About as much as I wanted to dress in head-to-toe sulfur. “Pass.” I made a face. “What would possess you to spend a beautiful Friday night watching something so depressing?”

“You have a better idea?”

I leaned against the counter, regarding my very best friend. Any other night, I would. We could pick up some smoothies and sneak them into the campus movie theater to avoid the overpriced refreshments they used to balance out the el cheapo entrance fees. We could order pizzas and spend the night watching the Meg Ryan oeuvre on Lydia’s twelve-inch set. We could run down to the CVS, stock up on nail polish, and have a pedicure party. We could grab that Finlandia Mango bottle and a bag of gumdrops, get drunk, drop the weird tension that had permeated our friendship since Tap Night, stop acting like children, and tell each other exactly what was going on with these secret societies we were joining.

But I wanted Lydia to go first.

“Not really,” I replied. And on a scale of 1 to maturity, I’d call that a 2.3.

Lydia held one of my shirts up to her chest and checked out her reflection. “Yellow does nothing for my complexion.”

“Yeah, but you look great in that blue silk blouse of mine that you’ve had for—what, five weeks?” It very much suited her Black Irish looks. I took off my watch, wondering if the Diggers were going to do something weird and magnetic to me. No metal? I was lucky I didn’t wear braces. I had half a mind to call Malcolm Cabot and ask him for wardrobe advice.

Lydia flopped back across my clothes. “Look who’s talking! I haven’t seen my red ankle boots since Spring Break.”

I ducked my head guiltily and unclasped my necklace. Those boots were at Brandon’s.

With all vestiges of metal removed, I headed back to my closet to find a pair of pants that didn’t need to fasten and still looked like something you’d wear outside the gym or the bedroom.

Lydia started rooting through my pile of discards. “What are you dressing for?”

Beats me. “I’m going out, and I’m not exactly sure where I’m going to end up, so I want to be prepared.”

She sat up. “Prepared? Are we talking society here?”

I rustled my clothes and pretended I didn’t hear her.

“Amy?”

Rustle, rustle, rustle. My velour loungewear? How come they never looked as good on me as they did on (a pre-pregnancy) Britney Spears?

“Amy?”

The corduroy skirt might work, but it was too short to do anything but sit or stand in. Somehow, I suspected the initiation would require a tad more.

“Neophyte Haskel?”

I snapped to attention and pulled out of the closet. Lydia had found my letter, and was reading it out loud. Appalled, I launched my body toward the bed. “Give me that!” Lydia rolled away and I landed with my face in a pile of winter sweaters.

She skipped across the room, giggling and reading in a creepy, Vincent Price–esque singsong. “ ‘Pass through the sacred pillars of Hercules and approach the Temple.’ Oooooh…This thing reads like an online Role-Playing Game.”

“Lydia, stop it!” I fought to untangle myself from the sleeves of my fleece.

Sighing, she tossed the letter in my direction. “Here, don’t have a coronary.”

I stuffed the letter in my desk and glared at her. “Are those like the instructions you got in your letter?” I asked with a sneer.

She looked away. “I can’t talk about that.”

“Oh, please! You’ve got to be joking!” I pointed at my desk drawer. “Is there any way on earth that your society could take things more seriously than mine?”

Oops. Her face turned hard. “And the true colors come out. Pardon me for intruding. I should have known a peon like me had no business invading the room of a high and mighty Digger.” She practically spat the word. At the door, she paused. “Don’t wear the velour,” she said coldly. “It makes your butt look huge.”

As luck would have it, I owned a pair of cargo pants with a drawstring waist and Velcro fastenings, and so, properly attired at last, I set forth to meet my destiny. At Whitney Tower, I hung out, periodically checking the time on the clock face and hoping I looked more casual than I felt. Five minutes after the Whitney Tower Carillon finished sounding off the eight o’clock hour, I did an about-face and marched toward the Rose & Grave tomb. I was determined not to repeat the mistakes of my interview—I wasn’t going to be late for initiation.

As I approached the tomb, I caught sight of another figure walking toward me from the south side of the street. Dammit. I couldn’t enter the Rose & Grave yard with someone standing right there watching me, could I? How did the members keep their secrets without a private entrance?

The figure passed beneath a sodium streetlight, and I could see it was a man. He wore a shiny black jacket festooned with more zippers than one reasonably expected to see on the average overcoat. I knew that jacket. It belonged to George Harrison Prescott.

“Heya, Amy!” he said as we met on the sidewalk directly in front of that hated wrought-iron gate. George rested his hand on it (as if it were just any gate and not the entrance to the Diggers’ tomb) and planted his feet directly in my path. “Whatcha up to?”

“Um…” I flickered my eyes toward the tomb. “Not much. You?”

“Same.” He winked at me, his gorgeous copper-penny eyes glinting even more from behind the shiny bronze rims of his glasses.

I clamped my thighs together, then prayed fervently that he didn’t notice. George Harrison Prescott was not only the most beautiful man in my class in Prescott College (and no, that’s not a coincidence about the names), he was also a Player with a capital “P.” Remember Marissa Corrs, who played opposite Orlando Bloom in that costume drama last year? Well, she recently took a leave of absence from Eli to concentrate on her acting career, but while she was here, guess whose room she was seen exiting every Sunday morning?

Yep. Chick could have had Orlando, but she chose George Harrison Prescott. Of course, if you squint your eyes a tad, George and Orlando could be twins, but for George’s glasses, which, as far as I’m concerned, make him ten times hotter.

Marissa was just one of many on what I’m sure is more like George Prescott’s Hit Dictionary. From what I’ve heard, George has slept with half of the straight and/or available women in Prescott College, and from what I know, the other half are impatiently waiting their turn.

Not me, of course! George and I are just friends. Acquaintances. The kind that nod in recognition when we pass each other on the street, or sit together in the Prescott dining hall when none of our other friends are around, chitchatting with each other in honor of class- and college-affiliation solidarity.

And if a girl indulges in the occasional sexual fantasy about accidentally stumbling into George Harrison Prescott’s bathroom while he’s in the shower—well, that’s no big deal, right?

“Headed home?” he asked, and I tried not to fixate on his mouth.

Since I was walking in the precise opposite direction of Prescott College, it struck me as a rather unusual question. “Nope.”

“Okay.” He smiled genially and neither of us moved an inch. At last, giving up, I sidestepped him and walked a few paces down the street.

George waved, but didn’t budge. By the time I reached the far corner and turned around, he’d taken a book of matches from his pocket and began striking them, one by one, and letting them burn down to his fingers before flicking the nubs to the curb.

I shook my head. Boys! Is it like a caveman thing to have to play with fire every chance they get? He looked ready to stand there doing his Prometheus act all night. How many times was I going to have to walk around the block before I got a clear shot at the tomb?