Diana Peterfreund - Secret Society Girl

He grabbed my arm and maneuvered me to one of the stone benches positioned farther away from the windows. “And you,” he hissed in my ear in a much lower tone than I’d been using, “are not exactly discreet.”

I rolled my eyes as we sat. “How discreet is that pin of yours?”

He snorted. “It took you about ninety seconds to notice it, and I practically had to jab you in the eye with the pointy end.”

“Thanks for restraining yourself.”

“Think nothing of it.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “Now I want an explanation.”

He narrowed his eyes. “For what?”

“For what!” I looked around the courtyard. Still empty. But I lowered my voice anyway. “For last night, of course.”

“You seemed to understand the process at the time.”

“Yeah, but then you just left me there. In the bathroom.”

“Of course. We had to get to eleven other people, you know, Amy. We were busy.”

I digested that point while he glanced around. “Look, this isn’t the time to talk. Everything you need to know is in the—” He stopped and looked down at my hands, empty but for WAP. “Where are the books I gave you?”

“In the library, I suppose.”

“WHAT!” Now it was Malcolm’s turn to get loud. He jumped up from the bench and threw his hands in the air. “You just left them there?”

I blinked at him. “They were library books. And I already have a copy of Poetics back in my suite.”

“There was—urgh!” He spiked his hands in his hair. “There was something in the Aristotle. For you. From us.”

“Oh.”

“Oh?” He paced back and forth in front of me. “Oh?!? That’s all you have to say?”

“What am I supposed to say? Did you honestly think that after that little act of yours I’d be more interested in hunting you down or settling back for a little bit of Dead White Guy’s take on literary criticism?”

“Well, I didn’t think you’d just leave them there!” He plopped back down on the bench and put his head in his hands. “I told them we shouldn’t get creative. I said, ‘What’s wrong with the Post Office?’ But did anyone listen to me? No. And now look.”

I patted him on the shoulder, because it seemed like the only appropriate response, but inside I was already plotting my course back to the reading room.

Malcolm whipped up and caught me by the shoulders. He stared at me intently. “Listen, you can’t let anyone else see the letter I put inside those books. It could ruin everything. You have to get back to the library and get them back. Now. Understand?”

I nodded, a bit taken aback, and put my hands on his chest to push him away. And, naturally, that’s when the door to the nearest entryway opened and Brandon Weare walked out.

“Hey, Haskel,” he said in a voice that was anything but casual. “What’s up?”

Malcolm dropped his hands and stepped back and I tried to think of the least awkward way to respond.

Option One:

“Whoa, Malcolm, be careful on those uneven flagstones, you don’t want to trip!”

Option Two:

“Hey, Brandon. Malcolm here was acting out this scene I missed on The OC last week.”

Option Three:

“Hi, Brandon. Malcolm and I can’t talk right now. We have to go back to the library before anyone finds the top-secret Rose & Grave correspondence Agent Double-Oh-Cabot here left in a book I had no intention of checking out.”

But Malcolm took over, going from Bobcat-Goldthwait-freaked-out to James-Dean-cool in a flash. “Hey, man, how’s it going?” He held out his hand and slapped Brandon five before my friend-with-bennies could figure out what was going on. “I’ve been meaning to congratulate you on that last intramural badminton game. Have you thought about being team captain next year? I think Calvin is going to make a real play for the Tibbs Cup.”

Brandon played badminton? Live and learn. Of course, considering the guy’s obsession with paper airplanes, the aerodynamically designed shuttle used in badminton fit perfectly.

“Thanks,” Brandon said, and stood a little taller. “I have been thinking about it.”

Unbelievable. I looked at Malcolm with new appreciation. Brandon was completely distracted. “Are you doing anything right now?” Malcolm was asking him. “We can go talk to the Calvin Tibbs Coordinator about it.”

“Well, I wanted to chat with Amy….” Brandon cast me a quick glance, but before he could break out his Amy-smile, Malcolm stepped in.

“Oh, she’s headed off to the library.” Malcolm clapped Brandon on the shoulder and made some kind of complicated eyebrow gesture in my direction. “Let’s go,” he went on, guiding my Brandon away.

I stood there, alone in the Calvin courtyard, and began to question the veracity of Brandon’s ongoing Hopelessly-Devoted-to-You act. The man had just ditched me for intramural badminton.

On the upside, I was definitely on my way to becoming a member of Rose & Grave. So, boy, did I need to reclaim those books!

I hurried back to the library, crossing my fingers that the shelving assistants hadn’t made their rounds in the reading room yet.

But my luck didn’t hold out. I got to the table where I’d been sitting, and it was completely cleared. No society tomes, no volumes of literary criticism, no missive from Rose & Grave.

Crap. The next freshman who had to read Poetics was sure in for a surprise. And I’d already screwed up my first objective as a member of a secret society—actually getting initiated. (Though, seriously, I don’t think I’m entirely to blame for this snafu. How was I to know? It’s not like there’s a “So You Wanna Be in a Secret Society” brochure.) Okay, Amy, think. They wouldn’t have had time to reshelve them yet, so they were probably sitting on one of the book carts behind the circulation desk. I could just go up to the people at the desk and tell them I needed it back.

So there I was, standing in line, practically hopping with impatience and straining my eyes to see past the counter to the book carts, hoping that I’d recognize at least one of the volumes. The petite girl working the computer had a nose ring and two green stripes in her hair, and when I told her I needed my Aristotle back, she just stared at me and blinked. “According to the system,” she said, pulling the info up on the screen, “there are 215 copies of the collected writings of Aristotle in the Dwight Stacks alone.”

“I know, but I need the one I was just looking at.”

“And another 167 in the rest of the Eli University library system.”

“Right,” I said, pointing behind her. “But I need the one on that little cart back there.”

She looked over her shoulder, then back at me. “You want me to go digging through the cart to find a particular book, another copy of which you can easily retrieve from the shelves in 382 different forms?”

Nice math, bitch. I was still carrying the one. But my momma always told me you catch more flies with honey.

“Pretty please.” I leaned forward. “I left some rather sensitive health information in there, accidentally.” I gestured vaguely at my lower regions and whispered, “Test results.”

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.”