Tap & Gown (29 page)

Perhaps it was a good thing Omar had slipped up on the secrecy thing.

Still, I wanted to grab the most non-lethal body part when it came time to carry Tal out of his studio.

We slipped into his apartment building and up to Tal’s floor. Jenny, the smallest knight in our group and therefore relegated to candle patrol, shoved brooms and mops out of the way in the closet, and set up the altar while the rest of us gathered outside his apartment door.

Omar knocked and we all forced our bodies into stillness. We heard the sound of a chain being released, and all I could picture was what a funny sight it must be to see through one’s peephole four black-robed, hooded figures gathered in a narrow hallway under a fluorescent light. And then the door opened.

We grabbed him, and he lay passive in our arms as we shuffled him into the closet and gathered in a circle. By the light of the candle, I could see a big grin on his face. Omar bent over the altar, the candle flickering strangely on the planes of his hooded face.

“Rose & Grave,” he intoned in a rumbling voice. “Accept or Reject?”

Tal grinned even wider. “Accept.”

Omar blew out the candle and we were off.

“Hey!” I heard Tal call as we sprinted away. I cast a quick look over my shoulder. He had started after us, then stopped when he saw the black-lined envelope we’d left behind. It contained instructions for his initiation and told him, quite firmly, that he was to stay put for now.3*

One down, four to go.

Then we tapped Jenny’s Cognitive Science major, Paul Raymond, who, like Tal, lived off campus. Easy peasy Even easier was Kevin’s tenor tap, who had some experience with the process after going through it with his singing group three years earlier.

Topher Cox was next on our hit list. I felt my heart pounding as we approached his entryway Our robes had grown damp by this point and stuck to our ankles as we walked, rendering our steps graceless rather than menacingly swirly Students braving the crummy weather in the courtyard stared at us as we swept by, black-robed and silent. Some even followed us. We entered, and Omar blocked the door, keeping
Page 137

prying eyes out. Jamie took a similar stance on the stair landing and Jenny made sure the bathroom was clear and the light was out as I swiftly lit my candle.

“Who you tapping?” called one of the sophomores on the stoop.

“Yeah, who is it?” asked another. Omar looked resolutely ahead.

“Hey Topher!” shouted a third, and banged on the window next to the entryway door. “They’re here for you!”

“He’s been holed up in his room all night,” I heard a girl say. “Waiting. Isn’t it weird?”

“I don’t know,” said another girl. “I want to be in one senior year. They’re weird, but fun, you know?”

Topher opened the door and peeked out.

“Go!” Jamie cried, leaping down from the stairs, his cape flapping like a comic book superhero. He pinned Topher’s arms and lifted him off the ground as Omar slammed the entryway door shut and hurried over to help. Kevin made a grab for Topher’s other leg and they shoved him, humble-jumble, into the bathroom. I swiped the candle out of the way, and Jenny tripped over her mended hem.

“Sloppy,” Topher said. Jenny was holding her wet cape together with one hand, struggling with the other to conceal her face beneath the hood. The candle, miraculously stayed lit.

“Shut up, barbarian,” Jamie growled, and I felt it in my toes. He whipped his head toward me. “Go.”

Go? He’d just insulted us! I stood poised over the black candle and stared at Topher Cox, who stared back, unfazed and entitled, surrounded by a semi-circle of knights I knew and loved.

Just tap him. Just say the words. This was the deal you made. This was what you agreed to. So do it.

Do it
.

My teeth seemed to swallow my lips, and I couldn’t speak.

“Go.” I felt Jamie’s hand on mine, his gray eyes like ice beneath the hood of his robe. Even in the stillness of the bathroom, his whisper barely reached me. “It’ll be okay, I promise.”

I looked across the candle. Topher’s smug expression had waned, replaced by a flash of—what?

Doubt?

“Rose & Grave,” I blurted. “Accept or Reject?”

“Accept!” he rushed to say, as if afraid I’d take it back.

I almost laughed. But instead, I followed the script: Blow out the candle, throw an envelope at his feet, and run.

In the courtyard, Jamie caught up to me. “You all right?”

“Yeah,” I puffed, and kept up the pace. Michelle’s apartment was across town, so we were running to
Page 138

Jenny’s parking garage to pick up her car.

“I was afraid you’d bugged out back there.”

“I’m fine.” Into the parking garage we ran, black and hooded beneath the sodium lights like a band of Dementors out of a Harry Potter movie. The student garage employee inside the glass box at the entrance was paying attention to her linear algebra homework, as usual. Omar jumped into the passenger seat and Kevin scrambled into the back, leaving the door open for us.

“Amy.” Jamie stopped me before I climbed inside. “You didn’t sell out.”

Was I so easy to read, even hooded? “Then why does it feel like I did?”

“It’s compromise. It’s mature.”

“It sucks.”

He laughed. “
Very
mature. Now let’s go get your Michelle.”

I turned, grabbed him and kissed him. “Thank you,” I said. “For giving me all of this. I wouldn’t have had it any other way.”

“Come on, you lovebirds!” Kevin cried, beckoning us into the car. “We’ve got tapping to do.”

We piled in, scooping up handfuls of our damp, tangled capes to make sure they weren’t caught in the door. My legs were thrown across Jamie’s lap in the tiny backseat, and I held on to his neck to keep from crushing Kevin. The windows steamed up with moisture as we drove, breathless with exertion and excitement, up Science Hill.

At Michelle’s apartment, I approached the doorman as the others hung back. I shoved wet locks of hair off my cheeks and smiled at him. “Hi, I’m here to see Michelle Whitmore?”

He gave me an up-down, then tipped his chin at my companions. “All y’all? Because we have to sign guests in.”

“We can’t do that,” Jenny said. “Can’t you just let us in?”

“Afraid not,” the doorman said. “Ms. Whitmore has been very specific …”

“Can you call her?” I asked. “She’s expecting us, I promise.”

The doorman’s expression was skeptical, but he picked up his phone. “Ms. Whitmore? There are some people here for you, but they won’t identify themselves. They’re in costume. Um, about five of them.

Really? Okay, but this goes against our policy … Okay, then.” He turned to us. “You can go up, and I’ll sign you in as a delivery, but if you aren’t back out here in five minutes—”

“We will be!” and we raced for the elevator.

Michelle answered the second I knocked on her door. Instantly, half a dozen hands reached for her and she reeled back, her eyes going wide.

Page 139

“Don’t be afraid,” I hissed at her as we carried her to the stairwell, which we’d darkened for this purpose. Jamie stood at our makeshift altar, and the black candle burned straight and true.

“Rose & Grave,” he declared in a voice that echoed up and down the floors. “Accept or Reject?”

Michelle stood stock-still, hands clenched to her sides. Her lips parted in shock. “Rose and … Grave?”

She leaned forward slightly, as if trying to get a better look at Jamie.

He tilted his face farther into shadow against the flame. “Accept or Reject?” he repeated.

She turned in a slow circle, taking in the hooded knights who surrounded her on all sides, their faces obscured and unknown. Then she stopped and stared straight at me. I raised my chin toward the circle of light and winked.

Michelle looked back to Jamie. “I accept.”

1*Historically, this meant Rose & Grave telling the other society to back the hell off. Given the perceived weakness of the Diggers this year, the knights feared it might get more complicated than that.

2*It’s entirely possible that Mara’s speech was less Mary Poppins than related here.

3*The confessor had insisted upon this addition after her own confusion last spring.

“Are we done?” I asked Jamie as soon as we left Michelle’s building.

“We need to powwow with the other groups and make sure they’ve got their taps in order—”

I pressed my body against his. “
Are we done?”

He looked down at me. “Don’t I wish.” He cocked his head back at Michelle’s. “That was a bit of a cheat back there, wasn’t it?”

Page 140

Even mid-tap, he hadn’t been paying attention to Michelle. Only to me. “Yes. And I don’t care. If she hadn’t seen my face, she wouldn’t have believed it. Just like I didn’t last year.”

Jamie shook his head. “I don’t get it. You both got notes with our seal on it.”

“Could be a prank. I know that’s what Michelle has been thinking all afternoon. She needed to see me to believe it. I thought the same thing last year.
Rose & Grave, tapping me?”

He squeezed my hands. “I don’t know what Rose & Grave would have done without you this year.”

“Probably gone on in its merry, misogynist way.”

“And me?”

“Same.” I giggled.

Jenny came running up to us, cell phone in hand. “That was Harun. The groups on the main campus are finished—we got every one!”

“Yes!” I pumped my fist in the air. “So we’re done?” I wagged my eyebrows suggestively at Jamie.

“Not hardly,” Jenny said. “Initiation’s this weekend. We have so much stuff left to do!”

“Jenny.”

“And Harun says a bunch of people are getting together for pizza—”

“Jenny.”

“—back at the tomb to celebrate. Don’t you want to party?”

“
Jenny.”

She looked from me to Jamie and back again. “Oh. I … see.” Her hands clasped together in front of her. “Um, it’s pizza from Sally’s? Best pizza in New Haven?”

“Rain check?” I said.

She grimaced. “Ooo-kay. Do you guys need me to give you a ride to … wherever?”

“We’ll walk,” Jamie said with a definitive nod.

“In this weather?”

“Yeah,” I said, and slipped my hand around his waist.