“But, Lydia—the blood…the feathers…”

She ducked her head sheepishly. “Yeah, I think I went a little overboard. Still, you believed it. And it was kind of fun, having you think I was in an even more intense society than you were.”

“What I was thinking,” I corrected, “was that whoever those bastards were, they were hurting you. Nothing about it was fun.”

“That dawned on me pretty quickly. Also, the whole ruse became tiresome. Lying sucks because it’s much harder to remember. And it’s completely ruined my social life, too. All our friends go out on Thursday and I’m stuck at home because I’m terrified people will say something in front of you about how I was at a bar with Carol or something. I can’t even eat in the Prescott Dining Hall. I go someplace where no one knows me.” She laughed. “I was almost relieved when Josh and I started dating. It was pretty obvious he was in a society, so at least I didn’t have to come up with another excuse.”

Unbelievable.

“And I started to recognize that I’d been acting a little crazy.” (A little, she says.) “None of it seemed important after all the hype of Tap Night was over. But I’d built such a story, I couldn’t just abandon it. It’s what I’d always imagined for myself. I’d go to Eli, get tapped by a society, graduate into the exalted ranks of the Bilderberg Group.”

“The who?”

She blinked at me. “You’re serious? What kind of Digger are you?”

I shrugged. The bugaboo kind.

Lydia went on. “This fall, after I got into Phi Beta Kappa, I realized exactly how foolish I’d been. Here I was, in a real honor society, the oldest in the country, and I was whining about some stupid frat.”

“They’re not stu-…” I shut my mouth. Well, who was I to speak on that subject tonight? Occasionally, they were incredibly stupid. “If you were so over it, then why did you get mad at Josh when you found out his society was Rose & Grave?”

“Because you two had been pretending you didn’t know each other. You played me so well.” She started doodling on the cover of one of her notebooks. “It’s fine, though. I understand now that you guys weren’t talking about me behind my back.”

This was crazy. We’d been so worried about her and all the time she was making shit up? “Last night, you told Josh about how your fake society had been beating you and sticking pins in your skin.”

“He told you about that?” She smirked. “I guess I spoke a little soon about all the not-talking-about-me-behind-my-back. And it wasn’t me. It was the fake swim team members in my fake society. But yeah, it got out of hand. It seemed like he wanted to talk about society stuff. Whatever hard time you guys were having, he just needed to vent a little. And I couldn’t let him do it without giving him something in return.”

“What did he tell you?”

“Nothing damning, I swear!” She tilted her head to the side. “Look at you, so loyal. I promise, he didn’t tell me anything. Just that he was really stressed, didn’t know how things would turn out, stuff like that. It wasn’t really the time to come clean about my…um, tall tales. He needed me to be there for him. He can trust me. You both can.”

“So you told him your society was torturing you to make him feel a little better about what was happening with his?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

The truth was, it was so adorable and so twisted that I couldn’t even condemn her for it. “But now the truth is out.”

“Yes. And, Amy, I’m so relieved. The more involved my lie became, the more I felt like I was living in a bad sitcom. It’s so embarrassing. Please forgive me.”

“You’re forgiven,” I said instantly. “I’m not even going to ask you where you got those feathers.” Lydia’s society research left much to be desired. Where had she gotten her information?

“Old pillow.” She looked at me through her bangs. “Will you let me tell Josh myself?”

I hugged her. “Gladly.” Lydia’s transgressions were minor in the scheme of things. Bizarre, to be sure, but ultimately harmless. Except, perhaps, to old pillows. A week ago, this might have put a pretty bad dent in our friendship. Now it seemed like little more than a foible. I couldn’t afford to lose another friend. At this rate, who knew what kind of perspectives I’d be able to entertain by Winter Break? Still, I didn’t want to be anywhere near Josh when he heard this one. “Though, if you want my opinion, his plate’s a little full right now. Might want to wait a few days.”

“Yes. Of course I will.” Lydia pulled back and examined my face. “Amy…is everything going to be all right?”

I couldn’t say yes. I couldn’t say no. I couldn’t even say I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you. Not after the heaping spoonful of truth Lydia had just served me. The dam broke and tears started rolling down my cheeks. I watched Lydia’s eyes grow wide as deep, heaving sobs rumbled their way up through my chest. She started holding me again and I cried, and cried, and cried. I cried until there were wet spots all over her shirt and my eyeballs felt like mosquito bites and my sinuses like cake batter.

Oh, thank God! I’d been waiting for this for days. I’d held out through the fights with Josh, Jenny’s disappearance, no one trusting me, arguing with Poe, staying up all night, fighting with Poe in the city, dealing with Jenny, dealing with Elysion, dealing with George, dealing with Poe, dealing with dealing with dealing with. I was so sick of it. The tears were like vomit, like poison. I wanted this pain out of my system. I didn’t care. No more secrets. No more Rose & Grave. What kind of knight was I?

“Oh, God, Amy, don’t tell me they’re flogging you!” Lydia said as the waterworks stretched on.

“You’d think,” I sobbed. “Maybe they should. We messed it up. The alums said we would, that we women would ruin it, and they were right. It’s over, Lydia. You should be very impressed with your roommate. I’m a goddess of destruction. I’m Medusa. I’m Kali.”

“You’re freaking me out is what you are. Calm down.” She pushed some hair out of my eyes. “I don’t even understand you. Is this some sort of society jargon?”

No. The Diggers had an entirely different pantheon in mind. “It’s been very difficult this semester. I thought we were all on the same page, but apparently no one agrees on what we’re really supposed to be about. Are we the sum of our traditions, even if those traditions suck? Or are we whatever the traditions were put there to protect?” I knew I was being too vague to get any real answer out of my best friend, but I was trapped by my vows of secrecy. Even now, I cared. “It’s just really tough, because the decisions of last year’s club blew apart the image of what the society has been…forever. And now we don’t know what we’re supposed to be.”

“Do you really believe that?” she asked. “That they’ve always been the same thing?”

“Sort of.” Though, come to think of it, those industrial barons and plantation gentry of the mid-1800s were hardly the kind of diverse population on the roster today. They’d even survived the infighting faction of Elysion once before.

“Here’s a little lesson you learn in Poli-Sci,” Lydia said. “Nothing is ever as stable as you think it is. What they called Republicans became Democrats who became Republicans who ended up deeding their ideology to Democrats….”

“I think I remember failing that quiz in A.P. History,” I said.

“The point is, every generation chooses its own image, regardless of the mandates of whoever came before. You have to, or you’d lose all relevance.”

“How much relevance can we have in a tomb, in silly costumes, singing old songs?”

“How much relevance do we have sitting here, in a 1930s rip-off of a medieval cathedral, surrounded by card catalogs?” She smiled. “Those are simply the trappings. The real tradition is us—the latest in the long line of students with the privilege of receiving our education at one of the greatest universities in the nation. And I don’t know about you, but I’m not here to look pretty. The tradition I’m interested in upholding is the pursuit of academic excellence. Therefore, it follows that it may be a great honor to be tapped into Rose & Grave, but it’s an even bigger honor to be granted the responsibility of keeping it going.”