I was no closer to a scheme for sneaking off with Poe the following morning, and as the clock ticked on inexorably to breakfast time, I began to fret about my options.
1) Spend time with Poe
2) Spend time with my friends
3)…
I desperately needed a number three. Why was this always the choice when it came to guys? You could either avoid them and spend quality time with your girlfriends (who, let’s face it, have all had a longer shelf life than any of your romantic relationships), or you could ditch your friends and do the romance thing, thereby providing you with fodder for the very thing you and your friends spent the most time talking about: boys.
Look at the situation with Lydia. I had a hard enough time tolerating her joined-at-the-hipness with Josh, and I considered him a close personal friend. It was a lot harder to accept a friend’s ditching if you actively disapproved of the guy she was ditching you for.
And they would if they knew. I was glad we’d decided not to tell anyone. It was too new, for starters, and too amorphous. He wasn’t my boyfriend, wasn’t even my friend-with-benefits. How could I explain this whole development to them when I couldn’t even figure it out for myself? Plus, they’d all pretty much made their positions clear regarding society incest.
I watched the other girls as they got ready. Jennifer, clearly struck with a bit of hair envy since hers had yet to grow out of its pixie cut (which, if you ask me, suited her just fine, in a sort of Angelina Jolie-in-Hackers kind of way), was tying Clarissa’s blond tresses into something called a “Dutch braid.” Demetria was moaning about starvation and cursing the island policy of keeping food out of the cabins (and thus away from invading hordes of bugs).
None of them knew it, but I was once again living up to my society name: Bugaboo. Clarissa had been wrong. The Diggers weren’t devolving into a dating club. Just me. Demetria and Odile may have had a moment or two, but from what she said yesterday, it sounded a heck of a lot more chaste than my little shower encounter. And I had no idea what was going on with Jenny (not a new circumstance, to be sure), but whatever her feelings were for Harun (and vice versa), I doubted she’d acted upon them. No, it was just me who had dipped my toes into Rose & Grave waters, and was now blithely double-dipping. Not only was I the club conspiracy theorist, I was fast becoming the club slut as well.
“I can’t take it anymore! When’s breakfast?” Demetria said. “This is why I don’t live on campus. I like to eat when I want to eat, not sit around like a calf in a feedlot and wait for the dining halls to open.”
“Was that your first attempt at a barnyard metaphor?” Clarissa asked. “Because it wasn’t half bad.”
I doubted any of the three of them had actually seen a barnyard in their lives.
Jenny tied off the end of Clarissa’s hair. “This is why we have Starbucks.”
“We don’t have Starbucks on Cavador.” Demetria rolled off the bed and crossed to the dresser. “Whose mints are these? Can I have one?”
I looked up too late and saw that she was ripping open my Life Savers. Poe’s Life Savers.
“No!” I shouted. Demetria froze.
It was too late. They were open. Fourteen tiny little white rings exposed.
“I’m sorry,” Demetria said, her tone one of pure confusion. “Were you…saving these for something?”
“No,” I said quickly. “It’s fine, go ahead.” They were just mints. He hadn’t even bought them with me in mind. They weren’t a love token, weren’t something special. They were a joke. He’d been making fun of me. But they were also the first thing Poe had ever given me.
I didn’t watch as Demetria popped one in her mouth, but I heard, or thought I heard, a decided crunch as she crushed the ring between her teeth. She wasn’t even going to savor them.
Oh, for Pete’s sake. This was ridiculous. They were mints. I hopped to my feet and joined her by the dresser. I pulled another Life Saver out of the package and put it in my mouth, letting the menthol burn against my tongue. Just mints.
Demetria narrowed her eyes. “You okay?”
I ran my finger over the package, trying in vain to pat down the ragged ends of wax paper and foil. “Yeah, why?”
“’Cause you’re freaking me out.”
And a moment later, we both almost choked as a voice broke through the morning stillness. “All knights, to the tomb. All knights, to the tomb.”
Demetria laughed. “Okay, that’s gotta be the weirdest announcement anyone’s ever made over a P.A.”
And when we finished dressing and arrived at the tomb, it was to greet the solemn face of Salt, who frowned at us all. “It is my great regret to inform you,” he said, with vast solemnity, “that I have received a very disturbing report from my counterpart in New Haven.”
“What?” George said. “Has something happened to Hale?”
“No.” Man, could Salt draw it out or what? “According to my counterpart, alarm bells went off in the Inner Temple of the tomb yesterday evening at 7:45 P.M. Apparently, the Inner Temple was breached by an outsider.”
“Did they steal anything?” Ben asked. Somehow, he’d already snagged himself a cup of coffee and several of the other Diggers were giving it longing glances.
“No,” the caretaker announced. “The assailants, however, left a message.”
We all waited, breathless, until we became aware that Salt was not about to volunteer the particulars without sufficient setup.
“Let’s just call Hale and get the scoop,” Jenny whispered to me.
I clenched my jaw. This guy was unbelievable. “What did it say, Salt?” I prompted, and he practically giggled as he read:
“‘It’s not over. Dragon’s Head.’”
Well, Felicity had warned me that the feud hadn’t ended as a result of her bargain with “her boyfriend.” Just the campaign against me. And that note was a fair warning that though one battle had ended, the war was still raging. Now they’d breached the Inner Temple.
“How convenient for them that we’re not on campus,” Jenny said.
“Yeah,” Demetria replied. “Just like it was convenient for us in January.”
“But why didn’t they just steal something of ours?” I asked. “Then we’d be even!” Then we’d be forced to tell them about their stupid dragon.
“Maybe they’re planning something worse,” said Harun.
Ben shook his head. “So we’re getting it from two fronts now? A bunch of conspiracy theorists on our neighboring island, and another society back home?”
Harun looked at him with interest. “Actually, do any of us know they are conspiracy theorists on the other island? Maybe that’s Dragon’s Head, too. Maybe…”
And thus passed another day on Cavador Key. Breakfast in the morning, followed by me resisting a boat trip while the others commandeered the island’s craft to check out the neighboring island. (Report from George: “I don’t think Dragon’s Head members tend to be quite so counterculture as the guys we saw through the binoculars.” Retort from Demetria: “So counterculture to you is dreadlocks and facial piercings?”) A leisurely lunch, then an afternoon of intermittent siestas and sunbathing, during which time Poe spirited me away for another trip to the crescent beach to practice dog-paddling, floating on my back, and French kissing. (I’m much better at the latter, still suck at the first two.) A long dinner with lots of wine, and a late night campfire complete with marshmallows, hot rum drinks, hot dogs, and ghost stories. (Poe is an excellent storyteller, by the way. Even Jenny and Clarissa admitted to being impressed, and I was glad I had the heat from the fire to explain away my blush.) Still later, the four of us girls tripped back through the woods to our cabin, a little drunk on rum and feeling as relaxed as I could recall being since New Year’s Eve.
Way too early the following morning, we heard a distant, rhythmic thwapping, getting steadily louder and louder.