Under the Rose Page 3

  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.

  “Yes. Said the school was at its height before they sullied the student population with an excess of estrogen. Wonder what she thinks of breaking the gender barrier at our club?”

  “I wonder why she even accepted the tap,” Clarissa said.

  “You expect a hypocrite to act rationally?” Jenny asked. “She thinks women shouldn’t be at Eli, but she’s a student here. If she really believed we don’t belong here, wouldn’t she be cooling her heels at Wellesley or someplace?” She toyed with the end of her long, dark braid and tucked her chin into her chest, as if the outburst had sapped all of her socializing strength. “Sounds less as if she’s saying what she really means than that she’s parroting the words of her cronies.” And then she clammed up completely, as if afraid to say more on the subject.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “She didn’t seem the submissive type in class today. Took on Professor Branch and everything.”

  “Well, we’ll get the scoop tomorrow,” Clarissa said.

  I twirled the glass in my hand. “Hey, guys?” I said, tentatively. “I have to tell you something. Before I came here tonight, I was checking my D-mail, and there was this message….”

  They all froze. They all looked down at their drinks. And then Jenny said, “So, you got it, too?”

  I hereby confess:

  Paranoia loves company.

  3.

  Skulls and Drones

  I’ll be the first to cop to a certain affinity for overthinking. Most of the time, it’s served me well. (Cf. academic success culminating in admittance to and continuing high GPA at Eli University.) Occasionally, it’s gotten me into trouble. (Cf. habit of constantly attributing mysterious occurrences to the shady machinations of misogynist Rose & Grave patriarchs. But sometimes, it really is their fault. After all, they tried to ruin my life last semester, so a little healthy wariness isn’t a bad thing.)

  But if every girl in the club got a mysterious e-mail, I sat up and took notice. When the club convened before the straggler initiation a few days later, we discussed the bizarre rhyming e-mails and what they could mean. Each Diggirl had received a two-line message sent from her regular Eli account to her Digger-mail; the time stamps showed each e-mail had been sent two minutes apart. When assembled by order of the time stamps, the couplets formed the following ditty:

  YOU THINK ITS OVER BUT ITS NOT

  FROM WITHIN DOTH PERSEPHONE ROT

  THEY WONT LOSE THAT FOR WHICH THEY FOUGHT

  PRETTY SOON THEYLL SNATCH YOUR SLOT

  TO SEE WHAT KIND OF DOOM YOUVE BROUGHT

  CUT THROUGH THE WEB IN WHICH YOURE CAUGHT

  LEARN OF THE THIEF WHO CAN BE BOUGHT

  FOR THEY HAVE FOUND YOUR ONE WEAK SPOT

  BEWARE OF POISON IN YOUR DRAUGHT

  OR IGNOBLE DEATH SHALL BE YOUR LOT*2

  “What do you think?” Thorndike asked, after pasting the lines together on her laptop.

  “That whoever it is needs to brush up on diction,” I said. “‘Draught’ is pronounced like ‘draft.’ Totally wrecks the rhyme scheme. And don’t get me started on the lack of punctuation.”

  “Plus,” Lil’ Demon added, pointing at line four, “this part sounds kind of dirty.”

  Thorndike slapped Lil’ Demon’s hand away from the screen. “Can you get sex off your mind for one second?”

  Lil’ Demon pursed her full lips and winked saucily down at Thorndike. “Oh, come on, you thought it, too. Snatch? Please.”

  Lucky blushed. “Moving on, what do we think it means?” For the moment, at least, she’d dropped her derision in favor of helpful discourse.

  “Haven’t the foggiest,” Angel said. She turned to me. “Really? Draft?”

  I nodded. “Who could have sent this? It had to be another Digger, right? Someone who knows our society names and e-mail addresses?”

  “Great,” Clarissa said. “That narrows it down to about 700 living patriarchs.”

  “Well, probably fewer than that who know anything about computers,” Jenny said. “I wouldn’t credit this to anyone older than D150 or so. If it even is a Digger,” she added under her breath.

  “Or it could be a patriarch willing to pay off some geek in the IT department,” I said. “Honestly? It could be anyone.”

  It was a sobering thought, but Lil’ Demon was rarely one for sober. “All right, ladies. Let’s discuss this with the guys after the initiation. Costumes, places, let’s get moving.”

  Little did we know that, post-ceremony, a badly written poem would be the last thing on any of our minds.

  The tomb kitchen on the lower level had been converted into a makeup trailer, which had rendered our aged caretaker, Hale, a quivering mess. “Hollywood types invading the tomb,” he was muttering from his place outside the entrance to the kitchen. “Never would have stood for it in the good old days.”

  “There, there, Hale,” I said, checking out my costume in the ancient, diamond-dust mirror hanging floor to ceiling at the dead end of the downstairs hall. The Rose & Grave tomb housed the coolest stuff. The mirror’s gorgeous carved wood frame featured various scenes from the tale of Persephone and was crowned at the top with a giant carving of a rose. Its reflection was a bit on the wavy side, but that was to be expected in such an antique. Almost a shame they kept it down here in the basement.

  “They’ll be gone in an hour or so,” I said. “And plus, it’s not like they’re seeing anything important, just hanging in the kitch—” He glared at me from under his bushy gray eyebrows and I shut my lip. Probably wouldn’t do to characterize our caretaker’s main domain as the least important part of the tomb. Hale took extraordinary pride in being the Diggers’ caretaker, as his father had been before him. No one in the society knew who we would hire after he succumbed to the ravages of age, since Hale had no kids and the position wasn’t exactly one we wanted to advertise for on Craigslist.

  “Oh, Hale,” I said quickly, walking toward him and putting my hand on his shoulder in a gesture of comfort. “I meant to mention this to you: Apparently Lancelot, D176, got a huge catch of halibut in Alask
a. He’s sending some down for our deep freeze.”

  “You heard from him?” asked a voice behind me, and I turned to find myself face-to-face with Death.

  Or Poe, in Grim Reaper makeup. Same diff, as far as I was concerned. Damn, where had he come from? He’s an Olympic-class lurker, this one.

  “Yeah, the other day,” I said.

  Poe frowned (or maybe it was just the spirit gum) and jammed his hand in his pockets. “Oh. How’s he doing?”

  Poe hadn’t heard from him? “Good. He, um, told me to say hi.” Actually, that wasn’t what Malcolm had written at all, but I have my limits when it comes to Poe. After all, four short months ago, the guy standing before me had stuck me in a plywood coffin and threatened to dump me in a pool. (I don’t swim.) No love lost around here.

  “He owes me an e-mail.” Now Poe crossed his arms over his chest. “So, how was your summer?”

  “Good,” I said. “I was in D.C.”

  “Yeah. Working for that patriarch.”

  Oops, bad topic. Poe had lost his own patriarch-bestowed internship at the White House after (eventually and reluctantly) siding with me and the other active Diggers in our battle last spring. I wasn’t sure what he’d been up to this summer. (Though whatever it was, judging from his arms, he’d gotten a tan. Looked good on him, actually.)

  “So, how’s…law school?” Last I heard, Poe had been scheduled to start as a 1L at Eli Law this fall, which meant this campus was stuck with him for three more years. Bummer.

  “Fine.”

  The conversation was going swimmingly. We stood in silence for a second or so, and then Poe, in a misguided attempt to jump-start the exchange, said, “Lil’ Demon asked me to play the Reaper tonight. Guess she couldn’t find anyone in the current class she liked enough to take on the role.”

  Yeah, because insulting my club would definitely warm me up. “Or maybe she thought no one else had the requisite air of depression and desperation.” I smiled. “Planning on drowning anyone this evening?”