Secret Society Girl

associated with it, no matter what kind of genitalia we have. If Odile wants to join merely to get lobster for dinner every Thursday night, then that’s her business. Not theirs. What the—thingamajigs—get out of it is having the great Odile Dumas as a member.”

“And that’s pretty freakin’ cool,” said Odile, signaling the bartender for another 312.

Demetria rolled her eyes.

But I couldn’t be so flippant. It was pretty cool. They were lucky to have Odile Dumas as part of their in-crowd. It definitely gave the old-boys’ network some 21st century Hollywood cred. And Demetria, who, one step at a time, was going to change the world. I definitely couldn’t imagine a cogent argument against Clarissa. Not only was she a legacy, but as soon as she was back on the New York socialite scene, she’d practically run the city. And Jennifer Santos would be the next Bill Gates. That left only…me.

Where did Amy Haskel come in?

Clarissa’s phone—well, it went off, since “rang” is probably not the appropriate term for the bubbly sound effects issuing from her cell.

She glanced at the display. “Uh-oh, girls, it’s George.”

Okay, I admit it: pulse sped.

She flipped down the mouthpiece and carried on a quick conversation. Five minutes later, the rest of the junior taps arrived.

“We’ve been looking for you everywhere,” said George, shoving into the Odile-Clarissa side of the table and winking at me. “The meeting kind of broke up the second you left.”

“But I see you didn’t leave with us,” snapped Demetria, reluctantly scooting over to let Josh and Greg pile in. Kevin took the remaining seat next to George (really not a lot of space on that side) and Benjamin the basketball player (Big Demon, like Little Demon, was a name given to a tap of a particular size) pulled up an end table and a few chairs for himself, Omar, and a very disgruntled-looking Nikolos (a.k.a. Graverobber).

“Well, at first we were all in shock,” Benjamin said, settling in and waving at the bartender. “Though not as badly as the seniors. I don’t think anyone had ever just walked out of a—”

“Thingamajig!” the girls all yelled.

“—meeting before. Nobody knew what to do.”

“So we all just sat there, staring at one another,” Kevin added.

“Until we realized that we wanted to cast our lot with you all,” finished Greg. “Where are the bloody drinks?”

Bloody was right. I slid over the rest of mine and he knocked it back.

“He wanted to ‘cast his lot with us,’ too?” I asked skeptically, pointing at Nikolos.

The men were saved from answering when the bartender arrived, looking scandalized. He did a quick head count. “Where are the other three?” he asked.

“Abroad.” Clarissa handed over a credit card. “Start a tab.”

“They know us here?” Josh asked.

“Oh, honey,” said Clarissa. “We’ve even got an official drink.”

Several hours and at least five rounds of 312s later (perhaps we should have moved to pitchers), the dozen new taps at the table were in possession of darkly stained lips and had proceeded to hammer out a plan of action.

“What I still don’t get,” Kevin, one of the few naysayers left in the group, said, “is why this is our responsibility rather than the seniors’.”

“They’re short-timers,” Demetria explained. “In a few weeks, they’re out of here and the closed tomb will be our problem. It doesn’t matter so much to them.”

“It does if the patriarchs carry through with their threat,” I said. “I heard that guy talk to Malcolm this afternoon. He said they were going to ruin his career.” And mine.

Clarissa snorted. “I’d like to see them try. That man is a governor’s son. He’s plenty well connected without the help of—thingamajig. Besides, you really think the patriarchs want to make themselves an enemy like that?”

“They’ve got plenty of allies without the likes of Governor Cabot,” I said, thinking of my pillow talk with Malcolm and his stories of his father’s prejudice. To be honest, Malcolm probably did need the help of the Diggers if his dad was the only alternative.

And Poe’s words wouldn’t leave me. I have a resume to update. If I were you, I’d do the same. Poe might be a jerk, but he was a smart jerk, and seemed to know more about the Diggers than anyone else. Why shouldn’t I trust what he said?

But when I shared my fears with the rest of the group, they just laughed.

“They aren’t Big Brother, Amy,” Clarissa said. To her credit, Clarissa hadn’t made one remark that might be construed to be within the vein of slumming all evening. Then again, maybe I was no longer persona non grata now that I had crossed the ranks into Digger. Still, chick was growing on me.

Add it to the list of things I would not be telling Lydia.

“That’s not what I’d always heard,” I said.

“That’s not what you’re supposed to hear,” said Josh. “Half of the power comes from the mystique. You’re told that, um—thingamajig —owns half the city, and you look in awe upon any twenty-one-year-old who has managed to join the ranks.”

“But what about the Presidents? Why are they always members?”

“Always, or occasionally?” Josh smiled. “Remember, we’re culled from the best and brightest at Eli.”

“Supposedly,” Nikolos added in a growl.

“Why wouldn’t some of those people end up being leaders? That’s why they were chosen.” I sensed a certain personal bias in his tone. “It stands to reason that if there are budding leaders here, the society will sniff them out. But the country’s not fixing the vote.”

Demetria snorted. “I’ve seen some stuff that would make you think otherwise.”

Josh turned to her. “You and I are going to have to have a conversation about how the electoral college works.”

“Later!” cut in Odile. “Right now, we’re talking about the patriarchs.”

And on it went. We’d move a bit farther into the realm of “getting somewhere,” only to be sidetracked by personal differences and petty squabbles. I still wasn’t sure we’d sold either Nikolos or Omar on the idea of fighting back, and even Benjamin looked like he could go either way. Nikolos appeared to be remaining with the group only under duress, Omar watched the entire proceedings in stony silence, and Benjamin seemed as if he was waiting to see where the chips landed before making a choice.

George, it should be noted, played footsie with me under the table.

Which wasn’t to say he was devoid of input. In fact, it was George who first came up with the idea of approaching the patriarchs on their own turf.

“Where does the board of trustees meet?” he asked, twirling his glass on the tabletop.

“New York Thity,” Clarissa said through a mouthful of nachos. (We’d decided to eat. I was pleased to see that the rail-thin Clarissa in fact did.)

“Then let’s set up a meeting with them. A real one. Not running up to them in the street in the middle of their demonstration like a couple of schoolkids. They’re businessmen. We’ll treat them like that. Boardroom, coffee urns, and all.”

I excused myself to go to the restroom. A couple of schoolkids? Is that what Malcolm and I had looked like this afternoon? No wonder they’d dismissed us so easily.

In the bathroom, I spent a long time looking in the cracked, rusted-out mirror above the sink. There was probably a line forming outside, but I didn’t care. Who was I kidding, in conference with these other Diggers? I was chock-full of outsider conspiracy theories that were beginning to sound increasingly ridiculous every time I uttered them in the company of people who actually had a clue what they were talking about. Line up all of them, all of their astounding accomplishments, and then look at me. What did I have to offer next to these superstars? I belonged in Quill & Ink, not Rose & Grave. If the patriarchs had an argument to make against the female taps, the weakest link to attack was…me.

The door burst open, revealing a gang of drunken sophomores. “Omigod,” said one, rushing in. “I gotta pee so bad!”

I barely made it out of the way.

Back in the narrow, dark corridor that sloped upward to the split-level body of the bar above, I paused. Maybe I should call it a night. I wasn’t adding anything of substance to the proceedings, and I doubted my presence would help them achieve a moment of brilliance. At the phone booth, I stepped up on the stool and peered over the split level through the railing at the booth where the other new taps sat. Josh and Demetria were in a heated debate about something, Benjamin was tapping his feet impatiently on the floorboards (got a perfect view of that from my vantage point), and Odile and Nikolos appeared to be in the midst of a discussion decidedly not about the society—unless there was important Digger lore to be found in her cleavage.

“Hey, boo,” said a voice behind me. “What are you doing?”

I started and nearly tottered off the stool. George steadied me with hands on my thighs.

“Careful there,” he said as I stepped down onto shaky legs, mindful of the four and a half 312s I’d consumed.

“You shouldn’t be using that name,” I said, trying to catch my breath and failing. Wasted effort with George Harrison Prescott around. “Not outside the confines of a society function. I’m afraid I’m going to have to fine you two dollars.”

“What name?” He stepped a little closer, pinning me between the phone booth and his body.

“You know. My society name.”

“Oh,” he said softly. “That’s not what I said.”

“What did you say?” I tilted my chin up in defiance.

“Boo.” His eyes glinted copper behind those glasses. “Just ‘boo.’ It means sweetie, honey, my girl. It’s a hip-hop endearment.”

I swallowed. My girl? Play it cool, Amy. “You’re not hip-hop.”

“My darling boo,” he said, “I’m so very, very hip-hop.”

And though I’d been imagining this moment for quite some time, the only thing I could think of as he kissed me was that the Yellow Pages were jabbing me in the spine.

And then, as if he knew it, he slipped his arms around my back and cradled me against him in a manner that chased all thoughts of telephone directories and