Tap & Gown (11 page)

I yanked down another stack of books.

Topher, on the other hand—I dreaded the idea of a guy like him having access to any of our secrets.

“Well, I’d still have to trade for him,” I said. “You want a girl tap?” Jenny’s marble had been black.

“No, I’m good,” she said. “I’ve got my eye on a Cognitive Science major in Calvin College. We had this great talk the other day. His goal in life is to discover the location of the soul. Right now, he’s trying to decide if he wants to do seminary before medical school, or vice versa.”

“Convince him to go to seminary first,” I said, remembering Howard, the D177 tap who’d dropped out to concentrate on the MCATs and med school applications. “We’ll be more likely to get him.”

“I’ll add that to the list immediately after ‘Convince him we’re not a bunch of devil worshippers.’” She laughed. “I hear that sometimes people think that.”

I grinned and shook my head. Was it only a year ago that Lucky had believed that herself, had joined Rose & Grave with the express purpose of bringing it down from the inside? No wonder she’d volunteered for the job of background checks. Not only was she the most capable, what with her network access, but she had a personal stake in ensuring we didn’t make the same mistake with our taps that D176 had with her.

“And … how’s everything else?” she asked. “Just as fine?”

“You want to know about the boyfriend you can’t stand?”

“I want to know if you can stand him,” Lucky said, idly flipping through yet another Black Book.

“Enough to, you know, talk to him about important events in your life. Or at the very least, about when the guy who kidnapped you calls for a chat.”

“I told you,” I said. “He’ll only get upset.”

“We all got upset,” she replied. “Why should he be any different?”

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I frowned at the shelves. It just was. Only Poe had serious doubts about my ability to handle the issues in my life.

“I want to make sure he’s making you happy.” Lucky folded her hands in her lap. “I’ve been there—remember last semester? The impossible boyfriend who asked for everything and gave nothing?

Remember how I was willing to hide or change everything I was for him?”

“And now what are you hiding?” I snapped back. “The fact that you
have
a boyfriend?”

She sighed. We’d spent most of Spring Break accusing Lucky that there was something going on between her and fellow knight Tristram Shandy. She always denied it. She did again.

“Poe’s not like that,” I said. “I don’t care what you guys think.”

“Right now, I am only thinking that not only is he your boyfriend, he’s your society brother. And that’s two reasons you shouldn’t be keeping secrets from him.”

“He keeps plenty of secrets from me,” I grumbled, and pulled down another stack of books.

Lucky began organizing and reshelving the ones on the far side of my pile. “Okay, leaving the issue of the boyfriend aside, how’s everything else? Between what happened during Spring Break and all this tap stuff, I feel like we haven’t talked in forever. How’s school? Your thesis? Your job search?”

Sucks (except for Nabokov), sucks, sucks. “Fine.”

“Do you know what you’re doing next year?”

“No,” I admitted.

“Because I’ve been thinking,” she began. “Caritas could kind of use a public relations chair.”

I stared at her. “What makes you think I know anything about public relations?”

She stared at me right back. “What have you been doing for us all year long? What about that article you spun for the
Daily
last spring where you single-handedly turned a damaging exposé on the society into an argument for the expanding role of equal rights in the Ivy League? What about all that work you did last semester when I … well, when I made that slight error in judgment? You mitigated that little snafu as well. You’d be great in PR.”

“Great in PR would require me having contacts. I don’t have contacts.”

“
I
have contacts, though,” Lucky said. “When I sold my program, back in high school, I was on dozens of news shows. They did a whole feature on me in
Wired
. And my Rolodex is your Rolodex.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Have you ever even seen a Rolodex?”

“Fine. My iPhone. But the bottom line is, I want you for your skills.”

“You want me because you’re creating an all-Digger corporation.”

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“No, I’m hiring my brother’s girlfriend, too.”

“What are you, an employment assistance program?”

“What’s wrong with me surrounding myself with a built-in pool of brilliant people I trust?” she asked.

“Isn’t the whole point of this society to make contacts that will help us later in life? You, and Angel, and Tristram, and everyone else are the best thing about being a Digger. Knowing you, trusting you. I’d hire Soze out of Stanford if I didn’t know he wants to go into politics. And in five years, he’ll be coming to me for campaign contributions, and I’ll be happy to give him what I can, because I know that he’ll do great things for our country. Not because we’re both Diggers, but because we were Diggers together and I know exactly what he can do, and I want him to do it.”

This was what no barbarian really understood about the nature of secret societies. They were suspicious of our bonds, of our tendency to stick together, work together, hire one another, support one another.

To outsiders, we were a nepotism network, an old boys’ club guaranteed to keep other people out.

But it wasn’t that simple. I didn’t love and trust every person in my society. I worked hard to even respect some of them, especially those with whom I disagreed on every point. I’d probably never end up keeping in touch with Nikolos or Mara. But the people I’d come to love over my months in Rose & Grave would be people I loved forever. Working for Jenny’s company would be an amazing experience.

Helping close friends I admire succeed in their dream jobs—what could possibly be wrong or elitist about that?

But Lucky sensed my hesitation. “Well, just keep it in mind,” she said at last. “I know you have a lot of pans on the fire right now. I don’t expect an answer right away.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Who knows? I may get into grad school yet.”

“I’ll pray that you have the best option open to you,” she replied, and shelved another stack of books.

“And that you and Poe stop keeping secrets from each other. Him I understand—but you? You’ve never really been the taciturn type. No offense.”

“None taken.” I opened the book on my lap. The first few pages related plans for the Straggler Initiation of D176—when the members of the club got together at the beginning of the school year to perform the full-on initiation of knights who’d been abroad during the junior year in which they’d been tapped.

According to the notes in the book, the Knight Poe had been particularly instrumental in designing the ceremony. Whoever the minute taker had been at that particular meeting, he’d had quite a talent for the poisoned pen. A small sampling:

10:46
2*: At which point, the Knight Poe recommended procuring
live
chickens for the festivities. The Knight Atlas, having some experience with poultry on his family farm, advised against it. Hale interrupted the meeting with the coffee cart and a staunch plea to keep livestock out of the tomb. Rebuffed, the Knight Poe proceeded to glower at his assembled brothers for a full five minutes.

11:15:
Chickens again.

11:52:
And back to chickens.

12:05:
Uncle Tony recognized the Knight Lancelot, who diffused tensions thusly: “It seems to me that Poe’s argument is for an added element of chaos in the proceedings. Rather than focusing on this whole chicken conundrum, perhaps we can find another way to infuse a dash of pandemonium?”

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Brainstorming ensues.

12:17:
Chickens dropped in favor of strobe lights and small-scale fireworks. The Knight Poe mollified.

Hale? Not so much.

From the very beginning, it seemed, Poe had been gung-ho about society life.

I wondered what else I could find out about him by reading the Black Books. I started flipping through the pages faster. People reported on their summer vacations, then the Connubial Bliss reports began. The first one wasn’t Poe’s, and neither was the second, though the third, the Puck of D176, had some rather spicy anecdotes. An orgy? Seriously? Wow, last year’s Puck made even George seem tame.

I pulled down the next Black Book and started flipping through that. Not Poe’s, not Poe’s, not Poe’s.

George’s father, George Prescott, came to talk to the club about emerging markets in China. More C.B.’s. Ah, here it was. The Connubial Bliss Report of Poe, Knight of Persephone, Order of Rose & Grave.

The book slammed shut in my hands. “Amy!” Lucky cried, her hands on the binding, and I was so startled I forgot to fine her. “What are you doing?”

“Looking for initiation ideas.”

“Not in the December volume you weren’t,” she said. “I saw what was on that page.”

“It’s in the Library,” I argued. “I can look at it if I want. Any knight can.” Besides, he knew everything about me already. It wasn’t fair.

“Don’t you think if he wanted you to know these things about him, he’d tell you?”

“Don’t you think a guy like Poe automatically assumes I’ve been snooping around behind his back?”

I had a point there, and Lucky knew it. “In that case,” she said, “I recommend you take the high road.

You shouldn’t look at this
because
he doesn’t trust you to do anything else.”

That made no sense at all, and it sounded especially false coming from Little Miss Computer Hacker.

She wrenched the book from my hands. “I think I’m just going to hold on to this for a little while.”

I lunged for it and missed. “No. I can look at anything I want to. What other purpose do these books serve but to let the current knights read them?”

She shook her head at me. “Four years at Eli and you still haven’t learned basic research skills. This is what becomes of English majors, you know.”

“Lit majors.”

“Whatever. The purpose of secondary sources—like these books—is to fill in the blanks when we can’t get our information from the primary source.”

“I
can’t
get my information from the primary source,” I argued. “He won’t tell me anything.”

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She pulled it out of reach. “Well, it’s dishonest to sneak around behind his back.”

I put my hands on my hips. “I’m showing media savvy. Finding ways to get what I need when my contact is being uncooperative. You should be glad I’m so resourceful.”

“I’d be gladder if you were honest with your boyfriend,” she said, turning to go, with the book still firmly in her grip. “Because more than I want you to work for me, I want you to be happy.”

Today, I was auditing The Russian Novel. The plan was to find a seat next to Kalani, but the girl was apparently popular on top of all her other positive attributes. Every seat in her row was filled. So instead I sat behind her. While the professor set up the podium, I tapped her on the shoulder. “Hey there.”

“Oh, hey, Amy. How’s it going?”

“Great.” I fished around for a topic of conversation. “I was wondering if you have the notes for the February 15th lecture on
Crime and Punishment
. I missed that one and I wanted to make sure I had everything covered for our paper due next week.” Yes, I can search the online syllabus with the best of them.

She flipped back through her binder. “February 15th … hmmm. They might be on my computer back at my suite.”

“Oh, no.” Oh, yes. “Is there a time I can drop by your suite and pick them up?”

“I can just e-mail them to you. That would probably be easiest.”

Yes, it would. Crap. “Great.”

Now I just had to sit through fifty minutes of lecture for a class I passed a year ago. As if I have time for any of this with my thesis due and only half-written. We hadn’t even hit deliberations yet and already tap period sucked.

It didn’t get any better at Atmospheric Change the following morning. Arielle’s switch had flipped from
On
to
Off
following our cryptic conversation in her dining hall. Now that she assumed I would be tapping Topher to take my place in Rose & Grave, there was no more saving seats for me in the lecture hall, and a definite dearth of offers to carry my books to and from class and lay down her jacket in any puddles along the way. One never notices how nice it is to be worshipped until one has fallen from grace.