Rites of Spring (Break)

by Diana Peterfreund

  I shook my head. I didn’t even remember getting on the boat. Had I brushed past Poe without even acknowledging him, without even thanking him for trying to help?

  No wonder he hadn’t called me! After he went out of his way to get to the police, endangering himself and a significantly pricey piece of the Myers’ property, I’d refused to press charges.

  “I’m surprised you haven’t talked to him,” George said. “Considering.”

  I bit my lip. “That’s over.” More like a nonstarter.

  “Oh.”

  “What, does that surprise you?” I said, getting annoyed now. “You’re the one who told me he was a jerk.”

  George looked at me in surprise. “Do you really care what I think?”

  No. No, but…“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said at last. “Not with you.”

  “Fine,” he said, and picked up a box of nails. “But you should know that I don’t think he’s a jerk anymore.”

  “Thank you,” I said. As he turned to go, I touched his shoulder. “And thank you, also, for saving my life.”

  George smiled his gorgeous smile. “That was cool, huh? I’ve never done anything like that before.”

  “It was very, very cool.”

  He walked away and I stared after him, watching various women on the crew drifting in his direction. I smiled. They absolutely couldn’t help it. Gorgeous, funny, charming, and in his spare time, he saved the lives of innocent coeds. And yes, I was completely grateful for that. But I didn’t feel the slightest compulsion to sleep with him again.

  I put down the nail gun and grabbed my cell phone, dialing the number from memory. It rang and rang, and when at last the answering machine played Poe’s voice, I hung up. What I had to say didn’t belong on a machine.

  “I’m never going to get the feel of powdered drywall out of my hair,” Clarissa whined. “And my manicurist is going to shoot me for what I’ve done to my nails.”

  “Do you regret it?” Demetria asked, pulling off I-91 and onto the quiet streets of New Haven.

  Clarissa grinned. “Not a minute.”

  “You’d better get it together,” Jenny said in mock warning. “I don’t want a CFO who isn’t presentable.”

  I smiled out the window. While others had used the road trip to get their futures in order, the drive up to Connecticut had given me too much spare time to ruminate on all the questions that remained unanswered. How long had Darren been spying on Poe and me to overhear our hypothetical plate-smashing plot? Would Gehry keep his promise to punish, rehabilitate, and, moreover, help his son? And what in the world would I say when I saw Poe?

  As the van rolled down Danbury Road, I came to a decision. “Hey, Demetria, can you pull over?”

  Demetria checked me out in the rearview mirror. “What? Why?”

  “There’s something I have to do.” I saw Poe’s block on the left. “Right here.”

  Odile checked out the neighborhood. “What do you have to do here? Buy crack?”

  “Isn’t this graduate student housing?” Jenny frowned and Harun covered her hand with his. “Oh.”

  George looked at the house. “Amy, do you think he’s even home?”

  “Who?” Clarissa asked.

  “Jamie Orcutt,” George said softly. He looked at me. “I’ll get your bags back to your room.”

  “Thanks,” I said, sliding open the door and slipping out. My sneakers sank into the last of the March slush. I felt through the fabric of my purse for the remainder of the cylinder inside. Life Savers.

  “I’m not leaving her down here alone,” Demetria said. “We can wait to see if he’s there.”

  But we didn’t have to. The door opened, and there was Poe, framed in the screen. He was wearing khakis and a dark blue Eli hoodie, and his arms were folded across his chest. I waved back at my friends and headed up the path to the porch. I didn’t even see them take off.

  “Hi,” I said. “Can I come in?”

  He stepped aside and I entered the apartment. It was much as I remembered it from last semester. The same worn furniture, the same bookshelves and red-bound law texts, the same giant aquarium with the giant snake. Lord Voldemort, if I recalled correctly. And next to it, the smaller cage for the little white mice Poe fed the snake. Except now, when I looked, I saw only one mouse in the cage, and a hamster wheel, and a little colorful ball. I leaned in closer.

  “I named her Reepicheep,” he said abruptly.

  “What?”

  “The mouse. I named her Reepicheep.”

  “Reepicheep was a boy mouse.”

  He shrugged. “Details.” He joined me in front of the cage. “He was a really brave mouse. Brave and noble and dutiful, and a little bit too much into self-sacrifice.”

  I swallowed. Well, there was answer number one.

  “And anyway,” he went on quickly, “I couldn’t very well feed her to anyone after that lecture you gave me in November.”

  I nodded. “And after naming her.”

  “Right.” He looked at me. “What do you want?”

  “To see you.”

  He turned away from the cages and sat down on the sofa. “Okay.”

  “And talk to you.” I turned around, too, but there didn’t seem to be anyplace to sit where I wouldn’t touch him. There didn’t seem to be anyplace to put my hands, anywhere to look that wasn’t at his face. I focused my eyes on the bookshelves, on the vegetarian cookbooks there, and I remembered why we’d fought that day. I felt so stupid now. He had eaten the lobster that night. He’d eaten it as a peace offering to the Myers. Poe was also a little too much into self-sacrifice.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Jamie’s eyes went wide. “You’re sorry? Christ, Amy, what for?” He shook his head in disbelief. “I can’t even look at you right now. I’ve been dreading seeing you again, after what I said to you. After what happened.”

  “Why?” I asked. This was like in January, when he’d avoided us all after he cracked his head open during the Dragon’s Head raid. “I heard about what you did, stealing the boat to call the police. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to thank you then and there.”

  “But that’s not what you wanted.” He wasn’t looking at me, and I think I might be getting a bit better at reading his expressions. Disapproval, resignation, carefully reined frustration. I remembered what he’d done to Micah Price, and that poor boy had only spit at me. Gehry would do well to keep his son away from Poe.

  I came closer. “You didn’t know that when you did it. Hell, I didn’t know it. You didn’t know anything but that I was in danger. And you chose me over the society.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.” I sat down next to him. “Like it or not, Mr. Patriarch, you broke the third oath.”

  He looked down at his hands and shrugged. “Details.”

  Exactly. Amazing how silly they seemed in context. Present a good enough reason, and you realize that the things you thought were important go right out the window. The society was just the symbol. It was the people inside who really mattered. Put me in a room with a man like Jamie, and my well-reasoned case against dating seemed ridiculous. And all the specific arguments against dating him evaporated like frost in the sun.

  We sat in silence for a few minutes, and then he spoke again. “Still, it was a pretty stupid move. It took me right out of the game. I wasn’t able to rescue you. I heard it was…George.”

  And how that must have grated on him! “You know George is long over, right?”

  He nodded. “Yes. I knew it at the time. I don’t know why I said that stupid—”

  “I don’t care.” I did then, but it all seemed so petty now. “You were angry. We all say stupid shit.”

  “That’s not even it,” he admitted. “It killed me that I wasn’t there to save you. Like I didn’t have the right to be.”

  “Actually,” I said, smiling, “I kind of saved myself. A week earlier, I would have drowned long before the boat got to me.”

  And now he
did look at me.

  “I think I must be a pretty good swimmer now, if I can do it tied up and drugged.”

  “Amy…” All incredulous.

  “Here’s the thing,” I said, quickly, before I lost my nerve. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes. About the society, and about my relationships—everything.” He was still staring at me, and the words came out in a rush. “And come on. We’ve had so many battles, and you’re just so damn prickly all the time. And my friends would think I’m nuts for…”

  “For what?” he cut in. “Making another mistake?”

  “No,” I said, and took his hand in mine. “Doing something that might make up for all of them.”

  Jamie stared at our hands for a moment, then pulled away. “No. I tried, on Cavador Key, but I hated it.” He caught my stricken expression and amended his words. “I couldn’t—I can’t pretend this isn’t important. I can’t act like it doesn’t exist. It’s ironic, but true. There are a lot of things I’m really good at keeping secret. But I’ve learned I’m not too good at that with you. I can’t pull it off. I don’t want to just hook up. I don’t want a secret relationship.”

  “Well, that’s a relief,” I said, grabbing for both of his hands and holding on for dear life.

  Doubt started giving way to recognition, but he needed to hear it. “Why’s that?”

  “Because I’m really sick of secrets.”

  Acknowledgments

  * * *

  FOLKS I’D LIKE TO THANK

  1) The readers of Secret Society Girl and Under the Rose

  2) The Venerable M.A.E., footnoter extraordinaire

  3) Tracy Devine, master titler

  4) Pam Feinstein, Lynn Andreozzi, Carol Russo, and all the others on the Bantam Dell Team

  5) Deidre Knight (and the gang at TKA), who always rooted for Poe

  6) The Sistahs, TARA, WRW, CLWOW, and the Non-Bombs, for being the only societies I need

  7) Holly Black, Libba Bray, Cecil Castellucci, Margaret Crocker, Cassandra Clare, Maureen Johnson, Jaida Jones, and Justine Larbalestier, for the (in)sanity

  8) Marley Gibson and Cheryl Wilson, who always have my back

  9) Erica Ridley and Carrie Ryan, for screaming in text and in person at the shower scene

  10) Julie Leto, who saved my storyline

  11) The bloggers, blog readers, and lurkers galore

  12) My family, family-in-law, and friends

  13) Fellow sons and daughters of Eli

  14) Those fabulous secret sources

  15) My husband (!!!)

  About the Author

  * * *

  DIANA PETERFREUND graduated from Yale University in 2001 with degrees in geology and literature. A former food critic, she now resides in Washington, D.C. Her previous two novels, Secret Society Girl and Under the Rose, are available now from Delta. Visit the author’s website at:

  http://www.dianapeterfreund.com.

  AND WATCH FOR

  The Conclusion of Diana Peterfreund’s

  Secret Society Girl Series

  On Sale Summer 2009

  Please turn the page for a special advance preview.

  I hereby confess:

  Everyone wants

  to be one of us.

  * * *

  You arrived in a state of awe, of wonderment. Maybe you’re the latest in a long line of your family members to matriculate to our fine university. Maybe you’re a celebrity, or foreign royalty, or a sports star, or a genius at the near-lost art of lute playing. Maybe you’re a Westinghouse scholar; a national debate champion; or the valedictorian of your elite, East Coast boarding school where your name was on the register from the moment you were born. Or maybe you’re none of the above. Perhaps you’re just handy with the SATs, rocked grades nine to twelve, and charmed the heck out of the middle-aged lawyer who interviewed you one evening in his satellite office on behalf of his alma mater. Whatever way it happened, you ended up at Eli.

  And from the moment you stepped on campus, you heard about us.

  For all that we were secret, we remained one of the constants of your college career. You could hardly get to your dorm freshman year without passing our tomb. And you wondered, even if you wouldn’t admit it to your roommates or your singing group friends or your lab partner, what it would be like to be one of us. What we did at our weekly meetings—sequestered, sacrosanct, silent except for the occasional scream.

  You hoped that someday you’d find out.

  The season is upon us. We, the members of Rose & Grave D177, are graduating and are thusly charged with the tapping of new souls to fill our robes, take up the torch of our traditions, and stand beside us as members of this illustrious, rarefied order. It is a lofty invitation and one that no man (or woman) should accept lightly. We are the standard bearers of a New World Order. We are the key that will unlock the life you’ve only imagined.

  You will be judged. Will you be found worthy?

  For this is what you’ve always wanted.

  Isn’t it?

  I hereby confess:

  I like being his.

  1

  Pledges

  * * *

  As many of my friends (and a few of my enemies) will tell you, I have a tendency to overanalyze. I’m aware of this characteristic within myself, and I do my level best to overcome it. As a result, I have occasionally been known to make snap decisions that, in retrospect, were probably mistakes.

  But here’s what I think now. Life is a bit like a standardized test. Not putting down an answer because you fear it could be wrong will lower your overall score. So remember what those nice folks at the Princeton Review told you: Make an educated guess. But be careful. You never know where that decision is going to take you.

  Almost a year ago, I accepted the tap from Rose & Grave, Eli University’s most powerful, exclusive, and notorious secret society. I knew my life would change. What I didn’t realize was how. I figured my induction into their order would net me some contacts in my preferred field of business, add an extra oomph to my résumé, and provide an insurance plan for the future that loomed just beyond the next set of final exams.

  What I didn’t expect was that it would open my eyes to a whole world of my own potential. I no longer even wanted the job I’d once hoped Rose & Grave would help me get. I also didn’t know that I’d have a host of new friends, some of whom I’d never dreamed of associating with before—a few of whom I’d actively disliked. But now I’d move mountains for any of them. I certainly never knew how much danger one little club membership could net me, though I’d spent the last year being threatened, thwarted, chased, conspired against, and even once—bizarrely—kidnapped.

  But most of all, I didn’t realize that the following March, I’d be sitting on a couch that looked like it had been fished out of the trash, staring at a guy I’d never even have looked twice at, and wondering if I dared take a risk answering the following:

  AMY HASKEL, ARE YOU IN LOVE?

  a) Yes

  b) No

  c) Insufficient data to answer this question

  Oh, hell, it’s c, which is why there was no way I was going to let our Spring Break fling end. He couldn’t do the secret hooking-up thing anymore? Fine. Let’s try something new.

  “I’m really sick of secrets,” I said, and kissed him.

  Brilliant as Jamie Orcutt is, it took him several seconds to parse the meaning of my statement. And when he did, the kiss turned from hesitant to heated in no time at all.

  Somehow, we shifted on the couch, from a relatively decent and G-rated side-to-side to something that rated the sort of parental supervision we had zero interest in at the moment. And, say what you will about how the couch looked, it certainly felt comfortable once I was sandwiched deeply between the cushions and Jamie. I clung to his shoulders as if I were drowning and he knotted his fists into my shirt, sliding the material away from my skin as his mouth moved south over my throat.

  “Ja…” I said on a sigh, and then, as his
tongue flicked over my collarbone, “Puh…”

  He lifted his head. “You are never going to get it straight, are you?”

  “Unlikely.” I slid my hands down his back, to where his sweatshirt ended and his skin was bare. “It’s already a tough enough effort to think of you as Jamie and not as—” Poe. I stopped myself in time to avoid a fine.

  “This is troublesome,” he said. “But then again, that’s your society name.” He tapped my nose.

  Bugaboo. Yes, and he’d probably chosen it, too, now that I thought about it. “You want to know what’s even more troublesome?” I scooted up. “Our real names rhyme.”

  He chuckled. “Yeah, they do. I never thought of that.”

  “People are going to laugh whenever they say things like, ‘We should invite Amy and Jamie to the party next weekend’ or ‘Let’s go on a double date with Amy and Jamie.’”

  He frowned. “I’m now required to go on double dates with your friends? Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”

  Neither was bringing up my friends, the majority of whom had no particular love for him. “I’m just saying, ‘Amy and Jamie’ sounds a bit lame.”

  But he was smiling. “I was just thinking how nice it sounds.”

  I blushed, and just as quickly, the concerns started crowding into my head. What kind of person gets into a relationship less than two months before graduating from college? Was I mad? Jamie was in law school, here, at Eli, for the next two years. I had no idea where I’d be. When I left town at the end of May, there’s no way our relationship would be ready for the long-distance thing (if it even lasted until then), and I had no intentions of sticking around New Haven for a boyfriend I’d just started dating. This was silly. I was setting myself up for an even worse heartbreak come commencement.