Tap & Gown

by Diana Peterfreund

  “Huh?” he said, furrowing his brow. “Oh, right. ‘If equal affection cannot be / Let the more loving one be me.’” He took another sip of his coffee, then made a face. “I don’t know if W.H. was right about that. I’ve been both. And I prefer guilt to humiliation.”

  I swallowed with some difficulty. Who was this guy? He wasn’t the Brandon I’d known junior year. It was me; I had been the one to do this to him. Felicity was right to blame me. Brandon had loved me without reservation, without fear, and I’d broken his heart. Broken it so that he couldn’t let Felicity in, no matter what she tried. He, in turn, had broken her heart. Was this some never-ending chain?

  “No,” I said softly. “It doesn’t have to be that way.”

  “I don’t believe that,” said Brandon. “Not anymore.”

  I hunched into my coffee drink. Brandon might claim to prefer the guilt, but he had no compunction about handing it off to me.

  “Which role did you play with that guy from Spring Break?” he asked abruptly.

  I straightened. “I have no idea. That’s not what happened.” Sometimes you met someone that changed the pattern, who wormed their way past the cracks in your heart, caulked them up, sealed themselves in, and stayed there. Sometimes they did it by insisting you meet them at every step, as Jamie had done to me. Sometimes they did it without even knowing, as I had done to Jamie long before.

  But how could I explain that to Brandon? He’d asked the same things of me that Jamie had. He’d been as forthright with his feelings—even more so. And yet, I hadn’t loved him. I’d loved Jamie. Brandon’s method was not at fault. Pursue a girl who could love you that way, and it would be bound to succeed. Had I killed that possibility? Had I destroyed him for future girls, the same way I had for Felicity?

  No, I realized. That hypothetical loving girl would come, and Brandon would forget his bitterness. He’d forget what I’d done, and he’d think only of her, as right this second, I could think only of Jamie.

  “Really?” Brandon asked. “You’ll forgive me if I find that hard to believe.”

  Of course he did. After all, it was me. And to explain what happened—to tell him that Jamie and I loved each other, but had chosen certain ambition over uncertain futures—well, wouldn’t that sound like commitment issues in disguise? It was more than Josh and Lydia’s conundrum. Choosing the life he did meant Jamie had to give me up. To give it all up.

  “I’ll forgive you.” I looked at him. “If you’ll forgive me.”

  Brandon said nothing.

  I gave him a weak smile. “Not yet, huh?”

  “Not yet.” He didn’t meet my gaze. “Not when you can sit there and act like you’re in love.”

  “For all the good it’s doing me.”

  He snorted and stared out over the quad. Whatever he’d been hoping for from this interview, it hadn’t happened. If anything, I’d probably made it worse.

  I’m sorry for breaking you, Brandon. I’m sorry you weren’t the one for me, and that we hurt each other the way we did. But you’ll be okay. You’ll be better than okay. At NYU, you’ll meet someone. She’ll be pretty and smart and fun and funny, and she’ll love you beyond all reason, and what’s more, you’ll love her back. I promise.

  But I couldn’t say that to him, so I just joined him in observing the students on the grass.

  Which is when I saw him. Even from across the quad, his eyes burned like laser beams. And those beams were focused right at me. Blake Varnham.

  How long had he been standing there, staring?

  “Brandon, see that guy?”

  It took him less than a second. “The one from Commons?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What a creep.” He smirked, and for a second, I got a flash of the old Brandon. “Let’s wave at him.”

  We waved. Blake put his hands in his pockets, but did not break his gaze.

  “Okay,” said Brandon. “Now he’s just pissing me off.”

  “Me too.” Across the lawn, someone called Blake’s name, and he dragged his attention away from us at last as the newcomer met him on the walk. His back was to us. They spoke, and then Blake pointed in our direction. The newcomer swiveled to follow Blake’s finger, and his face fell as our eyes met.

  Topher Cox.

  “Read it!” I hissed at the neophyte from beneath my mask of roses. The clamor rose around me, knights and patriarchs shouting and banging copper pots as they whirled in a circle around us.

  “Read it!” they echoed in their best scary voices. “Read it!”

  The neophyte ducked his head and peered at the parchment.

  “I, Christopher Lionel Cox, Barbarian-So-Called, most solemnly pledge and avow my love and affection, everlasting loyalty and undying fealty. By the Flame of Life and the Shadow of Death, I swear to cleave wholly unto the principles of this ancient order, to further its friends and plight its enemies, and place above all others the causes of the Order of Rose & Grave.”

  We all howled. Four knights grabbed him, lifted him above their heads, and paraded around the room, screaming like banshees.

  Initiation Night was in full swing. I’d thought the event was a whirlwind as a neophyte, but it was nothing compared to the maelstrom of actually running the show. We’d all been moving non-stop since daybreak, making sure everything was ready, hosting an alumni tea to greet the patriarchs, briefing them about the taps we’d be welcoming into the fold, and ensuring that they understood their roles. Even Lionel Drake had attended, like a proud papa bear, though he regretfully informed us that his bad leg would keep him from participating in the tap that evening.

  George Prescott the elder came as well, as did Malcolm, and over a dozen other patriarchs, so we had a good-sized cast, though both Odile and Demetria had complained that there were hardly enough women to fulfill the allotted roles.

  Topher was carried around the room twice more, then deposited in front of George’s father, who was dressed as Don Quixote, in a rusted-out suit of armor, with long gray whiskers. He held a long sword aimed at Topher’s heart, then shifted and smacked him hard on the shoulder.

  “From this moment on, you are no longer Barbarian-So-Called Christopher Lionel Cox. By the order of our Order, I dub thee Achilles, Knight of Persephone, Order of Rose & Grave.”1*

  Well, that was it. He was a Digger now. Maybe we’d be able to convince him to drop such loathsome friends as Blake Varnham. After I’d seen them together in the quad the previous day, I’d done a little digging of my own. Topher and Blake had gone to prep school together. No wonder Topher had known Michelle at the party—and no wonder Michelle hadn’t shown any interest in talking to him! I hoped that, now that they were about to be society brothers, they could each look past their history, as I had when Clarissa and I had joined Rose & Grave.

  Topher was shuffled out the door, and I ripped off my rose mask and handed it to Lil’ Demon.

  “Everything going well?” I asked, flipping up the hood on my robe.

  “Like demonic clockwork,” she replied, slipping the mask over her famous features. “We had a bit of a problem with the sixth level of hell about fifteen minutes ago. One of the flaming tombs actually caught fire. Damaged the wall, but no one was hurt.”

  “Who was the heretic inside?” I asked. According to Dante, the sixth level of hell housed heretics in coffins of fire.

  Lil’ Demon shrugged. “I can’t keep all the patriarchs straight, especially when they’re in costume.”

  “True.” I shoved my hair inside my robe. “Okay, I’m off to play Beatrice.”

  Beatrice was the final step on the initiate’s path before she reached the Inner Temple—our “heaven.” In the Divine Comedy, she makes Dante drink from the river of forgetfulness. For our purposes, initiates were instructed to drink “blood” from a human skull fashioned into a ceremonial goblet—an event I still wished I could forget.

  The next neophyte had yet to arrive, so I decided to take a quick spin around the tomb to bask in the initiation in
all its flash and chaos. With two taps to oversee, I’d hardly gotten a chance to observe the proceedings at large.

  Which reminded me, where was Michelle? If all went according to plan, she should be just entering the ninth level of hell, which was guarded by our tallest participants, garbed as fallen angels. At the moment, it was Big Demon and one of the older patriarchs. On the ground floor, Angel and Lucky flitted about in voluminous organza wraps that appeared lit from within, thanks to a collection of carefully arranged glowsticks. Threads of smoke wafted from the Firefly Room, and the staircase down into the kitchen (as well as the secret entrance to the barrel vault) had been turned into a slide ramp approximating Dante’s ride down the Cliffs of Malebolge on the back of the winged monster Geryon. Other patriarchs, in robes, guided blindfolded neophytes up and down the stairs between these two zones. On the landing, Puck and Lancelot, dressed as minor devils, were leading Juno’s tap, Brianna, in a trust fall from the landing to the ground, where a host of other patriarchs waited to catch her with a blanket.

  I shuddered, remembering my own terror during initiation. Poe hadn’t held anything back in his attempts to scare the taps: Over the course of the evening, I’d been threatened with suffocation, poisoning, drowning, and—let’s not forget—rape. He’d made up some crazy story about an in-house prostitute called “the Digger Whore” before dumping me off the landing into the pile of blankets. By the time the other guys had caught me, I’d been positive I was being attacked.

  I almost laughed aloud. From the inside, none of this had the same sense of menace I’d imagined as a neophyte. I could understand Poe’s desire to spice it up, to bring it to a level beyond your average house of horrors. Poe. I took a deep breath. What was I doing? Right, looking for Michelle.

  I spotted her then, heading blindfolded into a room on the third floor, being led by the hand by a patriarch in a shimmering purple robe. Between the destruction of the Tap Night rain (and, um, other activities) wreaked on a lot of our robes, and the large patriarch turnout at initiation, we were scraping the bottom of the barrel when it came to costume choices.

  “Yo, Bugaboo,” Puck called to me, and pointed at Brianna. “You’re up.”

  “That’s Beatrice to you,” I said with a wink and hurried down to meet the neophyte at the base of the stairs.

  “See thou before me, Neophyte?” I paraphrased at Brianna. “I am none other than Beatrice. Through many trials hast thou come to this mountain, where all men—and women—are made happy.”

  “Great!” Brianna said with a sigh of relief. “I thought this would never end.”

  “Impatience, Neophyte,” I went on, “will not serve you well this night. A few tests remain, before thou mayst enter into our most sacred mysteries.”

  I guided Brianna through the next step of her initiation, leading her back up the stairs, then watched as she drank from the skull and ushered her into the Inner Temple for the end of the ceremony.

  Duties accomplished, I went back down the stairs to peek in at the after-party shaping up in the Grand Library. More than half of our taps were now fully initiated and in the midst of getting to know one another over bowls of punch and in view of some of the more elderly (read: can’t get ‘em into costumes these days) patriarchs. As I watched, Topher—pardon, Achilles, D178—went over to pay his respects to Grandpa.

  Good. We had about five more taps to initiate, and then the knights of D177 would gather one last time in the Inner Temple to pay our respects to Persephone and take our leave. Then we’d join the new initiates en masse in the Grand Library, and the party would truly begin.

  After that, I played Beatrice to Paul Raymond, Jenny’s tap. Poor boy, he’d also inherited the society name Lucky. Though it had sounded cute on her, on a boy, it made me think of a farmhand from Oklahoma! I headed back downstairs to await the next neophyte.

  I reached the bottom step as a scream rent the air. An unscripted scream. Everyone paused in their bustle and turned their faces up to the third floor, where a door banged open and out swept the purple-robed patriarch with a struggling bundle in his arms. Michelle.

  “Let me go, you psychopath!” she shouted, and he tightened his grip around her throat. She flailed with both arms and knocked his hood from his face.

  That was no patriarch. It was Blake Varnham.

  For a moment, everyone stood frozen. The neophytes didn’t seem to know whether or not this was part of the act, and a few of the patriarchs looked similarly confused. My fellow knights were all in shock. How had this barbarian breached our tomb? How long had he been here?

  “Stop, Shelly,” Blake said in the calmest voice imaginable. “Don’t make me … don’t make me …” I saw the glint of a knife in his hand. Michelle’s eyes widened and her body went limp in his arms. He pointed the knife at her face and brought it close, but before I even had time to gasp, I saw that it was aimed not at Michelle, but at his own chest.

  Michelle’s eyes were saucers now, her focus trained on the knife, which rested inches from her cheek.

  “My God, look what you make me do,” he went on. “I’m just trying to save you from these people. Don’t you know what they’re like?”

  “Blake, please, please …” Michelle cried. Around them, I saw patriarchs inching closer.

  Blake whirled on them. “Come an inch closer and I’ll plunge this straight into my chest.” He looked at Michelle. “Look at them threatening me, honey. You see that, right?”

  “Blake, please …”

  “Shelly, do you think I want this? But what can I do? I can’t let them make you their whore. I couldn’t survive that. I’d rather see you dead. I’d rather be dead myself.” He cast one more warning look at the patriarchs arrayed on the upper level.

  Puck leapt at him.

  The knife clattered down the stairs, bounced once on the landing, then plummeted to the stones at my feet. I saw Michelle sliding from Blake’s arms, and a short, swift struggle, a billow of shimmering purple fabric, then both Puck and Blake pitched over the side.

  A forever fall, it seemed, before the crunch.

  “George!” I shouted.

  He was on top, at an impossible angle, his face contorted with pain, shifting feebly. The tomb seemed to come to life again, but when the screaming started, it was not directed at my ex-lover, my friend, my society brother.

  Michelle leaned over the landing, her face white, her mouth open in an endless cry.

  Blake had fallen on his knife.

  1*The confessor had voted for “Bateman,” but she was overruled. Apparently, Lionel would be immensely pleased if his grandson followed in his footsteps. Oh, well. It was fitting. Spoiled rotten rich kid who thought the world of himself and constantly needed more august family members to make him allowances? Sure.

  “Call 911!” Demetria materialized by my side. “This man needs a hospital!”

  George was trying to push himself off Blake’s body but there was something wrong with his arm. As the others tended to Blake, I pulled George off.

  Blake wasn’t moving. His eyes were open and his hands flittered, feebly, over his torso. His robe was twisted around his body, blood collecting in its folds.

  “Blake!” Michelle shrieked. “Dear God, someone call 911!”

  “Stop!” yelled a patriarch. “We can’t have the police in here.”

  “Drop dead,” said Demetria. All around her, cell phones were lighting up. Malcolm gently turned Blake over, balling up the robe to press against the wound. I couldn’t see well enough to determine how serious it was. From the blood, though, I had a pretty good idea.

  I turned to George. “You okay?”

  He was cradling his left arm with his right. “I can’t move my arm, but … yeah. Mostly just scared.”

  I shook my head at him. “You know you’ve kind of got a hero complex, right?”

  George winced. “Don’t you find it charming?”

  The doors to the Grand Library opened and I could see initiates and patriarchs poking the
ir heads out to look. One pushed his way past the threshold. “Blake!” Topher shouted, then joined us in the hall. “Oh, man. Oh, shit. Blake, man, what are you doing?”

  Blake opened his mouth and coughed up blood. I bit my lip.

  As Michelle joined Topher by Blake’s side, Topher said, “Shelly, what did you do?”

  “Nothing!” she cried. “He threatened me. Like always.”

  There was a knock on the door. A knock. On the door of the Rose & Grave tomb. “Police,” came the voice from the other side. For a moment, everyone froze.

  Demetria strode toward the tomb doors and flung them wide.

  Four hours later, I sat with a rather loopy George in his hospital room. He’d broken his collarbone and his arm in two places, and a bruise the size and shape of a Labrador retriever was blooming over the right half of his body. I was also plotting to kill whoever saw fit to give him painkillers.

  “The doctor says I won’t be able to walk tomorrow,” he said, a dreamy smile crossing his features. “You know what that means, don’t you, Amy?”

  I sighed. “Sponge baths?”

  “Sponge baths!” He pumped his uninjured arm in the air. “Ow.”

  The joke was funnier the first two times. “I do not envy Devon.”

  “Devon.” George furrowed his brow. “I should probably call and tell her what happened to me, huh?”

  “Why?” I picked up his cup of half-melted ice chips and took a sip.

  “She’s my girlfriend.”

  I dropped the cup. “Your what?”

  George’s mouth snapped shut. “Oh, fuck.”

  “George,” I said. “Did you just use the G-word? And the F-word?”

  He remained mute.

  “George—”

  “Don’t, Amy. Please, I can’t take this from you.”

  “Take what?” I asked. “The ridicule I’m going to heap on you once you come down off whatever crazy-ass drugs they’ve got you on?” I laughed. “That must be some really excellent shit, George Harrison Prescott. Girlfriend. Ha!”

  He didn’t respond.

  I blinked in disbelief. “You’re serious. You’re with her.”