Diana Peterfreund - Under the Rose

Um, what did she think? She was a girl, too.

“Apparently they’re all true,” said Angel, joining us and crossing her arms over her chest. The rubber asp forming the bulk of her Cleopatra costume slipped down one shoulder, exposing more than just her tattoo.

Soze clapped his hands. “Okay, guys. Fire’s out. Let’s go back now.”

Mara snorted inelegantly. “Right, more endangering of my life? I’m not up for that, thanks.”

“I’m with her,” said a boy I assumed must be Howard First, another straggler. “I don’t know if I want to be a part of this until you guys get your acts together.”

The Grim Reaper glided up and placed hands on both of their shoulders. “The Play is in progress, Neophytes. Come this way.” Figures Poe would be able to stay in character throughout the crisis.

But Howard shook him off. “Forget it, dude. I have strict standards when it comes to the protection of my body.”

“Is that what you were doing in that Colombian jungle last spring?” Thorndike asked. “Adhering to your strict standards?”

“Actually, no,” he replied. “I was inoculating children.” And with that bit of rampant holier-than-thou-ism, he made a beeline for the door.

Poe raised his eyebrows at me. Okay, so the scene did remind me a lot of what I’d done after he’d hit me with the water guns at my own initiation, but how was I supposed to defend the society in this case? Poe had been tricking me with super-soakers. I don’t think that explosion was a trick.

Here goes nothing. “Howard, wait!” I cried, running forward. “Look, don’t go. It’s just part of the initiation game—all of it. You should have seen the crap they pulled with me in April. They threatened to drown me, they threatened to rape me—”

“And this somehow endeared them to you?” he asked.

“Well, no, not as such but—”

“Look—uh, Glow Girl, or whatever part you’re supposed to be playing—this isn’t really my type of gig, okay?”

“Then why did you accept the tap?”

“Jungle fever?” he suggested.

Well, Kurtz, welcome to a whole new heart of darkness. “Look, I didn’t think it was my thing, either.” And my enemies would agree with that. “But it’s been—”

“Get out while you still can, man,” interrupted Graverobber. “Before any vows are taken. I wish I had. These cats don’t have the same cachet they used to.” He leaned against the wall. “Word is, the endowment’s drying up as well.”

Like Mr. Greek-shipping-heir Graverobber needed any extra dough! “Back off,” I hissed. I turned to Howard. “As you can see, we’d really love some new blood in the brotherhood.”

“As you can see,” Graverobber echoed, “the word ‘brotherhood’ is a bit of a misnomer.”

“Both literally and figuratively. You two are at each other’s throats.” Howard shook his head. “I don’t have time for this drama. I’ve got MCATs to study for.” And with that, he turned and walked out the front door.

Everyone stood and stared with their mouths open. I turned to Poe. “What do we do now?”

“Same thing I did last year. Go beg.”

“Me? I didn’t even start the fire. Where’s his big sib?” Weren’t there any other patriarchs on campus, or were we only blessed with this creep?

“Cutting up cadavers at Berkeley,” Poe said flatly. “Oaths of loyalty clearly don’t cross the Continental Divide.”

Oh, for Persephone’s sake! I grabbed Graverobber’s arm and yanked him after me in pursuit of our stray straggler.

“Howard!” I cried, as we sprinted down the steps and through the (open) gate. “Come back! Let’s talk about this.”

A bunch of freshmen at High Street Gate gave us weird looks, so Nikolos grabbed Howard’s elbow and pulled him into the alley next to the tomb leading to the sculpture garden. Once we were well hidden by building shadow and the drooping branches of a willow, I pushed back my hood. “Look here,” I said. “You accepted the tap. We put you on the list we sent out to all the patriarchs. You’re in. How can you go back on it now?”

“That was April.” He shrugged. “I’ve had a long summer to think it over, and with all of my commitments right now, I don’t know how much I can devote to you people.”

But he hadn’t decided that until he’d gotten inside and took a good look at us. Why did I have to be the one begging this jerk to come back? I didn’t care how many third-world children he’d inoculated.

I elbowed Nikolos, and he sighed, but rallied. “Your commitments? You’re the one senior on campus who’s still involved in activities? Can you not spare a little time for us? We will definitely make it worth your while.”

Howard chuckled. “A little? You’re a senior, right? Totally new to all of this. You don’t know how much time we’re talking about.” He began ticking things off on his fingers. “I’m a freshmen counselor, I’m doing my biochem thesis, I’m on the board at the Jewish Students Center, and I volunteer at a lab downtown a few nights a week. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until I was inside that tomb that I realized how much more those things matter to me than a bunch of strangers in weird costumes.”

“We don’t always wear the costumes,” I pointed out, to little avail. We wouldn’t always be strangers, either.

“Look, sweetheart, I know the guy who was grooming me to fill his spot in Rose & Grave, and he was a mess last year. Something happened where he almost lost his place in school…. I didn’t get the details.”

“So you think you’ll avoid that by denying us?” Nikolos asked.

“Getting out before I get in too deep sounds good to me,” Howard replied. “These meetings of yours are going to start taking up a couple nights a week—all night long. Wait and see. And then, when you’re struggling to finish your thesis on time, ask yourself if it was worth it. I’ll be seeing you. Or,” he added, giving my black robe the up-down, “maybe not.”

And then he was gone. I rubbed my temples in frustration, then glanced in dismay at my glitter-covered hands. Great. More mess to deal with. “Now what?” I turned to Nikolos. “Should we keep following him?”

Nikolos pulled at the tie on his robe and slipped it off his shoulders. “I’m not going to do it in this outfit,” he said. “I feel somewhat responsible. I probably shouldn’t have said those things to him back at the tomb. Let me try to catch him and make this right.”

I nodded, glad to see Nikolos was willing to shoulder some of the responsibility. Still, I didn’t have much hope. I watched him take off after our straggler, though he still hadn’t caught up by the time they turned the corner off of High Street and onto Elm.

Stunned, dejected, and yeah, a little concerned Howard First might actually be onto something, I returned to the tomb, to find Mara holding court.

“Don’t you find it disheartening?” she was asking Poe. “So many of our brotherhoods have fallen by the wayside, been gobbled up by the PC police. If you ask me, it’s these newfangled organizations that are truly the elitist ones. For all that students rail against the secret societies, who is really the one propagating racist doctrine on our campus?”

“Your newspaper?” Thorndike suggested.

“The administration is more intent on founding yet another alliance of people based on the color of their skin and cultural heritage—the Southeast Asian Alliance, the Muslim Student Alliance, the Northwestern Nepalese Students’ Union—rather than on what brought us all here in the first place, intellectual meritocracy! A fervent desire to drink from the fountain of knowledge.”

“You know, that’s an interesting point,” Soze said.