Страница 13 из 65
As for my couple status, it remained, much like my future, undecided. After the meeting last night, I’d waited up for Brandon, but he hadn’t called. Who knew how long his conversation had gone on with Felicity? Maybe he hadn’t felt up to seeing me directly after breaking up with her. His latest e-mail to me hadn’t even mentioned the coffee date with Felicity that Clarissa had reported. He’d just asked if he could meet me in my suite after his afternoon lab. Of course I agreed.
“It’s flatly impossible that no one knows anything,” Josh went on. “I’ve shaken down every patriarch I can, and they are either stupid or playing so.”
“I’d guess the latter, considering they’re Eli alums,” Demetria said. She and Je
“I’d guess the former,” said George, turning a page in his textbook, “considering most of them are inbred legacies with more money than sense.” He looked up, an i
I rolled my eyes and went back to my work. Brandon got out of lab in forty-five minutes, and I wanted to make sure I had all my homework done well in advance. So far, I had three fellowship applications in, and four more in the works. I’d submitted one of my best term papers to two scholarly publications and a couple of conference listings besides, though I knew it would be a long shot. Still, anything would help beef up my grad school applications. So far the rolling admissions hadn’t trundled in my direction, and I was hoping some last-minute additions to the package would help grease the skids.
The GREs had been a joke (ninety-eight percentile without even taking Kaplan) but I hadn’t exactly distinguished myself in front of my professors the way I’d hoped. After all, it had always been my intent to go out into the workforce instead of staying in the Ivory Tower, and recommendations from crusty Russian Lit professors didn’t carry much weight at Condé Nast. I hoped to get a few responses before Spring Break, but it was begi
George dropped his book next to me on the table. “Stressed about the future?”
“Not really.” I turned a page and typed another line into my file.
“You know, it occurs to me that we’re the only two people in the club who don’t have our futures pla
“Oh?” I said, looking up.
“Look.” He began pointing. “Kevin’s going to work for CAA, Clarissa’s starting at McKinsey in the fall, Demetria got into Berkeley, Omar’s headed to the Ke
I wondered how long it had taken him to memorize that list for recitation. And to think that, last year, I chose him over Brandon. “We haven’t heard from Greg yet.”
“You think there’s a chance he’s not going to get that Fulbright? I’m just saying we’re a dying breed.” He tapped his fingers on the table. “And that I’m sick of it being all political scandals, applications, and interviews around here. Don’t you think it was better when our weekly conversations were a tad more colorful?”
“No. I’d rather this than sit through another eight hours of your C.B.”
Oops. That was a mistake. He leaned in. “Could have been longer.” He’d spared me that humiliation at least. Sitting there while George kissed and told, and kissed and told, and kissed and told ad infinitum was a lesson in agony. The Co
“I could always present a coda,” he said. “If you think it’s necessary.”
“Is that a threat of some sort?” I asked.
“A threat?” He pressed his hand to his chest. “You wound me, Amy.” He also hadn’t called me “Boo” since I’d broken it off in November. It had been Amy outside the tomb and Bugaboo inside. He stared at me through his copper-rimmed glasses. His eyes, gorgeous as always, were steady and unblinking. “I wasn’t even the one to bring it up. You’re the one who has sex on the brain. Feeling frustrated? You can tell me.”
I abandoned the table then and there. Maybe I was frustrated, but I also had a date that could, hypothetically, fix all that.
When Brandon arrived at my room, his face was practically glowing. “I got in!”
“To what?” I said.
“NYU. Math!” He grabbed me and spun me around. “I just had to tell you first.”
I beamed. Eat your heart out, George. Knowing that Brandon wanted me to be the first to know his news was so much better than sex. “Oh, Brandon, that’s amazing! I’m so happy for you!” I enclosed him in a hug. “I’m applying for some stuff in New York, too. We could be together there next year. Wouldn’t that be wild?”
And he hugged me again, which was not really an answer, but never let it be said that Amy Maureen Haskel doesn’t do denial with the best of them. I didn’t even have the heart to ask him about his breakup conversation with Felicity after that. He was in such a great mood. Why spoil it with sad remembrances?
Brandon and I spent the rest of the evening in my room, talking about everything in the world but what was going on with him and Felicity, and doing everything in the world except the kind of activity that might lead to something I’d have to relate in a Co
Curious.
The pattern repeated for several days in a row. He’d come over, ostensibly there to help me out with my applications, but not a moment’s work would get done. “This is boring,” he’d say. “Let’s put on a DVD. We deserve it.” Which was all well and good, except I didn’t deserve it yet. I still hadn’t gotten into grad school.
Sometimes it felt like senior year in high school all over again. Once you got into college, nothing seemed very important. You’d skip classes, blow off homework, party on weeknights. Now, with most of my friends’ futures secure, I was witness to much of the same behavior all around. Not that I indulged too much. After all, the shenanigans from Dragon’s Head were getting more outlandish every day (I’d taken to keeping my shower supplies out of the bathroom, as the other day I’d found my conditioner bottle filled with blue dye, my soap covered in drain hair, and all the safeties removed from my razor blades), and I was a bit nervous about what they’d try on me if I ventured out and about.
My fellow knights were at a loss as to revenge schemes. Attacking one society member for the crimes of all of them was taboo in our little culture, and we were pretty sure Dragon’s Head was keeping a close eye on their tomb after our most recent raid. Their attacks on me were reminiscent of the kind of pranks we pulled on barbarians, not other society knights. Our rivalries were held to a different standard of honor entirely. Dragon’s Head was breaking the code by treating me like a barbarian. I admit I was begi
1
And people think secret societies are evil.