Secret Society Girl Read Online Free PDF

appeared to have finally found her tongue, for she leapt to her feet and began ushering him out the door. ―The lady says she‘s busy, Weare,‖ she said, crowding up on him. ―And much as we both like you, that means out. Now.‖

    ―But—‖ Brandon said, looking over his shoulder at me as Lydia hustled him out. I would have spoken up about the way she was manhandling my—well, my friend-with-bennies—but my mind was too busy doing round-off back handsprings and I was caressing that wax seal in my pocket like I was Frodo and it was the One Ring.

    ―Good night, Brandon!‖ I called as Lydia shoved him over the threshold and shut the door in his face. ―I‘ll call you tomorrow, I promise!‖

    She threw the lock and turned to me. ―Open it.‖

    I drew back, protecting my pocket. ―In front of you?‖

    ―I‘m your best friend!‖ she argued.

    I snorted. ―You‘ve been pulling a disappearing act all week! You won‘t tell me a thing about your society interview, and yet you think you get dibs on reading my letter?‖

    She thought about it for a second, then nodded. ―Yes!‖

    ―You show me yours, I‘ll show you mine.‖ I put my hands on my hips, realizing even as I did that I was leaving the envelope wide open for pickpockets.

    ―Fine,‖ Lydia said, stepping back. ―Be that way. I‘ll leave you alone with your precious envelope.‖ And then she turned, walked into her room, and shut the door, leaving me blinking at her whiteboard in surprise.

    That‘s not how I expected that to go at all. But I recovered a few seconds later, remembering that I still hadn‘t opened the envelope.

    I spent a good long time just staring at the seal. Would it crack when I opened it? I turned the paper over and over in my hands. Yep, that was my name, and yep, that was the Rose & Grave seal. And that was still my name.

    But Rose & Grave did not tap women.

    What the hell was going on?

    Finally, I carefully slipped my fingertips beneath the wax and popped it open in one piece. The envelope split on irregular lines, and unfolded into an odd, distorted hexagon. The words were written on the diagonal in a heavy, angular script, and this is what they said: B. S. C. *2 Amy Maureen Haskel:

    You have been judged and found worthy. Be in your room tonight at five minutes past eight o"clock and await further instructions.

    And then beneath that was the mark of Rose & Grave.

    I was being tapped by Rose & Grave!

    Oh wow. Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow. (As missives go, it wasn‘t too groundbreaking, but at the time I was over the moon.)

    I ran toward Lydia‘s bedroom, then skidded to a stop. Wait a second, I wasn‘t going to tell her anything until she shared with me.

    Brandon! I bet he‘d be back to his room by now. I could call—No, he‘d just finished telling me how Paleolithic he thought secret societies were, and Rose & Grave was the undisputed T-Rex of the country. They were old school and blue blood and their pedigreed members grew up to be Supreme Court Justices and CEOs and founders of major media conglomerates like AOL
    Time-Warner. Male ones.

    Could all of those rumors be wrong? Or worse, could this be someone‘s idea of a sick joke?
    Poor little Amy Haskel, didn‘t get an election, let‘s mess with her head. Such things had been known to happen before—of course, they tended to happen to gullible freshmen who didn‘t know any better. Every few years you heard stories about college pranksters dressing up in robes, kidnapping a gaggle of frosh, and putting them through all manner of humiliations in the guise of ―initiation.‖

    But really, wouldn‘t it be just as easy to fool an upper-classman? It wasn‘t as if I could ask a bunch of black-robed figures for ID when they showed up. As that Shadow-Who-Smiles guy had said to me at the interview, that‘s why they called it secret .

    I stabbed my hands into my hair in frustration. Why was there no information session on this?
    Why wasn‘t it covered in