Oh. Apologize for drugging me, kidnapping me, almost drowning me. How does a fourteen-year-old kid even begin to prepare a speech for something like that? “Where are you?”
“Uh …” He hesitated. “I’m not supposed to tell you the name. It’s against the rules.”
A rehab facility, probably. Troubled teens, delinquents. A place parents could send their children before the law took over. At least Gehry was adhering to that part of the promise.
“My stitches are supposed to be coming out tomorrow,” he said. “They had to shave off a lot of my hair.”
I glanced down at my wrist, to where the scabs had mostly peeled away, leaving shiny new pink skin. I wondered if it would scar. Darren’s injuries definitely would. He’d cut his head open on the boat when it had tipped over. He’d passed out in the water and, like me, had almost drowned.
Well, either those were the stitches he was talking about or the first thing they had done to him was a good old-fashioned prefrontal lobotomy.
I couldn’t think of anything to say to him. Did Kurt Gehry really think that his son wanted to chat with his victim? That I wanted to chat with my kidnapper?
“And Dad said—I wanted to … thank you,” he said, the words sounding oddly unnatural from his mouth. “For letting me come here instead of jail.”
“Okay,” I answered, because nothing else seemed to fit. Yes, I’d refused to press charges. I wouldn’t call it largesse. I lay down on the couch and curled my knees up to my chest. Where was Lydia when I needed her? Where was Jamie?
“But it kind of sucks,” he went on. “It’s all these girls with, like, anorexia and stuff.”
I doubted they had rehab centers reserved solely for budding sociopaths. I “hmmmmed” into the receiver to keep myself from speaking those words out loud. Though the way I remembered it, Darren Gehry had a good sense of humor. When he wasn’t trying to kill me, that was.
“I told him you wouldn’t want to talk to me,” Darren said. “That you’d be too afraid.”
There was a soupçon of pride in his tone. Yes, he’d terrified me. He’d set out to do so, and he’d succeeded. He was doing it now, even from a distance, even imprisoned. I sat up.
“I’m not scared,” I said. “I’m angry. I don’t like you. I have nothing to say to you. And your repeated declarations that the only reason you’re on the phone with me right now is because your father is forcing you isn’t really helping the conversation.” Darren couldn’t hurt me.
On the other end of the line, the teenager was silent. Was he sad? Furious? It would probably be too much to hope that my admonishment had actually made him rethink his attitude. Heck, it had probably shocked the hell out of him that I could stand up for myself. After all, I’d been plenty pliant when I’d been …
Begging for my life.
“Darren?” I said into the phone.
But I heard only a click, then a dial tone.
“I can’t believe he actually called you,” said Angel. We were in the tomb, researching initiations of old to get ideas for the upcoming festivities.
“According to him, his father was making him do it,” I replied. It was amazing how styles had changed to suit the times. Rites of the seventies included mind-altering substances to really get the initiates in the magical mood. Notes from the eighties were awash in references to cocaine,1* and the nineties-era clubs had printed all their invitations on recycled paper.
My own initiation into the Order of Rose & Grave had a theme of women and power, to fit with the momentous occasion of tapping women for the very first time. The skits had all been about Cleopatra or the Salem Witch Trials. I’d have to ask Poe about some of the messages behind those skits, as things had not ended well for either Cleopatra or the goodwives of Salem.
He probably had picked those out himself.
“You should have hung up on him immediately,” argued Lucky, pulling down another stack of Black Books.
“I don’t know,” said Lil’ Demon, flipping through a scrapbook of early 21st century initiation photos. “Maybe it’s part of his therapy. You know, apologize to those whom you have wronged.”
“This isn’t AA,” said Angel. “And it’s clearly too soon. A short stint at Delinquents-R-Us and he’s suddenly no longer a psycho?”
Lil’ Demon shrugged. “It depends on the rehab place. In some, you walk the walk and talk the talk and they pronounce you cured and give you massages and pedicures for a week. In others, it’s major lockdown.”
“If I know Gehry,” said Angel, “it’s a matter of getting Darren ‘cured’ as quickly as possible. That’s probably why he called you.”
“Yeah, well, Darren’s not cured,” I said. “I was completely unprepared for his call, and he could tell. Relished it, in fact.” I shuddered. If what you liked was scaring people, controlling people—did that ever go away? Even if you got into the major-lockdown-style rehab facility?
And if so, did it matter whether I pressed charges or not? Even if he did get into legal trouble for kidnapping me, his juvenile records would be sealed when he turned eighteen. Like that girl who’d murdered her mother, then ended up at Harvard. Of course, that was assuming the Gehrys could prevent the story from leaking to the press. The media had been focusing a lot of attention on the ex-Chief of Staff after it had been revealed that the hard-line conservative had employed a household staff composed of mostly illegal immigrants and the whole family had fled Washington, D.C., in disgrace. The likelihood that our case would provoke a media circus had been one of the factors that convinced me to keep the whole matter under wraps. Darren deserved punishment. He didn’t deserve tabloid covers.
“What did Poe say?” Lil’ Demon asked.
I focused my attention on the book in my hands. “I didn’t tell him.”
I caught Angel and Lil’ Demon exchanging a look.
“What? I didn’t tell him! Sue me. What would he do about it?”
“Fix it,” said Lucky. “That’s what he does. I mean, I’m not crazy about your boyfriend, Bugaboo, but I can admit that he knows how to get stuff done.”
“Like what?” I said. “He calls Darren at his undisclosed location?”
“Or he calls Gehry and tells him to get his son to leave you the hell alone,” said Angel.
“That’s exactly what I need,” I said. “Poe’s protection from the big, bad fourteen-year-old.” Poe’s pity. Poe’s opinion that I was pathetic. Forget it. If I’d managed fine when I was drugged and tied up on a deserted island, I could manage a stupid phone call. This wasn’t Scream.
“On the subject of wormy patriarch’s spawn we’d rather not spend time with,” said Lucky, “I’ve got some bad news about Topher Cox.”
“You’re kidding me,” I said. Lucky had been in charge of background checks on all our potential taps.
“Turns out, he’s the grandson of the illustrious Achilles of D125,” Lucky went on. “Lionel Drake, importer/exporter. Homes in Singapore, Paris, and Martha’s Vineyard.”
“Crap,” I said.
“Are we obligated to tap legacies, though?” asked Lil’ Demon.
“If we think it could help our standing with the patriarchs,” said Angel. “I’m not an idiot. I know one of the reasons I was picked last year is because D176 thought it would smooth things over with my dad if one of those horrible girl taps was, in fact, his own daughter.” She pursed her lips. “How little they understood my father.”
True. If anything, their choice of Angel, who had always been a disappointment to her father, had only ignited Mr. Cuthbert’s belief that women did not belong in the society.
“But I’ve never heard of this guy,” I said. “He’s not on the board, the way Angel’s dad is. Maybe he couldn’t care less if his grandson gets tapped.”
“Good point,” said Angel. “Usually the concerned patriarchs are pretty vocal about which direction they would like the nepotism to swing. They all know I’m a ‘legacy’ tap, and I’ve received no less than four e-mails fro
m patriarchs wondering if their rugrats are on my short list. Most include resumes. One included a video.”
Lucky just sat there, arms crossed, waiting for us to finish.
I groaned and looked at her. “Don’t tell me.”
“One month ago, Lionel Drake donated ten thousand dollars to the TTA.”
Later, Lucky found me up to my elbows in Black Books near the back of the Grand Library. “Everything okay, Bugaboo?”
“Yeah,” I said, pulling down another stack. “Fine.”
“You don’t have to tap him,” she said. “There’s no law.”
“Right, because we can afford to lose any more support from patriarchs.” I sat back on my heels and sneezed. “Doesn’t Hale ever dust back here?”
I’d really been getting excited about the idea of Kalani. She was everything Rose & Grave could possibly want—smart, accomplished, ambitious, focused, driven. She’d more than correct the temporary sidestep on the path toward world domination they’d experienced when Malcolm had tapped me. I understood that Kalani outclassed me completely on paper, but she worked hard, deserved it, and was really sweet, to boot. I wanted her to be in our society, on our team. I wanted to be her big sib. Maybe the support of the Rose & Grave network would help her along her path to superstardom. Maybe, if she was a Digger, she wouldn’t forget the little guys like me when she actually became a huge success.
I yanked down another stack of books.
Topher, on the other hand—I dreaded the idea of a guy like him having access to any of our secrets.
“Well, I’d still have to trade for him,” I said. “You want a girl tap?” Jenny’s marble had been black.
“No, I’m good,” she said. “I’ve got my eye on a Cognitive Science major in Calvin College. We had this great talk the other day. His goal in life is to discover the location of the soul. Right now, he’s trying to decide if he wants to do seminary before medical school, or vice versa.”
“Convince him to go to seminary first,” I said, remembering Howard, the D177 tap who’d dropped out to concentrate on the MCATs and med school applications. “We’ll be more likely to get him.”
“I’ll add that to the list immediately after ‘Convince him we’re not a bunch of devil worshippers.’” She laughed. “I hear that sometimes people think that.”
I grinned and shook my head. Was it only a year ago that Lucky had believed that herself, had joined Rose & Grave with the express purpose of bringing it down from the inside? No wonder she’d volunteered for the job of background checks. Not only was she the most capable, what with her network access, but she had a personal stake in ensuring we didn’t make the same mistake with our taps that D176 had with her.
“And … how’s everything else?” she asked. “Just as fine?”
“You want to know about the boyfriend you can’t stand?”
“I want to know if you can stand him,” Lucky said, idly flipping through yet another Black Book. “Enough to, you know, talk to him about important events in your life. Or at the very least, about when the guy who kidnapped you calls for a chat.”
“I told you,” I said. “He’ll only get upset.”
“We all got upset,” she replied. “Why should he be any different?”
I frowned at the shelves. It just was. Only Poe had serious doubts about my ability to handle the issues in my life.
“I want to make sure he’s making you happy.” Lucky folded her hands in her lap. “I’ve been there—remember last semester? The impossible boyfriend who asked for everything and gave nothing? Remember how I was willing to hide or change everything I was for him?”
“And now what are you hiding?” I snapped back. “The fact that you have a boyfriend?”
She sighed. We’d spent most of Spring Break accusing Lucky that there was something going on between her and fellow knight Tristram Shandy. She always denied it. She did again.
“Poe’s not like that,” I said. “I don’t care what you guys think.”
“Right now, I am only thinking that not only is he your boyfriend, he’s your society brother. And that’s two reasons you shouldn’t be keeping secrets from him.”
“He keeps plenty of secrets from me,” I grumbled, and pulled down another stack of books.
Lucky began organizing and reshelving the ones on the far side of my pile. “Okay, leaving the issue of the boyfriend aside, how’s everything else? Between what happened during Spring Break and all this tap stuff, I feel like we haven’t talked in forever. How’s school? Your thesis? Your job search?”
Sucks (except for Nabokov), sucks, sucks. “Fine.”
“Do you know what you’re doing next year?”
“No,” I admitted.
“Because I’ve been thinking,” she began. “Caritas could kind of use a public relations chair.”
I stared at her. “What makes you think I know anything about public relations?”
She stared at me right back. “What have you been doing for us all year long? What about that article you spun for the Daily last spring where you single-handedly turned a damaging exposé on the society into an argument for the expanding role of equal rights in the Ivy League? What about all that work you did last semester when I … well, when I made that slight error in judgment? You mitigated that little snafu as well. You’d be great in PR.”
“Great in PR would require me having contacts. I don’t have contacts.”
“I have contacts, though,” Lucky said. “When I sold my program, back in high school, I was on dozens of news shows. They did a whole feature on me in Wired. And my Rolodex is your Rolodex.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Have you ever even seen a Rolodex?”
“Fine. My iPhone. But the bottom line is, I want you for your skills.”
“You want me because you’re creating an all-Digger corporation.”
“No, I’m hiring my brother’s girlfriend, too.”
“What are you, an employment assistance program?”
“What’s wrong with me surrounding myself with a built-in pool of brilliant people I trust?” she asked. “Isn’t the whole point of this society to make contacts that will help us later in life? You, and Angel, and Tristram, and everyone else are the best thing about being a Digger. Knowing you, trusting you. I’d hire Soze out of Stanford if I didn’t know he wants to go into politics. And in five years, he’ll be coming to me for campaign contributions, and I’ll be happy to give him what I can, because I know that he’ll do great things for our country. Not because we’re both Diggers, but because we were Diggers together and I know exactly what he can do, and I want him to do it.”
This was what no barbarian really understood about the nature of secret societies. They were suspicious of our bonds, of our tendency to stick together, work together, hire one another, support one another. To outsiders, we were a nepotism network, an old boys’ club guaranteed to keep other people out.
But it wasn’t that simple. I didn’t love and trust every person in my society. I worked hard to even respect some of them, especially those with whom I disagreed on every point. I’d probably never end up keeping in touch with Nikolos or Mara. But the people I’d come to love over my months in Rose & Grave would be people I loved forever. Working for Jenny’s company would be an amazing experience. Helping close friends I admire succeed in their dream jobs—what could possibly be wrong or elitist about that?
But Lucky sensed my hesitation. “Well, just keep it in mind,” she said at last. “I know you have a lot of pans on the fire right now. I don’t expect an answer right away.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Who knows? I may get into grad school yet.”
“I’ll pray that you have the best option open to you,” she replied, and shelved another stack of books. “And that you and Poe stop keeping secrets from each other. Him I understand—but you? You’ve never really been the taciturn type. No offense.”
“None taken.” I opened the book on my lap. The first few pages related plan
s for the Straggler Initiation of D176—when the members of the club got together at the beginning of the school year to perform the full-on initiation of knights who’d been abroad during the junior year in which they’d been tapped. According to the notes in the book, the Knight Poe had been particularly instrumental in designing the ceremony. Whoever the minute taker had been at that particular meeting, he’d had quite a talent for the poisoned pen. A small sampling:
10:462*: At which point, the Knight Poe recommended procuring live chickens for the festivities. The Knight Atlas, having some experience with poultry on his family farm, advised against it. Hale interrupted the meeting with the coffee cart and a staunch plea to keep livestock out of the tomb. Rebuffed, the Knight Poe proceeded to glower at his assembled brothers for a full five minutes.
11:15: Chickens again.
11:52: And back to chickens.
12:05: Uncle Tony recognized the Knight Lancelot, who diffused tensions thusly: “It seems to me that Poe’s argument is for an added element of chaos in the proceedings. Rather than focusing on this whole chicken conundrum, perhaps we can find another way to infuse a dash of pandemonium?”
Brainstorming ensues.
12:17: Chickens dropped in favor of strobe lights and small-scale fireworks. The Knight Poe mollified. Hale? Not so much.
From the very beginning, it seemed, Poe had been gung-ho about society life.
I wondered what else I could find out about him by reading the Black Books. I started flipping through the pages faster. People reported on their summer vacations, then the Connubial Bliss reports began. The first one wasn’t Poe’s, and neither was the second, though the third, the Puck of D176, had some rather spicy anecdotes. An orgy? Seriously? Wow, last year’s Puck made even George seem tame.
I pulled down the next Black Book and started flipping through that. Not Poe’s, not Poe’s, not Poe’s. George’s father, George Prescott, came to talk to the club about emerging markets in China. More C.B.’s. Ah, here it was. The Connubial Bliss Report of Poe, Knight of Persephone, Order of Rose & Grave.
Tap & Gown Page 7
