Diana Peterfreund: Secret Society Girl

But when I pulled the paper out, I could see that it was a printout from the online card catalog, covered in check marks and other notations. I was about to drop it to the desk when one of the titles caught my eye:

Kellogg, H. L. College Secret Societies: Their Customs, Character, and the Efforts for Their Suppression. Chicago: Ezra A. Cook, 1874.

No wonder Lydia knew where to get the scoop.

As if to convince myself that I wasn’t obsessing about this whole secret society thing (after all, at least ninety percent of every Eli class never joins one!), I brought WAP with me to read in the library. It took me two hours to track down the five titles listed on Lydia’s printout. Dwight Library Stacks are about twelve stories tall, with enough hidden nooks and crannies for half the student body to hide in. It’s an old Eli tradition to have sex in the Stacks at least once before graduation. (And, no, I’ve never done it, not even with the faux beatnik Galen Twilo.)

I finally found one of the books tucked away in between the ceiling and the top of the bookcase where it was supposed to be shelved. Another old library trick: If you don’t want anyone to take out the books you need, you hide them. I often wondered how many volumes were forever lost in the morass of the Stacks because some student had decided to play nut-storing squirrel and lost track of his hiding places—or never bothered to undo the damage once the semester was over. (See, you’d think that Ivy League students were an honest, trustworthy bunch, but no. Some of the crap I’ve seen pulled on this campus is practically criminal. But I never thought Lydia was the type to engage in that type of behavior.)

I trekked down to the nearest reading room and set up shop at one of the carved wooden tables that ran from end to end. Giant burgundy leather wingback chairs and elegant reading lamps with green shades rounded out the décor, and the Friday morning sun shone in from the lead-veined windows and highlighted the Gothic stone arches vaulting high above my head. The Dwight Memorial reading rooms just reeked of high-class academia.

I immediately started to feel sleepy.

Which had more in common with the caffeinating qualities of a mochacchino: 1,472 pages of Russian historic literature extolling the exploits of the Napoleonic invasion, or dusty essays about 19th century collegiate frats?

Blecch. I decided to stave off boredom by switching back and forth on a regular basis. Natasha Rostov was up to her usual antics, but the society tome didn’t gift me with any useful info. Seriously, do I care whether or not Phi Beta Kappa started at William & Mary? I want to know what’s going on with Rose & Grave in the 21st century.

“Hi, Amy.”

I looked up to see Malcolm Cabot standing over my table. A senior, a popular party boy, and the son of a state governor, Malcolm Cabot and I didn’t run in the same social circles. My friends stocked up on popcorn and had Sex and the City marathons, while his crowd liked to drive down to “The City” for marathon sex weekends. He wasn’t in my college, we’d never been in the same class, and as far as I knew, we hadn’t exchanged so much as three words in my years at Eli. “Um, hi.”

Okay, four words.

“What’s up?” Malcolm craned his neck toward my reading material, which, luckily, was currently opened to page 834 of WAP. He was dressed in a spring green polo shirt with the letters “CC” printed in the corner, and a pair of very well-fitting blue jeans. His sandy hair looked like it had been ripped right out of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog. He wore his messenger bag slung across his chest and was thrumming his fingers against the strap. “Russian Novel class, huh? Which one did you like best?”

“Crime and Punishment,” I said. “It’s only 500 pages long.”

He laughed, which earned him dirty looks from at least three other people at my table.

Malcolm straightened then, but continued beating that tattoo on his shoulder strap. If you ask me, the rhythm, more than the whispered conversation, was what was distracting about his presence. And now we were up to two dozen words.

“The final’s a breeze,” he went on. “So don’t worry about it.”

“Thanks.” I guess. Thrum, thrum, thrum.

“Just don’t work too hard. You’ll need your energy.”

Huh? My eyes shot to his face. “What are you talking about?”

He grinned then, showing me a set of gorgeous white teeth. “Oh, I almost forgot.” He stopped thrumming for a second, reached into his messenger bag, pulled out three books, and set them down on my desk. “This might help you out when you’re stuck in class.” He pointed at each of them in turn. “Said was a post-colonialist critic, Levi-Strauss advocated structuralism, and Aristotle…well, he’s the oldest critic in the book. None of them is a New Critic. Get your facts straight, or I’ll think you deserved that B—in Ethiopian Lit.”

I stared up at that all-too-familiar smile, then down to his hands, which had started tapping on his shoulder strap again. Right next to the little gold pin stuck through the canvas that showed a rose inside an elongated hexagon.

Malcolm Cabot was the Shadow-Who-Smiles. And he was in Rose & Grave.

Which meant…

“Hey!” I said. Loudly.

“Shh!” The harsh rebuke came from a girl at the next table. I craned my neck around Malcolm’s torso to see Clarissa Cuthbert glaring at me over the rim of her Louis Vuitton bag. Clarissa’s gaze ping-ponged from me to Malcolm and back again, and then her ice blue eyes narrowed. Little wonder. She was probably wondering what Governor Cabot’s son was doing talking to me. Like Malcolm, Clarissa was part of the school’s über elite.

And Malcolm was taking advantage of my distraction. He ruffled my hair. “See you soon, babe.” Then he turned on his heel and walked off.

Ignoring Clarissa, and completely forgetting about both the society books and Malcolm’s favorite literary critics, I snatched up WAP (with both hands, of course, since the stupid thing weighs two hundred pounds) and dashed after him.

By the time I got into the main hall of the library, he was nowhere to be seen. Stacks? Exit? Ugh! I walked as quickly as possible to the front doors, all the while scanning down each bay for any sight of his green shirt or blond hair. No luck.

At the door, I went through the usual No-This-Is-My-Copy-of- War-and-Peace -That’s-Why-It-Doesn’t-Have-a-Library-Bar-Code-on-It rigmarole, then sprinted down the front steps onto the Cross Campus Green. No sign of him there, either.

What, did Rose & Grave members have a secret entrance to the library, too?

Fine, I’d beard the lion in his den. “CC” stood for Calvin College in Eli shorthand, and green was the college color. I’d follow him right back to his dorm room. I tried to look dignified as I power-walked across the Green and back onto High Street, but the weight of WAP kept throwing off my stride.

THOUGHTS THAT WENT THROUGH

MY HEAD ON THE WAY

1) Malcolm Cabot knew I’d been bullshitting at my interview but tapped me anyway.

2) Must be convenient for Malcolm that Calvin College and the Rose & Grave tomb are right next door to each other.

3) I wonder if the Diggers have the Russian Novel final on file.

I swiped my keycard at the entrance to Calvin College, and opened the heavy gate. A few steps later and I was in their small, sunny courtyard, empty but for one guy in a green polo shirt booking it toward one of the far entryways.

“Malcolm!” I shouted, and he stopped in his tracks. I ran to meet him. “You’re a Digger,” I said when I arrived, panting slightly.