Diana Peterfreund - Under the Rose

“That’s what she meant when she said she’d chosen carefully!” I said with a gasp. Anyone with even a vague grasp of Boolean searches could have figured out what had been leaked a long time ago. And Jenny was a girl who could Google.

“Gehry and the other patriarchs knew it, too,” George said. “But the week of the leak, they played up the damage to the Elysians—told us this was an example of how far Rose & Grave had fallen—and we fell for it.”

“You weren’t the only ones,” Josh said.

“Well, I should have…been more responsible. Taken my own counsel. Been more—” he caught my eye “—adult.”

“But if you look at it from this perspective,” Odile said, “Jenny’s crime wasn’t really so heinous.”

“I beg to differ,” Josh argued. “Look at all the media attention. If it really was old news, why would everyone care so much?”

“Because memories are short and there’s a 24-hour news cycle that needs filling,” Odile said.

“Even though we would freak, in the end it wouldn’t make a difference.” I marveled at the deviousness of the angelic Jennifer Santos. I’d need to learn to watch my step around her.

“See?” Odile gave us a megawatt smile. “I think we can make this work.”

George leaned in. “Trust me, Boo. This will fix us.”

Trust him? Trust him ? Now I knew I’d entered Bizarro World.

“Come on, Boo. With one fell swoop we can pay back Micah Price, who’s not only been working to bust open the secrets of our order, but has completely screwed over one of our own. And we can get the Diggers back on track. All three of our tenets. One little punk. What do you say?”

I looked at them. Smart move, putting the most beautiful people in the club on this particular campaign. Odile and George stood there, looking like a cross between a beer commercial and an ad for face wash, and silently encouraged me to let them do their worst.

Three oaths. One caper. And it would make Micah miserable?

“Have at it.”

I hereby confess:

It’s good to be knight.

Those of us who have chosen to spend our college years within the Gothic, ivy-spattered walls of this New Haven institution, who have bathed ourselves in blue and baptized ourselves “the sons and daughters of Eli,” who have aligned our academic and collegiate philosophies with this university, who have proclaimed our allegiance and sung, full-throated, our alma mater—to us, there is only one Game. The Game. Eli vs. Harvard.

Every November, on our campus or theirs, on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, we play the last football game of the season against them. Every time, it’s epic. It doesn’t matter if the results have no bearing on the championship standing. It doesn’t matter if their record trounces ours all season long. We rally, and scream, and cheer, and sing songs for the glory of our team and school, as generations of Eli students did before us.

This year, it mattered, as Eli was up for the Ivy League Championship. If we won The Game, we’d take first place. It was my senior year, my last Game, and we had home field advantage. But on this overcast Saturday, my mind was focused on loyalty of a different sort: Today was the day the Diggers got their pride back.

In the week following our meeting with Odile and George, they’d done everything they’d promised, and more. (I spent the time hacking out a new thesis topic. Jury’s still out on whether Burak will accept it.) We’d been told the revenge scheme would serve as penance for the disgraced knights. What we hadn’t realized was that the planning process would do more to galvanize the club than a semester’s worth of whining about devotion and brotherhood. Forget oaths—nothing bonds people together quite like the power of mutual dislike.

Today, that dislike was focused on the blond head seated seven rows down. Most Eli attendees in the stadium had been sectioned off into groups according to their college affiliation. Near the forty-yard line, I caught sight of the Prescott College contingent in their sunny yellow shirts. Lydia was the one sporting the yellow bandanna and the giant foam finger. My last Game, and I was missing cheering in the stands with my best friend. Still, it would be worth it. Above me, I could see a huge crowd of green-clad Calvin College residents, though thankfully Brandon was not in evidence.

At Eli, school spirit is every bit as valid in college colors as in Eli colors, unless, of course, your college colors happen to be Harvard crimson. Edison College colors were red, so the shirts of the people seated around me were gray with red accents, and everyone waved Eli Blue banners as well as the college flag as they shouted obscenities and college cheers across the rows to the other groups. I hadn’t the foggiest what constituted an Edison College cheer, so I stayed quiet. I looked at Jenny, seated beside me and shielded from the sight of anyone nearby by the massive form of Ben, who was splayed out in the row below us wearing a giant bulldog-shaped hat.

“How’s it going?” I asked her.

“Fine.” Her thumbs moved beneath her anorak, which was letting off a series of very unanorak-like beeps. “Just keep your eyes on that scoreboard. He’s still there, right?”

I looked over Ben’s hat. “Yep.”

Micah, of course, was not doing anything so dull as sitting with the rest of Calvin College. (Perhaps it was because they weren’t behaving in a manner that could be construed as remotely Calvinist.) Instead, he’d gathered about him his usual groupies and they’d separated themselves from the surrounding madness. For once, he didn’t appear to be attacking anyone. I felt a small twinge of guilt that we were about to reward such benevolent behavior with humiliation, but then again, I doubted it would be long before he pulled a dick move of some sort or another.

Above me, a brown-shirted member of Hartford College made a play for the Edison flag (flag stealing being a favorite pastime at The Game), and the whole section rose in revolt. Someone jostled Jenny, and she slammed into me, throwing us both off the bench and against Ben’s broad back.

“Watch it!” he shouted at the squirming mass of Edisonians. “You okay?”

“I think I screwed up the sequence,” Jenny said, rubbing the back of her head. “I knew I should be doing this from the tent.”

“And miss the look on his face?” I asked. “Not a chance, hon. You deserve this more than anyone. This is the only part we can’t catch on camera. So we’re here.”

“We won’t be catching anything, camera or otherwise, if I screw up the sequence.” Jenny crouched in the space between the benches and started back in. “Okay, it’s counting down. A little early, but it’ll still work, right?”

Elsewhere, people paid attention to the action on the field, sang along to the school hymns the marching band banged out, or sneaked out flasks for a quick swig; all were oblivious to the chaos about to be unleashed.

Harun appeared behind us. “How’s it going?”

“We started.”

“Already?” He put his hands on Jenny’s shoulders and gave her a congratulatory knead. “Great! How are you feeling?”

Jenny shrugged, but didn’t pull away.

“Not guilty, right?” He smiled down at her. “Personally, we’re all excited you’ve decided to hang on to your vengeance card for a little longer.”

“Vengeance is a lofty goal,” she said. “One I’d never think of usurping. I try to keep it simple.” And then she smiled. “Just a little reminder that payback, when indeed it comes, is going to be a bitch.”