that they should plan to dress in layers, as it would be cold. Each person could bring no more than one small suitcase. Lauren couldn't wait for the whole thing to be over.

And to have Alejandro back again.

She had left two messages for his parents, but neither of them had been returned. She didn't know why. Maybe they saw her as an outsider who was prying into their business.

As she was packing, the Chloé bag caught her eye, flung carelessly on a chair. That bag, and everything that came with it, had brought her nothing but trouble. She took it with her, even though it wasn't appropriate to bring to some
scrubby island in Maine.

After she had finished packing, Lauren rode the elevator down. Rory was on duty in the lobby. All month, the doormen had been collecting clothing for a charity drive that was organized by the building.

Lauren handed him the bag, explaining what it was for.

“Such a nice bag, miss—shall I leave a note, saying who it's from? You'll need a receipt, I imagine?”

“No,” Lauren said. “I won't need a receipt at all.”

 

An hour later, the three of them were at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, waiting for the other Society members to arrive. As with many of the other events, each member arrived in a private car. Phoebe noticed how entitled some of the Initiates appeared, stepping out of their cars as if they owned them. Maybe that was part of Society membership, moving from fear into ownership.

The question was, ownership of what?

The jet they were flying on had a creamy leather and bur-lwood interior, and Phoebe wondered if it was owned by the Society. The class of Conscripts joined the group, and the twenty-eight of them took off together. Someone had a flask and started passing it around, and one of the Conscript girls pulled out a silver thermos filled with Manhattans. Thad Johnson was up front asking the pilots all sorts of questions about the plane, and they let him sit in the jump seat. Before long, it was like a rollicking party in the air. Phoebe, Nick, and
Lauren abstained from drinking. Phoebe knew she wanted to stay clear, at least in the beginning. She was determined to keep her guard up until she found out what was going on.

 

Nick wondered why he was supposed to go with the Initiates when his father, mother, brothers, and grandfather were all going to be traveling on their own to Isis Island. He figured that it was part of the bonding experience to arrive there with the others in his year.

When the plane reached the coast of Maine, Nick looked out the window. The islands were stunning, little gems in the dark blue ocean, surrounded by frothing whitecaps that swirled like frosting on a cake. He imagined they would touch down on the mainland and take a ferry over, but was surprised when the plane positioned itself for landing on a small airstrip at the tail end of the island.

After the plane landed, the twenty-eight members stepped onto the tarmac. Most of the ground was covered with snow. Seven hunter-green Land Rovers were waiting for the group, and everyone piled in, four to a vehicle. They drove in strict procession to the Great Cottage.

Nick had heard rumors about the Great Cottage, but he had never imagined it to look like it did. For one thing, it was hardly a cottage at all; it was a large building, three stories of stone and shingle and wood, with turrets and cupola windows cut into the roof. Over its pediment was a winged statue of the
goddess Isis, mounted against the shingles. Pine and maple trees flanked the building on each side, standing guard.

All seven vehicles stopped on the main circle in front of the cottage. At exactly the same moment, each driver opened the car doors, allowing the Conscripts and Initiates to step out.

Waiting in front of the cottage, bundled in furs and topcoats, parkas and ski jackets, were the Elders of the Society, the two hundred of them attending the retreat. It was an overwhelming sight.

As the final Initiate stepped out, a drummer and a Scottish bagpiper in a kilt started playing a regimental march, an official-sounding tune that lasted for a minute as the twenty-eight of them stood wide-eyed in the gravel driveway. When they were finished, a cheer went up from the crowd, applause for the two classes, the Initiates and the Conscripts.

Some of the girls and their mothers started crying at the spectacle of it all.

Nick's family members rushed forward to him, crowding around him, hugging him and cheering. They pulled him and the other members into the Great Cottage's foyer, a vaulted structure with an enormous stag head as its centerpiece, its antlers appropriately garlanded for the holidays, and a grand Christmas tree, nearly twenty feet tall, in the middle of the room. The Great Cottage looked as if it had not changed in a hundred years. Its wide-planked pine floors were covered in worn kilim rugs of varying sizes, there were cozy club chairs by
a walk-in fireplace, and the mantel was covered in conch shells and sailing trophies. Caterers in starched white shirts brought out silver trays of hot chocolate, hot buttered rum, and cider; on tables at each side and on passed trays were tarts and cookies, deviled eggs and bacon-wrapped shrimp. The entire thing was proceeding as if it were a normal cocktail party.

“What about our bags?” Phoebe whispered to Nick.

“I think it's being taken care of,” he said.

“It is beautiful, I will grant them that. God, to think that all this is here, and it's used only a few times a year.” She shook her head. “Bizarre.”

“Phoebe!” Nick turned around to see his mother embracing Phoebe. “Darling, we are so happy that you are here. Don't you look pretty today! The Maine air suits you well. Come meet some of my friends.” Gigi grabbed Phoebe and took her toward a group of women.

“Mom—Phoebe, you don't have to—”

“Nick, I'm fine.” Phoebe smiled. “Don't worry about me. I'll see you a little later, okay?”

 

Lauren and three other girls were taken to their bunk by a valet in a ski parka. With the girls sleeping four to a room, the accommodations were a bit more Spartan than Lauren had imagined, but she didn't mind. While the Elders would stay in the Great Cottage's guest bedrooms, and in nicer accommodations in several outlying buildings, the Initiates
and Conscripts were to stay in simple whitewashed cabins on the south side of the cottage, with multiple bedrooms in each, two bunk beds to a room. A bathroom down each hall was shared, with creaky plumbing and steam heat that rattled when it came on. There were banners on the walls of the bedrooms from various alma maters, left there as mementos from days past: Yale, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton. It could have been charming, like staying overnight in someone's college dorm room or going to summer camp again.

Except that it was the winter, and she had to find out what had happened to her boyfriend. Or sort-of boyfriend. Or whatever Alejandro had been.

That night, Lauren sat with the other Initiates at a casual seafood dinner in the main dining hall, which was a huge whitewashed space off the Great Cottage's foyer. It also had vaulted ceilings and its walls were covered with plaques and medals, symbols of past Society exploits, interspersed with colorful sailing flags, maritime paintings, vintage prints of seashells and coral. She saw Nick's family there, as well as friends of her mother's, people she had known since she was a child. It was all rather giddy, like running into people at an exclusive vacation resort and not realizing you had been planning to be in the same place at the same time.

Lauren looked across the room at Nick and Phoebe and how carefree they seemed. She was happy for them both but couldn't forget that she was alone.

P
atch could barely believe that he had been able to get onto the island. He had started by going aboard with the Walker brothers and their two sons, who were going out lobstering on their boat, as they had for the past three years while their wives got some well-deserved time off between Christmas and New Year's. Patch almost wished he could join them, as it seemed like it would be a lot more fun. The guys played the Doors and Pink Floyd on the boom box they kept belowdecks, and they were particularly proud of the new GPS system they had recently installed. Patch even exchanged email addresses with the two cousins, promising he would look them up if he was ever in Maine again.

But that night, his goal was to get to the island.

While on the boat, Patch had come up with a plan.
According to the Walkers, a lot of local people were employed as part of the catering crew on Isis Island.

The Walkers' boat, the
Naugatuck,
approached the Isis landing. They followed Patch's instructions, seemingly amused at the little charade in which he had asked them to participate.

“Live lobster delivery for Palmer Bell?” said the older Walker brother, as the boat was pulling up against the dock.

A dockworker in a blue windbreaker checked his clipboard. “I'm not showing anything,” he said.

The boat was moored against the side of the pier, the engines idling loudly. The two Walker cousins hoisted Patch up onto the dock, out of the worker's sight. Patch waved a quick good-bye to them before walking carefully toward shore. He could hear the voices in the distance: “You'd better check that list again. I know Mr. Bell wouldn't like it much if he didn't get his delivery….”

At the end of a half-mile road leading from the dock was a large building, some kind of lodge or yacht club. When Patch arrived at the side door, he walked right in, asked someone where the uniforms were, and got to work, carrying crates of supplies, milk, and vegetables into the kitchen as directed. He hid his backpack in a storage room until he was assigned a bunk in the staff quarters, which were on a different part of the property. He hadn't had a chance to see much of the island at all; so far, it looked like a collection of stone and
wood buildings, surrounded by trees.

He hoped he would have some time to think before figuring out his next move.

 

At dinner, Phoebe felt as if she were in a slow-moving, extremely odd dream. No one referred to Jared's death, nor Alejandro's disappearance, and certainly not to Patch. She saw Dr. Meckling, and Daniel as well, from across the room, though she was avoiding them both. Phoebe wondered what Daniel had told her mom he was doing during these few days.

After the main course, Phoebe got up, ostensibly to go to the ladies' room. She whispered in Nick's ear to meet her in the library. After using the restroom (it was the type where the plumbing and tile work, albeit in perfect condition, hadn't been updated since the 1960s), she found him in the dark, book-filled room that was down a corridor from the foyer.

“So what do we do?” she asked Nick.

“I don't know,” he said.

In the dim, greenish light of the library's reading lamps, she looked at photographs of each class that were displayed. Captured in black and white, the members looked at the camera in stoic reserve, even though some of the photos were taken as recently as several years ago. There was something strange, though, that she noticed about the classes, aside from how stiff and posed the portraits were.

“Oh my God,” Nick said. “I think this was my dad's class-look, here's my mom's class, and here's my dad. Wow.” His mother and father looked so young in their portraits.

Phoebe examined two pictures, counting the members again. “Look at this,” she said.

“What?”

“In some classes, there are fifteen members, and in others, there are fourteen.”

“So what does that mean?”

Phoebe paused. “I don't know. I mean, it's not like there's a pattern to it. Here's the class of 1971, which has fifteen, and then the class of '72, which has fourteen, and then fifteen for two years, and then fourteen for two years…I can't really make any sense of it.”

“I didn't think you would.” The voice came from behind them, and Phoebe and Nick both started. At the entrance to the library was Parker Bell.

“Nick, Phoebe, I see you're doing a little bit of—what shall we call it—research?”

Phoebe faltered. “There's so much history here—we just wanted to see—to get an idea…”

“It's okay. You don't need to be afraid. You're curious. That's understandable. You've been part of the Society for nearly four months now, but you know very little about us. I, too, would be curious.”

He walked over to a long green leather Chesterfield sofa
and sat down, crossing his legs. “Are there any questions I might be able to answer for you?”

Now, Phoebe thought, they were finally having the meeting they had wanted. Except this time it was on Mr. Bell's terms.

“Why are there fourteen members in some photographs and fifteen in others?” Phoebe said.

“Ah, the Power of Fourteen,” Mr. Bell said.

“What's the Power of Fourteen?” Nick said.

“It will be explained in due time,” Mr. Bell said. “Let's just say that classes with fourteen members are stronger. I myself come from a class of fourteen.”

“But our class has fifteen members,” Nick said. “Or at least, it did. Does what happened to Alejandro have something to do with this?”

“Just wait a few days,” Mr. Bell said. “Everything will become clear.”

“Dad, I think we're tired of these things constantly being kept from us.”

“Nicholas, sometimes you have to wait. Especially for things that are important. Anyway, I need to be getting back to the dining room. I think they're serving coffee now. I suggest that you two do the same.” He exited the room, leaving Phoebe and Nick to stare at each other.

“I want to get out of here,” Phoebe said.

“Phoebe, how on earth are we going to do that? We're on
an island with spotty cell service, no ferry to the mainland, and a jet that no one has access to. We have to stay. Remember what Genie said, ‘The best way to rebel can be from within'? You need to use that now.”

She crumpled down onto an ottoman. It was all too much. Initiation rituals, the Great Cottage, the Power of Fourteen. The feelings of isolation and belonging at the same time. She started sobbing quietly.

“God, I'm not normally like this,” she said. “I swear, the only two times I've cried in the last month have been in front of you. How silly is that?”

“It's not silly at all,” Nick said. “I love—I love that about you. I love that you're honest. That you're real. It makes me feel like I, like I love—”

Phoebe held her breath, waiting for what Nick might say, but just at that moment, Nick was interrupted, mid-sentence, by an enormous crash in the hallway.

 

Nick jumped up and looked to the right, then to the left. At the end of the hall, a young man with close-cropped brown hair was quickly loading a pile of broken glasses onto a tray. Nick looked closer and it was—

Patch?

“Hey!” Nick said, before stopping himself. The young man put a single finger to his lips, grabbed the remainder of what had fallen off the tray, and scurried away.

Nick turned to Phoebe, completely forgetting the intensity of their moment together. “Okay, either I'm going completely insane or I just saw our missing friend. Carrying a tray of glasses.”

“You mean, P—”

“Don't say his name,” Nick said, coming closer to her and whispering. “I think it's better to be safe. We don't know who is listening.”

“True,” Phoebe whispered back. “But what the hell was it that your dad was saying about fourteen members in some classes? Nick, this is freaking me out.”

“I know. We can't panic. We need to keep our heads screwed on.”

He took her hand, holding it tight, and led her back to the dining hall.