by Tom Dolby
She wanted to tell everyone everything she knew. To go to the papers. To tell her mom and dad. To tell the police.
But how could she?
Parker Bell had made it quite clear how their futures would be jeopardized if they revealed anything about Alejandro’s death. Was that enough of a reason to stay silent? Lauren didn’t know. If she came forward, would anyone believe her? She had seen what had happened to Phoebe when she had gone to her mother with doubts about the Society last fall. The minute Phoebe had said anything, she was sent to a doctor who treated her as if she were crazy, giving her tranquilizers and hinting that she should be placed under observation.
As Lauren looked around the cathedral, she realized that it was decorated more lavishly than for most weddings, with candles everywhere, garlands of flowers even in the rafters, not to mention an abundance of not-inexpensive flower wreaths, an Argentinean tradition. All that money that could have been spent on rehab was now wasted on flowers and candles that would end up in the trash. She glanced over to the Callejas. Rocío Calleja was wearing more jewelry than Lauren had ever seen anyone wear at a memorial service: rubies, diamonds, gold. She had greeted Lauren when she had entered, embracing her as if she were a family member.
In death, it seemed that Lauren’s position as Alejandro’s girlfriend was more secure than ever.
Lauren knew one thing: she was done with bad boys. In fact, she might be done with dating altogether, at least for a while.
As the service ended, she got up with Thad and ducked away toward the exits in an attempt to avoid the crush of people. Thad had been amazing over the past few days, taking her out to lunch and for coffee dates, anything to keep her mind off things. He even took her shopping, an activity he admitted that he hated. He was such a sweet guy, and she was especially glad that Thad was gay—it removed any awkwardness from their friendship. She may have been sleepwalking through the past week, but at least she had someone who cared about her to do it with.
As everyone started to leave the cathedral, there was a commotion near the front. Palmer Bell, Nick’s grandfather, was halfway up the aisle when his cane gave way and he tumbled to the floor. Panicked voices rang through the cathedral, echoing over the organ music as everyone, but particularly members of the Society, crowded around him, calling 911 and shouting words of advice to try to revive him.
I hope he dies, Lauren thought. I hope he dies right here in this church, fifty feet from Alejandro’s casket. That would serve him right.
The paramedics rushed in, heralded by the sirens of their ambulance. Palmer Bell was coming to, but he clearly needed serious medical attention. In all the commotion, it was as if the reason people were here—to mourn Alejandro’s death—had been completely forgotten.
Once again, Lauren thought bitterly, it was all about the Bells.
Chapter Three
After his grandfather’s collapse, Nick slipped awkwardly out of the cathedral, following his family into the black limousine that was waiting for them. An ambulance that would take Palmer Bell to New York-Presbyterian Hospital had just pulled away from the curb. Nick agreed that he would meet up with Phoebe after he learned more about what was going on. According to what the paramedics had told his father, Palmer had suffered a stroke, indicated by his collapse, complaints of numbness in his legs, and general disorientation. The car pulled away and drove south, turning east on a side street and then uptown. The driver followed the ambulance, taking advantage of the path that had been cleared for them.
Nick loosened his tie and scratched his neck behind his collar, realizing that he had been sweating. The panic of a crisis was almost a welcome relief from the charade they had all been playing. It had been devastating to sit through Alejandro’s memorial service when he and his friends knew the truth about what had happened to him. And now his family was sitting in this warm cocoon of luxury while the rest of the horrible world went on. It was the first time in a week that Nick had been in such close proximity to both his parents—he had been avoiding them ever since returning from Isis Island on New Year’s Day. His mother, with her fiery red hair; his father, though graying, lean and fit on a regimen of running and stress.
Nick’s two older brothers, Henry and Benjamin, home from Yale for the funeral, were both idly texting and shooting worried glances at their parents and each other. They had proven to be nothing more than drones when Nick had asked them about the Society back in December. Nick wouldn’t have been surprised if someone told him that his brothers had been lobotomized. He had always thought Ben might have rebelled against the group, as he had been more of a free spirit, a member of the Yale Pundits, the type of guy who would bring home The Anarchist Cookbook and leave it in the living room over Christmas break. Henry, conversely, was notoriously uptight and headed directly to law school. Nick sensed that Henry, as a senior, was already being groomed to become more involved with the group. Perhaps Ben was as well.
Nick’s mother, Gigi, was on the phone and fussing with arrangements, calling Palmer’s doctor, making sure that the hospital would be ready to see him. Nick’s father was bickering with her, arguing that any doctor would do—whoever was on duty in the emergency room was fine. Just because Palmer had made a large bequest to the hospital several years back, he shouldn’t expect to be treated any differently.
Yeah, right, Nick thought. The rich are always treated differently.
The limousine pulled up behind the ambulance, and Nick could see his grandfather being loaded out and wheeled to the emergency room.
As Nick stood in the hospital lobby with his mother and father and his two brothers, assorted hangers-on started trickling in: Family lawyers. Advisers. Friends. Society members who were concerned. How is he? What room will he be in? Does he have the best doctor? My father had a stroke and . . .
To Nick, it was like vultures gathering around a half-dead carcass, waiting for their share of the spoils.
He walked out of the hospital’s revolving doors and headed home without saying a word to anyone.
Chapter Four
When Phoebe joined Lauren outside the cathedral after the memorial service, Thad gave her a knowing look. He had been waiting patiently with Lauren, but now that Phoebe had arrived, he seemed to know instinctively that the girls needed some time together. He parted ways with Lauren and Phoebe, giving them both hugs.
Phoebe walked with Lauren back to Lauren’s apartment on Park Avenue. There was to be a catered reception at the Calleja apartment at the St. Regis, but Lauren hadn’t wanted to go, and Phoebe agreed with her that they should skip it. Both of them knew that it didn’t make any difference to Alejandro, and that in the swarm of travel-weary mourners, his family wouldn’t even notice their absence.
Phoebe also knew that her friend needed her more.
Lauren was horribly depressed, as anyone would be about her boyfriend’s disappearance and death—it had only been two weeks since it had happened, and the pain was still fresh. Even worse, though, was the knowledge that Alejandro had never needed to die. Sure, he may have played fast and loose with the rules, but no one deserved his fate: to be kidnapped from a nightclub, taken to a flophouse on the Lower East Side, and forced to take all the drugs he could? Alejandro may have had a drug problem, but he hadn’t been out to kill himself.
Phoebe, Lauren, Nick, Patch, and Thad were the only ones who knew about any of this. Parker Bell had told all the other Society members that Alejandro had overdosed of his own free will, that it was a terrible tragedy that could have been prevented.
Only the five of them knew the truth—that the Society killed Alejandro because he was in danger of revealing its motives to the world. Alejandro had had a series of bad nights in the fall, one during which he was quoted as saying that he knew important people, and everyone would be sorry.
A simple comment like that was enough to make the Society concerned—it put the Society’s secret existence, not to mention the assets in the Trust, at risk. More than anything, though, Alejand
ro’s death fulfilled the Society’s goal of creating a class of fourteen. A class that would be stronger. A class that was bound by a secret.
For what? Amidst all the commotion and the threats, it was hard to understand what the Society was so worried about. During the retreat, Parker Bell had made repeated references to a way of life that the Society had to uphold. Phoebe understood that its secrecy was its power. The Society, she had learned, was a network of wealthy, educated people who recruited their sons and daughters, as well as other talented, educated young people. Phoebe had fallen into the latter category, while Nick, with his family’s involvement, was in the former.
The group used this network to gain and grant advantages to its members, sometimes legitimately, and other times in ways that were illegal. By the time members learned about the Society’s criminal ways, they were in too deep; they were either culpable for some of the Society’s deeds, or the Society had enough information on them to blackmail them effectively.
The Society also had a public face: the Bradford Trust Association. The members used the Trust as a cover, sometimes giving the group the appearance of a benevolent charitable foundation. Phoebe suspected that some of the members didn’t even know about the Society’s misdeeds, that they were only aware of it as a social group associated with the Bradford Trust.
Trust was a funny word: Phoebe couldn’t think of a single person in New York City, apart from Nick and her three friends, whom she truly, honestly, could trust.
Like the others, Phoebe yearned desperately to get out of it, to tell the world about the Society, but she couldn’t. If she and her friends were going to reveal anything, they didn’t want to do so until they had a plan. It had seemed unwise to make a move until Alejandro’s memorial service had taken place. The fact that Nick’s family was so directly involved in the coverup—a revelation that had become apparent to Phoebe only in the last week—made things even more complicated.
Nick was, after all, the first and only boy she had ever loved. And she wasn’t about to ruin that.
At the moment, though, Phoebe didn’t want to come up with a plan or do anything remotely strategic—there would be plenty of time for that later. She wanted to comfort her friend. This was Lauren, after all: Lauren, who had approached her in a nightclub four months ago and taken her under her wing; Lauren, who had made Chadwick bearable.
Lauren, who had encouraged Phoebe to follow her to the Society initiation when both of them had been invited.
Phoebe looked at her as the two of them rode up in the elevator to Lauren’s mother’s Park Avenue apartment. Even when she was exhausted, Lauren was so beautiful. Phoebe had always felt like the ugly duckling next to the swan. Lauren had blond hair while Phoebe had reddish brown; Lauren was lithe and graceful, while Phoebe, though still slim, worried about her hips. Before they reached her floor, Phoebe reached forward and grabbed her friend, giving her a private hug.
She couldn’t say it was going to be okay, because she didn’t honestly know if it would be.
When the two of them arrived at the apartment, Lauren’s mother, Diana, was already home. She had taken a car from the cathedral and arrived ten minutes before them. In the kitchen, it was as if Diana was hosting a wake for three. Lauren’s little sister, Allison, was already away at boarding school, and Lauren’s father lived across town.
Diana Mortimer was not exactly the most nurturing person Phoebe had ever met; she was so thin that Phoebe imagined hugging her might not be a pleasant experience. Today, though, she had come through with exactly what Lauren needed. On this Saturday afternoon, she stood with a mimosa in her hand and welcomed the girls into the kitchen. There was a beautiful spread of food that had been prepared: two kinds of quiche, a salad, Lauren’s favorite variation on eggs Benedict, pastries, a Linzer torte, coffee, tea, and freshly squeezed orange juice. Phoebe found herself touched at the sight of it all. From what Lauren had told Phoebe about her mother, Diana had never been one to equate food with love—her wavelength was more handbags and jewelry—but right now luxury goods weren’t going to cut it.
Lauren sat down in the breakfast nook and smiled weakly at Phoebe and her mother. “You know something? I’m actually hungry. For the first time in days, I’m hungry. I’d better eat, before the feeling goes away.”
Phoebe knew what this was like, the feeling of fear-induced nausea that was so constant that as soon as it went away, you tried to get a little food down. Lately Phoebe’s stomach had been in knots as well, and so instead of trying to control her hunger as she might before a big night out, she found she was actually grateful to be able to eat a few bites without feeling sick.
The two of them dug in, asking the cook to pile their plates with eggs Benedict, quiche, and pastries. Diana asked them if they’d like mimosas, but they both declined. There was something about the Society that made them not want to drink too much—it was the drinking, after all, that had gotten their friends into so much trouble. Jared at Cleopatra’s Needle, freezing to death and dying of exposure after a night of bingeing. Alejandro, making a fool of himself at a club in the Hamptons, and then, of course, overdoing it that night at Prohibition, the club on the Lower East Side where the Guardians had kidnapped him.
No, Phoebe knew, and she sensed Lauren did, too, that staying sober and aware would be the best policy, at least for the next few weeks.
Lauren was silent as she took small bites of her food, and Phoebe resisted the urge to check her phone, which kept buzzing in her purse. It was probably Nick, but she felt it would be rude to answer. Her relationship with Nick had gone so well during all of this that she wondered what they would do if they weren’t facing an external crisis, if they didn’t have the constant outside stimulation to keep them going. They had started dating at Thanksgiving and had made it through the stress of exams, the aftermath of Jared’s and Alejandro’s deaths, the Society retreat, and Patch’s disappearance and initiation. Though it had only been a few weeks, Phoebe did worry a bit about whether things, once they settled down, would seem slow.
After eating, Lauren assured Phoebe that she really didn’t need her to stay, that she hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before and was going to take a nap. Phoebe gave her friend a hug, said good-bye to Diana with a double air kiss, and let herself out.
She wasn’t going home, though, to the town house where she and her mother were living on Bank Street.
Via text, Nick had asked her to meet him in Central Park, at a location she remembered all too well from the fall: the chess tables.
Chapter Five
Somehow, this felt appropriate,” Nick said. He was sitting on a bench near one of the chess tables outside the Chess and Checkers House in Central Park as Phoebe approached.
“You couldn’t have picked a place that wasn’t freezing?” Phoebe said, giving him an anguished grin. It was late in the afternoon, and the Chess and Checkers House was closed. He handed his scarf to Phoebe, who wrapped it around her neck. In an attempt to warm up, she stomped her shoes against the ground as they sat on the ice-cold bench.
Nick gave her a big bear hug, but it didn’t seem to help. “Sorry,” he said, slightly embarrassed at not having realized how cold it would be inside the park. “We can keep walking.”
Phoebe gave him a kiss on his ear. “Hey, it was a valiant effort. I feel like I haven’t been inside the park in weeks.”
They looked around. The wisteria, so lush in the summer, had gone dormant. No one was playing chess. Nick remembered back to that night several months ago when they had been challenged to decode the address of the Society’s town house, and how new and exciting it had all seemed: the perks, the thrill of membership, the doors that would open for them. And that second Society event had almost seemed like a second date between Phoebe and him. He thought back to how he had imagined she would never like him, and how they were both so happy when they had finally gotten together over Thanksgiving. Now they started walking together out of the park.
“How’s your
grandfather?” Phoebe asked.
Nick shrugged in frustration. “I didn’t stay,” he said. “The paramedics said he had a massive blockage. To be honest, I was sick of all the family drama.”
Phoebe touched his shoulder as they walked. “But don’t you—I mean, don’t you care about what happens to him? I mean, he is still your grandfather.”
Nick shook his head bitterly. “Yeah, I guess I care, in that way that I’m supposed to care. But do I really care? No. What they’ve done is inexcusable. He may not be in charge of the Society anymore, but I still hold him responsible, along with my dad and everyone else. And why he had to have a stroke during the funeral, I have no idea. He certainly succeeded in taking people’s attention away from the real event.”
Nick kicked the muddy leaves on the ground as they walked.
“You don’t think he faked it for that reason, do you?” Phoebe asked.
Nick smiled grimly. “No. He’s a bastard, but I don’t think he’s able to spontaneously give himself a stroke. Anyway, he’s in the hospital now, recovering.”
“I’m sorry,” Phoebe said.
Nick shrugged again. “I really don’t think about him the way I know you’re supposed to feel about family.”
Nick wondered, as they walked, if these feelings would ever change. His family had betrayed him. First they had covered up their involvement in the Society. Next they orchestrated the deaths of two people Nick knew. He had been blocking it out during most of the past two weeks. And then Patch had come into the fold, had been instantly declared a member of the Society after he had infiltrated the retreat. Nick was happy that their rift was starting to heal, but it had brought up a host of other issues. Would Patch ever forgive him for shutting him out during those months? And would Patch accept the truth Nick now knew, the secret his father had told him the morning after Patch’s initiation?
