Under the Rose (4 page)

His eyes flashed toward Lydia, and a scowl turned down the corners of his mouth. Oops, right, Barbarian-in-Vicinity. Alert, alert.

“Where did she go?” Mr. Prescott asked George, who cocked his thumb at the stone nooks, then stuck his hands in his pockets as Mr. Prescott took off after his ex-wife, sometime lover, and decades-long sparring partner.

“It’s dead in there,” George said to us. “Now at least. Amy, are you going to Clarissa’s thing?”

“Um…” I hadn’t quite been able to explain to Lydia why my sworn enemy was now sending me party invites and showing up in our suite for impromptu chats. She probably suspected I’d gone shallow in my old age. Or maybe she figured it was one more Digger-inspired change that had come over me since being tapped. She’d adjusted splendidly to the sudden location switch of my summer internship from Manhattan to D.C. (mostly because it meant we could stay together over the summer). However, we’d enjoyed a strict moratorium on all secret society–related conversations since May, and activities skirting that topic—such as a party with a Digger friend—might be dangerous. Whenever I brought up anything that could be construed as heading in the direction of society talk, she clammed up faster than a biochem major after mid-terms. And I thought Rose & Grave valued secrecy! Evidently, we had nothing on Lydia’s brothers.

My roommate, however, was even now on her way into the Master’s house.

“They’re out of the cookies,” George warned, and Lydia slumped.

So, it was off to Clarissa’s shindig. Clarissa Cuthbert lives in a very swank penthouse on the top floor of one of the classier apartment buildings in town. Her dad is some sort of Wall Street bigwig who thinks nothing of throwing money at a problem. The Cuthberts had even donated a very valuable Monet to Eli upon their daughter’s admission to the university, though the ongoing campus debate about which came first, the admission or the donation, was not one I participated in anymore, for two reasons:

1)
Clarissa is a fellow knight, and also a friend.

2)
She told me the truth last year. (The donation, and it doesn’t bother her, either.)

Clarissa is also rather notorious for her champagne-tasting parties, to which I’d never before rated an invitation. Apparently, all it took to pass the bar around here was an initiation to an elite society, and of course, the subsequent bonding over a vast misogynistic conspiracy that almost ruined us both. Clarissa and I were pretty tight these days.

But try explaining that to your barbarian best friend.

“I don’t get it; why is it we like this bitch now?” Lydia asked, as we were ushered into an apartment scented with calla lilies and lit by hundreds of floating tea lights. A man in white tails offered us slender glasses of rosé champagne from a silver tray.

“What’s not to like?” George said, taking his. “Thank you, my good man.”

Clarissa Cuthbert, a vision in white silk and salon-sprayed tan, met us a moment later. “Darling!” she cried, air-kissing me on both cheeks as if we hadn’t spent the afternoon together in a darkened tomb. “George, sweetheart!” Same for him. She turned to my roommate. “Lydia, right? We met last spring.”

“Hi,” Lydia said. “Nice digs.”

“Thank you! Canapés are on the back sideboard.” She turned to point and her long, perfectly highlighted blond hair swung over her shoulder, revealing for a moment the edge of the Rose & Grave tattoo on her shoulder blade. George looked at me and raised his eyebrow. Lydia clamped down on my arm. Crap.

P
OSSIBLE
R
ESPONSES

1)
“What tattoo? I think there was something in her hair.”

2)
“Roses. How cliché.”

3)
Deny, deny, deny.

But, as it turns out, Lydia’s grip had not been inspired by the tat. “Oh, my God, Amy. Don’t. Look.”

Of course, I looked. Across the room, picking through a tray of chocolate-dipped strawberries, stood Brandon Weare. His hair was even longer this year, and streaked with golden highlights. His tan had deepened over the summer, like always. Brandon. From what I heard at the Lit Mag, he’d just gotten back to campus. He hadn’t been at school in time to help me on the frosh issue. Luckily, I’d had Arielle for backup. It was little more than a clips issue, so no biggie, but—

Lydia’s grip on my arm grew tighter. His plate loaded with fruit, Brandon crossed the room and joined a group of attendees. One turned and smiled at him. She had straight black hair. She had wide-set black eyes. She had an eensy waist. And as I watched, she snagged a strawberry and brought it to his lips.

I threw back the champagne.

“Maybe she’s helping him because his hands are full,” Lydia suggested.

The girl kissed a trace of chocolate from the corner of his mouth.

“Or not.”

The two of us shuffled behind a shoji screen. “Okay, game plan,” I said, steeling myself. “I’ve seen him, so the initial shock has passed.”

“Right. Step one achieved without public humiliation.”

“So the next question is: Approach him or wait for him to approach me?”

“Tough call. Approaching him puts the power in his hands,” Lydia said, “but in this crowd, he might not see you at all, and the resulting ego blow would be—”

“Crippling.” I nodded. “It’s a dilemma.”

The screen shook slightly. “Knock, knock,” George said. “Is this some kind of private summit usually reserved for group trips to the ladies’ room?”

“Ah, a wingman!” Lydia exclaimed.

“Negatory.” If I was going to appear on anyone’s arm, it wouldn’t be George Harrison Prescott’s. Brandon had broken up with me after discovering I’d hooked up with George mere minutes before I’d agreed to make our friends-with-benefits relationship official. I doubt such a display now would improve my rating on the slut-o-meter.

“What are you two plotting?”

“George,” I said, “be a darling and get us more champagne.”

As soon as he was gone, I slipped out from behind the screen and sashayed across the room, head held high. With my snazzy red highlights, I was hardly about to blend into Clarissa’s “Martha Stewart is my godmother” white décor. He’d see me, and he’d stop me to say hi.

But not before Clarissa did. “Amy, honey, come meet my good friend from camp!” One perfectly French-manicured hand on my elbow later, there I was, face-to-face with long black hair, wide-set eyes, eensy-weensy waist, and—dear Lord, those boobs couldn’t be real, could they? “This is Felicity Bower and her boyfriend, Brandon. Felicity and I spent six summers together at Camp Lake Hubert for Girls.”

And that simply couldn’t be her real name, either. “Hi, I’m Amy Haskel,” I said in as strong a voice as I could muster.

Felicity’s eyes got even bigger, but it was Brandon who spoke. “Hi, Amy. How was your summer?”

And then he hugged me.

I pulled back right before my major organs went into emergency shutdown. “It was good.” I swallowed. My throat was parched. Jesus, where was George with that champagne? Where was George with that body and that face and those eyes? Felicity was blinking at me. “I was in D.C., working for a think tank.” Was Brandon taller? What was up with the five o’clock shadow on his chin? Who did he think he was, Keanu Reeves? Did Felicity actually go for that shit? “We were putting together narratives by exploited women.”

“Wow!” Felicity said. “What an amazing job! How did you score that one?”

“It sort of fell in my lap, last minute,” I offered lamely. The kind of last minute that comes of knowing a Digger patriarch. Of course, the society owed me after screwing up my first job. A waiter passed by and I swiped another glass of champagne.

“Man,” Felicity said, “all I did this summer was house-sit my uncle’s place.”

Clarissa heaved a dramatic sigh. “Woe is you, lounging in the Hong Kong mansion.”

Felicity blushed, beautifully. Of course. “Well, I almost died of boredom until I met this one.” She ruffled Brandon’s hair. “And then my uncle totally made it all up to me when he lent us his yacht for our cruise around Fiji.”

Okay, she totally knew about me and Brandon, so she was just doing that to be a bitch. As soon as he saw the focus of my gaze, Brandon caught her hand and pulled it down.

(I’m not ashamed to admit he’s a far better person than I am. Had he treated me the way I’d treated him, I would have basked in showing off my new, drop-dead-gorgeous, rich-as-Pluto significant other in front of him.)

“No dates for me this summer,” Clarissa said, oddly oblivious to the tension. “After Mom found Dad in flagrante with the dog-walker, she went on this whole I-am-woman-hear-me-purr kick. Completely cut the Y chromosome out of her existence. Except for the divorce lawyer, of course.”

“What happened to your dad?” I asked. There was no love lost between Mr. Cuthbert and me, not after the way he and his Rose & Grave patriarch cronies had sabotaged our tap class. Of course, he’d sabotaged his daughter at the same time. I wondered exactly how daddy dearest and his dog-walker had gotten caught.

“Considering the heinous details of the case,” Clarissa began, then shot me a look reminding me, as if I needed it, never to get on the bad side of the Digger named Angel, “we suffered obvious emotional trauma such that…well, let’s just say my father readily arranged to keep us both in the manner to which we’d become accustomed.” She stopped the latest server. “Beluga, anyone?”

“Actually, we’d better get going,” Brandon said, slipping an arm around Felicity’s waist. “It was nice meeting you, Clarissa.” He nodded at me. “See you later, Amy.”

And then they were gone, before I had time to figure out whether it was a
see you around
kind of “see you later” or an
I’m going to call you so we can discuss this
kind of “see you later.” I wasn’t given much chance to ponder it either, as we were immediately set upon by the Prescott College contingent—George and Lydia.

“Well?” Lydia asked.

“He looks different, he smells different, and he’s dating a girl named Felicity.” Still quite the hugger, though.

Comprehension dawned chez Clarissa. “So you know that guy pretty well?”

“Biblically.”

She groaned (though George was grinning). “Total social faux pas. So sorry, Amy.”

I took a deep breath. “I’m fine.”

“Felicity?”
Lydia cocked an eyebrow.

I glared at her in warning. “I said I’m fine.”

“Which is more than I can say for some of my other guests.” Clarissa gestured to Jenny Santos, who was sitting on a white couch looking disdainful. I don’t know what that girl’s deal is. If you’re going to take part in something, shouldn’t you commit yourself? She’d skipped out on our rehearsal earlier, and now she was acting too good for a fellow Digger’s party. And while I could dismiss the former as merely overextending her activities, I’m not quite sure what motivated the latter. If she didn’t want champagne, Clarissa no doubt had plenty of fancy French spring water.

“She’s been hiding out all evening,” Clarissa said. “George, want to come with me and get her circulating?”

George began to edge toward the sideboard. “I think I’ll pass. That girl has always looked at me like she’s Salome and I’m John the Baptist.”

If he used lines like that more often, Jenny would probably like him better. Clarissa went off to cheer up our resident party-pooping Digger, and Lydia and I found space to perch on the edge of a wingback chair.

“So what do you think was up with George’s parents?” Lydia asked over the din of the party. “His dad acted like he knew you.”

“I think we met move-in day freshman year,” I lied smoothly. “Or maybe he got me mixed up with one of the billion girls always dangling off his son.” I knew all about George’s divorced parents’ long-term love-hate (or at least lust-hate) relationship, but George had told me that in confidence, Digger to Digger. The report wasn’t for Lydia’s barbarian ears, or even, as far as I was concerned, for other Diggers until George felt like sharing it himself. Had I not spent last spring keeping the secret of my society big sib Malcolm’s sexual identity?

Malcolm’s e-mail made him sound so lonely up there in Alaska. I understood his desire to take a gap year before starting business school, especially given the trauma of coming out to his ultra-conservative governor father, but did he have to do it in such an isolated locale? That reminded me, I didn’t finish reading his e-mail.

Or figure out who had sent me the other one. I looked over at Clarissa and Jenny, whose company had grown. “Excuse me for a minute,” I said to Lydia, who was already waving to a fellow Debate Team member near the cheese fondue, and crossed the room.

The knot of girls on Jenny’s couch had only two things in common:

1)
A small tattoo of a rose inside an elongated hexagon somewhere on their bodies.

2)
The fact that they’d once taken on a group of powerful and vicious men and lived to tell the tale.

Other than that, we didn’t look as if we’d be friends at all, and I wondered if—extreme circumstances aside—we really were. Sure, we’d bonded as taps and at various society events over the summer, but once we got into the schedule of classes and regular meetings, what would we have to talk about? A club of Diggers was supposed to offer one another support and advice. But what did a Hollywood starlet like Odile Dumas have to say to a computer whiz like Jenny Santos? What kind of support could a radical activist like Demetria offer to a socialite like Clarissa Cuthbert?

Still, you’d think I was the only one questioning stuff if you saw the enthusiasm with which they greeted me. “Hey, chica!” Odile called, pulling me down next to her. “We were talking about Mara. One more girl for our little revolution, eh?”

“I saw her this afternoon,” I said. “She’s kind of intense.”

“She’s a classist bitch.” Demetria sniffed. “Did you read her column in
The Ivory Tower
about how they never should have let women into Eli?”

“Sounds like a girl the patriarchs would like,” I said. “Did she really write that?”
The Ivory Tower
is this crazy conservative paper on campus.