Diana Peterfreund - Rites of Spring (Break)

“I’ll what ?” I cried. “You’ve got to be kidding me. I don’t agree to that!”

Felicity’s beautiful brow furrowed. “I’m sorry, perhaps my letter was a tad unclear. You don’t have to agree to anything. I made this deal with Brandon.”

I stood there, dumbstruck, wishing I had a bench to fall onto.

“You see, Amy, my boyfriend, for reasons passing understanding, took umbrage at the fact that we were, shall we say, persuading you to return our property.” She paused. “You wouldn’t be interested in doing that now, would you?”

“Over my dead body,” I hissed.

She sighed. “At any rate, my boyfriend had this crazy theory that I, as the director of our little campaign of persuasion, had some sort of personal stake in the matter, above and beyond the usual society feud. Barbarians and their strange ideas! Of course, you and I know that’s silly.”

I personally didn’t know anything of the sort. “Your campaign, as you call it, was a bit out of the mainstream.”

“As is everything about your club,” Felicity replied. “My boyfriend was under the impression that I had used his inexplicable lingering fascination with you to discover your schedule, habits, and even brand of shampoo.”

“Which you did.”

“Don’t you find it odd that anyone would remember someone’s favorite brand of cheap, drugstore shampoo?” Felicity’s smile remained sanguine, and my hands fisted inside the pockets of my coat. “And I don’t even know my own roommate’s class schedules.”

“Brandon must really care about me,” I shot back.

Here, her smile grew wide. “My boyfriend is a kind person.” She kept saying that phrase, my boyfriend. She must have known how much it needled me. “And I really care about him. I love him. I love him ever so much more than I love some silly feud between two college clubs. I care about him so much more than I care about some silly college secret society.” She paused. “I don’t know if anyone else could say that.”

The little bitch. Brandon had apparently told her everything about our breakup last year. She’d never needed the shoes to identify me. She’d always known I was in Rose & Grave. And she also knew I’d chosen it over Brandon.

“And it was surprisingly easy to convince my boyfriend of that fact. For him to give you up, I just had to promise that I would as well. Which I have.”

“Your society won’t accept that!” I said.

“Oh, we aren’t letting go of the feud, or of our statue. The Diggers are going down, mark my words. We just won’t be after you—specifically—anymore.”

Frustration and rage bubbled inside me, cutting off rational thought, any argument. “I don’t understand! If this was a decision made between you and Brandon, why this whole parley charade? Why drag me out here in the rain?” I mean, aside from the obvious pleasure of watching me look like a drowned rat.

“How else would you know?” she asked simply. “How else would you know that I won, and how I won, and how, now that I’ve chosen him over my society, Brandon loves me even more than he did before?” She rose. “Have a good night, Amy. I hope you get in safe from the storm.” She brushed past me, and it took all my self-restraint not to pummel her into the mud. Girls like Felicity probably had years of kickboxing or Krav Maga training anyway. “Oh, and if I were you or any of the other Diggers, I’d be watching my back.”

I stood there for way too long after Felicity left, not from any desire to savor the New Haven climate. I just didn’t know what to do next.

Where do you go when everyone you know owes you a big fat I told you so ? Where do you hide on a night so wretched that even Dickens wouldn’t have chosen it to illustrate his character’s desperation? Where do you run to the moment you realize that your SAT scores were a lie, your transcript obviously faked, your faculty recommendations the apparent result of a parental bribe, your acceptance letter from Eli University clearly some sort of cosmic joke, because there is no way that anyone in their right mind would mistake you for someone smart?

Someone with operational gray matter would never have let this happen to her. Someone with the intelligence of your average housefly would have put two and two together when Brandon had IM-ed her about “society nonsense.” Someone who had spent a moment examining her history, her experiences, or even the rational order of the universe would have noted at least one of the following:

1)Mr. Let’s-Define-Our-Relationship Weare had never professed any interest in discussing what we were really doing in our stolen afternoons.

2)The fact that after he told me he was going to make a decision, he never called again. Hello, clue phone.

3)Or how about the simple truth that when someone has the choice of the beautiful, polished, rich girl who has never broken his heart—the girl who would forgive his transgressions, would sacrifice her position in her society to make him happy—or the girl like me, it’s a no-brainer. Whatever else I might be tempted to say about Brandon at this moment, I’d never insult his intelligence.

Where do you go when this is made obvious to you? Other than back to Ohio? Part of me wondered if it was too late to book a flight. I wanted to be far, far from campus right now. I wanted to climb into my dad’s lap and hug my mom and act like I was still a teenager, instead of an adult who should have so known better. I wanted to hide, to flee, to pretend that I’d never even heard of Connecticut, let alone chosen it as a setting for such a humiliation. How could he love her more?

One thing was certain, I could not go back to my fellow knights yet. They were waiting for me just outside the library, but there was no way I could face anyone in my current state. There would be plenty of time to explain Dragon’s Head’s new strategy—after I dealt with my own state of mind. I pulled my coat’s hood low over my face and rushed back inside the Reading Room. Out in the main hall, I turned right, toward the back, rather than toward the front entrance. There was a back way out, near the law school.

A security guard stopped me. “Library’s closed, miss,” but as soon as he saw my face, his expression softened.

“I just want…” I gasped. “The back door.”

“Closed after midnight.”

“I just want to leave. I don’t have anything to check out…just…”

The guard relented and I rushed by him, practically sprinting on my way out the back. I shoved hard on the door and burst through into the cold alleyway beyond. I plopped against the nearest wall, heedless of the rain as it mixed with tears on my face. Great wracking sobs seemed to echo around the empty street, bouncing off stone walls and cobblestones. Yeah, there was no way I’d do this in front of the other knights. I imagined the patriarchs that had come before me weeping dignified tears over a lost comrade in war, or the death of a brother or a spouse. I couldn’t see them acting so stupid. No, this kind of behavior would be reserved for the Bugaboo of the group.

“Why?” I said to the buildings around me.

How could I question his choice? Maybe it was best. For if I did love him, if I really did, wouldn’t I have fought for him long before this? Wouldn’t I have fought for him when we tried dating last spring, or when I saw him again this fall, or even the first time he told me he still cared about me? Wouldn’t I have told him to stay with me that night, to really be with me, to tell Felicity right away that they were through for good?

If I’d really loved him, then I would have done what Felicity had. I would have picked him over Rose & Grave, I’d have put him first last spring, have shared my troubles with him rather than with the society brothers I’d only just met. I’d have called him back this fall instead of getting caught up in yet another society drama. I’d have run to him from the first moments of Dragon’s Head’s “little campaign of persuasion.” Wouldn’t I?