Secret Society Girl Read online

  “Like what?” Angel asked around a mouthful of champagne.

  Poe exchanged careful looks with Lancelot. “Funding. Changes to the, um, bylaws.”

  Lancelot shrugged. “We had to do some art restoration work last year, and we had to get permission to pay for that.”

  One of the other knights cracked up. “Yeah. ‘Art restoration.’ You put a football through an oil painting, Lance.”

  He blushed and ducked his head.

  All of the early 19th century brothers were similarly well heeled, and the Tobias Trust grew in wealth. They invested in a chunk of prime campus real estate, built themselves a massive stone tomb, and filled it with a wealth of antiques, artwork, curiosities, and college knickknacks crooked from every other organization at Eli.

  Aside from the property on High Street, the Tobias Trust (a tax-free non-profit, apparently) owned a lovely little set of suites at the Eli Club in midtown Manhattan and a private island down south, where the members went on retreats.

  “How much is the trust worth?” Soze asked. I was quickly learning that Josh could always be counted on to get to the meat of any equation.

  Poe quoted a number teetering on eight figures.

  Personally? I was impressed, but a quick glance around the room showed a mixed bag of reactions. Angel looked like her last sip of champagne had gone to vinegar, and Soze appeared to be biting the inside of his cheek.

  “Is that not…enough?” Lucky asked, speaking up for the first time. Small wonder. Her similarly large income had probably paid for a fleet of churches. But it most likely didn’t equal Angel’s trust fund.

  Poe backpedaled. “Our actual operating budget’s pretty large, so the cash value of the trust itself is not indicative—”

  “We’ve got plenty of money,” a patriarch interrupted, as if the discussion was closed.

  I raised my eyebrows at him. “Are we still on a need-to-know basis?” I asked. “Even now that we’ve been initiated? Secrets within secrets?”

  “Wrapped in riddles buried in enigmas, babe,” Lancelot added, lifting his champagne glass in an impromptu toast.

  “Look, Ms. Haskel—” the patriarch said, then bit his lip suddenly, his reproach forgotten. He dug into his pocket, pulled out his wallet, and handed two dollars to Poe.

  “Barbarian names,” Poe explained as he stuffed the money into the pocket of his robe. “Penalties go into our personal till.”

  “Two down, nine million to go,” Soze said.

  The point of this whole barbarian business was to separate our society lives from everything else. Inside the tomb and during official society events outside the tomb (like our lessons in the mansion), we used society names for each other, and society terms for various objects and events. We swore by Persephone rather than our professed religious figures. Time even ran differently; the Digger clocks were set five minutes ahead of the outside world and Diggers counted years from the time of the society’s inception. Anything that happened in the normal world, even if it happened to society members, was referred to as “barbarian matters.”

  The party broke up soon afterward (and without any further elucidation on our financial standing, much to the new taps’ chagrin), and we followed the seniors into the atrium, where there was an indoor swimming pool—a real one this time. I trailed along at a safe distance and watched them strip to their skivvies and splash around in the heated water. Mist rose from the surface and swirled toward the glass ceiling, and their shrieks and shouts echoed off the stone walls. My brothers, screaming their heads off in see-through BVDs and—oh, Lord, Clarissa!—lacy white thongs.

  I collapsed on a cushioned lounge chair and poured myself another glass of champagne from the near-empty bottle of Veuve Cliquot I’d been toting around. My mind could not absorb the events of this evening. The crazy initiation, the new class of taps, the tour of the tomb, the history, the songs, the protocol—it was like cramming for a history exam and a lab practical all at once. There was no way I’d remember all the formulas, and they’d already outlawed crib sheets. There had been dozens of secret passwords and combinations and hiding places and handshakes—yes, we learned a secret handshake, too, can you believe it?

  This is how it goes:

  OFFICIAL ROSE & GRAVE SECRET HANDSHAKE

  Step One: Giver extends hand as if giving a regular handshake, but before clutching, tucks index finger underneath and presses it against the other guy’s palm. That’s how you tell them you are in.

  Step Two: Receiver taps thrice, once, and twice on the giver’s ring, middle, and index finger knuckles, respectively. That’s how you make sure you’ve separated a Rose & Grave member from some other organization that also uses the palm-tickle trick.

  Apparently, it’s derived from the Templars, or the Masons, or someone, and so a lot of other secret societies do similar things.

  “Everyone copies us,” Lancelot had said with his signature grin.

  “Why don’t you just do the part that’s specifically Rose & Grave?” I had asked, and immediately regretted it, as I saw the other taps’ eyes raise heavenward. Every time I opened my mouth, it seemed, I got myself in trouble.

  Only Lancelot seemed immune to the annoyance. “Because, Bugaboo, some of these guys are eighty, and you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

  “We’ve been using the shake for centuries,” another Digger explained. “And we aren’t about to change just because some idiots caught on and decided to copy.”

  I leaned back in my chair and practiced the secret handshake on myself, doing my best to make it look as subtle and unobtrusive as possible, so that nosy onlookers wouldn’t notice all the fancy fingerwork. It was trickier than it looked, especially given the fact that one of my hands was upside down.

  Maybe there was someone else around here to practice with. I looked up, and sure enough, Jenny Santos was sitting by herself again, watching the swimmers with a mixture of amusement and confusion on her face. She was the only one who hadn’t been drinking tonight. In fact, of all the taps, she’d been acting the most aloof. Maybe it was time to break the ice.

  “Don’t you like swimming, either?” I asked, sitting down on the end of her chaise lounge.

  She snapped out of her reverie. “I love it. But I’m not taking my clothes off.”

  I checked out the various swimmers. And their underpants. Good point. “Want to try the secret handshake?”

  I stuck out my hand and she proceeded to do the handshake with such ease and casual skill that my mouth dropped open. “Wow, how did you do that? Did you already know it?”

  Jenny shrugged. “No.”

  Maybe it was a computer dork thing. Like she was so skillful at manipulating the keyboard, flitting her way around the finger work of a secret handshake was no problem. I felt around for another conversation topic, because it didn’t seem like Jennifer here was going to introduce any. “So I hear you’re a big-time computer genius. What did you invent?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “I’m a smart girl. Try me.” At least try with more than two words, honey.

  She sighed, loudly, as if she was tired of explaining it. “I wrote the kernel for a desktop search program that avoids the repeating context search polling thread queries that invalidate the translation lookaside buffers and avoids the bogdown of CPU resources. It got picked up by a software company, and they integrated it into their new operating system.”

  Okay, maybe I’m not that smart. But I’m sure I could understand the monetary part. “And they paid you a pile of money for it?”

  “Not exactly. They didn’t know how much they would like it until they started using it, so they made the mistake of paying me by commission instead of buying the program outright.”

  “That’s awesome! So now you get a commission for every copy of their new operating system?”

  “Yep.”

  “Which software company was it?”

  “One of the big ones.”

  By this point
, I was getting a little annoyed by her coy attitude. “We’re Diggers now. We shouldn’t have secrets.”

  Jenny looked at me, eyebrows raised. “Is that what you think? The Brotherhood of Death has many secrets, Amy. We’ve only just scratched the surface.” She reached up to caress the cross around her neck. “Though, to tell you the truth, I think I was expecting something more”—she gestured weakly at the swimmers—“devious.”

  I thought about what Malcolm had said about finding the right apple with which to tempt Jenny. Maybe she wasn’t as tempted as they thought. I opened my mouth to ask her more about this “Brotherhood of Death” (because I’d certainly never heard the Diggers called that), when a bunch of soaking-wet Diggers descended upon us, trying to drag us to our feet.

  “Come on!” they screamed, laughing, lifting Jenny in the air.

  “Wait! Wait!” she yelled, giggling. “I have to get my BlackBerry off!” A few moments later, sans BlackBerry, they tossed her in the pool. She surfaced, splashing water on her captors and smiling so broadly, it was as if I’d just been talking to a different girl.

  “You’re next!” Thorndike yelled, grabbing my arm.

  “No, wait!” I said, as the girl tugged me to my feet. “I don’t swim.”

  She let go, and I fell back on the chaise. “At all?”

  “Oh, please!” Josh said, grabbing my other arm. “She just doesn’t want to get her clothes wet. Get her!”

  Crap! Not again!

  “Guys,” said Malcolm. “Forget it. She’s already had a dunk tonight.” He put his hand on my shoulder and everyone let go. This is the effect that Malcolm Cabot has on people. They just listen to him.

  “My hero,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Do me instead,” he offered to the mob as he peeled off his shirt. A moment later, they picked him up and marched him to the water’s edge. He didn’t fight it, probably thinking that, if anything, it was good practice for when our class had to tap our own group next year.

  I wondered how they went about choosing the class. High achievers, obviously—people like Josh, Jennifer, Demetria, and Harun didn’t come around every day. Nothing I’ve ever done could hold a candle to those guys. From what I’d heard in the library, it was clear to me that George Harrison Prescott was a legacy (his daddy dragging him in, etc.), and I’d bet just about anything that Clarissa was, too. Mr. Cuthbert had just looked like the kind of guy who’d be in Rose & Grave. I didn’t know the rest of them that well, but I bet their C.V.s were every bit as impressive from both a merit-based and a genetic perspective. And they all knew it. Except me.

  Why aren’t you in Quill & Ink?

  Why indeed?

  I started practicing the handshake on myself again. A few droplets of water dripped on my elbow. I looked up. Malcolm stood over me. His artfully tossed hair was slicked back from his face, and water dripped down his Abercrombie & Fitch abs and ran in rivulets from the legs of his clingy, soaked boxer shorts. He must have taken off his pants when I wasn’t looking. Shame. Malcolm had clearly gotten into the poolside fun, though from what I could tell, Jenny was splashing around still hampered by her cargo pants and a white T-shirt that, sorry, girlfriend, ain’t hiding nothing.

  “You’re kind of in my light,” I said, squinting up at him.

  “You really don’t swim, do you?”

  Malcolm Cabot was incredibly hot. And he’d been paying me a lot of attention all night. At first, I’d just been writing it off to his desire to make the new initiate feel welcome—especially after the way that Poe guy had treated me. But even after it was clear that I’d gotten over it and was more than ready to party, he stuck close. Uh-oh. Did Brandon have competition? If so, he’d better watch out—Malcolm was way out of his league.

  (Oh my God, did I just think that? I’m such a bitch! Like it matters! How could I have entertained such a petty, worthless, small-minded thought? Was I already turning into a snob; I was in a secret society, therefore I was better than someone who wasn’t? Was Lydia right? And to think it about Brandon, too—Brandon, who was so sweet to me, so good. I liked him. A lot. I wasn’t in love with him, but…)

  Actually, truth be told, Malcolm was way out of my league, too. So the idea that he was interested just didn’t compute, even in my champagne-addled mind.

  But, considering the above addling, I didn’t really care if it made sense. He was here, wet and nearly naked.

  “No, I really don’t swim.”

  “Why?”

  I winked at him. “It’s a secret. I can still have secrets from you, can’t I, Lance?”

  He sat down beside me. “It’s frowned upon, but technically, yes. Come on, Bugaboo, tell me.” He grabbed my thigh and jiggled it as if to shake the truth from me.

  I blinked in what I hoped was a seductive manner, but the movement of my eyelids seemed to take much longer than strictly necessary. Note to self: When it looks like you might get the chance to hook up with a hot senior, go light on the bubbly. Then again, this probably wasn’t all champagne knocking me for a loop. After all, it was near 5 A.M., and I’d never been good with all-nighters.

  And I was sitting here, outclassed by an Adonis in a pair of wet boxer shorts.

  Of course, “outclassed” had basically been the theme of the evening, hadn’t it? I was wracking my Eli-educated brain trying to figure out where I fit in this world. Even the Christian computer nerd seemed a more appropriate ingredient.

  “Please?” He batted his blond eyelashes at me. “I’ll tell you a secret, too.”

  “Is it a big one?”

  He smiled and leaned in. “The biggest.”

  * * *

  WAYS TO KNOW WITHOUT ROLLING OVER

  TO LOOK AT HIM

  1) Instead of a thick, fluffy down duvet, boys have thin, cotton-fill bedspreads in black, navy, or forest green.

  2) The stereo is huge.

  3) There’s a poster of one of the following on the wall: Angelina Jolie, the Beastie Boys, or Star Wars.

  4) The pillow smells like hair gel.

  5) There’s a deep pit of dread in your stomach.

  If your present surroundings fit at least three of these criteria, look forward to your upcoming Walk of Shame.

  Mine fit four, but that fifth one was well on its way.

  I rolled over to face my fate, dreading who I would find hogging the hair gel–scented pillow to my right. Had I really consumed so much champers last night that I couldn’t remember? But the bed was empty. I sat up and took an in-depth survey of the room. No identifying features—family photos, a big sign saying: What’s-His-Name’s Room—and worse, no sign of my clothes.

  Uh-oh.

  I looked down at my body. Underwear, bra, long white boy’s undershirt with a little gold pin stuck through the collar—Rose & Grave. As if that narrowed it down.

  Think, Amy, think. Okay. Initiation, limo, mansion, lobster, swimming pool…do I remember the ride back to Eli? This was ridiculous! I had drunk half a bottle of champagne, tops, plus whatever may or may not have been in that Digger punch, and considering how many hours I was out there, there was no way I’d been drunk enough to hook up with someone and not remember…right?

  The door opened like a reality-show reveal, and for one second, all I could see was a sneakered foot. Then in walked Malcolm Cabot in a pair of designer jeans and an Eli T-shirt, balancing a drink holder and a paper Starbucks bag in one hand and a stack of folded clothes in the other.

  And then I remembered an image from last night: Malcolm Cabot, soaking wet, in a pair of boxer shorts and a smile.

  Double uh-oh.

  “Morning, sleepyhead!” He flopped the clothes on the bottom of the bed. “I tossed these in the wash for you. One thing you’ll learn really quickly: Pomegranate juice stains.”

  I tucked the comforter up around my hips. “Thanks.”

  He sat down at my side and handed me one of the paper cups. “I hope you like mocha.”

  The sharp aroma of dark chocolate wafted up toward m
e and I folded my hands around the cup, grateful that he’d thought to bring me breakfast in bed. Brandon, for all his kindness, had never ducked out for mocha. Not even Alan Albertson, the great “love of my life” (and number three on the Hit List, if you’re still keeping track) had ever done that. I sipped the drink, and wondered what the protocol was. Do I kiss him? Act casual? Tell him that I have absolutely no memory of us hooking up?

  Speaking of, how was I going to do the standard post-hook-up dissection with Lydia without breaking my oaths? There was no way I’d be able to explain this turn of events without letting her know that Malcolm Cabot was in Rose & Grave.

  Malcolm was busy spreading vegetable cream cheese on a cinnamon raisin bagel that already bore a slab of sausage. Gross. “Sorry I brought you here last night,” he said. “You zonked out back at the mansion, and my room was much closer to the limo drop-off than yours.”

  I choked on my mocha. “What?”

  He looked up. “I know. I’m weak. These muscles are all for show.” He flexed his biceps and grinned, then took a big bite of his disgusting breakfast.

  “I—fell asleep?”

  “Yeah. And it was only six-thirty, too. Don’t you ever pull all-nighters?”