Tap & Gown (23 page)

There were very few corrections to what I’d already written. Rather, his suggestions all leaned toward taking my research one step further, finding another example to back up my points. At the top of the pages, he’d placed a sticky note reading:

Some truly original thoughts here. Glad you ditched Persephone!

I may have ditched her, but I didn’t leave her in the lurch. My final thesis topic, on the repeated trope of women as gatekeepers to the spirit world, owed a lot to my understanding of the Queen of Hades. I wondered if Professor Burak would be happy to learn that we’d decided to incorporate a few of these ideas into the Rose & Grave initiation. Last year, though I hadn’t understood it at the time, Jamie had registered his dissident vote by spearheading an initiation ceremony filled with scenes of upstart women throughout history. (Hint: They were mostly killed.) I don’t know how well the irony would have played in Peoria; in New Haven, I’d been scared out of my wits. The pro-women portion of the D176 club, on the other hand, thought the anti-feminist symbols presented a truly appropriate house of horrors, an imbalanced world they were toppling by their bold move to tap women for the first time at the end of the tours.

Page 108

Symbolism: It’s never what you think it is.

Our club had decided to ditch that theme and move toward the obvious next step: As the first club to include women, we thought we’d focus on an initiation that showcased the participation of women in arcane and secret rites. A little
Da Vinci Code
, perhaps, but since I’d done a lot of the research for my thesis, it would be relatively easy to pull off.

Which reminded me. I was supposed to call the prop department at the Eli drama school and put in an order for fake blood. I clicked on the phone. No dial tone.

“Lydia!” I called. She didn’t answer and I rose from my chair and headed back to the common room.

“What did you do to the phone!”

“Unplugged it,” she said calmly, turning a page in her book.

“Why!”

“Because the ringing was starting to bother me. You’re not the only one with a thesis to write, you know.”

“Well, what if I need to use it?”

She looked up from her work and gave me a chilly glare (her new specialty). “Do you, or do you not, have in your possession an item that we in the 21st century refer to as a cellular telephone?”

I rolled my eyes and plugged the phone back in. “I’m so looking forward to having my own place next year. What if that was someone calling me about grad school?”

“They don’t call. They send letters. Like the one Eli sent to me. You know the one. It contained private correspondence you didn’t choose to respect.”

The phone began to ring in my hand. Lydia let out a beleaguered sigh.

“Do we need to talk about this?” I asked her. She gave me another glare, with
What do you think?

written all over her face. The phone trilled again.

“Oh, just answer the damn thing,” she huffed.

“But Lydia,” I said. “If we need to talk—the 21st century has also provided us with a little thing called

‘voice mail.’”

“I’m not ready to talk to you,” she replied. So I answered the phone.

“Hello?” A woman’s voice, a crisp English accent. “May I speak to Amy Haskel?”

“This is she.” I furrowed my brow.

“My name is Maya Butler, and I’m with the Rothemere American Institute—”

“The what?”

Page 109

She chuckled indulgently at the Yankee. “At Oxford.”

“Oh.”
Oh
. Oxford. On the phone with frickin’
Oxford
and I’d already managed to make myself sound like an idiot.

“I’m organizing a colloquium this summer on behalf of St. Catherine’s College about Women and the Classics. Your thesis advisor, Dr. Yousef Burak, submitted to us an abstract of your paper on—er—”

she fumbled over the words “—‘Chicks with Styx.’”

He had? He hadn’t told me that. “I, um, really need a new title.”
Great, Amy. Continue to impress
. I’d been so punchy the evening I’d decided that was hilarious.

“Well, yes, we shall have to work on that,” she said, her tone indulgent. “We were curious when the paper will be complete.”

She was calling me from Great Britain to ask me that? “It’s due on the fifth.”

“Marvelous! In that case, we’d be delighted to extend an offer for you to present it at our conference.”

You what?
I caught myself from shouting that into the phone. Lydia was growing silently frantic at my side.

“Hello, Amy? Are you still there?”

“Yes. Sorry. I was just—present my paper? In England?” I gaped at Lydia! So much for her letter theory.

My roommate, to her credit, squealed and bounced to her feet.

“Yes,” said Maya Butler. “Now, the conference is at the end of June. As a presenter, your entrance fee and housing at St. Catherine’s will be gratis, but unfortunately, we cannot provide airfare, so …”

I listened as she laid out the rest of the offer, but my mind had already started to race way ahead.

England. Oxford. An hour from London. The Thames. The Tower. The West End. And England! I could travel around afterward. Stonehenge. Jane Austen’s house. Stratford-upon-Avon. Bath!

Amy. Focus. A conference. A weeklong conference. And me … presenting? On classics? But I didn’t even speak Latin!

No, I could do this. This was amazing. I was totally going to kill my professor for not giving me a heads-up, but still …

“… I can e-mail you all the other information you’ll need.”

“And I can e-mail you my thesis,” I replied. “Thank you so much!”

When I hung up, Lydia squealed again and hugged me. “Tell me everything. I only got to hear your end and … well, no offense, hon, but you need some speaking practice before you go to England. What are they teaching you in this secret society of yours?”

I squeezed her back. “Shut up, I was never on the debate team.” I pulled away. “So does this mean
Page 110

you’re done being mad at me?”

“Not even a little,” Lydia said with a laugh. “But there’s a moratorium. We have to celebrate!”

Jamie was in class until six, so I left a message with him to meet us at the Diggers’ favorite bar and took off with Lydia, who’d left a similar message with Josh (sans the “Diggers’ favorite” part). As it was Monday night, the large, split-level, wood-lined bar was relatively empty. Clarissa and Odile had already commandeered our usual spot, a vast, circular booth of dark leather, and were blowing off post-interview steam by splitting a pitcher of Rose & Grave’s signature drink, the 312. They beckoned us over right away, and we’d hardly gotten settled in our seats when Jenny and Harun arrived, together as always. I still didn’t know what was going on with those two—they swore up and down that there was nothing between them but no one believed that. However, no one had ever caught even a whiff of un-platonic behavior either, and given my track record, I couldn’t start pressing them to define whatever their relationship happened to be.

Not that it deterred others.

“You know what you remind me of,” Odile said to them as they scooted into the booth. “Those sneaky co-stars having an on-set affair who are always so careful not to let anyone photograph them together because they don’t want the paparazzi to have any material by which to draw inferences.”

“You know what you remind me of?” Jenny replied coolly. “The paparazzi.”

Odile: “Touché.”

Clarissa made a sizzling sound through her teeth and motioned for the bartender in a subtle, fluid motion I could practice in the mirror a hundred times and never get right, that I could use in a hundred bars and never draw the staff with the efficacy she managed.

Then again, Clarissa’s tipping was legendary. That might also have something to do with it.

As we gave the man our orders, Lydia turned to Odile and said, “Actually, whatever you’re having looks good. What’s it called?”

“Um …” Odile demonstrated her weakness as an improv player.

“Oh, let her have one,” I said. “Who the hell cares? There’s nothing proprietary about the ingredients.”

“Whatever you say,
Demetria
,” Clarissa mocked, taking a sip of her 312.

Demetria herself showed up halfway through our first round, along with Ben and Greg.

“You people again?” Ben said, as we scooted over to make room. “Man, it’s like I can’t get away.”

“Not at this bar,” Harun agreed.

Demetria checked out his pint glass. “Is that Guinness?”

“Root beer. On tap.”

Page 111

“Really?” She waved at the bartender and called, “Same as him. But with SoCo.”

“Ew,” said Odile. “Sweet much?”

“Yes, I am.” Demetria gave a saccharine smile. “As far away as I can get from that stuff.” She pointed at the pitcher of 312s.

“Why?” Lydia asked, all innocence, though her mouth was stained with pomegranate.

“I—” She looked at Lydia. “I didn’t know this was a barbarian thing. I would have brought Shannon.”

“Ooh,” said Odile. “Who’s Shannon?”

Jenny glared at her. “Would you, for
once
, leave someone’s personal life to themselves?” She took a sip of her soda, and her face softened. “Okay, you’re right. I want to know who Shannon is, too.”

“And how you’ve managed to keep her secret from us,” Clarissa added.

“That’s not allowed, is it?” said Lydia, and I kicked her under the table.

“Oh, look,” said Demetria, pointing away. “Amy’s
boyfriend
is here.” She still avoided saying his name whenever she could.

The distraction achieved its intended result, and I slid from the booth to meet Jamie at the stair landing.

His book bag was slung across his chest, tugging his black T-shirt and twill jacket tight across his shoulders. He also wore a pair of khakis with a tiny tear on the right thigh. Strange how his well-worn wardrobe had somehow become one of his more charming attributes.

“Hey, you,” I said, grinning as he took the stairs two at a time to reach me.

He slipped his arms around my waist and pulled me in close. “I got your message.
I’m so proud of you

,” he whispered against my neck.

“Thanks,” I said. “So, that’s two weeks down, and only seventy more years I have to create a plan for.”

“One step at a time.” He looked down at me, and a lock of his dark hair fell into his face. “And the next step is to alert all the places you’ve still got applications out. This is a huge update—”

“Party pooper,” I said. “First things first. We drink.”

“I stand corrected.” He pulled his bag off his shoulder. “I came here straight from class, so I’m going to run to the restroom for a moment. Order me something?”

“312?”

He looked over my shoulder at the table. “You’re drinking those in front of barbarians?”

I smirked at him. “Wanna make something of it?”

He laughed. “What else from D177? By the time you’re done with us, I don’t think there’ll be any secrets left in this society.”

Page 112

“And that’s a bad thing?”

He didn’t answer. “It may shock you to discover this, but I never actually liked 312s. Get me a gimlet instead?”

“Wow, call the secret society police! What’s a gimlet?”

“You’ve only been to keggers your whole Eli career, haven’t you?”

“So not true.”

“Don’t worry, the waiter will know.” Jamie stopped and searched my face. “Everything okay? You don’t seem as happy as you should be.”

I shrugged. “Michelle skipped her interview, so I’m disappointed.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I know you had high hopes for her.”

“And you didn’t, I know.…”

“What I thought has no bearing on this, Amy.”

“Oh, please.” I looked away, across the bar.

Then I felt his fingers on my cheek and looked back at him. “It doesn’t. You know what I think, what I’ve thought all along. But I don’t expect us to make the same decisions. Have never once expected it, in fact. And honestly, if I’d been making predictions, I should have guessed you’d do something so …” He paused. “Iconoclastic?”

“Heretical, you mean?”

“Yes. Heretical. My little heretic.” He kissed me. “Forget Michelle. If she couldn’t recognize an offer when she saw it, she doesn’t deserve to become one of the elect. You can accept that much Rose & Grave doctrine, can’t you?”

“But what if the problem is she didn’t know what we were offering? We never say ‘Come be a Digger’

when we call for an interview.”

“If they’re smart, they know.”

“I didn’t,” I said.

“You …”
Busted
. “… understood you were auditioning for a society, though.”

“Nice save.” I pushed his hair back off his brow.

“It was, wasn’t it?” His hands went back to my waist. “I can be very, very good under pressure.”

“I see that.”

Page 113

Someone cleared his throat behind us. “You’re blocking the stairs.” Josh. We pulled away from each other and he squeezed by. “I think the phrase I’m looking for is ‘Get a room.’”

“With all the PDA going on in my suite?” I asked. “That’s a mighty glassy house you’re standing in.”