Under the Rose (18 page)

Except when I arrived at the campus pizza joint where the Diggirls were supposed to meet, there were only four knights waiting for me: Clarissa, Demetria, Mara, and Odile. The little sneak had opted out. Well, no matter. I’d share my suspicions with the girls and see if they took me more seriously than Josh had.

“You’re late,” said Clarissa, scooting over in the booth and taking her crinkle-plastic cup full of diet pop with her. “I got your usual small Greek salad. I don’t know how you can deal with all that fat.” (“Small” was a misnomer when it came to the Greek salad at Normandy Pizza. It was roughly the size and shape of a football and drenched in feta cheese bits, olives, and dressing.)

“Yum,” I said, sliding into the booth. “Anyone know where Jenny is?”

Demetria shrugged. “This isn’t the first time she’s wimped out on us. Girl doesn’t have her priorities straight.”

Clarissa nodded her agreement. “Have any of you ever seen her tattoo? I think she didn’t get one.”

Mara shuddered delicately. “Can I express once more how happy I am I joined your merry band after the whole tattoo phase? Staining one’s skin is a sign of barbarism.”

The other four of us looked at one another and smiled. “In this case,” I said, “it’s exactly the opposite.”

“I hope she shows up,” said Clarissa. “But I’m not going to hold my breath. We’ve got a lot to talk about, so let’s get started and she can catch up. This whole leak situation really has the patriarchs rattled. Frankly, you’d think they’d be nicer, considering we’re the ones protecting their secrets.”

“Spoken like someone who would sell secrets just to get back at them for being jerks,” Demetria said with a smile. “But have you seen that website? Come on. I refuse to let myself get up in arms over something with a flashing tiled background and animated gifs. Real firebrands would go for something professional-looking.”

“The issue isn’t the website,” Clarissa said. “It’s who the website turns on to the story. Josh says—”

I rolled my eyes. “Josh says an awful lot, but just because he’s the Secretary doesn’t mean he’s the boss of us. To listen to him talk, sometimes you’d think we should each be strip-searched upon entering or leaving the tomb!”

“Tell me about it,” said Odile. “You should have heard the interrogation I got when I came back from New York last month. Some timing, huh? And he was all, ‘Terribly convenient for you to be absent the day the leak is broadcast, Lil’ Demon.’ Right. As if I’d be selling my services to some conspiracy-theorist website the same weekend I’m hosting
Saturday Night Live.
Why the hell would I do something like that when I had a much larger audience just waiting for me to spill some Eli goss? I swear the only thing Lorne ever wants me to talk about is the seedy underbelly of this school.” And then she coughed.

Were this a Dickens novel, this would be a signal that Odile had contracted consumption, and would die within a few chapters. But in my world, it meant something else entirely. Mara and I started in our seats and then, for the first time in our relationship, our eyes met in understanding. We looked from Demetria to Odile, and back again.

“What?” said Clarissa as Demetria ducked her head. Realization slowly dawned on Miss High Society. “Ohhhh.”

“Did you two hook up?” Mara said with a gasp.

“No!” Demetria protested…too much.

Odile shot her an incredulous glance.

“Eww,” said Clarissa. “Society incest. Bad idea.”

“It is?” I asked, then occupied myself with my salad.
Shut up, Amy, or the cat will really be out of the coffin.

“Duh, of course!” Clarissa said.

“I don’t think so,” said Odile.

Demetria snorted. “Of course
you’d
say that. You’re not really the type to concern yourself with taboos, are you? A regular George Prescott, but without the dick.”

“I didn’t see you complaining,” Odile snapped.

Clarissa sliced her hand down between them. “Whoa there, ladies.”

“Forget about it,” said Demetria. “It was silly.” She caught Odile’s eye. “No offense, but admit it, it was silly.”

Odile shrugged, Mara was looking more scandalized than I’d ever seen her (which is saying something), and I was constructing a little tower of lettuce, feta, olives, and tomatoes on my fork.
A regular George Prescott?

On the one hand, I was wild to hear more about the juiciest Rose & Grave gossip in months. On the other, it seemed a bit hypocritical for me to indulge, since I was currently engaged in my own society affair. Best to downplay whatever had transpired between Demetria and Odile, lest the scrutiny turn into speculation about who else in the club had hooked up.

Of course, George had yet to give his C.B., which meant if he planned to adhere to his oaths (always up in the air with a guy like George), then everything we’d done would be fair game. Clearly, Josh knew at least part of the story already. Maybe I should admit it to the Diggirls, so as not to send them into shock when they heard it through official channels. They wouldn’t judge me, right? I mean, the guy was gorgeous and sexy and infamous and I bet all of them, even the female-focused Demetria, had wondered at least once if all the rumors were true. Besides, we were Diggers, and we were supposed to love and support one another and stuff.

Though maybe I hadn’t been doing that recently with one of my fellow knights.

“Girls…” I began. But just then, our waitress, another Eli institution (she’d been working at the restaurant longer than our freshman counselors’ freshman counselors could remember) stopped by with her little black leather portfolio.

“We’re not ready for the check,” Clarissa said.

The waitress put her hands up, palms out. “I don’t get involved with you people.” And then she departed.

Clarissa furrowed her brow and flipped open the folder. There, on a slip of receipt paper, were scrawled three words:

It Went Live.

I hereby confess:

I wish I were wrong.

10.

Disappeared

Before he graduated, Malcolm told me that it was a good thing I had my grade point average in shape before I joined Rose & Grave, because my society commitments would begin to commandeer a lot of my time. No joke. I don’t think I thought about schoolwork for a moment after that fake check arrived at our table. No, it was all angry e-mails, emergency meetings, spin summits, and of course the horrific and constant scrutiny the entire student body suddenly focused on the tomb on High Street.

The campus tabloid,
The Ruckus,
jumped on the story first, printing a special one-page issue alerting the campus to the conspiracy website and all of the secrets it spilled. (No doubt they still harbored some bitterness over the World Clock fiasco.) Naturally, the political bloggers scented blood in the air, and from that point, the race was on to be the first major 24-hour news cycle outlet to report the story. Print media, from the
Eli Daily News
and the
New Haven Register
to the New York
Daily News,
the
New York Post,
the
Washington Post,
and the
New York Times
were actually a bit late to the ball game, given the hassle of working with an actual printed press. It wasn’t safe to approach the tomb, what with Channel 8 News and CNN camped outside, waiting to get an exclusive interview with an actual, live Digger.

What did they expect, that the President was about to come up to New Haven and just stroll inside?

Luckily, any media outlet controlled by actual, live Diggers (and there were several) stayed as far away from this little news nugget as possible. And what, pray tell, did the traitor say? Detailed analysis of all our initiation rites, membership lists of certain clubs, and teases about juicier info…to come next week. Apparently, the individual was giving the patriarchs and their adolescent exploits one week’s reprieve (the better to build expectation—and extortion—with, my dear).

The patriarch reaction, as assessed through Phimalarlico e-mails, messages on the tomb’s voice mail, and infuriated phone calls to our Secretary, Josh, could be divided into three groups:

Standard:
“I’ve called to express my disappointment with the current media coverage of our society. I stood by this new club, unorthodox though it might be, and was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt that your unconventional makeup would inject new blood into the organization. I’m beginning to wonder if my fellow patriarchs weren’t correct in their original decision to invalidate the tap. This is an appalling turn of events and I’m reconsidering my choice to continue supporting this society until you get your act together.”

Angry:
“I knew we shouldn’t have expected much from you people, but this takes inappropriate to a whole new level. Less than six months in and you’re already doing your best to drive Rose & Grave right into the ground. You need to find the knight responsible for this leak and deal with him…or her. I did not spend the better half of my life protecting the oaths of my brethren to let you people destroy it. You’ll never see another dime from me.”

Kurt Gehry:
“You incompetent sons of bitches, I told you to take care of this. Fine, since you either cannot or will not do what’s necessary, we’re taking matters into our own hands. Watch how
real
men,
real
Diggers, handle those who threaten us.”

On Thursday afternoon, my path crossed with Genevieve Grady, ex-editor of the
Eli Daily News,
ex-girlfriend of Malcolm Cabot, and ex–person-of-interest to Rose & Grave. Last year, Genevieve, in a fit of woman-scorned pique, had threatened to blackmail Malcolm into giving her paper a peep inside the tomb, but I’d managed to talk her out of it. When she saw me coming, she threw her hands up in surrender.

“Amy, I swear! I had nothing to do with—”

I shook my head. “No, I know. Your paper is simply repeating what’s already out there. It’s fine.” And no, I couldn’t resist the jab about recycled content.

“So you do know who’s responsible?” She went immediately into reporter-mode.

I gave her the evil eye. “Right, because I’m about to turn that info over to you.”

She smirked. “Come on, Haskel. You’re my secret source.”

“Not this time. You’ve lost your hold on me.”

Her smile faded. “Have you…heard from him?” Genevieve had been in love with Malcolm, but the poor boy was unable to return her feelings.

“Yeah, I have. He told his parents last summer and they, predictably, disowned him. He’s living in Alaska for his gap year and then he’s going to business school.”

“Disowned him?” She bit her lip. “I think I’d like to e-mail him. I feel so bad about…last year. I think I went a little nuts.”

You think?
But I refrained from saying that. “I bet he’d appreciate it.”

“Okay, then, I will. Oh, and Amy…” She touched my shoulder. “In retrospect, I’m really glad they tapped you and not me.”

I shook her off. Yeah, she certainly dodged that bullet, didn’t she?

But the rest of us were feeling its bite. Thursday evening, we managed to sneak into our meeting through a very complicated system of visiting the Art and Architecture’s sculpture garden while various and sundry delivery trucks pulled up to the tomb’s supply door.

“This is why we need that secret entrance I was promised,” I grumbled to Odile as we hid behind a stack of milk bottles.

“Word.”

Dinner that evening was a dismal affair, despite Hale’s masterful preparation of beef Wellington. We wandered in, one by one, and picked at our food. Since Sunday had been reserved for a presentation from a patriarch who had recently returned from Bolivia, we’d temporarily switched the C.B. schedule to Thursday—though, given the consequences of the leak and the possible future humiliation should further Digger information come to light, no one was enthusiastic about sharing their sexual history. At first, we thought we’d can the schedule and just engage in a little old-fashioned Rose & Grave political debate, but state issues were not on the forefront of anyone’s mind—not even Soze’s, who was in full spin-doctor mode.