Sweet Deceit

by Kate Brian

  “Are we sure this is where the archives are?” Ariana whispered.

  “Adam and I took shifts watching Martin Tsang all day,” Jasper replied, tugging a pair of high-tech binoculars from his waistband. Ariana had no idea where he’d gotten them, and she decided she didn’t care. She was just glad he had them. “He went in through this door three different times, and Adam saw a couple of Fellows come out right before lunch. Then after lunch I saw two others go in. That’s why we think there might be more than one of them guarding the stones. It’s like they’re taking shifts.”

  He lifted the binoculars to his eyes and adjusted the knobs. “Yes. We have movement,” he said, handing over the binocs. “Check the westernmost window.”

  Ariana stared him down. “You can just say right or left.”

  He smirked, his blond bangs sticking out from beneath the hem of his black hat. “Left.”

  Ariana rolled her eyes and checked the window. Linen blinds were pulled securely over the windows to discourage prying eyes, but the lights were on inside, and sure enough, Ariana could see the shadows of two or more people moving around behind them.

  “Okay. Are you ready to do this?” Ariana asked.

  Jasper lifted his stuffed backpack onto his shoulders. “Say the word, General Covington.”

  Ariana stifled a laugh and stood up. “Everyone,” she whisper-shouted. “We’re going in!”

  Tentatively, Landon, Tahira, Adam, and Kaitlynn slipped out of their hiding places, each toting a large bag, some empty for carrying back the headstones, others full of the creative weaponry needed for Jasper’s plan. The six of them crouched and ran, two by two, across the open grass between the tree line and the back of Pryce Hall.

  “Get down!” Jasper whispered as they reached the outer wall.

  Ariana hit the ground, her back up against the cold brick wall, the branches of the decorative shrubbery around the building scratching at her knees. Tahira and Landon ended up on one side of the metal door, Ariana, Jasper, Kaitlynn, and Adam on the other. For a few moments, no one moved a muscle. Ariana’s heart pounded in her throat and in her temples. If the Fellows realized they were here before they wanted the Fellows to know, their plan was done for. And the headstones might be done for too. All of this was being done to impress the Stone and Grave membership, but they would not be impressed if the taps frightened the Fellows into destroying the stones prematurely.

  “Okay. Is everyone clear on their assignments?” Ariana whispered.

  The others nodded. Jasper and Landon pulled several bottles of canola oil from their bags, stolen from the dining hall earlier that day. Tahira jimmied out a couple of torn feather pillows. A few white feathers escaped into the breeze. Ariana and Kaitlynn followed suit, carefully extracting their own pillows. Ariana clutched the tear closed to keep from making too much of a mess.

  “Let’s go!” Jasper whispered.

  He got up and, ever so quietly, tugged open the heavy back door. He held it as Ariana, Tahira, Landon, Kaitlynn, then Adam slipped through, then closed it slowly—silently.

  Ariana tiptoed down the stairs, her leg muscles tense, the others following her lead. At the bottom of the steps, she found a perfectly round, empty room with a gleaming marble floor. To the right was a heavy wooden door with an imposing-looking bronze doorknob and an ancient keyhole. She held up a hand as the others fell in behind her on the stairs. A loud round of laughter sounded on the other side of the door.

  “They’re in there,” she whispered.

  “Quiet, everyone,” Jasper added. “This is it. Take your positions.”

  Ariana, Tahira, and Kaitlynn tiptoed around the room, spacing themselves out evenly along the walls, still clutching their pillows. Landon, Adam, and Jasper opened up their bottles of oil and, starting at the top of the room and working their way backward toward the door to the archives, dumped their contents out all over the floor. Ariana scrunched her nose as the scent of oil filled the room, the glug-glug of the bottles sounding like a trumpet call in the silence. Every second she expected the Fellows to come through the door and into the foyer to check out the noise, but the door stayed shut. Finally, the bottles were empty. Jasper shoved the plastic bottles into his bag and placed it against the wall by the door to the archives. Then he pressed his back up against the wall. Landon and Adam stood on the opposite side of the door.

  “Everyone ready?” Jasper whispered.

  Ariana held her breath and nodded with the others. Jasper met her eye. “Go!”

  Jasper, Landon, and Adam pounded on the door and shouted, making a huge cacophony in the silence. It took about half a second for the door to fling open, nearly knocking Jasper off his feet. Four of the Fellows came barreling out and instantly slipped on the oily floor. The first went flying heels-over-head and landed directly on his back. The second tripped over his friend’s prone body and fell face-first into the thick of the oil, sliding clear across the floor. The third and fourth saw what had happened to their brethren and tried to stop short, but they were too late. They skidded forward, collided with one another, and were sent sprawling in a fit of shouts and groans.

  “Feathers!” Jasper shouted to the girls. “Now! Go! Go! Go!” he prodded Landon and Adam.

  The guys ran into the now-open archive room while Ariana, Kaitlynn, and Tahira stepped tentatively forward, staying on the oil-free periphery, and shook out their feather pillows. White fluff filled the room and fluttered down all over the four Fellows, sticking fast to their oil-slicked bodies. Ariana felt a laugh bubble up in her throat as the Fellows struggled to get up onto their hands and knees, only to splay out flat again, cursing and vowing to kill the girls. Soon she, Tahira, and Kaitlynn were all laughing together, adding more and more feathers to the mess and confusing the Fellows to the ends of their wits. She met Tahira’s and Kaitlynn’s eyes through the thick air and realized she was actually enjoying this, enjoying doing this with them. Little did the Fellows know that their ill-conceived prank was actually working to bring the Stone and Grave taps closer.

  “We’ve got them!” Jasper shouted as he, Adam, and Landon emerged from the archives. Their backpacks were stuffed to the gills, unzipped at the top with a few stones jutting out of each. Apparently the stones weren’t stones at all, but made of some lightweight material, because the guys seemed to be having no trouble toting them.

  “Let’s go!” Ariana replied. “Stick to the walls.”

  The guys followed her instructions, sidestepping toward her with their backs to the bricks. The girls joined them. As they made it to the stairs, one of the Fellows managed to scramble to his feet. His legs slid out on both sides, but he threw his arms out and kept his balance. He was completely covered in white and brown feathers—his hair, his hands, his lips—and his chest heaved as he pressed his fingers into fists. This guy was pissed off.

  “You are so dead,” he said through his teeth.

  “Spread the word,” Ariana said, laughing. “The Stone and Grave is not to be trifled with.”

  Then she balled up her pillowcase and threw it at him. He reached for it instinctively and, in doing so, lost his balance and slammed to the floor with a splat. Ariana and her friends cracked up laughing and ran up the stairs, tripping out into the night.

  “Nice one,” Jasper said as they jogged away from the door.

  “Please. That was all you,” Ariana said breathlessly. She paused as they reached the tree line and bent to catch her breath. The others raced ahead, intent on getting as far away from the building as possible.

  “I guess we both have wicked minds,” Jasper replied, leaning one hand against a thick tree trunk as he sucked wind.

  “What do you mean?” Ariana asked. She tugged her hat off and shook her hair out, her scalp tingling.

  “The gum thing? I know that was your idea,” Jasper said, taking a step toward her. “It was noble, what you tried to do for Lillian . . . but I know a fellow schemer when I see one.”

  Ariana’s face fell at being sna
gged, but then she slowly smiled. It was nice to have her idea acknowledged. For a long moment, she and Jasper stood there together, under the canopy of branches, catching their breath and smiling.

  “Come on. Let’s go reap our spoils,” he said finally.

  And together, they took off after their friends.

  CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE

  Ariana and her fellow taps all lined up in tap order in the Tombs—Tahira at position one, Kaitlynn at five, Ariana right in the center at number three—standing in the spots in which they were normally placed for Stone and Grave interrogations. On the floor behind them were the bags full of headstones. Each of the taps stood with their hands clenched behind their backs, and Ariana felt as if she could hear the hearts of her cohorts pounding with excitement. When she heard the door squeal open in the distance, followed by a bevy of confused, intense voices, she found she could hardly breathe.

  This was going to work. It had to.

  The first person to enter the room was Lexa. Her jaw dropped slightly when she saw the taps standing there, but she quickly recovered and stormed over. She was wearing jeans and a sweater under her red coat. Her face was scrubbed clean, and there was a crease on her right cheek from her pillow. Ariana felt a twinge of satisfaction, knowing her text to the membership had woken Lexa up.

  “You? You called this meeting?” she demanded, looking down the line of pledges. “And what the hell is Adam doing here?”

  “If you don’t mind, Sister Becky Sharp, we’d like to wait for the entire membership to arrive before we explain,” Ariana replied coolly. She was not going to let Lexa intimidate her. Right now, Ariana had the power.

  Lexa’s green eyes flashed. “Do not use that name in front of him,” she snapped, thrusting a finger out at Adam. “How dare you bring an outsider in here? This is sacred space.”

  Ariana could feel Landon and Tahira staring her down. Her face burned under their accusatory glares, but she didn’t flinch. She was in the right here. And she wasn’t about to let them think otherwise. Soon the Tombs were filled with Stone and Grave brothers and sisters, all of whom were staring the taps up and down, murmuring and whispering. Lexa narrowed her eyes at Ariana.

  “Well, it appears we’re all here now . . . at your request,” Lexa said with a sneer. “Why don’t you give me one good reason not to throw all six of you out on your asses right now?”

  “We’ve got about thirty,” Jasper replied.

  He, Ariana, and Landon turned, picked up the backpacks full of Stone and Grave headstones, and placed them at Lexa’s feet. April stepped forward out of the crowd, her red hair back in a ponytail, her coat tied loosely over flannel pajamas, and she gaped down at the bags, dumbstruck.

  “Are those—?”

  Lexa bent and tugged one of the stones from the first bag. Then she and April unzipped all of them and dumped them out carefully onto the floor, laying them out in front of the taps.

  “How did you . . . where did you . . . ?” April stuttered. “I haven’t even cracked the riddle yet.”

  Palmer slipped out from the huddle of members wearing gray sweatpants and a navy blue Yale sweatshirt. He knelt down to inspect the stones. “Someone start explaining,” he said, looking up at Landon. “Now.”

  “Brother Starbu—,” Kaitlynn began. Then, off a silencing glare from Lexa, her mouth snapped shut. She cleared her throat and started again. “If I may speak?”

  Lexa nodded. “Go ahead.”

  “Ana thought it would be good for us to take initiative and retrieve the stones,” Kaitlynn said. “As a gesture to you . . . our brothers and sisters. She called the tap class together and she and Jasper figured out the riddle.”

  “Is this true?” Lexa said to Ariana.

  Ariana was so dumbfounded over the fact that Kaitlynn had just given her credit where credit was due—that she hadn’t even mentioned her own role in the riddle-solving—she could hardly find her voice. Her body tingled with warmth from the top of her head all the way to the tips of her toes. It was in that moment that she knew all of her plotting had worked. She and Kaitlynn were friends again. Really and truly friends.

  “Yes,” she said, unable to contain her grin. “It’s true.” Then she took a breath and continued. “But Lillian was the one who remem-

  bered the riddle word for word,” she added. “And if it wasn’t for Adam, we would have gotten nowhere with the answer. We never would have found the archives without him.”

  “The archives?” Palmer said, standing up and turning to Adam. “They exist?”

  “They do,” Jasper replied as Adam blushed in silence. “And thanks to Adam, we now know exactly where they are.”

  “The Fellows were keeping our headstones there,” Ariana explained.

  “‘All honored memories locked inside, and now your precious gifts I hide,’” April recited, crossing her arms over her chest. “Of course.”

  “The archives made sense, but it was Adam who came forward with the information that Martin Tsang had a key to get inside,” Ariana explained. “We followed Tsang and we found the stones.”

  “Okay, but how did you get him to give them back?” Palmer asked, crossing his arms over his chest and eyeing them with interest.

  Ariana looked at Jasper and laughed. “It’s a long story,” Jasper said. “But let’s just say they didn’t give them up willingly.”

  “Let’s just say it was a . . . sticky situation,” Kaitlynn added.

  Palmer smirked and Ariana could tell he wanted the whole story, but she and the other taps were still on the hot seat, and now didn’t seem like the moment for a hilarious retelling of the details.

  “I still don’t understand how Adam got involved,” Lexa said suspiciously. “I thought we made it clear that this is a secret society. How many outsiders, exactly, did you go to for help?”

  “They didn’t come to me. I followed them,” Adam spoke up finally. “I wanted to prove to them, and to all of you, that I deserve to be here. It’s not their fault I listened in.” He paused and smiled, lifting an eyebrow. “I’m just that good.”

  Palmer and a few of the other guys laughed, but they stopped short at a stern look from Lexa. She turned around and walked over to the first dusty bookcase, gripping the shelf in front of her with both hands, clearly deep in thought. Ariana held her breath. Would Lexa really kick all of them out? Could the Atherton-Pryce Hall chapter of Stone and Grave really justify having no pledge class at all?

  Finally, Lexa lifted her head and turned to face the membership, her back to the taps. A bolt of apprehension sizzled through Ariana’s heart.

  “Brothers and sisters, tonight our tap class has proven that we have been wise in our selections this semester,” she said loudly. Then she glanced over her shoulder at Adam. “And, perhaps, too hasty in some of our decisions.”

  Adam grinned from ear to ear.

  “ To our taps!” Lexa shouted, raising one arm in the air.

  “ To our taps!” the membership shouted back.

  Ariana’s heart inflated with happiness as the entire room dissolved into applause and cheers and congratulations. A couple of the guys clapped Adam on the back and pulled him into the group. Maria and Soomie, meanwhile, raced forward to hug her, which made it all the easier to hug Palmer as well without looking suspicious. As he grabbed her up in his arms and lifted her off her feet, Ariana had never felt so free, so accomplished, and so proud.

  She’d done it. She’d gotten the headstones back to Stone and Grave and, thanks to Kaitlynn, she’d gotten most of the credit for it. There was no way they were going to hold her to her task now. She and Palmer were going to remain a secret until they were ready to come out as a couple, and she was going to go down in history as the Stone and Grave tap who’d saved their headstones.

  Everything was working out even better than planned.

  DRESSING UP

  Ariana couldn’t stop smiling. And since she couldn’t remember the last time she couldn’t stop smiling, she decid
ed to relish it. As she, Palmer, Kaitlynn, and Jasper walked into Privilege House together, shaking off the chill of the night air, she caught a glimpse of her grinning reflection in the window and it only made her smile wider.

  “You guys have no idea what this has done for your stock,” Palmer said as they walked into the elevator alcove. Jasper hit the up buttons for both the girls’ and boys’ elevators. “We’re talking through the roof.”

  “Deservedly so, I think,” Jasper said as Kaitlynn and Ariana laughed happily.

  “I just can’t believe we solved the riddle before April did,” Ariana said.

  “I can,” Palmer said, eyeing her with pride. “And nice job with the execution, man,” he said, turning to Jasper. “I just wish you guys had thought to take some video. I’d give anything to see those guys flailing around covered in feathers.”

  “Video!” Kaitlynn said. “Why didn’t we think of that?”

  Possibly because I never want to think about video-recording anything ever again, Ariana thought.

  “Next time,” Jasper promised.

  “There’s going to be a next time?” Palmer said with a laugh.

  “Never say never,” Jasper replied mischievously.

  The elevators pinged at the same time and Kaitlynn and Jasper moved to get in. Ariana started to follow her roommate, but Palmer grazed her arm with his fingers.

  “Ana. Hang back for a sec,” he said.