Chapter One
Thalia
I put my head down on my arms and groan.
“Come on,” commands Victoria from across the table. “You got this. You can do it.”
“We believe in you!” Harper adds, on my right. “Go, Thalia! Go! Go! Chug!”
“Chug?” asks Margaret, cool, calm, and collected on my left.
“Chug… knowledge?” Harper says. “Look, I’m just getting into the spirit of the thing.”
“You know, chug knowledge,” Victoria deadpans. “The common phrase that people say all the time?”
“See?” says Harper.
I lift my head, rest my chin on my arms, and look at Margaret again. She’s holding six fingers up in front of her face, the answer sheet in front of her, and trying not to laugh at Harper.
“Which ones do we have?” I ask.
Margaret clears her throat and looks down at our answer sheet.
“Chastity,” she starts. “The easy one.”
“Is it?” asks Victoria, and Margaret just grins.
“Charity,” she goes on. “Temperance.”
Harper snorts.
“Kindness, patience, and humility. Props to Victoria for coming up with that last one.”
“Thank you.”
Margaret and Victoria clink their glasses together, then each drink.
“I don’t know,” I tell them, carefully resting my forehead against my fist. “Fortitude? Is that a virtue?”
“It sounds like it could be,” Margaret says.
“Filling up the gas tank in a borrowed car,” I say, still staring at the tabletop, willing my brain to work better. “Picking up litter that isn’t even yours? Making more coffee if you take the last cup? Remembering to wipe the stove down after you do the dishes.”
“Pretty sure it’s gonna be one word,” Margaret says.
“I like fortitude,” Harper says. “It sounds right.”
“It’s not,” I say. “Arrrrrgh.”
Victoria puts her elbows down on the table, silver bracelets clanking, then leans toward me, her red lipstick bright against her ebony skin, her hair bouncing gently with the motion.
“Thalia,” she says, very, very seriously. “You attended twelve years of Catholic school.”
“Thirteen,” I correct.
“Thirteen years of Catholic school,” she says, not missing a beat. “Thirteen years of itchy wool skirts, ugly sweaters, and nuns. Thirteen years of getting your knuckles smacked by rulers. Thirteen years of no boys. And you know why?”
Victoria pauses dramatically. She’s got a flair for this sort of thing.
“Why?” I ask, totally drawn in.
“For this moment,” she goes on. “I don’t believe in coincidences, Thalia. You went to Catholic school for a reason, and that reason is this very bar trivia question.”
Victoria can sometimes get kind of intense after she’s had a few drinks, and that means she’s taking this bar trivia night really seriously.
“You have it in you,” she goes on. “I know you’ve got that seventh virtue knocking around somewhere in that brain of yours. Come on, Catholic school. Come on.”
“Come on, Catholic school!” Harper hoots, pumping one fist in the air.
She’s had a few more drinks than the rest of us. She’s the birthday girl, after all.
“Cath. Lick. School!” Harper says, slowly, pumping that fist. “Cath. Lick school! Come on!”
“Oh God,” I mutter.
“Ask for all the intercessions you want,” Victoria says, sitting back, spreading her hands wide. “Francis? Christopher? Mary, you up there? Help a girl out!”
Right above us, the speaker crackles.
“All right, you’ve got another sixty seconds to name as many of the seven virtues as you can for our free drink round!” the trivia host says. “Then it’s on to pop culture. Hope you’ve been paying attention to the movies this year!”
“Cath-lick school!” Harper says again, motioning for Margaret and Victoria to join in. “Come on! CATH-LICK SCHOOL!”
“CATH-LICK SCHOOL! CATH-LICK SCHOOL!”
Now all three are chanting. Margaret’s banging the table. I squeeze my eyes shut, fingers pinching the bridge of my nose.
Nothing.
I know I know it, but I can’t think of the seventh virtue to save my life.
Instead, I take a drink of my whiskey ginger.
Still nothing. I take another sip.
Maybe six is enough, I think. Do the other teams even know six virtues?
Six virtues are plenty, right?
I put my glass back down on the table.
As I do, the name of the seventh virtue hits me so hard I practically fall out of my chair, and I grab Margaret’s arm dramatically.
“DILIGENCE!” I whisper-shout, trying to keep the other trivia teams from overhearing me. “IT’S DILIGENCE. D-I-L-I—"
She’s already written it, because a pre-med college senior with a 3.9 GPA knows how to spell diligence.
Margaret jumps off her chair without another word, pen still in hand, waving our answer sheet as she makes her way toward the trivia night moderator.
“Go!” Harper shouts, unnecessarily.
“Is that it? You’re sure?” Victoria asks. “You’re totally sure?”
“I’m totally super sure,” I say, and drain my whiskey ginger in excitement. “Once I wrote a paper for tenth grade English and somehow only spell-checked the first half, and Sister Agatha called me in and lectured me about the virtue diligence, and God, she loved reminding me that a young lady could never have enough virtue —”
“Of course you can,” Harper says. She’s blue-eyed, blonde, and looks like she’d be hard-pressed to understand a complicated traffic light.