Tap & Gown (14 page)

“On the other, it might give them both false hope.”

“Exactly.”

I frowned and snuggled closer. “So what should I do?”

“No way in hell am I answering that for you.”

I pinched him. “You’re so mean. Seriously, what would you do?”

“You know what I’d do, Amy, because you know what I
did
. I tapped the legacy, even though I wasn’t overly fond of him.”

“George is not Topher.” And not just because I’d slept with the former.

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“I’ll give you that. But a society is only as good as its network. If it crumbles due to lack of support, there’s no point.”

“A society is only as good as its members,” I argued back. “If we tap degenerates, we only beggar future generations.”

Jamie pulled me close and kissed me hard on the mouth. It was all the response I needed.

In the end, I invited Topher to the party. Our next encounter displayed a decided increase in the deference and respect quotient, which made a firm case for someone—most likely Grandpa Drake—having gotten to our boy in the interim. Perversely, I enjoyed Topher’s sycophancy, though I’d resented it in Arielle.

Her party invitation was still burning a hole in my backpack. Clarissa had made one for everyone on our stated short lists (except for the celebrities on George’s) as a matter of course, but I didn’t want to instill any false hope in the poor girl. If I invited Arielle to the party, would she view it as rubbing salt in the wound?

Or maybe I should just frame it as a chance to get free champagne out of us Diggers?

Try as I might, I couldn’t think of a low-key way to accidentally bump into Kalani a third time. Her high-powered
EDN
position meant that when she wasn’t actively in class, she could usually be found holed away in the Gothic castle of newspaper headquarters. I’d heard a rumor that she occasionally worked out on the elliptical machines at the gym, but the girl clearly wasn’t in a fitness frame of mind that week, and her stupid roommate had apparently even offered to pick up her stupid dry cleaning on Monday afternoon, so my stakeout at the campus cleaners was for naught.

Most frustrating.

By Wednesday, I was getting desperate. The party was the following evening, and I hadn’t managed to slip an invite to my chosen tap. I decided to pay another visit to the Russian Novel class. This time, I chose to sneak in at the end of the lecture, in hopes of catching my prey without being forced to listen to fifty minutes on
The Brothers Karamazov
.

The lecture hall was packed as usual, and I scanned the room twice before I spotted her halfway up the rows on the left side of the auditorium. I stationed myself at the end of the last row, adjacent to the door she’d have to take to leave, and tried to think of an innocuous conversation starter.

Why was this so hard? I felt like I was trying to pick her up.
Hey, Kalani. Wanna go with me to a
party tomorrow night?
Yeah, real subtle. Besides, who invites a girl they’ve talked with exactly once to a party? That behavior might fly the first week of freshman year, when no one had any friends and everyone pretended that the people you met crossing the campus were destined to be your future best friends forever. Seniors had grown out of that nonsense. Juniors had as well. She would think I was a total loser to be pulling that move at this stage in my Eli career.

The lecture ended and the room bustled with noise as students rose in a wave, chattering, powering up cell phones, packing away books and notepads and laptops. For a moment I lost sight of Kalani. No, there she was, down in the front, talking to a classmate. I ran through my ice-breaking options.

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A)
Hey, Kalani. Thanks so much for those notes. They sure came in handy. How’d your paper go?

B)
Hey, Kalani. Look, here’s the thing. I’d like to tap you into Rose & Grave. Game?

C)
Hey there, good lookin’. Going my way?

Kalani was ascending the stairs now, headed toward my row. Her fingers fumbled with the clasp of her bag, as her attention was partially focused on the girl climbing the stairs at her side. Think, Amy, think.

Great lecture. Great editorial in last Sunday’s opinion column. Great skirt
. Anything. Just get the ball rolling, then invite her to the party.

She was almost to my row now. I opened my mouth.
Hey, Kalani. Hey, Kalani. Hey, Kalani
.

I looked up. She was laughing at whatever her friend was saying. My eyes slid toward said friend.

Felicity Bower. Felicity, of Dragon’s Head. Felicity, who was dating my ex-boyfriend Brandon. Felicity, who had done her best to make my life a living hell for the first few months of this semester. Felicity, who would gleefully step over my cold, dead corpse if given half the chance.

I froze. Abort, abort!

“Hey, Kalani,” my mouth said, because it has this pesky habit of working independently of my brain.

“Oh, hi, Amy,” said Kalani. Felicity stopped, turned toward me, and her mouth condensed into a tiny, irritated moue. “Great lecture, huh?”

“I’m still trying to figure out that whole metaphor with the aqueous globe,” my mouth said, heedless of my brain’s new strategy. The one that involved me running for my life from the crazy rival society member with the huge, Amy-shaped chip on her shoulder.

“I didn’t know you were enrolled in this class, Amy,” said Felicity in an even tone. “In fact, I thought you took it last year.”

Kalani’s brow furrowed. Dammit.

Strike earlier plan. New plan involves sticking a fist through Felicity’s smug face.

“Ah, Felicity, always so busy memorizing my schedule.” True. How else would she have been able to track me down when Dragon’s Head was pulling all those pranks?

“Exactly,” Felicity replied.

“I think you have it mixed up with something else.” I smiled through clenched teeth. “But you know me. I can’t get enough of Dostoevsky.”

It helped, of course, that
The Brothers Karamozov
was thick enough to pass for a lethal weapon if you wielded it just right.

“We were going to check out this new boutique downtown,” Kalani said. “Want to come?”

Oh, we were, were we? I looked at Felicity, at her unabashed expression of challenge. Unbelievable.

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She was after my tap. My. Tap.

Naturally, Dragon’s Head would want a girl of Kalani’s caliber for themselves, but why would Felicity, of all people, be the one in charge of recruiting her? She wasn’t in the journalism scene. Did Dragon’s Head have a vastly different M.O. when it came to finding society members? Did she want her because her part-Polynesian background fit into Felicity’s idea of an Asian-American tap?

Nah. That would be giving her way too much credit. Dragon’s Head wanted Kalani—
Felicity
wanted Kalani—because they knew I was gunning for her.

This was the society’s newest volley in our decades-long feud.

“Sure,” I said to Kalani, still looking at my nemesis. “I’d love to.”

I swiftly discarded the notion that Dragon’s Head had, in fact, bugged the Inner Temple. They wouldn’t need to think hard to figure out which juniors we were after. Malcolm and Jamie had told me last year that it was commonplace for societies to compete for the top-tier taps, and Kalani was a golden girl when it came to secret society wish lists.

I wondered how many of the other potential taps were being similarly wooed. My fingers itched to tap out a quick text message to Jenny or Clarissa.
Watch yr backs. DH on the prowl
. But it was tough to type, walk, and remain insinuated into Felicity and Kalani’s conversation all at the same time. I decided to concentrate on the latter two.

Right now, unfortunately, they were discussing fashion. My understanding started at “Don’t wear white shoes after Labor Day” and ended somewhere around my abject disdain for formal shorts, so I had little to contribute. I settled for the occasional sage nod and “hmmmm.”

We were going to a boutique, though. Which meant that if Clarissa’s clothes know-how was at all reflected in her childhood friend, Felicity was going to come off looking a lot better than I was. Score a point for Dragon’s Head.

Then we came to the boutique. Felicity’s nose wrinkled, then smoothed as she smiled at Kalani. “Neat,”

was all she said.

Neat
was clearly the opposite of what she meant. I peered into the windows. It looked like a Renaissance Faire had exploded in there. Corsets and swords, tiaras and gauntlets, velvet capes embroidered with Celtic knots and pillows printed with scenes from the Bayeux Tapestry. The stencil on the glass doorway read: THE SIGN OF THE UNICORN.

We entered, fairy bells tinkling to signal our arrival.

A woman dressed like Stevie Nicks appeared behind the counter. “Blessed be,” she said to us, her hands folded serenely before her chin. A row of books at her back proclaimed all manner of spells and herbal remedies.

“Are you Wiccan?” I asked Kalani. Demetria might approve if I brought some non-mainstream religion into the mix.

“No,” she said, and wandered down an aisle stuffed with brocaded skirts. “I just like the clothes.” News to me, what with her never-ending supply of beige suits.

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Felicity was still standing at the entrance, desperately searching around for some fragment of what she thought proper boutique clothing looked like.

“Hey, Felicity,” I called, then pointed at a giant bronze dragon in the corner. “Check it.” I followed Kalani down the aisle. If she liked costumes, she’d fit right in with Rose & Grave. This was getting better every minute.

Kalani held a dress of green and gold up to her body, then checked out her reflection in the ornate mirror at the end of the row. “It’s silly, I know. But my parents were in the Society for Creative Anachronism when I was growing up, so I was always kind of interested. I actually joined the Eli chapter my freshman year, but then I got too busy with … other activities to keep it up.”

Like the paper. I couldn’t imagine how much she had to give up in order to run the
EDN
. Still, she found time to get a literary agent and keep a full course load. I hoped she’d find time for Rose & Grave, though I was beginning to doubt very much that she needed us anywhere near as much as we needed her.

She held the dress in front of me. “You should try on this one. It goes so well with your eyes.”

I held out the sleeves, which were shaped like giant wings. “Great, I needed a new frock for the jousting tournament this weekend.”

She brightened. “There’s a jousting tournament this weekend?”

“I was joking.”

“Right.” She frowned and picked at a loose thread. “Hey, thanks for tagging along. Felicity’s nice and all, but she’s been a little clingy lately. Know what I mean?”

Not really. Felicity didn’t cling so much as pounce. Usually armed. “What does she want?” I asked. This was good news. Kalani was clearly more annoyed by Felicity’s attention than intrigued enough to join Dragon’s Head. Like Arielle and me, in reverse.

“Long story,” Kalani whispered, then turned back to the clothes racks as Felicity came down the row.

“I’m going to try this one on,” she said, and pulled out a gown in a pale, tarnished silver brocade. Even in RenFaire getup, Kalani favored beige.

I rubbed one yellow sneaker against the other as Kalani headed toward the dressing room in the back, leaving me alone with Felicity.

“So what do you think?” I asked her blithely, holding the green and gold gown up to my front. “Is it me?”

“Drop dead,” Felicity countered, her eyes on the dressing room door.

“She told me you’ve been bothering her,” I went on. “I guess she and I have that in common.”

“That’s all you’ll have in common,” Felicity hissed.

“Why don’t you step aside,” I hissed back. “Don’t you know when you’re outclassed?”

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“Outclassed? Are you kidding? By you?”

I lifted my chin. “By my people.”

“Oh, classic, Amy. You’ve anticipated my ‘you and what army’ argument.”

“If I remember correctly,” I said, “it was you who needed the army. Your entire society all rallying to the cause of what, exactly? Right—keeping me away from your boyfriend.” I turned to her. “And how is Brandon these days?”

Felicity stood very still, but there was a flicker in her eyes that revealed my barb had struck deep.

“You,” she said, “are an unbelievable bitch.”

“Takes one to know one.”

Kalani emerged from the dressing room, swaying her hips so the material in the skirt bloomed out and swirled around her. “Well? What do you think?”

The gown was stunning. She looked like a Hawaiian Queen Elizabeth. “Where are you going to wear it?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. The Silver Slipper Ball, if I have the guts to go in costume instead of just formal.”

“That’s Eli for you,” I said. “A formal dance every week or two, and costume balls you can set your watch by.”

“I guess,” Kalani said. “But of course I’m going to the Silver Slipper. I just don’t know if this is too much. This is only my second one. Last year I just did boring black cocktail. I wanted to go all out this time.”