Tap & Gown (16 page)

“What do you think?” I replied, trying not to sound as weary as I felt. “I’d like you to come to a party tonight.”

“A party,” she repeated, toying with the envelope. As we were still in a theoretically anonymous stage of the tap process, the envelope was a simple, plain white, not the glossy, black-edge, rough-cut stationery we’d be using later to inform our taps of our choice. “With whom?”

“Some friends.” This was painful. She knew, I knew she knew, and she knew that as well. “What do you say?”

She focused on the envelope. “I say what took you so long.” Then she slipped it into her backpack and resumed taking notes. She did not invite me to sit with her. She did not look at me again.

This did not bode well. The knights were supposed to be the ones with the power, not the taps. Taps were supposed to feel chosen, plucked from obscurity to become one of the elect. But Arielle was no fool. If I’d come to her now, after being so blunt before, she must understand that I needed her.

I wish she’d given me lessons last spring.

Feeling more miserable than ever, I clomped down the stairs and collapsed in a seat four rows from the front.

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“Yo, Amy,” said Michelle. She turned around and leaned across the rows, grinning. “Why so glum? Is it the existential guilt over the coming environmental crisis?”

I gave her a weak smile. “You know any other tunes?”

“Not in this class.” Now she frowned. “I’d thought I’d convinced you to come to section last week.”

She leaned closer. “You’re kinda ruining my rep with the other T.A.s, you know.”

“Huh?”

“I’m already on their hit list since I’m young and I’m not really a Geology major. Now I can’t even get people to show up for my section?” She raised her eyes to the ceiling. “Forget it. I’m not allowed to join in any of their reindeer games.”

“Why do you care what they think?”

“Because someone once told me that reputation is everything at Eli.”

That one I knew well. It was practically a Digger creed. “I’m sorry.”

“Prove it. Come to section tomorrow.”

I gave her a blank look. “On a Friday afternoon? You must be joking.”

“I’m not. To sweeten the deal, I’m bringing cupcakes.”

I remained skeptical. “Vegan cupcakes?”

“I refuse to answer that on the grounds that it may incriminate me.”

Ugh. Vegan cupcakes. They were probably made with wheat germ and carob.

“Come on, Amy,” she said, a pleading note in her voice. “The professor’s coming, and he did me a real favor, and I want to show him I can do a decent job. My attendance has been way down this semester and I don’t want to look like a slob. Fifty minutes of your life and a slide show on acid rain. Please?”

“Do I have to eat the vegan cupcakes?”

“Totally optional.” She turned around as the professor reached the podium and greeted the class.

Grinning in spite of myself, I opened my notebook and started jotting down the professor’s words. I’d definitely been missing something skipping section for the past few months. Michelle was a riot. I’d never met a more prickly hippie.

Or was that even the term? Her misanthropy seemed to stem from her environmentalism, but she wasn’t exactly dressed in hemp and Birkenstocks. If anything, her outfit was a bit on the preppy side. Today, she had on khakis and a faded polo shirt.

I was writing down a list of carbon sinks when a triangle of paper landed on my desk. Passing notes?

That was a little high school.

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I unfolded the paper football.

IOU1!—M.W
.

Apparently you don’t owe me complete words
, I, ever the Lit major, wrote back, wondering whether or not note-passing lost her more points with the professor than having a poorly attended section did.

I watched her unfold the note. Her shoulders shook with silent laughter, and suddenly I was filled with nostalgia, remembering a class I’d taken second semester freshman year with Lydia. We’d spent the whole time sitting together, writing jokes to each other in the margins of our textbooks. I still had those books, scribbled all over with nonsequiturs, snarky observations about our classmates and professor, and the foundation of a friendship that would last our whole lives. I’d never take a class with Lydia again.

I’d never take a new class at Eli again. A few more weeks of sitting in these hallowed halls with a spiral-bound notebook in my lap and that was it.

Michelle, of course, had another year, being a junior.

A junior.

I sat up straight in my seat. Michelle might owe me for visiting her section tomorrow, but Jenny Santos owed me even more, for screwing up the tap research. And we needed another tap, to replace our one instance of attrition, Howard First.

Howard First, the science tap.

We needed someone smart and accomplished, like an undergrad who was already working as a teaching assistant.

Someone passionate and ambitious, like a student who took semesters off, though it meant dropping behind her classmates, in order to do research for causes she believed in.

We’d made a short list for his slot, same as everyone else’s, but given the extenuating circumstances I faced, a last-minute addition wouldn’t be out of line. I tore off a scrap of paper as quietly as I could and composed another note to Michelle. It wasn’t Clarissa’s fancy stationery, but it would have to do.

Want to go to a party with me tonight?

—
A.H
.

I was almost skipping by the time I entered my suite that afternoon. My step was light, buoyed by plans and enthusiasm. Ever since I’d found out about Kalani, the entire tap process had seemed little more than a burden and time sink. I couldn’t see any way to make myself happy with Topher Cox, and the idea of being his big sib had cast a gray pall over the entire occasion. I couldn’t very well seek comfort from Jamie; he’d taken one for the team when it came to tapping George the previous year, and our differing opinions of—and experiences with—Jamie’s little sib didn’t exactly make him a gilded conversation topic.

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Jenny’s phone had gone to voice mail, so I hadn’t been able to tell her the good news. Clarissa, deep in planning for the party, wasn’t answering her phone, either. That was fine. I’d inform her of the extra attendant when I went to help her set up.

Lydia looked up from the couch as I walked through the door. She had a couple of envelopes in her hand, and an untouched sandwich and bottle of pop lay on the coffee table in front of her. “Hi, stranger,”

she said.

“Hey there.” I swept past her toward my room.

“Do you have a minute?”

Not really. I paused by the door. “What’s up?” Please let it be quick.

“I never see you anymore. You’re always either doing stuff at the tomb or over at Jamie’s place.”

“Or you’re at Josh’s,” I countered. I resisted the urge to check my watch. How long did I have until Clarissa expected me? And I still needed to hop in the shower, pull out something decent to wear …

“I feel like I never get a chance to talk to you these days,” Lydia was saying. “And soon we’re going to graduate—I don’t want to lose you, Amy.”

I joined her on the couch and threw an arm around her shoulders. “You’re not going to lose me. We’re BFFs, right?”

She rolled her eyes. “I don’t know. I haven’t taken any oaths, unlike you and your other friends.”

“We don’t need an oath. We’ve got something more important.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

I furrowed my brow. “Give me a minute. I’ll come up with something.”

She laughed for a moment, then bit her lip and looked down at the papers in her hands. “I need to talk to you. I can’t put this off any longer.”

Oh my God, she was pregnant. I steeled myself for the news, running through my supportive, best friend lines.
You can still go to law school. You and Josh are in the best situation possible for this news.

Which doesn’t mean you have to get married or anything, unless you want to. You have a lot of
options. You can even give it up for adoption. A baby from two Eli grads? Talk about high
demand. What does Josh think?

“Look.” She held out an envelope bearing the Eli Law seal. I looked inside.

Dear Ms. Travinecek
,

We are pleased to offer you admission to the Eli College of Law …

I didn’t get any farther. “Lydia! Holy cow!”

She nodded. “I know. I didn’t expect—it was such a long shot—I was on the wait list—”

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“Eli Law! You badass, brilliant woman! This is your dream come true!” I hugged her hard.

“I know.”

So why wasn’t she bouncing around the room? I studied the letter. Wait a minute … “Lydia, this acceptance letter is dated three weeks ago.”

“I know.”

For someone who just got into the top law school in the country, her vocabulary was remarkably limited.

“You’ve known for three weeks?”

“Since I got back from Spain.” Now she looked at me. “Oh, Amy, what am I going to do? I can’t tell Josh.”

I blinked at her. “Why not?”

“Because we’re supposed to go to Stanford together. We’re supposed to get an apartment and be a fabulous law school power couple, then a clerking power couple, then a lawyer super-power couple.”

She looked down at her hands. “There was a plan.”

“The plan included you developing super powers?” I asked. “Please tell me it wasn’t laser beam vision.”

“Amy—”

“I’m sorry, but what you’re saying isn’t any less ridiculous. Josh is going to be thrilled for you, honey!”

Lydia was quiet.

“Do you think he’ll be jealous that he didn’t get in?” I asked her.

“Possibly.”

Probably, if I knew him.

“I mean, I think he’ll be happy for me, but he’ll also be disappointed for himself. But I’m afraid that telling him will make me seem like some kind of martyr.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m not going to go.”

“
What
?” I stared at my friend in shock. “But …
Eli Law
!”

“I know, but it’s not like Stanford is some schlub institution of learning. I was going to be perfectly happy there three weeks ago. And it has Josh.”

I shook my head in disbelief. This didn’t happen. We didn’t make decisions about where we were going to school based on our boyfriends. Well, there was this one girl from my high school who turned down
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Georgetown to be a Buckeye with her boyfriend, and then he dumped her by the end of spring semester freshman year. So it was for nothing.

But that was precisely the point. Boyfriends were fleeting, but alma maters were forever. Didn’t Lydia get that?

“Josh will understand,” I said, though he might not. “And you can still stay together.” Though they probably wouldn’t. “This is your future.”

“
Josh
is my future,” Lydia replied. “Every bit as much as the law. I love him. I want to be with him forever. Don’t you think that at some point we’re going to have to make sacrifices for that? He gets a clerkship in some city so I follow him there? I get a job in another, and he follows me? I recuse myself when I’m a judge and he’s a lawyer?”

“Josh isn’t going to be a lawyer,” I said. Law school was just another check mark on his resume before becoming a politician. Which was another reason he’d be jealous of Lydia at Eli Law. Unlike Stanford, Eli rarely turned out practicing lawyers, just people with law degrees who became professors or politicians or spies.

“Whatever. You know what I mean.”

“But that’s later!” I said. “That’s
later
that you do all that sacrificing stuff. Like, when you’re married.

Right now we’re too young to be so serious. Follow some guy across the country just because you love him? That’s stupid.”

“We’re not too young,” Lydia argued. “We’re not teenagers anymore. And I’m not just following him blindly. I’m following him to Stanford.”

I read the whole letter and shook my head. “If you’ve decided all this already, then why are you telling me?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I want you to tell me I’m doing the right thing, I guess.”

But I didn’t think she was. “No, you wanted me to talk you out of it.”

Lydia picked up her sandwich and took a bite. She chewed and swallowed, and still said nothing.

“If it doesn’t work out between you and Josh at Stanford, you’ll regret this forever.”

She took another bite.

“And if you pick Eli, and it doesn’t work out between you two, you’ll always wonder what would have happened if you’d been at Stanford instead.”

She chewed for a moment, thinking, then put down her sandwich. “So you’re saying it’s the dominant strategy in a prisoner’s dilemma. But what you’re not taking into account is the marginal utility of the expected value of—”

“Hold up,” I said. “I don’t speak LSAT.”

“You’re saying it’s better for me to be at Eli whether or not Josh and I stay together. And that since
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which school I go to is the only variable I control in this scenario …”

I nodded.