Diana Peterfreund - Rites of Spring (Break)

“Are those Popsicles?” George asked, jumping up and taking the box from Darren’s hands. “C’mere, man, and help me with this Gorgon head.”

“What is all this stuff?” Darren asked.

“Afraid we can’t tell you that,” George said, pulling out an orange pop and handing the box to Ben. “But if you’re really good, I’ll let you in on where the best place to watch from secret is.”

“George!” Clarissa exclaimed.

“Oh, come on,” George said. “Like you wouldn’t have done the same thing as me when you were his age.”

“I guess this answers the question of which of you are really Diggers,” Darren said, as the ice pops made the rounds.

“Ooh, he’s a quick one,” said Odile, examining the box for nutritional info. “Where’s your sister?”

“My dad wanted her to stay inside this afternoon,” Darren said. It was the first time I’d ever heard him mention his father.

“Probably because we’re a bad influence,” Demetria said. “Wouldn’t want her to get any new ideas about a woman’s place.”

“What are you talking about?” I said. “We’re sitting here sewing .”

“Yeah, on a secret project,” said Kevin, waving his purple pop in the air like a scepter. “Hate to do this, kid…”

George made a face. “It’s ridiculous. Darren’s a legacy at Eli, and a legacy…elsewhere. Is there a word for the opposite of a patriarch?”

“Pretriarch?” I suggested.

“Plus, we’re playing a game. Let him join.”

“No, thanks,” Darren said. “I’m not into dress-up.”

“Well then,” Ben said. “I recommend you remember this word come Tap Night: ‘reject.’”

I laughed. Rose & Grave did require a flair for the dramatic.

“It’s okay,” Darren went on. “I have an appointment with my father soon anyway.”

Appointment? What an odd way to put it. I had appointments with my dentist, or my thesis advisor, not my parents. Then again, Darren was being homeschooled, so maybe he was meeting his dad for half an hour of Socratic dialogue. I could totally see old Kurt going for that.

“Did you get a chance to start on Monte Cristo ?” I asked him.

“A little,” he admitted, ducking his head in guilt. “But I left it in the rec room yesterday. I should probably go grab it.”

I stood. “I’ll come with you. It’s time to stretch my legs anyway.”

We walked up to the house and I noticed that Darren was playing with the hem of his grubby T-shirt as he walked. I couldn’t imagine the guts it must have taken him to visit the college kids after the scene we’d witnessed that morning, but I wasn’t sure whether or not I could even begin to broach the subject. Poe’s approach to Darren seemed to be very hands-off, as if the last thing Darren wanted was to talk to anyone else about what was going on in his life, but then again, I had to consider the source. Poe didn’t like to talk to anyone about anything. And if Darren really wanted nothing more than to avoid us all, then why did he keep showing up? He’d come to talk to us on the boat, and before breakfast, and again just now.

I figured he was desperate for company in his own age bracket, and the Eli students were the closest he could get. And though I agreed with my fellow knights about keeping Digger activities restricted to Diggers only, I also understood George’s point. There was a pretty fair chance that Darren would eventually join our ranks, and plus, was our little skit really all that important to the makeup of the organization that we needed to keep it a secret? How juvenile was that?

A lot of times, it seemed like the secrecy of our society just served to hide how boring and pedestrian most of our activities really were.

“You know,” he confided in me, “I’ve seen these things so many times I could probably do it better than any of you.”

Well, that answered my question! “I bet,” I said with a chuckle. “You want my part? I’m the back end of the sea monster.”

“Really?” he asked, surprised. “But you don’t swim, and that’s the part that goes on the rowboat.”

I stared at him. “Rowboat?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Aren’t you guys using the rowboat?”

Um, not that anyone had told me. Darren’s expression had Amateurs written all over it, and I began to think that maybe this particular pretriarch had more experience with dress-up than he wanted to let on.

Time to change the subject. “Maybe, if your dad will let her, Odile can drop by your house this afternoon and meet your sister.”

“She’d like that,” Darren said. “I think she misses Bettina.”

“Who?”

He shrugged. “Our housekeeper. She lives with us and they’re really close. We don’t even get cell reception on the island, so Isabelle hasn’t been able to talk to her since we’ve been here.”

That wasn’t the only reason. I opened my mouth and shut it again, unable to formulate any type of response. So there it was. Darren didn’t know.

“Got it,” Darren said, picking up The Count of Monte Cristo off an end table. I noticed a bookmark a good third of the way into the novel. Ah, a fellow speed-reader.

“You must be liking it so far,” I said, pointing at the bookmark. There. Books were a safe topic. Weren’t they?

He flipped through the pages. “It’s okay.” He looked out the window at the rest of my club, then returned his attention to the book. “Hey, I heard something happened at your cabin the other day.”

I nodded, eager to steer the conversation far, far away from Bettina. “It was outrageous! Someone broke in, trashed the place, and wrote all kinds of nasty stuff on all the walls and mattresses with paint.”

“Wow,” he said, though his face was still buried in the pages. “Anything of yours get ruined?”

“Not mine, luckily. They totally destroyed Clarissa’s new purse, though.”

“Designer?”

“Louis Vuitton.” Not that he knew what that meant.

“That’s my mom’s favorite,” he said. Once again, Darren surprised me. Was there anything this kid didn’t know?

“You know,” he said. “I don’t think George is right.”

“About?”

“Me joining Rose & Grave. Wouldn’t it be cooler to, like, join Dragon’s Head or something? I bet they’d love it, all the secrets I could tell them. Aren’t they the big Digger rivals?”

“I may have heard something like that once,” I said. I was so the wrong girl to ask about Dragon’s Head, the bastards. And to bring them up now, after yesterday’s news…I wondered how much this pretriarch actually knew about society happenings. “But still, that’s uncool—to join another society just because you have the goods to betray this one.” Not that I was biased or anything.

“What else am I going to use this info for?” Darren asked. “It’s not worth anything if I just become another Digger.”

“You’ve been reading too much Nietzsche,” I replied. And here my inner Digger was rising up in defense. We were giving this guy room and board on the island, and this was his idea of gratitude? Maybe we should rethink the whole barbarian invite policy.

“Whatever. I probably won’t even end up at Eli anyway.”

“Really? I think you’re pretty much a shoo-in.”

He shrugged. “I might go to Oxford or something instead.”

“That would be cool,” I agreed, glad to get back onto topics that wouldn’t raise my ire at the teen. Who knew what I might let slip if that happened? “I’ve never been to England.” But one of my fellowship applications would take me there. If I got accepted. (Cross fingers!)

“I have. And Oxford’s a better school than Eli, even.”