Rites of Spring (Break)

by Diana Peterfreund

  Two days later, I turned my back for five seconds in the dining hall and someone covered my salad with a spray of habanero pepper. A day after that, I was following my usual route home from class and passed underneath the Hartford College arch. When I emerged on the other side, I was met with another icy shower. (Luckily, I’d taken to keeping my valuables inside Ziploc bags inside my satchel.) By the time I looked up, I saw little more than two hooded figures disappearing back into their window, dragging a large empty tub behind them. Dragon’s Head sure liked their liquids.

  Greg Dorian said he admired the ingenuity of their multilateral attacks. (I thwapped him with the Kaboodle Ball in response.) Josh wondered if we should be keeping tabs on my transcripts, to avert any bizarre clerical errors, a possibility that kept me up all night. Jenny was constantly monitoring my computer, and reported three different attempts to send me a virus through bogus announcement e-mails from the Prescott College master’s office. I only hoped she was good enough to catch them all.

  And then came the superglue incident. And the Great Cricket Invasion of January 2008 (Lydia still won’t sit on our couch). What was next, locusts to eat all my homework? I began to wonder if Rose & Grave pride was worth ruining my last semester at Eli. Nothing against taking one for the team, but it’s not as if I could explain to my thesis advisor, the dean of the Lit department, or any potential graduate schools that the reason my work took a sudden nosedive was because I was fending off a secret society hell-bent on using me as a scapegoat for all the crimes the Diggers had committed over the past centuries. And even if I did manage to make this point without forswearing my own society’s vows of silence, I doubt the faculty would believe me, or even care.

  I was beginning to think our rivals didn’t even need the dragon statue as an excuse. They wanted revenge on Rose & Grave, and since they couldn’t get into the tomb, one innocent knight walking the streets of New Haven made a darn convenient target. Spring Break was still a month off, and this winter looked like it would never end.

  So, in the grand tradition of stalker victims everywhere, I began to act like the hunted prey I was. I varied my schedule, turned down social engagements, took alternate and unfriendly routes around campus, and found excuses to stay home from class in the relative safety of my room. (I insisted Lydia double check all the locks every time she stepped out, and since there were still several dozen chirping insects hiding somewhere in the suite, she agreed.)

  One afternoon, Prescott College held a snowball fight in the courtyard, but there was no way I’d brave the melee under the present circumstances. Who knew how many Dragon’s Head members lay in wait, disguised as innocent Prescotteers, eager to pummel me into the slush? Instead I sat at the window, watching the festivities from afar, warm and dry and bored to the beyond. There goes my last college snowball fight.

  I also missed my friend Carol’s senior thesis play, and all the cajoling in the world on the part of Lydia and my other friends, barbarian or otherwise, failed to induce me to go to the Seniors’ Valentine’s Day Ball. Of course, as soon as I was left alone in the suite, it occurred to me that I’d maneuvered myself into another classic stalker-victim position—the isolated target. The only place I felt safe was in the Rose & Grave tomb’s Inner Temple, because—you’ll remember—Dragon’s Head still didn’t know how to breach our security. I packed my study materials into my bag (still mildly sticky, despite several washings) and furtively raced for the tomb, hoping my heavy winter clothing would disguise my identity from any Dragon’s Headers who’d also stayed home from the dance.

  I made it safely into the sanctuary and shed my coat in the front hall. Success. Relieved to be free of the constant pressure and vigilance, I practically skipped up the stairs to the Inner Temple. I even did a little pirouette on the landing.

  And then I heard the clapping. Not a full-out round of applause, just a slow, sardonic smack. I froze, and slowly turned around. So, they couldn’t make it into the Inner Temple. Didn’t mean they didn’t have access to other parts of the tomb.

  “Nice, Bugaboo.” Poe stood at the base of the stairs, unsmiling (as usual). “Planning an audition?”

  I sank back on my heels, relieved to see him for perhaps the first time ever. “Just reveling in my freedom.”

  “From what?”

  “Tyranny and terrorism.”

  “I assume you aren’t talking in general terms,” he said. “Otherwise I’d have to engage you in a political lesson.”

  “Dragon’s Head.” I clopped back down the stairs.

  “Ah.” He nodded. “I heard.” I reached him and he leaned on the banister. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re to blame.”

  “Why not?” I was truly surprised. Poe always thought I was to blame. It was the foundation upon which our relationship was built.

  “I didn’t notice those sneakers.”

  I laughed. Right. And if Poe, the über-Digger, didn’t notice it, then it was just a fluke they were identified at all. “I appreciate the support, but right now, it doesn’t make a difference. I’m still wearing a bull’s-eye on my back.” I shrugged. “I can’t even go to the V-Day Ball tonight.”

  “Here I thought it was because you were too much of a loser to get a date.”

  “That, too,” I mumbled. I looked up at him. “What brings you here tonight? You’ve been MIA since—” since his recent brush with concussion “—all semester.”

  “Miss me?” he snarked.

  “Hardly,” I snarked back. “And you didn’t answer my question.”

  He flashed a ghost of a smile. “Because it’s none of your business.”

  “My tomb, my society, my”—I pointed at the black book he held in the crook of his arm—“archives.”

  “As well as mine. And trust me, this is nothing that concerns you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it concerns me.”

  Or maybe because I’d screwed up the last caper. “Right. The Bugaboo.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Okay. What’s your opinion on current domestic policy?”

  “Huh?”

  “Exactly.” He said nothing for a moment, just stood there, observing me in the unnerving way he had. “If this Dragon’s Head thing is really bothering you, then give in,” he said. “Tell those losers where we hid their precious hunk of metal.”

  I blinked in astonishment. Poe was telling me to put my needs above the Diggers’? Perhaps he’d hit his head harder than we thought. “Excuse me?”

  “I’m serious. You don’t have much time left. Don’t waste your last few months on a battle that’s not going to be worth it in the long run. If you’re miserable, let it go and just…enjoy being a senior. Rose & Grave will survive a little more humiliation this year.”

  Oh, I got it now. “You don’t think I can take it.”

  “No, I’m saying you shouldn’t have to. It’s misplaced pride.”

  “I can’t believe you of all people would say that to me.” I put my hands on my hips. “What happened to all that bull you spout about our oaths coming before anything?”

  “I almost can’t believe it myself.” He shrugged. “But I’ve been there, remember? I have huge regrets about the things I didn’t do when I was an undergrad. This is it, Bugaboo. This is your last chance. You don’t have any more semesters, any more ‘wait and sees.’ Don’t let it slip by while you ride this out. Trust me on this. It’s not worth thinking about.”

  Now he sounded like Brandon, whose similar advice had tipped me toward joining Rose & Grave in the first place. Funny, I couldn’t name two people less alike. Brandon was warm, where Poe was cold; Brandon friendly and open, where Poe was distant and unforgiving. Brandon had loved me, whereas the most I’d ever expected from Poe was a reluctant truce. Brandon was honest and forthright where Poe was—okay, he was honest, too, but he tended to say things I didn’t want to hear. And he never spoke like this. Kind counsel wasn’t Poe’s usual style. I didn’t know how to respond.

&
nbsp; “Anyway,” he said at last, “I should probably head home.” He made for the door, then paused for a moment. “Of course,” he said, “if you do roll over, don’t expect me to let you live it down.”

  “Of course.” That was the Poe I knew.

  I spent the next few hours studying and musing over Poe’s words. And in the end, I understood it wasn’t snowball fights or even Winter Balls that I was missing, and that it wasn’t Dragon’s Head that was keeping me from it, either. I’d been afraid my junior year when I’d told Brandon that I didn’t want anything more than a friendship-with-benefits. I’d been afraid last semester when I’d had my no-strings-attached fling with George Harrison Prescott. I was wallowing in fear every time I made fun of Josh and Lydia, or beat myself up over what Felicity had been able to create with Brandon. I’d been afraid of it for years, and I was about to graduate from college, still terrified of the idea of being in love.

  Pathetic, huh? They teach us a lot here at Eli, but evidently not much about human nature. We’re all so awash in our own ambition that we can’t spare any attention for the ambitions of another. We can’t afford to invest in relationships that will likely crash and burn. And we really can’t allow ourselves to get distracted by the everyday drama of romance. There were too many other things to do.

  But what about now? Arguably, I’d had a stellar college career. I’d run a publication, taken full course loads, drafted theses, joined a secret society, and taken on powerful conspiracies bent on my destruction—and no, that last one isn’t necessarily in the Eli brochure for prospective students, but I did it anyway, and I kicked ass. I didn’t regret one minute I’d devoted to these things.

  I did regret screwing up with Brandon. I regretted that we were no longer close. If there was one thing I wanted back, in the twilight of my college career, it was him.

  But I didn’t expect it so soon. Because when I finally packed up my books around three and headed back to the suite, I found Brandon waiting for me on my common room couch—locks be damned.

  It was as if I’d fallen through a time warp. This could have been last year, when Brandon was a regular fixture on this couch, waiting for me to come back from wherever I was. Loyal, devoted, like a puppy. Except now he wasn’t puppy-like in the least. No, the energy he radiated was that of angry stray. Tonight, he was dressed in a rumpled suit, his tie undone, his dress shirt unbuttoned over a white tee, his dark, longish hair ruffled far past the point of respectability.

  “Brandon?” I blinked. “What are you doing here?”

  He looked at his hands. “I honestly don’t know.” He sighed, and stood. “This was a mistake. I’m sorry, Amy.” Now that he faced me, I could see that wrinkled clothes were the least of his problems. His usually warm, golden skin looked wan, his deep brown eyes were rimmed in red.

  “No, it’s fine. It’s just…a little late for a social call.”

  He nodded absently. “Yeah, it is. I was beginning to think you’d be…out. For the night.”

  Like, with a guy. I could fill in that subtext all right. “And I figured that you’d be at the Ball…with your girlfriend.”

  He let that one hang in the air for a while. “Why didn’t you call me…ever? After the coffee shop last fall? After lunch last month?”

  So much for chitchat. “I don’t know,” I said with the type of honesty that can only come of being taken by surprise. “What would be the point?”

  “The point would be you calling me.” His voice was raw, like I’d never heard it before, not even when he’d broken up with me.

  My eyes flashed to the door behind him. Could Lydia and Josh hear this?

  He caught the direction of my gaze and waved dismissively. “They aren’t here. They let me in and left. It’s just us.”

  You mean just me, on trial. “What I’m saying is, what would be the point, with the way things are between us now?”

  He took a few steps closer. “How is that, Amy? How are things between us?”

  I watched him approach with trepidation. I heard the way he said my name with even more. No one ever said my name like Brandon did.

  “They’re…awkward. You have your girlfriend, and she doesn’t like me very much.”

  “No, she certainly doesn’t. Especially not tonight.”

  Tonight? But before I could say it out loud, I remembered. Valentine’s Day. Our anniversary.

  He looked down for a moment, took a deep breath. This wasn’t like him. Brandon never hesitated to say anything. “The thing is, Amy, I’m really happy.”

  “I’m glad.” Pure reflex. I was so lost here.

  “I mean, really happy. This is my senior year, I’m acing all my classes, my badminton team has been kicking ass, I think that Calvin College might actually be in the running for the Tibbs Cup, and I have this gorgeous, amazing girlfriend who is very much in love with me.”

  Wow, when he put it like that, the best thing for me to do would be go jump off of something tall. “I’m…glad,” I choked out.

  “So then, what’s wrong with me?”

  Nothing. Nothing was wrong with Brandon. He was perfect and happy. He had to be. I’d driven him away so he could be, in a way that wasn’t possible with me. “What do you mean?”

  He looked up. “Why am I always thinking about you?”

  4.

  Sin and Cosin

  * * *

  Late that night, it started to snow again. The flakes floated against the windowpane, flashing blue when they caught the reflection of the emergency call box outside the entryway. We’d turned off all the lights in the suite, since there are things you can’t say if you’re not in the dark.

  Snow is a different substance at 3 A.M. It accumulated on the ground, glowing in the moonlight, coating the campus with an unearthly, radioactive radiance. Part of me wanted to go out and roll around in it, see if I could shimmer as much as the crystalline trees and the icy ground and the frosted, wrought-iron banisters. The other part never wanted to leave the room. In the post-snowfall silence, it was easy to believe that the night would never end, and I’d never have to deal with the consequences that waited beyond this moment, beyond that door.

  The room was still dark when I opened my eyes the next morning. It might have been the sound of the wind that woke me. New Haven was in for a rotten day, to judge by the wet, angry howling on the other side of the glass. So much better just to snuggle back under the covers, which I did.

  And jostled the body lying next to me.

  “Hi,” he said, and put his hand on my T-shirt-covered shoulder. “You’re awake.”

  “How long have you been?” I whispered.

  He shrugged, his arms brushing my torso beneath the covers. “A while.”

  “Doin’ what?”

  “Watchin’ you.”

  I felt heat in my cheeks, and wondered if there was enough light for him to see me blush. The silence that followed his announcement was one in which, under normal circumstances, the girl would kiss the boy who’d wanted to watch her sleep, but these weren’t normal circumstances, and even though the rules were only a few hours old, I understood them.

  1) Look, but don’t touch.

  2) Talk, but don’t taste.

  3) Sleep together, as long as you aren’t sleeping together.

  Brandon wore the sweatpants and T-shirt I never had gotten around to returning to him. He shouldn’t have stayed, and we both knew it. But our conversation had gone on so late, ending just as the weather had been at its worst, that the very idea of sending him out in it had seemed unconscionable. Why the perfectly serviceable couch in the common room hadn’t been a viable option was a bit harder to explain away.

  You know, if we planned to explain it to anyone. And I didn’t know if we did. It hadn’t once occurred to either of us to say What are we doing? or What does this mean?

  And I didn’t want to be the one to break that spell. Not on this dreadful, bleak morning, cocooned inside my comforter, lost in the dreamtime of February. I d
idn’t want to know the answer to those questions. Didn’t even want to think the word Felicity, in case it was enough to crack this moment like thin ice.

  But as I looked into Brandon’s eyes, I ran out of synonyms for happiness.

  “You aren’t hungry, are you?” he asked me.

  I rolled my eyes. Being hungry would mean getting up and going into public. And I never wanted to do that again. I wondered, idly, how long we could live on the Tic Tacs in my purse.

  “Do you want to sleep more?”

  I shook my head against the pillow, still not willing to speak. And now he was smiling. What a great smile he has. How in the world had I survived the last eight months without seeing it?

  “Neither do I.” And then he snuggled back under the covers as well. His hand slipped from my shoulder down my arm and past my wrist, and he laced his fingers with mine.

  I shifted my face up again and met his eyes. We stared at each other as his thumb softly traced that sensitive bit of skin at the base of my thumb and forefinger. It was another moment where normal circumstances would prompt us to kiss, and again, we didn’t. We didn’t kiss, because that would cheapen the whole experience, turn it into some kind of rebound fling. It would be wrong.

  And what we were doing felt so right.

  The story came together courtesy of my various friends, each of which had their own version—not to mention their own take on the matter.

  Of course, I’d heard Brandon’s first, that night:

  “I didn’t even realize I’d been doing it until she started pointing it out after that day when you were in my room. But the more she kept bringing it up, the more she kept talking about you, the harder it was to overlook. And it doesn’t make sense that…”