Diana Peterfreund - Under the Rose

“I saw her this afternoon,” I said. “She’s kind of intense.”

“She’s a classist bitch.” Demetria sniffed. “Did you read her column in The Ivory Tower about how they never should have let women into Eli?”

“Sounds like a girl the patriarchs would like,” I said. “Did she really write that?” The Ivory Tower is this crazy conservative paper on campus.

“Yes. Said the school was at its height before they sullied the student population with an excess of estrogen. Wonder what she thinks of breaking the gender barrier at our club?”

“I wonder why she even accepted the tap,” Clarissa said.

“You expect a hypocrite to act rationally?” Jenny asked. “She thinks women shouldn’t be at Eli, but she’s a student here. If she really believed we don’t belong here, wouldn’t she be cooling her heels at Wellesley or someplace?” She toyed with the end of her long, dark braid and tucked her chin into her chest, as if the outburst had sapped all of her socializing strength. “Sounds less as if she’s saying what she really means than that she’s parroting the words of her cronies.” And then she clammed up completely, as if afraid to say more on the subject.

“I don’t know,” I said. “She didn’t seem the submissive type in class today. Took on Professor Branch and everything.”

“Well, we’ll get the scoop tomorrow,” Clarissa said.

I twirled the glass in my hand. “Hey, guys?” I said, tentatively. “I have to tell you something. Before I came here tonight, I was checking my D-mail, and there was this message….”

They all froze. They all looked down at their drinks. And then Jenny said, “So, you got it, too?”

I hereby confess:

Paranoia loves company.

I’ll be the first to cop to a certain affinity for overthinking. Most of the time, it’s served me well. (Cf. academic success culminating in admittance to and continuing high GPA at Eli University.) Occasionally, it’s gotten me into trouble. (Cf. habit of constantly attributing mysterious occurrences to the shady machinations of misogynist Rose & Grave patriarchs. But sometimes, it really is their fault. After all, they tried to ruin my life last semester, so a little healthy wariness isn’t a bad thing.)

But if every girl in the club got a mysterious e-mail, I sat up and took notice. When the club convened before the straggler initiation a few days later, we discussed the bizarre rhyming e-mails and what they could mean. Each Diggirl had received a two-line message sent from her regular Eli account to her Digger-mail; the time stamps showed each e-mail had been sent two minutes apart. When assembled by order of the time stamps, the couplets formed the following ditty:

YOU THINK ITS OVER BUT ITS NOT

FROM WITHIN DOTH PERSEPHONE ROT

THEY WONT LOSE THAT FOR WHICH THEY FOUGHT

PRETTY SOON THEYLL SNATCH YOUR SLOT

TO SEE WHAT KIND OF DOOM YOUVE BROUGHT

CUT THROUGH THE WEB IN WHICH YOURE CAUGHT

LEARN OF THE THIEF WHO CAN BE BOUGHT

FOR THEY HAVE FOUND YOUR ONE WEAK SPOT

BEWARE OF POISON IN YOUR DRAUGHT

OR IGNOBLE DEATH SHALL BE YOUR LOT [2] All [sic], naturally.

“What do you think?” Thorndike asked, after pasting the lines together on her laptop.

“That whoever it is needs to brush up on diction,” I said. “‘Draught’ is pronounced like ‘draft.’ Totally wrecks the rhyme scheme. And don’t get me started on the lack of punctuation.”

“Plus,” Lil’ Demon added, pointing at line four, “this part sounds kind of dirty.”

Thorndike slapped Lil’ Demon’s hand away from the screen. “Can you get sex off your mind for one second?”

Lil’ Demon pursed her full lips and winked saucily down at Thorndike. “Oh, come on, you thought it, too. Snatch? Please.”

Lucky blushed. “Moving on, what do we think it means?” For the moment, at least, she’d dropped her derision in favor of helpful discourse.

“Haven’t the foggiest,” Angel said. She turned to me. “Really? Draft?”

I nodded. “Who could have sent this? It had to be another Digger, right? Someone who knows our society names and e-mail addresses?”

“Great,” Clarissa said. “That narrows it down to about 700 living patriarchs.”

“Well, probably fewer than that who know anything about computers,” Jenny said. “I wouldn’t credit this to anyone older than D150 or so. If it even is a Digger,” she added under her breath.

“Or it could be a patriarch willing to pay off some geek in the IT department,” I said. “Honestly? It could be anyone.”

It was a sobering thought, but Lil’ Demon was rarely one for sober. “All right, ladies. Let’s discuss this with the guys after the initiation. Costumes, places, let’s get moving.”

Little did we know that, post-ceremony, a badly written poem would be the last thing on any of our minds.

The tomb kitchen on the lower level had been converted into a makeup trailer, which had rendered our aged caretaker, Hale, a quivering mess. “Hollywood types invading the tomb,” he was muttering from his place outside the entrance to the kitchen. “Never would have stood for it in the good old days.”

“There, there, Hale,” I said, checking out my costume in the ancient, diamond-dust mirror hanging floor to ceiling at the dead end of the downstairs hall. The Rose & Grave tomb housed the coolest stuff. The mirror’s gorgeous carved wood frame featured various scenes from the tale of Persephone and was crowned at the top with a giant carving of a rose. Its reflection was a bit on the wavy side, but that was to be expected in such an antique. Almost a shame they kept it down here in the basement.

“They’ll be gone in an hour or so,” I said. “And plus, it’s not like they’re seeing anything important, just hanging in the kitch—” He glared at me from under his bushy gray eyebrows and I shut my lip. Probably wouldn’t do to characterize our caretaker’s main domain as the least important part of the tomb. Hale took extraordinary pride in being the Diggers’ caretaker, as his father had been before him. No one in the society knew who we would hire after he succumbed to the ravages of age, since Hale had no kids and the position wasn’t exactly one we wanted to advertise for on Craigslist.

“Oh, Hale,” I said quickly, walking toward him and putting my hand on his shoulder in a gesture of comfort. “I meant to mention this to you: Apparently Lancelot, D176, got a huge catch of halibut in Alaska. He’s sending some down for our deep freeze.”

“You heard from him?” asked a voice behind me, and I turned to find myself face-to-face with Death.

Or Poe, in Grim Reaper makeup. Same diff, as far as I was concerned. Damn, where had he come from? He’s an Olympic-class lurker, this one.

“Yeah, the other day,” I said.

Poe frowned (or maybe it was just the spirit gum) and jammed his hand in his pockets. “Oh. How’s he doing?”

Poe hadn’t heard from him? “Good. He, um, told me to say hi.” Actually, that wasn’t what Malcolm had written at all, but I have my limits when it comes to Poe. After all, four short months ago, the guy standing before me had stuck me in a plywood coffin and threatened to dump me in a pool. (I don’t swim.) No love lost around here.

“He owes me an e-mail.” Now Poe crossed his arms over his chest. “So, how was your summer?”

“Good,” I said. “I was in D.C.”

“Yeah. Working for that patriarch.”