Secret Society Girl

slumming with us after all.”

I flinched. Of all the secret societies in all the colleges in the world, Clarissa Cuthbert had to be tapped into mine. So that’s what she’d wanted to discuss with me.

But Angel didn’t seem interested in rehashing our earlier conversation. She turned to the others and said, “I guess there’s just George Harrison Prescott left now, huh?”

“Yeah,” said a short Asian guy joining the group. “But I hear they had to drag him into the tomb kicking and screaming.” He stuck his hand out at me. “Hey there, I’m Frodo.”

“At last, someone with a worse name than mine!” Thorndike sniffed.

“Do not go gently into that sweet night, GHP,” said a young man with a completely edible English accent. “But rather…make your daddy force you.” He winked at me. “I’m Bond…Barbarian-So-Called Greg Dorian. I hear you’re the writer.”

“Another creative type?” Frodo asked. “I’m a filmmaker. And Little Demon is a…singer, of sorts. This is one artsy class.”

I looked down into my punch cup. “I’m not really a writer.” Thirty pages of a wretched novel does not count.

Soze shrugged. “Then what are you?”

“The editor of the Lit Mag.”

They all exchanged glances.

“Why aren’t you in Quill & Ink?” Thorndike asked. “My ex-girlfriend Glenda Foster is in that one.”

TWO POINTS

1) Very good question.

2) Glenda Foster is a lesbian?!? You think you know someone….

“ ‘Girlfriend’ is a relative term.” A slender, stunning woman with waist-length red hair joined our group and extended a graceful hand toward me. Now, this chick I knew. But of course, you all know everything about Odile Dumas as well. She’d been tabloid fodder since she was 15. Her matriculation to Eli had been largely viewed by all to be an attempt to present herself as less Lindsay Lohan and more Natalie Portman. But to the media’s shock, she’d taken to collegiate life with gusto and all but dropped out of public view. Odile hadn’t had an album or movie out in three years, and the word around campus was that she was smarter (and less slutty) than anyone had expected (or hoped).

“Little Demon,” she purred, “but if I end up pursuing that hip-hop career, I’ll change it to Lil’ Demon.” The name rolled off her tongue with such ease that we all knew at once—hip-hop career or no—what we’d end up calling her.

“How droll.” Thorndike rolled her eyes and Lil’ Demon turned to her.

“Just because you get a poor girl drunk and seduce her once or twice does not make her your girlfriend. Bad as a man. Behavior like that is a disgrace to lesbians everywhere.”

Thorndike narrowed her eyes. “Are you including yourself in that number?”

“I’m pansexual,” Lil’ Demon said, with a shake of her hair. “Why settle?”

Bond lifted his punch glass. “I’ll drink to that.”

But Thorndike wasn’t finished. “And you, Odile, are a disgrace to women everywhere.”

Angel clucked her tongue. “Watch the barbarian names in here, kiddies.”

“Oh, get a room, you two,” Frodo said. Thorndike and Lil’ Demon looked at each other, sniffed in disdain, and turned in opposite directions.

This was one hell of a tap class.

Everyone chuckled, and I laughed uneasily to keep them company. Was it me, or did they all seem to know one another very well? I drained my glass and started back to the punch bowl, if only for something to do. I’d had my fill of pomegranate juice for one night.

Angel headed me off at the pass. “I looked it up,” she whispered. “Little Demon is also a traditional name, given to the smallest tap every year.” She cast a haughty glance back at the colorful Lil’ Demon. “Don’t you think I’m skinnier than she is?”

I ladled myself a glass of punch and resisted throwing it in her face. “I honestly”—couldn’t care less—“wouldn’t know.”

She shook her head as if shrugging it off. “That was some piece of luck today in the library, huh?”

No. I was never fortunate to run into Clarissa. “How so?”

“Me being there to find that letter before someone else did. Pretty cool trick of Lancelot’s—you know his society name is Lancelot, right?”

I nodded. Had Clarissa—Angel—already looked it up in one of the many leather-bound books lining the walls of the room? She had to be getting all her Rose & Grave trivia from somewhere. Man, she and Lydia were separated at birth!

I was about to ask her where she’d unearthed that bit of info when the doors opened and in shuffled George Harrison Prescott, sheepish grin plastered across his gorgeous face, zippered jacket and eyeglasses notably absent.

“Hey, guys. They got me.” While everyone lifted their glasses in cheer, George crossed to a table I hadn’t noticed before, scrawled something on a sticker, and slapped it against his chest. Then, with a flourish, he turned, presenting his society name sticker.

Angel’s mouth dropped open.

“Yo, Amy!” George waved. “Another Prescotteer, thank God! What’s your new handle?”

“Bugaboo.” I looked down at my stickerless chest, glad that I’d been able to pull off underwire after all.

Angel looked at me. “Right, you need a sticker.” A moment later she handed me one with Bugaboo printed in a curly, girly script. Good thing there were no “i” s in my name, or I was damn sure she would have dotted them with hearts.

“Thanks,” I said as she leaned close to whisper in my ear, smelling of Chanel, vodka, and pomegranate juice.

“You know what ‘Puck’ is, right?”

Well, let’s see….

Option One:

The little black disk hockey players fight over.

Option Two:

That annoying bicycle messenger from Real World: San Francisco.

Option Three:

“As an English major, I’m required by law to respond ‘the head sprite in Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ ” I said, sure she was about to give me another lesson in Digger lore. I was not disappointed.

“The name they give to the tap with the most sexual experience.”

I rolled my eyes. “Well, there’s a no-brainer. George Harrison Prescott probably has more sexual experience than the rest of us combined.”

Angel threw back her head and laughed, giving me a great glimpse of what must have been two-carat sparklers in her ears. Guess the no-metal rule didn’t apply to platinum earring backs. “I think we’re going to get along great, girl.”

Uh-oh. Certainly hadn’t meant to deliver that impression. I moved closer to George. “Hey, what was the deal with the matches earlier?”

“They’re tipped in sulfur,” he responded. “Diggers aren’t supposed to carry sulfur.”

Oh, that’s what they’d meant in the letter. Things a nonsmoker never thinks about. Probably didn’t want to accidentally ignite us in the Firefly Room.

He shrugged. “I was just screwing around with them. But look at you!” He beamed. “A Digger! What do you think?”

I glanced around the library, at the built-in bookshelves stuffed floor to two-story ceiling with leather-bound volumes, at the lead-veined windows overlooking a darkened courtyard. In one corner of the room, Frodo was giving an animated reenactment of his initiation to a knot of new taps, while in another, a group of half a dozen older men stood in stony silence, surveying the room as if grading us. A lone girl sat off to the side, fingering something around her neck.

“I’ll tell you when I know.” I cocked my head in the direction of the girl. “Let’s go say hi to her.”

She stood as we neared. “Hey,” I said. “You new here, too? I’m Bugaboo.”

“Jen—Lucky—Santos. Whatever.” She took my hand, dropping the crucifix she’d been clutching against her throat.

“I’m Puck,” George said, but the girl shot him a withering glance rather than take his proffered hand.

“I know who you are.”

So, his reputation had preceded him. George opened his mouth, but before he could engineer a response, the huge double doors of the library were flung wide and in strode the rest of the Diggers in a five-deep pyramid formation. The most outlandish of their costumes had been traded out for a uniform of simple, black hooded cloaks, but traces of the makeup some had worn in the Inner Temple or the tableaux remained around their hairlines and jaws. I recognized the Devil, Othello, and one of the Puritans. They were followed into the room by another dozen men, all bearing similar remnants from their costumes.

The one I knew as Poe, standing at the apex, lowered his hood and spread his arms wide. “Welcome, Rose & Grave Tap Class Anno Deae 177.”

My Latin was a bit rusty—okay, it was completely deplorable—but did he just say The Year of the Goddess? Everyone began clapping.

“Now that you have all been Initiated into our Brotherhood”—apparently, he hadn’t gotten all his capital letters out during my torture session—“we will spend the rest of the evening teaching you the Secrets of the Tomb and the Ways of our Order.”

“And partying,” added Lancelot.

Poe shot him a glare. “And partying,” he added with reluctance.

“Hear, hear,” Puck said, lifting his glass.

“Will our newest Initiates please step forward and join hands?”

Twelve people threaded their way through the burgeoning crowd to stand before Poe. The Rose & Grave seniors fanned out until there was one standing behind each of us. Lancelot put his hand on my shoulder.

“Three of the taps are absent this evening, owing to the fact that they aren’t currently on this continent.”