Secret Society (6 page)

N
ick woke at eleven from a dreamless sleep, his phone ringing with the ominous chimes of the alarm he had set. He had walked home that afternoon in the waning light after parting with Phoebe at the Viand. He hadn't been hungry for dinner—he had felt only an incredible tickle in his stomach, as if he might throw up. It was all too much: his club night, the initiation, the lack of proper sleep. But mostly, more than the secret society stuff, it was Phoebe. There was something about her, that despite her shyness, she was too cool for him. Downtown girl. Los Angeles. Bank Street. An artist. The most beautiful reddish color of hair he had ever seen. What would she want with a guy like him? He was a child of privilege; he was probably the type of guy she hated at her old school. But whatever—maybe they could be friends.

Don't dare be late.
The directions had been clear. He scrambled out of bed, not having much time to think about what he was getting into, remembering that he had agreed to meet Phoebe at the park's Sixty-fifth Street gates. He wondered how everyone else would know where to go. They would probably meet up with one another along the way. Or they had broken another Society rule, as he and Phoebe already had, and were talking to each other about Society business. He had to wonder, why all the cloak-and-dagger secrecy? He couldn't take it that seriously, although it did frighten him a bit: the coffins, the basement in the Meatpacking District, the man with the tattoo gun. Who wouldn't be scared by all that?

He left the building at twenty to midnight, giving a nod to his doorman. His parents weren't home, still out at the beach house for the weekend. His older brothers were away at school. No one would know he was gone. Having slept most of the day, he now felt a jolt of energy.

Phoebe was a dark, shadowy figure, motionless like a small sculpture near the park gates. She turned to meet him, and he thought he saw the glimmer of a smile. The leaves on the walkway shifted in the breeze; the waxing moon illuminated the grassy embankment. There were a few couples out strolling, but for the most part, the park was empty.

“Hey,” she said. They had seen each other only eight hours ago, but it seemed like ages. She had changed clothes, he thought, or maybe she hadn't—he realized that his
mind was a bit of a blur.

Nick greeted her back, giving her an awkward pat on the shoulder. He hadn't spent any time thinking about what to say, and Phoebe's reticence wasn't making it easier.

People assumed it was so simple for him, but it wasn't. Figuring out girls was as difficult for Nick Bell as it was for everyone else.

 

Lauren had Googled “black, white, games” to see what came up. After browsing through a few pages, the chess tables riddle finally made sense. A deep tiredness had come over her since she had received the text. She had moped around in her bedroom, not wanting to face the fact that she was ignoring voice mails from her friends asking where she was. She had texted Chloë to say she wasn't feeling well, that she was going to stay home. She was already lying. Lauren knew to watch out for two situations: when she had the urge to lie and when she had the urge to drink too much. Both usually meant she wasn't doing the right thing.

A cab dropped her off at the entrance to the park. She walked quickly along the path to the Chess and Checkers House, which was surrounded by a bower overgrown with wisteria. Underneath it were the outdoor chess tables. The Society's fourteen other members from her initiation class were milling about aimlessly, chatting, and trying to figure out what to do. Aside from Claire and Alejandro and a few
others, she hadn't really caught people's names last night. Everyone looked tired, and still a bit hungover. Lauren wondered if she should have had more than hummus and crackers for dinner.

One guy, Thaddeus Johnson, motioned everyone over to one of the tables underneath the pergola. “Check this out,” he said. “It's a set-up board.” He pointed to a table set up with silver pieces that were inlaid with ivory and onyx. Although Lauren had only met Thad last night, she had heard he was some kind of math genius—she was now remembering what someone said, about how his parents weren't rich, but he had already taken the SAT and gotten a perfect score. For a math whiz, she couldn't help noticing that his taste in clothing was impeccable.

One girl picked up a pawn, looking at it carefully.

“Don't touch it,” he snapped at her, and she put it back, as if stung.

He started mumbling something to himself.

“What's up?” Nick asked.

“It's a code,” Thad said, his eyes scanning the middle part of the board.

“It's a game that makes no sense,” said a guy with curly dark hair and caramel skin, who was wearing, of all things, a bow tie. He offered a hand to Thad. “Bradley Winston.”

Thad nodded, briefly shaking his hand, and then turned back to the game. “Each position on a chessboard represents
a letter and a number. This could be the kind of code where a pattern comes out of randomness, depending on what you're looking for. You have to ignore everything that doesn't apply and hope that what comes out of it makes sense.”

“Okay,” Claire said. “And that leaves us where?” True to what Lauren had suspected, the girl was turning out to be a bit of a pill.

“Do you have any better ideas?” Thad said.

Claire looked down, saying nothing.

“Somebody remember this. The letters go from A to H. The numbers, one through eight, go up this side.” He pointed to one side of the board.

“How do you know they go in that direction?” Bradley asked.

“The numbers and letters start on the lower left hand corner of white's side. That's just the way it works.”

A few members of the group were hanging back, waiting to see what happened, while the rest of them stood in rapt attention, as if watching a magician perform a trick. Lauren stood with the group at the table, curious about what Thad would come up with. A wind rustled through the leaves on the bower.

“Okay, so let's try the center of the board, going right to left: You've got two pieces on fours. Then, two spaces. Then we can see the next three numbers are five, six, and six. I'm going to guess that the five is actually an E, which refers to
the horizontal axis, assuming that this is an address—”

“Wait—how do you know it's an address?” Bradley asked.

“It has to be. I mean, we're looking for a place to go, right? If you add up just the letters, it makes ABEFG, which tells us nothing. And if you look at the second group of numbers, you get five-six-six, which we all know isn't a street. But if you turn the five into an E, you've got East Sixty-sixth Street—”

Nick continued, “And then you add the two fours—Forty-four East Sixty-sixth Street. There's your address.”

“Exactly,” Thad said. Lauren was impressed. Forty-four East Sixty-sixth Street was between Madison and Park, a short walk from here. Everyone started getting their stuff together and walking toward Fifth Avenue. Phoebe, Nick, and Lauren lingered behind, as Thad continued to examine the board.

“What are you doing?” Nick asked.

“Despite all the moves that make no sense, it's actually a good game they've got going here,” he said. “It's almost at its end. I know what the next move would be.”

“What's that?” Lauren asked.

“The queen is about to put the king into checkmate.”

P
hoebe walked the several short blocks to the specified address with Nick, Lauren, and Thad. Their new friend apparently went to The Whitford School, over on the west side. She was still getting used to the names: Dalton, Trinity, Spence, Nightingale-Bamford, Horace Mann. These kids were from all these schools, the types of schools she had been hearing about for years. Phoebe had read the appalling stories in various magazines, about how parents had tried to buy their kids' way out of trouble. How kids had made up Facebook and MySpace pages that ripped apart their teachers. How scandal after scandal would erupt and then die down. She wondered how many of them were true, if these kinds of things really happened—and particularly if they happened at Chadwick, to people like the ones she was meeting now.

The four of them approached the front door of the Sixty-sixth Street townhouse along with another group of five. It was a classic Manhattan brownstone, with a sandstone exterior and imposing façade. Would this be like last night's initiation, some freaky ritual in a basement? Phoebe wasn't up for any more tattoos—she was still getting used to the one from yesterday. It felt sore, and she was afraid to remove the bandage, although she knew she would eventually have to change the dressing. Thankfully, her hair covered it up.

The door opened, and Phoebe heard the sound of drinks and conversation. A warm light spilled out from the entryway, and Phoebe saw hints of the interior. Voices came from what looked like a drawing room in a fashionable neighborhood in London's Notting Hill. Or, for that matter, New York fifty or one hundred years ago.

A pretty young woman in a cocktail dress greeted them. It was Emily van Piper, whom Lauren had told Phoebe about last night. “Lauren! Hi! Hi, you guys.” She introduced herself. “Come on in and meet the other Conscripts.”

“What are the Conscripts?” Thad whispered to the group.

“It's the class above us—above us Initiates,” Claire said, seemingly pleased with herself that she knew this already.

Phoebe was confused. The tone was so different—if last night was mysterious and clandestine, tonight was like a gentleman's smoking lounge circa 1955. In the corner, a skinny
guy mixed drinks for everyone in a silver cocktail shaker, while the rest of the group was scattered around two clubby rooms. Phoebe's eyes ran over the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and wood paneling with portraits of stern-looking men and women. On a tiger maple credenza against one wall, someone was actually playing records, although the music wasn't that old; a group clustered around, admiring this exotic anachronism. The girls were dressed stylishly, but not terribly formally—only Emily and a few others wore cocktail dresses; the rest were dressed casually, some even in jeans and heels. Except for the setting, it could have been any other party.

As the Initiates got drinks, a few of the Conscripts lit cigarettes and cigars, tapping them into crystal ashtrays. Phoebe and Lauren tried not to cough—they had spoken the night before about how neither liked to smoke. Lauren said she was nearly certain that the secret to a good complexion was to avoid cigarettes.

“Phoebe?” A voice behind her sounded familiar. Phoebe turned around and recognized the source of the voice, although she wasn't exactly sure why. Then it hit her: It was Anastasia Lin, one of the youngest artists ever to be accepted into the Venice Biennale. Her video installation,
A Brief History of My Life,
in which she read from her diary, alternating between English and Cantonese, while riding the F train, had been praised by everyone from
Artforum
to the
New York Times.
Phoebe was mildly jealous. That was what she should
be doing, instead of recovering from a hangover: working on her art.

She also realized why Anastasia looked and sounded familiar: She had been Phoebe's mentor last night, from the few brief snippets of the initiation that Phoebe could actually recall. Now, Phoebe remembered that Anastasia had never introduced herself, that she had only seen her face through the semiopaque plastic of the mask.

“So,” Anastasia said, “the Folly begins.”

“I'm sorry?” Phoebe said.

Anastasia smiled and brushed her short black bob away from her face. Before she could answer, another member, someone from the class above them, brought Phoebe a drink, and motioned for her to sit down. He was a tall, handsome guy, dirty blond hair spilling over his forehead. He fit right in, with his argyle sweater vest, Oxford cloth shirt, and corduroys. “Gin and tonic, right?”

“How did you know?” Phoebe asked.

He grinned, almost demonically. “We know these things. You're the kind of girl who drinks a gin and tonic in September.”

Phoebe cringed. “Okay, come on…”

“Relax! I just asked your friend over there”—he motioned to Lauren—“what you might like.”

Phoebe smiled and sat back in the leather club chair. She didn't really feel like drinking tonight; she wasn't used
to drinking this much in general. Her mother didn't have a problem if she went to the occasional party or had a glass of wine or champagne on a special occasion, but drinking G & Ts two nights in a row? She wasn't sure how Maia would feel about that.

She wasn't sure how her mom would feel about any of this.

 

Nick waited by the bar as a scraggly guy with dark brown hair fixed drinks for everyone. He looked up from the cocktail he was making for Nick. “Oh, wait, you're Nick Bell, right?”

Nick nodded.

He stuck out a pale hand. “I'm Jared Willson. I'm supposed to be your mentor, you know, to, like, help you through stuff. I can't remember if I mentioned that last night, at the Night of Rebirth.”

Nick gave an embarrassed grin. “I'm afraid I don't remember much about last night. I actually didn't even know it was called the Night of Rebirth.”

“Don't worry, you'll get the lingo. So your mentor is basically like a big brother. I wasn't able to make the meeting when they explained it all, but that's the general idea.”

“Wait, you missed a meeting?”

“Yeah, I totally shouldn't have. Had a messy night. They were really peeved. That's my first bit of advice: Don't miss meetings. Old Kitty doesn't take it too well.”

“Kitty?”

“Katherine Winthrop Stapleton. They call her the Administrator; I call her the Battleaxe. Runs everything for the Elders—”

“Wait, sorry, what are the Elders?”

“They're everyone above us. Above all of you Initiates and all of us Conscripts. You become an Elder after you've been through the appropriate period of conscription. Kitty manages all that. Keeps all the records straight, does the finances. Has apparently been doing it since she became a member back in the fifties or whatever. It's her life. So you don't want to mess around with her. She knows everyone's business. She prepped us on all of you—where you go to school, what your hobbies are, your families, that kind of stuff. I mean, with you, it was pretty easy. Your family's famous around here.”

Nick nodded uncomfortably, shifting his stance. “I guess so.”

“I'm basically here to answer any questions, help you figure out whatever you need to. If you play your cards right, the Society can open doors for you.”

“What kind of doors?”

“Anything. College admission. Introductions to famous people. I have a feeling that there's a way that you and I could really make something happen.”

“What's that?” Nick said.

“Let's talk about your club night. The Freezer, was it?”
Jared took a sip from a drink he had fixed for himself.

“Oh, it went really well,” Nick bluffed, not wanting to admit that he had run out on it. “Totally sold out. Packed the place. Everyone loved it.” The truth was that Nick had barely even thought about his club night since he had crossed the threshold of 53 Gansevoort the night before. Since then, he hadn't heard from Patch at all. There had been a message from Costa that he had listened to, but it was only a congratulations and an invitation to hold another party whenever he wanted.

It felt good, but he wanted something more.

“I popped my head in last night—you did a nice job. How would you like to do a night with me at Twilight?” Twilight was the newest—some said most exclusive—addition to the Meatpacking District's collection of nightclubs.

“Are you serious? At Twilight? No way.”

“Carlo would be thrilled.”

“Carlo, as in Carlo Ferdinand?” Carlo Ferdinand was one of the best DJs in the business, in a league far above what Nick had promised to his guests the night before.

“That's right. He knows the scene needs some new blood-it's usually the same old tired promoters with the same old tricks. He likes your work. He sent me over last night to check it out, and I told him that what you did at The Freezer wasn't halfbad.”

“Carlo Ferdinand? Well, sure. Yeah, of course.” Nick felt
himself blabbing. He took a sip of his drink, as if that would make him more coherent. This was truly excellent news—a connection like this might not happen over the course of years in the business, might not happen ever. But now here it was, dropped in his lap.