Secret Society Girl

She retrieved the cart forthwith and started rummaging through the books. Unfortunately, Poetics was not among them, nor were any of the other books I’d had with me earlier.

“Sorry,” she said, then reached into her pocket and pulled out a card. She slid it across the counter, then laid her hand softly over mine. “You know, I volunteer at the Eli Women’s Center. If you need to talk about anything, we have a twenty-four-hour Crisis Help Line.”

I did my best to look somber. “Thank you,” I said, taking the card and stuffing it in my pocket. Okay, now what was I supposed to do?

“Hey! Psst, Amy. Amy Haskel.”

I turned in the direction of the voice and saw Clarissa Cuthbert seated in a leather armchair in a little reading alcove. Her Louis Vuitton bag was on her lap, a pile of library books sat on the table beside her, and between two of her French manicured fingers, she dangled a white envelope with a black border and a black wax seal.

“Looking for this?”

4. Semper Paratus

And let me tell you why.

Remember Galen Twilo, numero dos on my Hit List? Well, soon after our Reading Week love-in, about two weeks into the second semester, when it was just penetrating my lust-addled brain that I would never again be treated to a post-coital discussion about existentialism and the incontrovertible nothingness of being (I know, strange thing to think right after an orgasm) in the arms of Mr. Twilo, I had a rather unfortunate encounter.

There’s a sort of restaurant/club in New Haven called Tory’s that caters to the very, very old-school factions of the student body. To eat there, you have to be a member, and the dress code is incredibly strict. They serve stuff like Welsh rarebit, and campus organizations who have Tory’s members on their roster like to go and have what we call “Tory’s Nights,” where we sing songs and drink toasts out of giant silver trophy cups at the long tables in the restaurant’s private banquet rooms, though we never actually eat anything. Clarissa Cuthbert is amongst the very oldest of the old school, and her father, some hotshot Wall Street guy, is the type of person who pays the steep post-graduate membership fee to Tory’s just so he can eat toast points whenever he visits his daughter at his old alma mater.

I didn’t know any of this then. I knew of Clarissa—she was beautiful in that “Bergdorf blonde” way, dressed like she was in a fashion show for every class, and had a dorm room on campus (as all freshmen are required to) as well as a swank penthouse on the corner of Chapel and College Streets, the town’s ritziest student-friendly address. She held champagne-tasting parties. At eighteen.

I was still getting used to keggers.

My first Tory’s Night with the Lit Mag had been going on for about an hour and a half when the almost-empty trophy cup was passed to me. “Finish it,” Glenda Foster, then a sophomore, had whispered to me, and the whole table lifted their voices in song. Now, the rules of the Tory’s Cup Game are a little bit complicated (especially considering it’s a drinking game), but here’s a short list.

TORY’S NIGHT RULES

1) The Tory’s Cup can never touch the table.

2) The players pass the cup to the left, making a half turn every time, and everyone takes a sip.

3) When it gets down to a low enough level of mixed alcoholic beverage (identified only by color—i.e., a Red Tory’s Cup, a Gold Tory’s Cup, a Green Tory’s Cup), the person holding it is obliged to chug the rest, wipe the inside of the cup out on her hair and/or clothes, and rest it, upside down, on a napkin. If there’s any ring of moisture imprinted on the napkin, she has to pay for the next cup. (Tory’s Cups are prohibitively expensive, hence the not ordering food at Tory’s Nights. We can’t blow our budget on cucumber sandwiches.)

4) All this is done while the other people at the table sing “the Tory’s Song,” which is an incomprehensible mix of letters, hand-clapping, and general drunken revelry, into which they insert the unlucky drinker’s name. Students aren’t ever taught the Tory’s Song, we just pick it up through osmosis as soon as we get on campus.

These cups probably hold more than a gallon, so even when they look nearly empty, there’s still a highly deceptive amount of liquor, juice, and other people’s backwash swishing around on the bottom of the polished-silver bowl. And I had to drink it—without drowning. For a second I thought I’d have as much luck trying to swim in it. But I rallied, and chugged, and did my best to dry the rim and interior off on my hair and clothing. The price of a Green Cup is about sixty bucks, which was my freshman-year spending money for a month, so I had to win the game.

And I did, but I paid the price. Woozy, sticky, and already regretting my future dry-cleaning bill, I excused myself right afterward to go to the restroom. I wobbled down the stairs into the main dining hall and practically tripped over a table containing Clarissa Cuthbert, her father, a few people I didn’t recognize, and Galen Twilo, dressed unaccountably in khaki dress pants, a shirt and tie, and a blue blazer with gold buttons on the cuffs.

They looked up from their watercress salads at my sticky, green-stained outfit, and Galen’s eyes (I will never forget this) showed absolutely no recognition. For a moment there, I thought maybe I was seeing things and it wasn’t Galen after all. Galen wore black pants with chains hanging off them and Clash concert T-shirts he found at thrift stores in the Village. Not blue blazers with gold buttons and—I looked down at his feet—brown loafers with little leather tassels.

Just then, that pint and a half of Tory’s Cup in my stomach got the better of me and I rushed to the toilet. I was still in the stall, trying to erase the image of violent green alcoholic vomit from my mind, when the door to the ladies’ room opened and in walked Clarissa and one of her friends. (I peeped through the crack in the stall door.)

“—he says they went out a few times,” Clarissa was saying as she popped open a Chanel compact and brushed bronzer on her nose. “But he never thought she’d just show up here.”

“Following him around like a devoted puppy, huh?” The other girl made a clucking sound with her tongue. “And what was that stuff in her hair?”

Clarissa shrugged. “You know how Galen likes slumming.”

WHAT I LEARNED THAT NIGHT

1) There’s a restroom near the private banquet halls that Tory’s prefers its student Tory’s Night guests to use so as not to disturb the people in the main dining hall with their sticky outfits.

2) Mr. Rebel-Without-a-Cause Twilo was actually a trust-fund baby from Manhattan who’d grown up on the Upper East Side and attended the same twee private school as Clarissa.

3) Never finish a Green Tory’s Cup.

And I never did like Clarissa Cuthbert after that. Slumming!

So here I was, two and a half years later, watching Clarissa fondle my letter from Rose & Grave with a smug little smile plastered on her (probably plastic surgery–enhanced) face.

I swallowed. “Why, thanks,” bitch “Clarissa!” I said in what I hoped was a tone of sincere gaiety, but probably came across as forced brittleness. “I was so wondering” why you’d steal my books “what I’d done with that” secret society letter “birthday party invitation.”

“Can it,” she said, and beckoned to me with the letter. “Come here.”

I started to trot over, then remembered that, whatever Clarissa might have said freshman year, I am not an obedient little puppy, stopped, and held out my hand. “Please give me back my letter.”

“As soon as we ascertain that it belongs to you.”

That brought me fully into the alcove. “It belongs to me and you know it,” I hissed.

She turned the envelope over in her hands, a look of serene innocence on her face. “No name on it.”

I clenched my jaw. “Then let me describe it to you.”

“Oh, please do!” She smiled sweetly. “Especially what’s on the inside.”

I sat down on the chair opposite her. “Clarissa, I’m not kidding around here. Give it back.”

She hesitated, frowned, and handed it over. I snatched it out of her claws and, after ensuring the seal remained unbroken, shoved it between the covers of WAP. Well, that was easier than I thought it would be. Dude, if it were me, I’d have put up a real fight to get a look inside her letter.

All business between us seemingly at an end, I rose to go.

“Wait, Amy.” She touched my arm, and I was quite proud of myself for not jerking away in revulsion. “We should talk.”

“About what?” I said haughtily.

“You know about what.” Her eyes softened for a second. “Please?”

What a crock. Like she’d be my friend now that I had won the approval of a group like Rose & Grave? I pulled out of her grip. “Sorry, Clarissa. I’m not into slumming.”

The inside of the letter had been burned in places, and large charred blotches left black streaks on my hands as I tried to unfold it and read the writing. Like before, the print was lopsided on the page, which was folded into an irregular hexagon. This time, it smelled like smoke.

This is what it said:

Neophyte Haskel,

At five minutes past eight this evening, wearing neither metal, nor sulfur, nor glass, leave the base of Whitney Tower and walk south on High Street. Look neither to the right nor to the left. Pass through the sacred pillars of Hercules and approach the Temple. Take the right Book in your left hand and knock thrice upon the sacred portals. Tell no one what you do.

—Rex Grave

Um, okaaaay. I knew what all those words meant, but the sum was still a mystery. Who wears sulfur? The glass restriction was okay, since I was blessed with