That night Amystays with a friend and Zee with Trey. Unwilling to stay in by myself, I go to Liam’s room. Knock on the door.
Liam answers with a look of surprise, sleepy and shirtless in the doorway. I try not to look down at the lines of his muscularstomach, or the V trailing from each hip down to his sweatpants. “Hey,” I say.
His face relaxes and one side of his mouth tips up in a grin that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “You have no idea how much I’ve missed you.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Maya
November 2011
It was the day ofmy initiation into Sterling Club, and outside our window, downy flakes of snow drifted from a starless sky. Since Lila’s warning, anxiety had grown steadily within me. What was she warning me away from? And why didn’t Daisy want me to talk about it?
I’d shown Daisy the note when we were getting ready.
“Who wrote that?” Daisy’s eyes had narrowed as she’d read it a second time.
I’d shrugged. “It was tucked into my book.”
“You sure no one else was around?”
I’d shaken my head. For some reason, I hadn’t wanted to tell her it was Lila. Daisy had stared at me with a strange look in her eyes, and I’d been torn as to whether to laugh or feel unsettled. But before I could ask anything else, she’d torn the paper and told me not to bring it up again.
—
Now, as moonlightpooled against the snow-covered grounds on our way to Sterling Club, Daisy’s strange reaction surfaced in my thoughts again. “Hey, can I ask you something?”
Daisy was walking quickly. Though I was the one being initiated tonight, she’d been on edge all day. “Of course!”
“All of you talk about Sterling like it’s perfect…but it can’t be, right? I mean, nothing is ever really perfect.”
She slowed her pace to a walk and glanced at me as if decidingwhether to tell me the truth. Eventually she spoke. “Well, like anything, there are pros and cons. Once you’re in, you’re in for life…and that can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how you look at it. Nothing is free, and the life Sterling gives to its alumni has a price too. We get all this: connections, jobs…Think of it as an early favor you spend the rest of your life repaying. That’s what makes the whole thing so successful.” There was something dark about her expression, but in an instant, it was gone.
My apprehension rose as the eating clubs came into view. I got the strange sensation of eyes on me and glanced up to find a monkey gargoyle staring down at us. “That note…whoever wrote it seemed like they were warning me not to join.”
“It was probably just a stupid joke, some idiot that’s jealous you’re getting initiated into Sterling and they’re not,” she replied, but there was a quality to her voice that made me think she was withholding something.
When we paused at the last stoplight, Daisy turned to me. She checked to make sure no one was around before leaning in close. “Okay, so there’s something you need to know before we go in. Greystone Society operates from within Sterling Club.”
I stared at her, the hairs on the back of my neck rising. I’d heard whispers about Greystone Society ever since I came to campus, that it held the same level of prestige that Skull and Bones did at Yale. But I thought it was an urban legend. I thought Princeton didn’t have secret societies.
“I thought they dissolved when the university banned them?”
She shook her head. “Maya, what do you think eating clubs are if not just rebranded secret societies? They were banned like a hundred and fifty years ago when one of them set fire to Nassau Hall, but as always, someone’s daddy got involved—and his friends, powerful alumni—and got the school to approve a group of students who wanted to form aneating club,with known membership. That first club was Ivy.” The light had changed and Daisy surged across the street. “Since then, eating clubs have been sanctioned and supported by the university. But a fewsecretsocieties never disbanded. They still operate, sheltered within the clubs.”
She explained the rest as we hurried toward Sterling initiation,her words swirling between us along with the snow the rest of the way there.
—
“You excited?” Daisyasked, when we finally arrived. She removed her snow-covered gloves as we stepped across the threshold into Sterling. It was like stepping into a warm embrace, melting the snow from our coats.
WasI excited? I pushed what Daisy had just told me from my mind and came back to myself. I should be excited. I’d wanted this so badly, and now I was here. When I saw the members gathered in the front hall, on the leather couches, spilling up the stairs, I began to wonder…which of them could be in the society? What qualified you to be in the innermost circle of this already exclusive space?
Outside was below freezing, and by contrast, the front hall of the club felt like a furnace. There were at least a hundred of us packed in the space as flickering taper candles tossed shadows across the walls. The intensity in the room felt like a held breath, and I was immediately put on edge. Perhaps it was the members’ glowing faces, their unblemished skin and unnatural symmetry.
Lila’s warning surfaced in my thoughts again. A whisper, louder this time:Get out while you can. GET OUT!Did I really understand what I was signing up for with Sterling? Nearly everyone else around me was a legacy. They knew what to expect, but did I?
The candles shuddered as an icy draft sneaked in through the door.
