“I’m sorry.” For lack of anything better to say.

“And I’m a conduit.” He laughed without mirth. “They come to drop me off or pick me up at one of our houses, take one look at each other, and boom.”

Boom?

George filled in the blanks. “Until about five years ago, they used to fuck regularly.”

What, and leave little Georgie standing in the kitchen? “What happened five years ago?”

“Dad got married.” George stood, checked the street. “Now it’s only semi-regularly.”

I dropped to the bench, too shocked to speak.

He looked back at me, grimaced, and raked his hand through his hair. “I have no clue why I’m telling you all this. Guess the Digger bonding thing is starting already.”

Like Malcolm. “The Digger bonding thing where you tell your brothers all your deep dark secrets?”

“Yeah. Or my sister, in this case. At this rate, I’ll have nothing left for my C.B.”

I stood. “I have a tough time believing that about you, George.” I stood very close to him in the confines of the alcove. Perhaps too close.

His eyes widened behind his glasses, as if he was surprised to hear his reputation thrown back at him. Yep, definitely too close. He put his hand up to mine. And palm to palm is holy palmer’s kiss. If he were an English major, I would have suspected he’d done it on purpose. Maybe he had. Unlike with Brandon, I couldn’t read George at all.

TWO THINGS HE MIGHT BE THINKING

1) Oh, look, it’s Amy. She’s cute and smart and funny.

2) Oh, look, it’s a girl in a dark corner. Haven’t done her yet.

I took a breath. “The coast is clear now, right?”

He nodded, slowly, and we spilled out into the relative brightness of sodium streetlights.

As we walked down the slate-lined alley between Hartford and Calvin Colleges, we said very little. George, I think, was still shell-shocked over his own gut-spill and I was busy contemplating if I should reciprocate. But what should I say? My parents were happily married, and rarely fought about anything more serious than whether to hire the kid down the street to cut the lawn or do it themselves. That would go over well. Or should I share something darker? The time last year that I slept with a boy whose name I can’t remember? Would that make me sound like a slut?

We hit High Street and turned toward the tomb, still in mutual silence. The gate was closed, and George held it open for me—after we both checked to see that no one stood on the street. “Guess no one is inside,” he said, referring to the gate-position code.

We were about to find out why.

He jogged up the front steps to the main entrance and froze. When I arrived a moment later, contemplating how dangerous it would be to hang out inside Rose & Grave alone with George Harrison Prescott, I was similarly struck.

The doors had been chained and padlocked together.

9. The Backlash

In retrospect, we should have gone to Malcolm or one of the other seniors right away, but we didn’t. After all, we were new at all of this Digger stuff. How were we supposed to know that the padlock was a recent addition to the look of the tomb? I remember reflecting to George at the time that perhaps the caretaker always padlocked it on the days when there were no formal events planned. But when we went around to the side entrance, there was a chain there, too, and neither of us knew where we might obtain the keys.

“We could knock,” George suggested, but didn’t move to do so. I was relieved to see my hesitation echoed in someone who had been more thoroughly versed in the mores of the society. Even though I’d spent hours inside the tomb yesterday, taking oaths and learning secrets, the same unease about the property that had been cultivated in the last three years still held power over me. I felt, almost, that I didn’t belong on the site.

Which, it turns out, is exactly how they wanted me to feel.

Our plans to hang out in the tomb thwarted, we walked down to Lenny’s Lunch, which holds the distinction of having the most batshit hours of any restaurant in New Haven. Really, you never know when it’s going to be open. The hours are something like 11 A.M.–3:15 P.M. on Monday, noon–2 P.M. Tuesday, 7–9:30 P.M. Thursday–Friday, and noon–midnight on Saturday. I kid you not (and no, do not hold me responsible for any of these hours. I honestly have no clue when they are open). Plus, there’s only one thing on the menu—cheeseburgers on toast with onions and tomato—and the proprietor will kick you out if you ask for ketchup. But if you learn the rules, in a sort of “Seinfeld soup-Nazi” way, they make awesome cheeseburgers. (And only cheeseburgers, by the way, not hamburgers. Woe betide the lactose-intolerant.)

We settled into the ancient wooden booths and waited for our food. Over the decades, people had carved encyclopedias’ worth of personal histories into the tops and sides of the tables and benches (the bottoms were something you stayed away from if you wanted to keep your appetite). Hearts, crests, quotes from Shakespeare and Stalin—anything goes at Lenny’s Lunch. I rubbed the condensation from my bottle of birch beer and polished a carving that read “B + A 1956.”

Those are very common initials.

George and I ate our cheeseburgers without ketchup, drank our pops, and talked about movies. We didn’t discuss his family, or mine, or the strange locks on the tomb door. The buzz of vodka was finally fading, and I kept my hand over the carving as I ate. George Harrison Prescott was a very attractive man, but I had no interest in contributing to his already stellar track record.

“What are you doing this summer?” George asked.

“I’ve got an internship at Horton. The publishing company?” A pat of cheese plopped from my burger to the wrapper. Smooth, Amy, smooth.

“In New York? Cool.” He twirled his bottle around by the stem. “I’m going to Europe for a few weeks right after exams, and then I’ll probably work for my dad in the city. We should hang out.”

“Do you know what you want to do after graduation?”

He shrugged. “One of the three big ones: I-banking, consulting, law school.”

“No preference?”

He shrugged. “Not really. Tell me, is this your first publishing internship?”

“In New York, yeah. I worked at the Eli Press a few summers back.”

“Well, then you’re well positioned to get a job when you graduate. I wish I’d been thinking that far ahead.”

See, that’s the dirty little secret they never tell anyone. When I first came to Eli, I thought that I’d have employers falling all over me upon graduation, just dying to hire someone with an Ivy League degree. When you’re signing your life away to Sallie Mae, the schools stress how fabulous a reputation they have, how it will open all sorts of doors for you. But once you’re in the thick of your education, you learn otherwise. You aren’t a made man (or woman) just because your diploma bears the Eli seal.

PEOPLE WHODO CARE

1) Investment banking and consulting firms where they can charge their clients through the nose since they’re providing Ivy League pedigreed staff (which they proceed to chew up and spit out).

2) Law schools whose rankings are partially based on the credentials of the schools from which they cull their students.

3) Your great-aunt Amelia, who likes to brag to the folks at the VFW.

If you want a job that leads to a career rather than a quick buck, then you’d better have a pretty full resume by the time you get your diploma.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “You’ll be making lots more money as a consultant than I will as an editorial assistant. You’ll be a better brochure statistic by far.”