“Is there a problem?” Ariana asked.
“No. Of course not,” Quinn answered quickly. She knew that questioning orders would not be good for her position at APH, nor for her chances of making Stone and Grave the following year. “I’ll be right back.”
“Okay, what was that?” Tahira said as Quinn disappeared through the door. She shoved her hands into the pockets of her white coat, her diamond nose ring twinkling under the doorway light. “Lexa’s gonna freak.”
“No, she won’t,” Ariana said, holding herself against a cold breeze. “Things are different now.”
It was a simple statement for a simple truth. Tahira and Ariana were the onl
y two girls being initiated into Stone and Grave. During their pledge period, Ariana had grown close to Tahira. That made her part of the group, without question.
“If you say so,” Tahira said, looking less than confident for the first time since Ariana had met her.
“Here you go!” Quinn opened the door and handed Tahira a wax-paper bag full of pastry. “Anything else?” she asked, looking only at Tahira.
“No. That’ll be all,” Tahira said, amused.
Quinn smiled and went back inside, leaving Ariana and Tahira alone to stroll across campus.
“So, have I mentioned I’m totally jealous of you?” Tahira asked, shaking her wavy dark hair back as she peeked inside her pastry bag. “I would pretty much kill to have a single right now.”
Ariana bit down on her tongue to keep from laughing at the irony of that statement. “It is the greatest thing ever.”
“I’ll bet,” Tahira said, her dark eyes wide. “I love Allison, but if I could get her to disappear, I would. I need some more space. Back home I have an entire wing and my own pool. Here I don’t even have my own bathroom. Plus she’s been kind of pissy ever since she got thrown out of S and G. I mean, I was pissed too, you know, but at some point it’s just like . . . get over it already.”
“Totally,” Ariana replied. “Do you think she’s jealous of you?”
“She’s jealous of all of us,” Tahira confirmed. “Sometimes I think that if you don’t get in to S and G, you shouldn’t be allowed to live in Privilege House. I mean, it’s just so annoying. For both of us. There’s all this stuff I can’t talk about, and she’s irritated because she thinks I’m being a bad friend. It’s unnecessarily hard.”
Ariana smiled to herself, thinking how odd it was to be having a heart-to-heart with a girl who, just a couple of months ago, was her sworn enemy.“Maybe you two should just—”
Ariana’s advice died on her lips when she heard footsteps rushing up behind them. She glanced at Tahira, and they both froze.
Suddenly a thin black sack came down over Ariana’s head. Her heart fluttered with excitement as two firm hands gripped her arms and yanked her off the pathway into the evergreen bushes alongside.
This was it. Initiation.
“Let’s go, plebe,” a gruff voice growled in her ear.
Ariana’s shoes crunched over dried, dead grass, and the group stopped while someone opened a heavy, creaking door. As Ariana was manhandled down a set of shallow concrete steps, she was careful to maintain her balance to keep from tripping. Now that she and the other pledges knew that the Tombs were located in the basement of the APH library, being taken there under black hoods seemed pointless, but she understood that it was all part of the tradition. At the bottom of the steps she started to turn to the left, as usual, but this time, she was yanked to the right.
Okay. This was new. Ariana’s heart pounded in earnest as they shuffled along the concrete floor. The two Stone and Grave brothers who led her kept bumping into her hips as if they were hemmed in on both sides by a narrow hallway. They paused again, and frigid air rushed in all around her. There was a lot of whispering and shuffling, followed by a series of odd squeals and wails, like several rusty latches opening. Ariana’s throat was dry.
Finally, Ariana was shoved forward, and the brothers let go. Wherever they had left her, it was freezing. Her wool coat did nothing to ward off the chill. Then someone came forward and ripped that coat off her shoulders.
“Strip!” dozens of voices shouted.
“Here we go.”
Ariana recognized Jasper’s voice. He must have been mere inches from her in the darkness.
“Strip!” the brothers shouted again.
Shaking, Ariana removed her heeled boots and unbuttoned her jeans. As she bent to tug them off her heels, she bumped into Jasper and staggered forward. Goosebumps popped up all over her legs as she fought for her footing. She took a breath. So what if dozens of her friends were watching this ridiculous, humiliating display? So what if they were laughing at her in the dark? It was all for a good cause. Removing her V-neck cashmere sweater without taking her black hood with it proved to be a bit more difficult, but she managed, dropping the sweater on the ground at her feet. As soon as she was down to her bra and underwear, someone stepped forward and brought a familiarly itchy burlap sack down over her head, cinching it around her waist with a rope.
She was dying to scratch the openings around her neck and elbows. But she knew better than to move.
Just breathe, she told herself. This will be the last time you have to wear this thing.