Diana Peterfreund - Under the Rose

I maintain that if they expect to hit me up for extra dough after my monthly student loan bill, they’re unfamiliar with the twenty-thou-a-year—in Manhattan! — editorial internship I have waiting for me after graduation. (That is, if I go to Manhattan. More on that later.)

Tonight’s Prescott College reception was par for the course, but as I’d told George this afternoon, at least there would be free beer.

I stood in front of my desk, brushing my hair with one hand and scrolling through my “welcome back” message from the dean of the Lit department with the other. My hair had grown out a bit over the summer, and in August, I’d capitulated to Odile’s prodding and gotten funky red highlights. She said it would match my tattoo. Of course, not many people saw said tattoo, so my correlated coloring hadn’t gotten the appreciation it deserved from anyone who wasn’t one of the five “Diggirls.”

In her adjoining bedroom, Lydia was singing. If ever a girl loved shopping period, it was my best friend. But I don’t think I’d ever seen her as happy as she was when she got back to the suite earlier. I wandered out to the wood-paneled common room, but her bedroom door was still shut, its whiteboard decorated with a blue ink smiley face sporting orange ink pigtails.

Singing and pigtails? Yeah, I was going to hear about this later on for sure. (Unless it was about something going on in her own secret society.) But as long as she was busy…

I ducked back into my room, carefully angled my computer screen away from the door, and minimized my Eli mail window.

A moment later, I was logged on to my other e-mail account. One new message.

From: Lancelot-D176@phimalarlico.org

To: Bugaboo-D177@phimalarlico.org

Subject: good luck tomorrow!

how’s my favorite little sib? all set for the stragglers? do me a favor, and try not to tear apart the foundations of the society at the initiation. i know that’s what you’re famous for. give poe a hug for me, huh?

“Hey,” Lydia said, sticking her head in. “Ready to go?”

“Yeah, just a minute,” I responded. “I’m reading an e-mail.” I took a deep breath. Don’t ask from whom. How was I to explain my sudden kinship with the wildly popular and recently graduated Malcolm Cabot? But Lydia made it easy on me.

“Okay.” She ducked out.

everything’s great up here. it’s so beautiful, bugaboo, i wish you could see it. i’ve been making a few friends, but we rarely talk about anything but fish. (that reminds me, give hale a heads-up to expect a large shipment of halibut.) i won’t lie; it’s been a bit of a letdown after the kind of closeness I had w/ the d’s at e, but I guess that’s the point. nothing is ever going to be like r&g. i’m going into juno at the end of the month. should be a fun trip. you know what they say about alaska: five men for every woman. though they never do mention how many men for every man.;-)

on the homefront, the latest report says i’m suffering from *exhaustion*—

“You know,” Lydia said, very close. I jumped a foot. She stood beside me, idly rooting through the earrings scattered across the top of my dresser. “If we get there after all the Master’s seven-layer cookies are gone, I’ll never speak to you again.”

Could she see? The text was small, and there were no incriminating graphics on the page. Just to be sure, I alt-tabbed back to the mailbox and minimized.

A second before the screen disappeared, I caught sight of another bold subject heading in my in-box. New mail.

WARNING: AMY HASKEL

Lydia waved a hand in front of my face. “Ames. Let’s go.”

I slammed the laptop closed.

Lydia jumped back. “I wasn’t snooping!”

Who sent that? Who was using my barbarian name to send me e-mail on the secret Diggers-only, society terminology—only, society time-stamps—only e-mail? It had to be from another knight of Rose & Grave. Only they knew of our secret domain or the configurations of our e-mail addresses. This had better be some kind of joke—something worth the two dollar fine for using barbarian names in society missives.

“There’s no reason to freak out,” my roommate continued.

But there was. Because Phimalarlico webmail was only supposed to come from others in the phimalarlico.org domain. It was a “virtual tomb”—no one but Diggers inside, heavily password-protected, no barbarians allowed.

Lydia was still talking. “Ten seconds and I’m leaving without you.”

“No, wait!” I cried. “I promise, ten seconds, I just have to—”

Lydia rolled her eyes and stalked out, murmuring, “Ten—nine—eight…”

I opened my laptop again.

From: amy.haskel@eli.edu

To: Bugaboo-D177@phimalarlico.org

Subject: WARNING: AMY HASKEL

YOU THINK ITS OVER BUT ITS NOT

FROM WITHIN DOTH PERSEPHONE ROT

I closed the window as the hairs on the back of my neck rose. Leaving aside for a moment the lack of apostrophes and phenomenally bad sense of rhythm in the poem (you can take the girl out of the editorial office…), it was one seriously chilling message.

And it apparently came from me. Which meant someone out there, who knew my society identity—which, I guess, could be any Digger—had hacked into my regular e-mail in order to send it to me. What was I supposed to do? If I told the other Diggers, it would seem as if the security leak was my fault, as if I’d somehow been less-than-discreet about my society e-mail.

“Two, one and a half, one!” Lydia warned from the common room.

“Coming!” I called, and rushed to meet her.

We’d “squatted” during the housing lottery last spring, betting on keeping our top-pick junior suite rather than risking a crappy draw that might lead to a less-than-desirable senior year rooming situation. Like something on the fourth floor. It might be great for our calves, but so not worth the hassle.

Lydia stood near the door, arms crossed, foot tapping. “Can you tell me what was so important, or is it verboten?”

I fingered the Rose & Grave pin I was wearing inside my pocket. “Some bizarre Salon op-ed.”

“Aren’t they all bizarre?”

“Says the woman addicted to Daily Kos?” I replied as we lumbered down the steps of the entryway and into the Prescott College courtyard.

The air was still late-August warm and all the windows of Prescott were open, showering snatches of hip-hop music, scholarly debates, video game sound effects, roommate squabbles, and cello tuning onto the students milling about on the lawn. The cacophony was a signature start-of-term sound, one I would no doubt associate with Eli for the rest of my life.

Beneath a yellow pool of light from a lamppost, a group of students kicked around a hackey sack. Nearby, a circle of outdoor types sat tailor-style in the grass, drinking from Nalgene bottles and reminiscing about the bonding they’d done on their freshmen outdoor orientation trips. In a small stone niche, two black-clad Theater majors were smoking and arguing about whether their company should start out the year with Ibsen (too trendy), Sartre (too light), Miller (too chaste), or Williams (too avant-garde).

We arrived at the Master’s house, and if the crowd we glimpsed inside was anything to go by, we’d definitely missed the seven-layer cookies. At the door, we were met by George Harrison Prescott, who was holding fast to the arm of a pretty, dark-haired woman.

“George, let go of me. I’m perfectly capable of walking by myself,” she said, then proceeded to tumble off the stoop.