Tap & Gown

by Diana Peterfreund

  Our first target to tap was Omar’s choice: the Israeli engineer Tal Yitzchach. To own the truth, I was mildly nervous about how this would go down. Society tradition dictated that we were to burst into his room, fully robed, carry him bodily to an undisclosed, pitch-black location (in this case, the broom closet down the hall from his apartment), and ask him if he wanted in. All well and good, until you considered that Tal was ex-military and an expert at the art of krav maga. If we caught him by surprise, he might break all our necks.

  Perhaps it was a good thing Omar had slipped up on the secrecy thing.

  Still, I wanted to grab the most non-lethal body part when it came time to carry Tal out of his studio.

  We slipped into his apartment building and up to Tal’s floor. Jenny, the smallest knight in our group and therefore relegated to candle patrol, shoved brooms and mops out of the way in the closet, and set up the altar while the rest of us gathered outside his apartment door.

  Omar knocked and we all forced our bodies into stillness. We heard the sound of a chain being released, and all I could picture was what a funny sight it must be to see through one’s peephole four black-robed, hooded figures gathered in a narrow hallway under a fluorescent light. And then the door opened.

  We grabbed him, and he lay passive in our arms as we shuffled him into the closet and gathered in a circle. By the light of the candle, I could see a big grin on his face. Omar bent over the altar, the candle flickering strangely on the planes of his hooded face.

  “Rose & Grave,” he intoned in a rumbling voice. “Accept or Reject?”

  Tal grinned even wider. “Accept.”

  Omar blew out the candle and we were off.

  “Hey!” I heard Tal call as we sprinted away. I cast a quick look over my shoulder. He had started after us, then stopped when he saw the black-lined envelope we’d left behind. It contained instructions for his initiation and told him, quite firmly, that he was to stay put for now.3*

  One down, four to go.

  Then we tapped Jenny’s Cognitive Science major, Paul Raymond, who, like Tal, lived off campus. Easy peasy Even easier was Kevin’s tenor tap, who had some experience with the process after going through it with his singing group three years earlier.

  Topher Cox was next on our hit list. I felt my heart pounding as we approached his entryway Our robes had grown damp by this point and stuck to our ankles as we walked, rendering our steps graceless rather than menacingly swirly Students braving the crummy weather in the courtyard stared at us as we swept by, black-robed and silent. Some even followed us. We entered, and Omar blocked the door, keeping prying eyes out. Jamie took a similar stance on the stair landing and Jenny made sure the bathroom was clear and the light was out as I swiftly lit my candle.

  “Who you tapping?” called one of the sophomores on the stoop.

  “Yeah, who is it?” asked another. Omar looked resolutely ahead.

  “Hey Topher!” shouted a third, and banged on the window next to the entryway door. “They’re here for you!”

  “He’s been holed up in his room all night,” I heard a girl say. “Waiting. Isn’t it weird?”

  “I don’t know,” said another girl. “I want to be in one senior year. They’re weird, but fun, you know?”

  Topher opened the door and peeked out.

  “Go!” Jamie cried, leaping down from the stairs, his cape flapping like a comic book superhero. He pinned Topher’s arms and lifted him off the ground as Omar slammed the entryway door shut and hurried over to help. Kevin made a grab for Topher’s other leg and they shoved him, humble-jumble, into the bathroom. I swiped the candle out of the way, and Jenny tripped over her mended hem.

  “Sloppy,” Topher said. Jenny was holding her wet cape together with one hand, struggling with the other to conceal her face beneath the hood. The candle, miraculously stayed lit.

  “Shut up, barbarian,” Jamie growled, and I felt it in my toes. He whipped his head toward me. “Go.”

  Go? He’d just insulted us! I stood poised over the black candle and stared at Topher Cox, who stared back, unfazed and entitled, surrounded by a semi-circle of knights I knew and loved.

  Just tap him. Just say the words. This was the deal you made. This was what you agreed to. So do it.

  Do it.

  My teeth seemed to swallow my lips, and I couldn’t speak.

  “Go.” I felt Jamie’s hand on mine, his gray eyes like ice beneath the hood of his robe. Even in the stillness of the bathroom, his whisper barely reached me. “It’ll be okay, I promise.”

  I looked across the candle. Topher’s smug expression had waned, replaced by a flash of—what? Doubt?

  “Rose & Grave,” I blurted. “Accept or Reject?”

  “Accept!” he rushed to say, as if afraid I’d take it back.

  I almost laughed. But instead, I followed the script: Blow out the candle, throw an envelope at his feet, and run.

  In the courtyard, Jamie caught up to me. “You all right?”

  “Yeah,” I puffed, and kept up the pace. Michelle’s apartment was across town, so we were running to Jenny’s parking garage to pick up her car.

  “I was afraid you’d bugged out back there.”

  “I’m fine.” Into the parking garage we ran, black and hooded beneath the sodium lights like a band of Dementors out of a Harry Potter movie. The student garage employee inside the glass box at the entrance was paying attention to her linear algebra homework, as usual. Omar jumped into the passenger seat and Kevin scrambled into the back, leaving the door open for us.

  “Amy.” Jamie stopped me before I climbed inside. “You didn’t sell out.”

  Was I so easy to read, even hooded? “Then why does it feel like I did?”

  “It’s compromise. It’s mature.”

  “It sucks.”

  He laughed. “Very mature. Now let’s go get your Michelle.”

  I turned, grabbed him and kissed him. “Thank you,” I said. “For giving me all of this. I wouldn’t have had it any other way.”

  “Come on, you lovebirds!” Kevin cried, beckoning us into the car. “We’ve got tapping to do.”

  We piled in, scooping up handfuls of our damp, tangled capes to make sure they weren’t caught in the door. My legs were thrown across Jamie’s lap in the tiny backseat, and I held on to his neck to keep from crushing Kevin. The windows steamed up with moisture as we drove, breathless with exertion and excitement, up Science Hill.

  At Michelle’s apartment, I approached the doorman as the others hung back. I shoved wet locks of hair off my cheeks and smiled at him. “Hi, I’m here to see Michelle Whitmore?”

  He gave me an up-down, then tipped his chin at my companions. “All y’all? Because we have to sign guests in.”

  “We can’t do that,” Jenny said. “Can’t you just let us in?”

  “Afraid not,” the doorman said. “Ms. Whitmore has been very specific …”

  “Can you call her?” I asked. “She’s expecting us, I promise.”

  The doorman’s expression was skeptical, but he picked up his phone. “Ms. Whitmore? There are some people here for you, but they won’t identify themselves. They’re in costume. Um, about five of them. Really? Okay, but this goes against our policy … Okay, then.” He turned to us. “You can go up, and I’ll sign you in as a delivery, but if you aren’t back out here in five minutes—”

  “We will be!” and we raced for the elevator.

  Michelle answered the second I knocked on her door. Instantly, half a dozen hands reached for her and she reeled back, her eyes going wide.

  “Don’t be afraid,” I hissed at her as we carried her to the stairwell, which we’d darkened for this purpose. Jamie stood at our makeshift altar, and the black candle burned straight and true.

  “Rose & Grave,” he declared in a voice that echoed up and down the floors. “Accept or Reject?”

  Michelle stood stock-still, hands clenched to her sides. Her lips parted in shock. “Rose and … Grave?”


  She leaned forward slightly, as if trying to get a better look at Jamie.

  He tilted his face farther into shadow against the flame. “Accept or Reject?” he repeated.

  She turned in a slow circle, taking in the hooded knights who surrounded her on all sides, their faces obscured and unknown. Then she stopped and stared straight at me. I raised my chin toward the circle of light and winked.

  Michelle looked back to Jamie. “I accept.”

  1*Historically, this meant Rose & Grave telling the other society to back the hell off. Given the perceived weakness of the Diggers this year, the knights feared it might get more complicated than that.

  2*It’s entirely possible that Mara’s speech was less Mary Poppins than related here.

  3*The confessor had insisted upon this addition after her own confusion last spring.

  “Are we done?” I asked Jamie as soon as we left Michelle’s building.

  “We need to powwow with the other groups and make sure they’ve got their taps in order—”

  I pressed my body against his. “Are we done?”

  He looked down at me. “Don’t I wish.” He cocked his head back at Michelle’s. “That was a bit of a cheat back there, wasn’t it?”

  Even mid-tap, he hadn’t been paying attention to Michelle. Only to me. “Yes. And I don’t care. If she hadn’t seen my face, she wouldn’t have believed it. Just like I didn’t last year.”

  Jamie shook his head. “I don’t get it. You both got notes with our seal on it.”

  “Could be a prank. I know that’s what Michelle has been thinking all afternoon. She needed to see me to believe it. I thought the same thing last year. Rose & Grave, tapping me?”

  He squeezed my hands. “I don’t know what Rose & Grave would have done without you this year.”

  “Probably gone on in its merry, misogynist way.”

  “And me?”

  “Same.” I giggled.

  Jenny came running up to us, cell phone in hand. “That was Harun. The groups on the main campus are finished—we got every one!”

  “Yes!” I pumped my fist in the air. “So we’re done?” I wagged my eyebrows suggestively at Jamie.

  “Not hardly,” Jenny said. “Initiation’s this weekend. We have so much stuff left to do!”

  “Jenny.”

  “And Harun says a bunch of people are getting together for pizza—”

  “Jenny.”

  “—back at the tomb to celebrate. Don’t you want to party?”

  “Jenny.”

  She looked from me to Jamie and back again. “Oh. I … see.” Her hands clasped together in front of her. “Um, it’s pizza from Sally’s? Best pizza in New Haven?”

  “Rain check?” I said.

  She grimaced. “Ooo-kay. Do you guys need me to give you a ride to … wherever?”

  “We’ll walk,” Jamie said with a definitive nod.

  “In this weather?”

  “Yeah,” I said, and slipped my hand around his waist.

  Kevin and Omar were already in the car. Jenny just waved back at us and hopped behind the wheel. Jamie watched until the brake lights turned the corner, then pulled me into his arms.

  The walk back to Jamie’s apartment took longer than expected; we stopped every few steps to kiss. The drizzle had intensified during Tap Night, drenching our clothes and hair and ceremonial robes. We ran hand in hand up his front porch, and I shivered as he fumbled for his keys in the wet pockets of his jeans, scooting closer to him until I was inside the warm, humid cocoon of his cape.

  He wrapped an arm around me and opened the door with the other, half pushing, half carrying me inside. As soon as we crossed the threshold, he spun me around and pressed me against the door. Our wet cloaks hung heavily from our shoulders, their flaps sticking to our arms as we reached for each other in the darkness. Underneath his robe, his T-shirt stuck to his skin and his throat was slick with rain and sweat.

  “You know,” I said to him as he started undoing the buttons on my blouse. “I could actually go for some pizza right about now.”

  “Tough luck.”

  I reached for his belt and my knuckles brushed against his navel and the spattering of coarse hair there. “Melted cheese, spicy tomato sauce, crust with that signature Sally’s blackened bottom—”

  “Later,” he groaned, pushing my sleeves down my arms so my blouse pooled at my feet. My robe instantly melded to the skin of my back and arms. “I promise I’ll buy you a dozen pizzas.”

  “A dozen?” I laughed in the back of my throat and pulled the tongue of his belt through the loops. “That law school stipend is a generous one.”

  His palms trailed up my sides and he moved closer to me until the edges of our robes furled together. His fingers were cold from the rain, but his body was all wet heat. “Is this your version of sexy talk? Financial aid?”

  “No,” I said, opening the fly on his jeans. “Pizza is.” I reached inside and he buried his face in the hollow of my shoulder, breathing hard. “It was our first date, remember?”

  “I don’t remember it being a date,” he managed, in between attempts to unhook my sodden bra. “If I recall, you were a little broken up about some other guy.”

  “It was our only date.” There went my bra. I was fairly certain what remained was not a Digger-approved wardrobe.

  “Not true.” He slid his hands to the front to work the button on my pants. “In Florida, I made a picnic and took you on a hike. That’s a classic top-ten date.”

  “You seduced me on a sandbar, yes,” I conceded, and shoved his jeans down.

  He yanked me to him by my waistband. “You seduced me.”

  I wrapped my arms around his neck. “Stop splitting hairs.”

  “Stop revising history.”

  I curled my fingers around the nape of his neck and pulled his head toward mine. “Stop talking.”

  For a long time we just kissed, half-naked, our robes tangled and clinging to thighs, chests, shoulders. And then I pulled away and grabbed the hem of his T-shirt, lifting it and carefully threading the material beneath the tie that held his cloak around his neck.

  “So we’re committing to this?” Jamie asked with a laugh as I pulled the last of his T-shirt through the robe and slipped it off over his head. His wet hair lay in dark whips across his brow, and the rain had left slim, shiny tracks on his temples. “Keeping our robes on?”

  I tossed his T-shirt onto the floor, then wiggled out of my pants. “Guess so.”

  He grinned and squeezed me tight. “God, I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  His arms tightened just a fraction, and then he became very, very still.

  I touched his shoulder. “Jamie?”

  “I didn’t expect you to say that.” He still had me in his grip; I couldn’t pull back and look him in the eyes. I had expected to say it; had been feeling it ballooning inside me all day, ready to burst with the slightest provocation. I was afraid the entire club would read it on my face; was half hoping he’d know before I ever spoke the words.

  I’d wanted to tell him in the tomb, while we sprinted from dorm to dorm, after he’d bolstered me through Topher’s tap, as we stood in the rain outside Michelle’s. I’d wanted to tell him once for every pizza he was going to buy me. I’d wanted to confess it to him spontaneously, in the clear, not as some response to his own declaration. But he’d beaten me to the punch.

  “Then why do you say it?” I asked. “It’s not like you to give up a trump card like that.” Neither, I realized with some chagrin, was it like me.

  Go figure, Amy. You’re more emotionally unavailable than James Orcutt.

  “I told you,” he said. “I can’t keep secrets from you.”

  And then we were kissing again, and touching each other all over. The air grew heavy around us, and my body blazed with heat, sensitive nerve endings sizzling every time the rough fabric of our robes rasped against my flesh. Every place they touched me stung, until Jamie’s cool, tend
er fingers came along and his caresses soothed my skin. When he knelt before me I threaded my fingers through his damp hair, still slightly chilly, holding on to him for balance.

  “This seems familiar.”

  “Unlike some people I can mention,” he murmured, as little puffs of air tickled my thighs, “I will not stop in the middle.”

  When I couldn’t take the sensations anymore I balled my fists up into the folds of his hood and tried my best to keep my footing.

  He steadied his palms against the front of my thighs. “Okay?”

  “Yeah,” I panted. “You? Hardwood floors treating you well?”

  I could hear his smile through the darkness, though saw little more than pale skin in the frame of his robe. “Get down here.”

  He reached for his discarded jeans, grabbed his wallet, and drew out a condom, then sat back on the floor, his back against the arm of the couch.

  After he was ready, I sank to the ground, straddling him, shifting until our robes were both hopelessly mangled, our legs tangled, fighting for purchase as we pushed into each other, the soles of my feet braced against his thighs as I moved on top of him, the ties of my robe tugging against my throat with every thrust, his hands supporting me at the small of my back and between my shoulder blades as I arched in his arms.

  Once he was fully inside me, I paused and leaned up to look in his face, barely visible in the glare of distant streetlights through the window. His eyes were shut, his head lolling back, his lips slightly parted. All the pride and insolence that usually characterized his features were gone. His sharp cheekbones and angled jaw, the long, dark locks on his forehead that slashed across his eyebrows suddenly fell into different, softer patterns. Was this the true face of Poe? The man he’d be if he hadn’t lost his mother, hadn’t fought his whole life to convince himself and others he was worth the things he was capable of achieving, wasn’t struggling even now with how to reconcile his past with the elite world of Eli and Rose & Grave? Was this the man I loved?

  I leaned forward and brushed noses. His eyes shot open and bored into mine as if he had read every last one of my thoughts.