Tap & Gown (27 page)

ITS A LOT HARDER WHEN THEY DONT HIT U.

“So what happened with the dean?” I asked, trying to get back on course before the rest of the Diggers blew this whole thing with their stupid text messages.

“She said she’d help. Planned a disciplinary hearing. Said all this stuff about how Blake was going to have to stop living in Strathmore College, maybe even be rusticated, how he’d have to stay a certain number of feet away from me, how he couldn’t take any of the classes I was in … I felt kind of guilty.”

She picked up her mug again, though the tea was likely cold by now. “I mean, it was his college, too.”

I thought of my mother’s friends who lost their social circles in their divorces, of my high school buddies whose popularity and lunch table placement were determined entirely on the basis of their boyfriends’

status. Why did women let themselves do things like that? Give and give and give. We were withholding our love, at least let them have their turf? Was that a reasonable strategy?

“But at the same time I was relieved. I hadn’t come to Eli to be tormented. To be told what classes I was allowed to take, what professors I was allowed to have. Who I was allowed to be friends with …”

She took a sip of tea and made a face. Yep, cold. “Every time I think of it, I can’t believe I let myself get in that position. Like, I must have been some other person. It couldn’t have been me organizing class schedules around the ugliest professors I could get. Me not joining a study group because there was a boy in it.”

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“Or dropping out of a research project?” Clarissa slipped. I shot her a look.

But Michelle seemed lost in thought. “It couldn’t have been me letting some guy trap me in my room. He

…” She paused, squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, then went on. “He promised to kill himself if I left.

What could I do? I never even had Psych 110. I skipped all those lectures they made us take freshmen year about safe sex and alcoholism and depression and unstable roommates and boyfriends and went with my suite to get fake IDs instead. It seems so crazy, but when I was there, it made perfect sense to listen to him, to do whatever he wanted in order to keep us both safe. Just like it makes perfect sense when he tells me that if I would only have sex with him one more time …”

She took a deep breath and shook herself free. “There was a phone, a window—I could have called for help. I
should
have gone for help as soon as I did get out. But I was so exhausted by that point. I’d missed a mid-term, spent hours crying on the floor with him—I wasn’t thinking straight. It
wasn’t
me. I was a different person. He made me into a different person. Slowly, but inexorably. By such tiny increments that I hardly even noticed what I was giving up.”

The words fell into the lush carpet and rich furnishings, and I absorbed their meaning in silence. I imagined Jenny, who despite her brilliant, logical mind, had let the boy she thought she’d loved talk her into betraying folks she’d known had done no wrong. I imagined Demetria, who couldn’t stop expressing her disappointment about her inability to change the fabric of Rose & Grave, and who was more than a little worried that it had changed us instead. She was proof that it wasn’t only boys that could seduce you like that. Little by little we’d sold out to the society’s archaic value system, placed its need for secrecy, pedigree, and blind loyalty above the things we knew to be right.

Like reporting Darren to the police. Maybe we as a society had screwed up, but did that honestly account for his actions?

Why was I even giving in to the concession of Topher Cox? To keep one patriarch happy out of the hundreds who thought we were the ruination of everything they held dear? Would Topher be enough consolation for them, or would they keep complaining and being disappointed until we were exactly what they wanted us to be? And would we and the clubs that came after us give in, little by little, bit by bit, until the world changed around Rose & Grave so much that the society no longer held any relevance at all?

Had it already happened while we played dress-up with our robes and pins and secret songs?

“I don’t understand,” Clarissa was prompting Michelle. “
You’re
the one who is living off campus now.”

“Yeah,” Michelle said. “Funny thing. The dean got the
time
of the discipline hearing wrong. Can you believe it? How
silly
of her! We
missed
it. So of course the charges were dropped. And when I went to her to reschedule, it was a whole different tune.” Michelle’s expression turned sour, as if she was holding back tears. “‘Really, don’t you think you’re being a bit too dramatic?’ ‘Sometimes relationships just go wrong, and no one is to blame.’ ‘Well, I understand if you don’t want to live in our college anymore. It’s too late to transfer, though. You should consider moving off campus.’” She looked away. “I don’t know if there was ever any disciplinary hearing planned. It was … humiliating. I trusted her and it was like all of a sudden I was the one to blame for all of this. She was so closed off. Like someone had gotten to her.”

Maybe someone had. We should do more research into Blake … and his family. He’d slipped away from due punishment despite Michelle’s attempts to prosecute. It made me wonder: If I did press charges against Darren, would anything really happen to him?

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“The college deans are supposed to be our advocates, all right. But the thing is, we’re both in Strathmore College. She was obligated to advocate on both our behalfs, and I guess she didn’t want the scandal.” Michelle bit her lip.

“I was so defeated. I canceled my classes that semester and went home. Personal break, all that. Went stir-crazy after a month and found a job interning at a research lab near my parents’. Once I got my act together, I contacted this professor I’d worked for freshman year. He helped me get a gig assisting a Geochemistry team in the Ring of Fire. I loved it.”

“So you switched to the Geology department?” I asked.

“Not right away. I sneaked back to campus last semester and did some more independent research. Just wanted to see if I could be here on the DL before enrolling again. It wasn’t perfect, but I really, really wanted to put all that stuff behind me. So I decided to come back to school. I gave it one more shot with Strathmore, but my old dean had left, and it turns out, she’d left no records of our chats at all. Go figure, right? The new dean had nothing to pin on Blake; he was pretty much a model student. Even my old friends in Strathmore were on his side. I had bad grades and left, he stayed and was on the dean’s list.

Who was the unbalanced one when you looked at it like that? It was the previous year’s humiliation all over again.”

On paper, Blake would be a more likely candidate for a Rose & Grave tap than Michelle. I wondered if there was another society on campus looking at him.

Michelle went on. “So I did what they said. I moved off campus. I avoided him. Or tried to. I even transferred into the Geology department so I wouldn’t have to see him in the Chemistry labs. He’s pre-med, you know.” She sighed. “But still … I like Geology. And the guy I studied under last fall was really helpful, hooking me up with a professor who needed a new teaching assistant, stuff like that. So it worked out.”

“Worked out?” I blurted. “A pariah in your own college? Sneaking around Science Hill because you’re worried about running into him? That scene in Commons—”

“How about sleeping with him to get him out of your apartment?” Clarissa added. “I’m pretty sure that’s coercion, which means it’s rape.”

I was pretty sure Demetria was frothing at the mouth by this point. Clarissa clearly hadn’t skipped her freshman orientation sessions. I can’t believe the dean of a college at Eli would put reputation above a student’s safety. How often did something like that happen on this campus, and no one ever knew?

“What can I do?” Michelle said. “It’s his word against mine, and because the old dean screwed me over, it’ll just sound like I’m making up stuff that happened over a year ago to excuse my own bad academic record. Who would believe me?”

“We believe you,” said Clarissa.

“You can’t keep Blake away from me,” Michelle said.

“Don’t be so sure about that,” I said, standing. “There’s all kinds of things we’ve been able to pull off.”

Of course, they usually leaned in the direction of folks not getting in trouble, but still …

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“No.” Michelle shook her head. “I don’t want to get into this again. He almost succeeded in ruining my life last time. My grades, my ability to stay with my graduating class, all of it. I can’t risk that again. I just want to keep my head down and finish school and get out of here. Get far away, where he won’t bother me anymore.”

“Antarctica?” I asked.

“If that’s what it takes.” Michelle hugged her arms around herself and looked out the window again. “I’ll take semesters off until he’s graduated himself if I need to. He didn’t bother me when I went away. Out of sight, out of mind. It’s only when he sees me that he gets all … riled up. Like he can’t stand being reminded that I escaped. That I’m not under his control. He keeps showing up, calling, getting in my face.

Doing whatever it takes to remind me what he got away with. What he can always get away with if he wants to.”

My blood went cold and I couldn’t think of a response. Could barely move, just sat on the couch, dumb as a rock. Like Darren, rubbing Disney World in my face. This is what came of ignoring guys like Darren and hoping they went away. They grew up into Blakes.

It didn’t escape Clarissa’s notice, either. “I think that he needs to be brought to justice.” She didn’t specify which he. “And I want to help.”

But Diggers weren’t good with that. No, we specialized in obfuscating justice. We were experts in doing exactly what Blake had managed to do. Cover-ups. Getting our crimes swept under the rug, for the good of the society.
Just forget about it. Youthful indiscretion. Hell grow out of his sociopathic
tendencies. You’ll see
. Michelle was right in not wanting any part of Rose & Grave.

“I’m fine,” Michelle said. “Really. I’m just going to go … catch the bus back to my apartment and do my homework.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “You could always stay with me if you want. I don’t like the idea of you being alone.” Guys like Blake, they picked on you when you were alone. That’s how Darren had gotten to me.

“No,” she said. “It’s fine.”

“Or I could call Jamie, have him meet you at your apartment, make sure everything’s cool.”

“No,” Michelle said, more firmly this time. “I think Blake would throw a fit if he saw me with Jamie.

He’d remember him from Strathmore and maybe he’d even put two and two together and then Jamie …

I couldn’t have that. I’m not even sure what would happen if he saw you with Jamie after this.

Remember, this was the guy who didn’t like me having male TA.s.” She stood up. “Um, can I use your bathroom?”

“Sure,” Clarissa said, and pointed the way. As soon as Michelle had closed the door, we glanced at each other and bolted toward the master bedroom.

Inside, the other twelve members of the Rose & Grave club of D177 sat on the bed and floor, huddled around a TV screen displaying Clarissa’s living room through the hidden camera mounted on the bookshelf digital picture frame. It may not be the usual format for an interview, but it worked.

“Well?” I asked them. Everyone nodded.

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Josh stood. “Okay. She’s in.”

The day of Tap Night dawned with a rather disappointing drizzle wholly inappropriate for such a momentous occasion. Good weather would have made it easy for us to run around and deliver our black-lined letters; a thunderstorm would have added an air of Gothic mystery to the event. But there was nothing romantic or convenient about a drizzle. It was an entirely anti-climactic climate in which to choose new knights.

Not that any of us had much time to ruminate on the weather or the metaphorical significance of same.

Every knight in the tomb had a task to perform to make sure that Tap Night ran as smoothly as possible, from preparing the letters to cleaning the ceremonial robes to coordinating with the other societies on campus to make sure that no one on our lists overlapped, or, if they did, that we could all come to a mutually satisfactory compromise.1*Fortunately I was spared that detail, and only had to listen throughout the day as my fellow knights reported back to headquarters (the tomb’s Grand Library) on their findings.

“There’s no one on the Book & Key list,” Juno announced to us around noon. “Does that mean we’re tapping a class of dummies?” It was rumored that Book & Key had more simultaneous Phi Beta Kappa members than any secret society on campus.

“It means we’re tapping people who have more going for them than book smarts,” said Lil’ Demon, dripping hot wax onto yet another finished Tap Letter.

“No one on our list at Serpent, either,” said Bond a little later. “But you’ll never guess who they do have on their list!”

“Who?”

“That fellow Big Demon had on his short list—Andrew Cortland.”