Rites of Spring (29 page)

“What is all this stuff?” Darren asked.

“Afraid we can’t tell you that,” George said, pulling out an orange pop and handing the box to Ben. “But if you’re really good, I’ll let you in on where the best place to watch from secret is.”

“George!” Clarissa exclaimed.

“Oh, come on,” George said. “Like you wouldn’t have done the same thing as me when you were his age.”

“I guess this answers the question of which of you are really Diggers,” Darren said, as the ice pops made the rounds.

“Ooh, he’s a quick one,” said Odile, examining the box for nutritional info. “Where’s your sister?”

“My dad wanted her to stay inside this afternoon,” Darren said. It was the first time I’d ever heard him mention his father.

“Probably because we’re a bad influence,” Demetria said. “Wouldn’t want her to get any new ideas about a woman’s place.”

“What are you talking about?” I said. “We’re sitting here
sewing
.”

“Yeah, on a secret project,” said Kevin, waving his purple pop in the air like a scepter. “Hate to do this, kid…”

George made a face. “It’s ridiculous. Darren’s a legacy at Eli, and a legacy…elsewhere. Is there a word for the opposite of a patriarch?”

“Pretriarch?” I suggested.

“Plus, we’re playing a game. Let him join.”

“No, thanks,” Darren said. “I’m not into dress-up.”

“Well then,” Ben said. “I recommend you remember this word come Tap Night: ‘reject.’”

I laughed. Rose & Grave did require a flair for the dramatic.

“It’s okay,” Darren went on. “I have an appointment with my father soon anyway.”

Appointment?
What an odd way to put it. I had appointments with my dentist, or my thesis advisor, not my parents. Then again, Darren was being homeschooled, so maybe he was meeting his dad for half an hour of Socratic dialogue. I could totally see old Kurt going for that.

“Did you get a chance to start on
Monte Cristo
?” I asked him.

“A little,” he admitted, ducking his head in guilt. “But I left it in the rec room yesterday. I should probably go grab it.”

I stood. “I’ll come with you. It’s time to stretch my legs anyway.”

We walked up to the house and I noticed that Darren was playing with the hem of his grubby T-shirt as he walked. I couldn’t imagine the guts it must have taken him to visit the college kids after the scene we’d witnessed that morning, but I wasn’t sure whether or not I could even begin to broach the subject. Poe’s approach to Darren seemed to be very hands-off, as if the last thing Darren wanted was to talk to anyone else about what was going on in his life, but then again, I had to consider the source. Poe didn’t like to talk to anyone about anything. And if Darren really wanted nothing more than to avoid us all, then why did he keep showing up? He’d come to talk to us on the boat, and before breakfast, and again just now.

I figured he was desperate for company in his own age bracket, and the Eli students were the closest he could get. And though I agreed with my fellow knights about keeping Digger activities restricted to Diggers only, I also understood George’s point. There was a pretty fair chance that Darren would eventually join our ranks, and plus, was our little skit really all that important to the makeup of the organization that we needed to keep it a secret? How juvenile was that?

A lot of times, it seemed like the secrecy of our society just served to hide how boring and pedestrian most of our activities really were.

“You know,” he confided in me, “I’ve seen these things so many times I could probably do it better than any of you.”

Well, that answered my question! “I bet,” I said with a chuckle. “You want my part? I’m the back end of the sea monster.”

“Really?” he asked, surprised. “But you don’t swim, and that’s the part that goes on the rowboat.”

I stared at him. “Rowboat?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Aren’t you guys using the rowboat?”

Um, not that anyone had told me. Darren’s expression had
Amateurs
written all over it, and I began to think that maybe this particular pretriarch had more experience with dress-up than he wanted to let on.

Time to change the subject. “Maybe, if your dad will let her, Odile can drop by your house this afternoon and meet your sister.”

“She’d like that,” Darren said. “I think she misses Bettina.”

“Who?”

He shrugged. “Our housekeeper. She lives with us and they’re really close. We don’t even get cell reception on the island, so Isabelle hasn’t been able to talk to her since we’ve been here.”

That wasn’t the only reason. I opened my mouth and shut it again, unable to formulate any type of response. So there it was. Darren didn’t know.

“Got it,” Darren said, picking up
The Count of Monte Cristo
off an end table. I noticed a bookmark a good third of the way into the novel. Ah, a fellow speed-reader.

“You must be liking it so far,” I said, pointing at the bookmark. There. Books were a safe topic. Weren’t they?

He flipped through the pages. “It’s okay.” He looked out the window at the rest of my club, then returned his attention to the book. “Hey, I heard something happened at your cabin the other day.”

I nodded, eager to steer the conversation far, far away from Bettina. “It was outrageous! Someone broke in, trashed the place, and wrote all kinds of nasty stuff on all the walls and mattresses with paint.”

“Wow,” he said, though his face was still buried in the pages. “Anything of yours get ruined?”

“Not mine, luckily. They totally destroyed Clarissa’s new purse, though.”

“Designer?”

“Louis Vuitton.” Not that he knew what that meant.

“That’s my mom’s favorite,” he said. Once again, Darren surprised me. Was there anything this kid didn’t know?

“You know,” he said. “I don’t think George is right.”

“About?”

“Me joining Rose & Grave. Wouldn’t it be cooler to, like, join Dragon’s Head or something? I bet they’d love it, all the secrets I could tell them. Aren’t they the big Digger rivals?”

“I may have heard something like that once,” I said. I was
so
the wrong girl to ask about Dragon’s Head, the bastards. And to bring them up now, after yesterday’s news…I wondered how much this pretriarch actually knew about society happenings. “But still, that’s uncool—to join another society just because you have the goods to betray this one.” Not that I was biased or anything.

“What else am I going to use this info for?” Darren asked. “It’s not worth anything if I just become another Digger.”

“You’ve been reading too much Nietzsche,” I replied. And here my inner Digger was rising up in defense. We were giving this guy room and board on the island, and this was his idea of gratitude? Maybe we should rethink the whole barbarian invite policy.

“Whatever. I probably won’t even end up at Eli anyway.”

“Really? I think you’re pretty much a shoo-in.”

He shrugged. “I might go to Oxford or something instead.”

“That would be cool,” I agreed, glad to get back onto topics that wouldn’t raise my ire at the teen. Who knew what I might let slip if that happened? “I’ve never been to England.” But one of my fellowship applications would take me there. If I got accepted. (Cross fingers!)

“I have. And Oxford’s a better school than Eli, even.”

I bit my lip to hold back a smile and nodded. Okay, now he was just trying to piss me off. Join Dragon’s Head to screw with the Diggers. Go to Oxford because Eli wasn’t good enough. Maybe he was more like his dad than I’d thought. Or maybe he was just a teenager bored out of his skull and trapped on Cavador Key. Either way, I think he’d cashed in his last sympathy point with me, and I was relieved when Odile appeared a few moments later in search of a spare broadsword.

“Greeks didn’t use broadswords,” Darren volunteered. “Their swords looked very different. Besides, they used spears mostly, and I’d definitely have some with me to kill a sea monster.” He pretended to catch himself. “Oops, did I reveal too much?”

I rolled my eyes. The little snot.

Odile, however, was much taken with the young know-it-all, and took him on board as a “story consultant.” He looked very much in his element instructing George on the proper way to tie a toga, which apparently was something the latter had never learned in all his youthful spying on Cavador Key.

“Of course,” the teenager was saying, “a toga’s pretty anachronistic as well. Perseus would have been wearing a chiton.”

“Oh, really?” Odile said, practically batting her eyelashes at him. “Do you know how to make one of those?”

Beside me, Jenny snickered. “You’re so
knowledgeable,
” she mocked. “So big and strong and masculine, with your ancient costuming know-how.”

Demetria smothered her laugh in a pile of scales. “Aww, have pity on the poor guy. He’s starstruck. It’s a story he can tell his friends at school.”

“He doesn’t have a school,” I said.

“Or access to the Internet,” Jenny added. “Or he’d be the most popular kid on MySpace.”

“Screw MySpace,” Clarissa said. “He’d have some mighty fine pictures to sell to the tabloids if he wanted.”

And I believed Darren would do just that, given our conversation in the rec room earlier.

Done convincing Darren of his profound desire to finish all the hems, Odile sauntered over to the Diggirls and plopped herself down. “So, Amy,” she said, “what do you think of this whole break-in situation? You were so quiet during breakfast. It’s not like you to keep mum on the subject of a conspiracy.”

I shrugged. “I haven’t a clue. It’s either the guys on the other island, or Kadie. Honestly, I’m starting to lean toward the other island.”

“Not you, too,” Demetria groaned.

“Why?” Odile asked me.

Because Poe had promised me that Kadie wasn’t involved. Then again, Poe had told me last fall that Kurt Gehry had nothing to do with Jenny’s disappearance, though it turned out that the older man knew exactly where she’d gone and even a good chunk of the reason why. And Poe had been protecting him, as well as the secret of Elysion. Poe, who even now was enjoying an afternoon on Kadie Myer’s boat.

Remind me why I was kissing this guy?

“I don’t know. It just seems a bit sophomoric for her.”

Odile blew a strand of hair out of her eyes. “I don’t know her that well, but I’m inclined to agree. I remember she had quite the ice queen rep on campus when we were freshmen.”

I hadn’t run in Kadie’s circles at all, and she’d passed the torch to a new generation of well-bred queen bees (like Clarissa) by the time I understood the social strata of Eli enough to figure out who she was or what she was like. I’d have to take Odile’s word on that one.

“The temper tantrum bitch-fit wouldn’t appeal to her,” she went on. “She’s more likely to slip poison in your afternoon tea than get her hands dirty with a paint can.”

“How…vivid of you.”

Odile laughed. “Well, someone’s got to pick up the slack if you aren’t going to provide the theories,
chica.
” She cast me a concerned look. “Still hung up on Brandon?”

“Still?” I echoed. “How quickly do you want me to get over it?”

“Quick. I half expected you to be in the middle of a rebound right about now.”

I swallowed. “With whom? There’s no one here but us Diggers.”

“Never stopped you before,” Jenny snapped.

“I thought we’d tabled this conversation,” Demetria said.

“Huh?” Odile looked at Demetria, confused.

“Society incest is a bad idea,” I said. “In summation.” She didn’t need to know that a rebound was a pretty darn good description for my latest trip to the shower house. “You missed the Diggirls’ last debate on the subject.”

Odile let out a delicate snort. “
Society incest
might be the most ridiculous term I’ve ever heard,” she said. “Fuck who you want to. It’s not illegal. If you worried about ‘incest’ in L.A., no one would ever get laid.”

“So clearly,” Demetria said, “it’s not something you’ve ever worried about.”

“Can we please change the subject?” Clarissa asked. “I never thought I’d say this, but I really wish Mara were here to encourage us to talk about something other than our sex lives.”

“Or lack thereof,” Jenny corrected. “Please.”

Demetria groaned. “Am I getting that bad? Really? Clearly, I’m the one who needs to get laid.”

Odile shrugged and rose to her feet, brandishing the anachronistic broadsword a bit more skillfully than one would expect for an actress who’d never appeared in a period piece. “Isn’t that what ‘social networking’ is really code for? Besides, we don’t
just
hook up with one another and talk about sex. We also play dress-up and commit capers. And then sometimes we have those boring political debates.” She sheathed the sword in a leather scabbard. “I prefer the sexy stuff.”

Clarissa dropped her face into her hands and sighed. “Where’s a gang of conspiracy theorists when you really need them?”

16.

Sunstroke