Tap & Gown (5 page)

In my bedroom, I sat down at my desk and opened the lid on my laptop. A few e-mails, including one from my mom about commencement travel plans—nothing I couldn’t wait until tomorrow to answer. The file with my thesis draft was open. I clicked over and stared at the blinking cursor for a few minutes.

An IM window popped up on my screen.

DinkStover
: Hey. Wondered when you’d be getting home.

The new window flashed at me, daring me to accept something from this stranger. Whoever Dink Stover was, he knew I wouldn’t be back until late. I clicked Accept.

DinkStover
: How did it go?

I smiled. Oh, he knew, all right.

AmyHaskel
: Jamie?

DinkStover
: Do I need to provide the secret handshake?

AmyHaskel
: Can’t be too careful these days.

DinkStover
: Good girl.

I pursed my lips. What, was I a dog?

DinkStover
: So how did it go?

Page 20

AmyHaskel
: Fine.

My fingers hovered over the keys. Should I tell him it was sheer torture? Ask him how in the world he survived it, especially as a voice of dissent? I barely got involved in the discussion and I was miserable.

He must have been the most wretched person on the planet. Especially since, to Jamie, Rose & Grave meant everything.

DinkStover
: It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it.

Long hesitation.

DinkStover
: But I’m here if you need a shoulder to lean on.

When I didn’t answer, he wrote again.

DinkStover
: You still there?

AmyHaskel
: Yeah. I’m taking a screenshot for evidence that there is a Gentle Jamie.

No response.

AmyHaskel:
I’m joking.

DinkStover:
No you’re not.

AmyHaskel:
It’s harder to tease you when I can’t see your face.

DinkStover:
I’m not walking over there at two-thirty in the morning.

DinkStover:
Wait … that *was* an invitation, right?

I bit my lip. Was it? I didn’t even know anymore.

AmyHaskel:
Pretty tired, actually. Class tomorrow.

DinkStover:
I understand. So at least tell me how many people you’ve got on your short list.

I should have figured a die-hard Digger like Jamie wouldn’t give up so easy on hearing details about our deliberations.

AmyHaskel:
I haven’t thought that far ahead yet.

DinkStover:
You’d better believe they have.

AmyHaskel:
What do you mean?

DinkStover:
You were a shoo-in for Quill & Ink last year, right?

AmyHaskel:
Until you guys screwed it up.

DinkStover:
But you knew it. You were expecting it.

Page 21

AmyHaskel:
Yeah?

DinkStover:
Well, this year’s shoo-ins for us are expecting it, too.

AmyHaskel:
But what does that matter to us? I’m not going to tap someone just because they expect it.

DinkStover:
Spoken like Malcolm’s true little sib. But don’t go the other way, either. Don’t *not* tap someone because it’s expected.

I frowned at the screen.
Don’t lecture me
.

AmyHaskel:
This? This right here? It’s why I didn’t want to talk about it.

DinkStover:
Okay. I’ll just assume it’s the three, then.

The three? The three what? Were we each supposed to start from a list of three and pare down? Josh hadn’t mentioned that this evening, but maybe that’s because everyone else knew how it worked. After all, they’d been part of the whole winnowing-down process. But if that was the case, why would Malcolm have had to pick me last year? After the whole debacle with Genevieve, couldn’t he have gone to either of his two backups? Or was I always a backup, and it was standard procedure to keep us thoroughly in the dark as to our status? I hesitated, then began to type.

AmyHaskel:
Probably going to regret this, but what’s “the three”?

DinkStover:
The three people I already know you have on your short list.

AmyHaskel:
And who, pray tell, would they be?

DinkStover:
The usual suspects: EIC of the Eli Daily News, managing ed. of same, and, because it’s you, the EIC of the Lit Mag.

AmyHaskel:
Oh. Those.

Of course that was how it would work. Rose & Grave always tried to tap either the editor-in-chief or the managing editor of the
Daily
. They were probably sitting at home expecting the little white and black envelope to slide under their door any minute. And though I’d never had a moment’s experience in campus journalism, I’d be expected to tap one of them to replace me. This was the system.

I didn’t know the editor-in-chief at all, though I’d read a few of her columns, and her name was either a point of envy or a punch line in my suite (depending on how many Gumdrop Drop shots we’d imbibed): Kalani Leto-Taube. Her reputation was one of accomplishment and elegance, and her position ought to belong on the top of any short list I made. Rose & Grave hadn’t gotten the EIC last year. I could fix that.

The managing editor I knew, to my chagrin. Topher Cox. He’d drunkenly hit on me in Cambridge at The Game during my junior year. Between the Andover T-shirt and the sloppy leer, I’d been sure he was from Harvard. It was Glenda, my predecessor at the Lit Mag, who’d explained to me that he was the resident golden boy over there at the castle-like headquarters of the
Eli Daily News
.

A son of Eli. One of our own. And if I followed standard Digger M.O., he’d be another of me.

Page 22

AmyHaskel:
I’m supposed to pick a girl.

DinkStover:
Is that how you guys are working it? All the girls pick girls?

AmyHaskel:
Are you going to keep *bugging* me until I tell you everything?

DinkStover:
We have ways of making you talk, Miss Haskel.

I laughed and typed
wish you were here
. But I didn’t press
Send
. Some circumspect backspacing later, I typed:

AmyHaskel:
You bring up an interesting point. What if our perfect tap is the wrong gender for our assignment?

DinkStover:
You have to find a way to work it out. Your perfect tap might be the wrong gender, or might be abroad and unreachable, or might not be interested in joining. We don’t all get our perfect taps.

AmyHaskel:
True. Malcolm didn’t.

DinkStover:
Malcolm did okay for himself.

AmyHaskel:
Oh, so *now* you’re okay with it?

DinkStover:
You know I am.

I wondered what Jamie would have done had he drawn a girl marble last year. Actually, wait …

AmyHaskel:
Who is your little sib? Mara?

DinkStover:
No.

AmyHaskel:
Who?

There was a long silence. Jamie was probably trying to figure out the best way to scold me for my lack of observance. Maybe if I were a really good Digger, I’d have memorized the line of succession of every knight back to 1832. I’m sure he had. I didn’t even know who’d tapped Malcolm, my own big sib. Then again, I’d actively avoided Jamie for the first few months of our acquaintance. It wasn’t like I spent much time seeking out the company of either him or the people in the club he’d be most likely to hang out with.

DinkStover:
George was my tap, Amy.

I blinked at the screen. I was clearly up too late. That made no sense. They never hung out. They weren’t anything alike: Not in background, not in personality, not in interests or majors—the only thing George and Jamie had in common was … well, me.

AmyHaskel:
I didn’t know that.

DinkStover:
Now you do.

What was the correct response here?
I’m sorry you tapped someone I later slept with before I
started liking, let alone
dating
you, with whom I have not slept?

Page 23

Way to nail the issue, Amy. But still, I had to say something; the silence on the screen was turning fatal.

The cursor blinked at me like a ticking time bomb.

AmyHaskel:
You don’t like him.

Probably never had, not even last spring. George Harrison Prescott had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, then with the triple threat of his looks, his entirely decent brains, and his significant charm, received the rest of his life on a matching silver platter. He’d never had to work for anything. Not Eli, not girls, and not Rose & Grave. Last spring, Jamie’s class had practically forced the tap upon him. As George was a legacy of one of their most supportive patriarchs, his membership was an absolute must.

At the meeting, George had mentioned that his big sib’s constant presence “cramped his style.” No kidding. No wonder I hadn’t seen them together much. George and Jamie clearly did not have the same kind of relationship that I had with Malcolm.

Jamie hadn’t yet answered me. Maybe George hadn’t been the only one forced that particular Tap Night. And maybe this was not the conversation to have over IM.

AmyHaskel:
You know, sitting in stony silence loses some of its punch over IM. I just assume your Internet connection blinked out.

DinkStover:
Curses.

AmyHaskel:
I’m going to hit the sack, I think. You coming tomorrow?

DinkStover:
We’ll see.

AmyHaskel:
I want to see you, either way.

He was quiet, and I pictured him in his lonely apartment halfway across town, sitting on his couch, shirt off (hey, a girl can dream) and looking at those words on his screen. I smiled.

DinkStover:
You will. Good night, Amy.

AmyHaskel:
Night, Pajamie.

Alone in bed as the garbage trucks and street sweepers heralded the morning in the road beyond the boundaries of Prescott College, I thought about all the times that I’d gone to Malcolm while navigating some of the more confusing elements of society membership. Had George done the same?

Hey, Jamie, I was wondering what you think about this? The other day, Amy and I had quite a lot
of sex in the abandoned tomb. We even did it in the Inner Temple. Is that okay?

What had I gotten myself into?

The next evening, the club convened to work out the details. At dinner, Soze expressed his fervent wish that yesterday’s debate was well and truly behind us, and that the remainder of the tap process would run

“smoothly and harmoniously.”

Poor, naive little boy.

Page 24

Though we’d all arrived toting our short lists, as requested in Soze’s e-mail that morning, it was anything but the simple, straightforward process our dear secretary had been hoping for.

Recounting in detail may make my brain explode, and I need that to graduate. So here are the lowlights:
1)
At least three of the knights already wanted to be released from their marble-mandated gender assignments. Including Thorndike.

2)
Some knights’ short lists were anything but. For instance, Frodo had placed every pitch of the eleven all-male singing groups on campus (and a healthy handful of talented tenors outside the a capella sphere) on his. “Look at it this way,” he’d said by way of explanation, “half of these guys are going to join the Whizzbangs anyway. So that cuts the potential to actually get them down a lot.”2*

3)
On the flip side, some lists were deemed too short (mine, which had only the “three” that Poe had suggested), or were generally too inappropriate or too dadaist altogether. Puck’s latest attempt at rebellion was to introduce his list with the following: “After long consideration, I have decided that no one currently on campus meets the proper specifications to take my rightful place in the society. Therefore, I submit the following proposal: I desire that the full weight of Digger influence be deployed to encourage at least one, if not more, of the following persons to matriculate to Eli within the next month: Samuel L.

Jackson, Richard Branson, or Hunter S. Thompson.”

“Hunter S. Thompson is dead,” Bond pointed out.

“Fine.” Puck consulted his alternates. “Prince Harry of Windsor will do.”

I blinked, trying to imagine the list that contained both deceased gonzo journalists and tabloid-fodder British royalty. To be perfectly honest, Harry wasn’t a half-bad choice.

4)
Worst of all, Poe sat through the whole meeting and opened his mouth only to take another sip of coffee. He didn’t even look at me while George made his ridiculous pronouncement about who was worthy of replacing him (though I definitely stared at Poe enough to gauge his reaction: not amused).

His poker face remained firmly in place no matter how heated the debate grew, and he declined to offer advice about any of our lists or suggestions, despite the frequency with which the other Diggers and I looked to him for an opinion—even a tacit one.

I would have called him on it, but a public squabble with my new society-incest boyfriend was hardly going to lessen the tension within the tomb. Besides, I knew enough by now to figure out that when Poe bothered to keep his opinions to himself, it was because he was armed with a weapon of mass destruction. Whatever he said would likely devastate us. “Walk softly and carry a big stick” was practically engraved over his heart.