Under the Rose (38 page)

There’s something to be said for a dramatic exit. And actually speaking the words aloud added an especially nice touch, in my opinion. You thought the silence was pretty intense before, you should have heard it after my little decree. Or not, as the case may be.

We’d been pussyfooting around the issue all evening. I was just the one who actually put words to our worst-case scenario. Figure out how to make this work or be the ones responsible for waving good-bye to two centuries of tradition. Boom.

Plus, it’s the truth. I’d devoted enough time and energy to the dramas of Rose & Grave. If we couldn’t get it together, maybe we should give up. Even if it meant going on hiatus and letting the patriarchs pick a new class (who, I’m cynical enough to predict, would undoubtedly be all male) for D178.

I closed down the meeting and vamoosed, disrobing and departing the Inner Temple before I could be roped into any more conversations or debate. And I wasn’t going to sign into my Phimalarlico account tonight, either. I’d given plenty to the society in the last few days. If it couldn’t stand without me for a few hours, then maybe it didn’t deserve to stand.

This time, as I left the tomb, no one followed me back to my college. (As if George wanted to get anywhere near me!) I anticipated a blissfully peaceful Sunday evening. Even Lydia would be busy with her own society meeting.

But as I turned onto York Street and Prescott College came into view, I caught sight of a familiar figure passing through the gate and turning toward College Street. It was Lydia, carrying her bag. What was she doing out here? She must be way late for her society meeting.

I began walking after her, keeping a safe distance. This was the perfect opportunity to discover what society she’d actually joined. I’d simply follow her right to the door of her tomb.

But instead of leading me to any tomb I knew of, she turned into Cross Campus and headed for the library. I followed her into the building and watched her make a beeline for the elevators in the back. As soon as the doors closed behind her, I rushed up and watched the number display. Floor seven. Freshman year, I’d heard rumors of a society that actually met in a secret room in the library stacks, though I’d never learned which one it was. I hopped in the next elevator. How hard would it be to find the entrance to the tomb in the Stacks? There wasn’t anything up there but reading rooms and bookshelves. Of course, I’d recently been taught a lesson about how well a society could hide its rooms, if necessary. I’d have to keep an eye out for any suspicious-looking mirrors.

The elevator reached the seventh floor and opened onto a hall lined with doorways. Most were inset with panes of frosted glass, though a few of those panes had been covered up by layers of paint or even, in one case, pieces of wood. I held my ear against each door. Nothing. I touched the metal doorknobs. Still cold.

Maybe the entrance was actually
in
the Stacks.

At Eli, there are two different types of people: those who study in the Stacks, and those who don’t. I’ve been known to do a bit of reading or even a problem set or two in the public reading rooms on the ground floor, but hang out for hours in the Stacks? Not on your life. Endless, silent rows of bookshelves, each illuminated by fluorescent bulbs controlled by individual electric timers. Going into the Stacks meant turning the dial, waiting until the light flickered into sickly life, and then rushing down the row, hoping to find the book you needed before the clock stopped ticking and the light went out. There was nothing freakier than wandering through these dusty rows and wondering, if something was to happen to you up here, how long it would be until someone needed a copy of
The Passion of Perpetua
or was interested in a little light reading on the life of Hildegard of Bingen. For instance. There were indeed study carrels to be found in this bibliographic wasteland, though I couldn’t imagine the type of person who would frequent them. There’s a decided difference between peace and quiet and fearing you’re the only person left on Earth.

Or maybe I’d just been traumatized at an early age by the poltergeist librarian in
Ghostbusters.

Whatever the cause, I remained on high alert as I picked my way through the abandoned floor. Most of the rows were dim, and I didn’t turn on any lights, fearing discovery. When I reached the end of the row of shelves, I turned right and headed toward the interior wall. Any secret room would likely be found along that end. Of course, all I could see before me was a row of study carrels, each as abandoned and forlorn as everything else in this desolate fortress of learning.

“Amy?”

I froze. There, seated behind one of the tall wooden dividers of a cubicle, sat Lydia. Her bag was open on her lap, and she hadn’t even gotten out her highlighter yet.

“Amy, what are you doing here? Don’t you have your meeting?”

I just stared at her, openmouthed.
“Don’t you have yours?”

I hereby confess:

I
so
knew it!

20.

Address and Redress

Lydia sat there for a moment, tapping her pen against her hand. “Does it look like I’m at a meeting?” she said at last.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “Was yours over early, too?” I’d latch on to any explanation at this point.

“I’m glad this happened,” Lydia said. “I am.”

I shook my head. “This can’t be right.”

“Were you following me?” She leaned over and caught the leg of another chair, scraping it across the floor until it was positioned across from her. I collapsed onto the seat.

“Of course I was! I wanted to see what tomb you went into!” I shook my head again. “Don’t do this to me, Lydia. I honestly don’t think I can take anything else this week. What happened with your society?”

She took a deep breath. “I’m not in one.”

“No shit!” I massaged my temples. If your cerebral cortex explodes before graduation, do your parents get a refund? “But what about everything you told Josh?”

“Lies.” She shrugged.

“What about everything you told me?”

“More lies.”

“What about all that crap that happened on Initiation Night? What about the fucking blood on our fucking floor?”

“Wow,
language,
Amy. And this is a library. Keep your voice down.”

“There’s no one around for miles, Lydia. Talk to me! I don’t believe this is happening. And if you knew anything at all about the kind of week I’ve been having, you’d know that’s saying a lot.” My best friend, a liar. My society brothers, my lover, and now my best friend. Any second now, my parents would call and tell me they were actually space aliens. Or European royalty. Or Republicans.

I considered scheduling a nice chat with the folks at Mental Hygiene. That’s what the DUH (Department of University Health, and a more accurate acronym has never been employed) calls their Psych department.

“I know, Amy. There have been so many times I wanted to confess the whole thing. But I didn’t even know how to start.”

“Just start,” I whispered. See? I can talk softly.

Another deep breath. “I didn’t get called back after interviews. I didn’t get tapped. And you did. By Rose & Grave, of all places. I didn’t even know they do women.”

“They didn’t.”

“And I was…jealous. You didn’t even want to be in a society. Not like I did. I was also a little embarrassed. So I started doing research on secret societies, and then I kind of…made one up.”

“You
made up
a secret society?” Maybe I wasn’t the one who needed Mental Hygiene after all.

“Yeah. I wanted you to think I’d gotten tapped, too. I figured it would be pretty easy to pretend. All I had to do was fake a couple of Initiation Night rituals and then disappear every Thursday and Sunday. And sometimes I didn’t even have to do that, since you weren’t in the suite on those nights anyway.”

“But, Lydia—the blood…the feathers…”

She ducked her head sheepishly. “Yeah, I think I went a little overboard. Still, you believed it. And it was kind of fun, having you think I was in an even more intense society than you were.”

“What I was thinking,” I corrected, “was that whoever those bastards were, they were hurting you. Nothing about it was fun.”

“That dawned on me pretty quickly. Also, the whole ruse became tiresome. Lying sucks because it’s much harder to remember. And it’s completely ruined my social life, too. All our friends go out on Thursday and I’m stuck at home because I’m terrified people will say something in front of you about how I was at a bar with Carol or something. I can’t even eat in the Prescott Dining Hall. I go someplace where no one knows me.” She laughed. “I was almost relieved when Josh and I started dating. It was pretty obvious he was in a society, so at least I didn’t have to come up with another excuse.”

Unbelievable.

“And I started to recognize that I’d been acting a little crazy.” (
A little,
she says.) “None of it seemed important after all the hype of Tap Night was over. But I’d built such a story, I couldn’t just abandon it. It’s what I’d always imagined for myself. I’d go to Eli, get tapped by a society, graduate into the exalted ranks of the Bilderberg Group.”

“The who?”

She blinked at me. “You’re serious? What kind of Digger are you?”

I shrugged. The bugaboo kind.

Lydia went on. “This fall, after I got into Phi Beta Kappa, I realized exactly how foolish I’d been. Here I was, in a real honor society, the oldest in the country, and I was whining about some stupid frat.”

“They’re not stu-…” I shut my mouth. Well, who was I to speak on that subject tonight? Occasionally, they were incredibly stupid. “If you were so over it, then why did you get mad at Josh when you found out his society was Rose & Grave?”

“Because you two had been pretending you didn’t know each other. You played me so well.” She started doodling on the cover of one of her notebooks. “It’s fine, though. I understand now that you guys weren’t talking about me behind my back.”

This was crazy. We’d been so worried about her and all the time she was making shit up? “Last night, you told Josh about how your fake society had been beating you and sticking pins in your skin.”

“He told you about that?” She smirked. “I guess I spoke a little soon about all the not-talking-about-me-behind-my-back. And it wasn’t me. It was the fake swim team members in my fake society. But yeah, it got out of hand. It seemed like he wanted to talk about society stuff. Whatever hard time you guys were having, he just needed to vent a little. And I couldn’t let him do it without giving him something in return.”

“What did he tell you?”

“Nothing damning, I swear!” She tilted her head to the side. “Look at you, so loyal. I promise, he didn’t tell me anything. Just that he was really stressed, didn’t know how things would turn out, stuff like that. It wasn’t really the time to come clean about my…um, tall tales. He needed me to be there for him. He can trust me. You both can.”

“So you told him your society was torturing you to make him feel a little better about what was happening with his?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

The truth was, it was so adorable and so twisted that I couldn’t even condemn her for it. “But now the truth is out.”

“Yes. And, Amy, I’m so relieved. The more involved my lie became, the more I felt like I was living in a bad sitcom. It’s so embarrassing. Please forgive me.”

“You’re forgiven,” I said instantly. “I’m not even going to ask you where you got those feathers.” Lydia’s society research left much to be desired. Where had she gotten her information?

“Old pillow.” She looked at me through her bangs. “Will you let me tell Josh myself?”

I hugged her. “Gladly.” Lydia’s transgressions were minor in the scheme of things. Bizarre, to be sure, but ultimately harmless. Except, perhaps, to old pillows. A week ago, this might have put a pretty bad dent in our friendship. Now it seemed like little more than a foible. I couldn’t afford to lose another friend. At this rate, who knew what kind of perspectives I’d be able to entertain by Winter Break? Still, I didn’t want to be anywhere near Josh when he heard this one. “Though, if you want my opinion, his plate’s a little full right now. Might want to wait a few days.”