Tap & Gown Read Online Free PDF Page B

tried to tap either the editor-in-chief or the managing editor of the Daily . They were probably sitting at home expecting the little white and black envelope to slide under their door any minute. And though I’d never had a moment’s experience in campus journalism, I’d be expected to tap one of them to replace me. This was the system.
    I didn’t know the editor-in-chief at all, though I’d read a few of her columns, and her name was either a point of envy or a punch line in my suite (depending on how many Gumdrop Drop shots we’d imbibed): Kalani Leto-Taube. Her reputation was one of accomplishment and elegance, and her position ought to belong on the top of any short list I made. Rose & Grave hadn’t gotten the EIC last year. I could fix that.
    The managing editor I knew, to my chagrin. Topher Cox. He’d drunkenly hit on me in Cambridge at The Game during my junior year. Between the Andover T-shirt and the sloppy leer, I’d been sure he was from Harvard. It was Glenda, my predecessor at the Lit Mag, who’d explained to me that he was the resident golden boy over there at the castle-like headquarters of the Eli Daily News .
    A son of Eli. One of our own. And if I followed standard Digger M.O., he’d be another of me.
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    AmyHaskel: I’m supposed to pick a girl.
    DinkStover: Is that how you guys are working it? All the girls pick girls?
    AmyHaskel: Are you going to keep *bugging* me until I tell you everything?
    DinkStover: We have ways of making you talk, Miss Haskel.
    I laughed and typed wish you were here . But I didn’t press Send . Some circumspect backspacing later, I typed:
    AmyHaskel: You bring up an interesting point. What if our perfect tap is the wrong gender for our assignment?
    DinkStover: You have to find a way to work it out. Your perfect tap might be the wrong gender, or might be abroad and unreachable, or might not be interested in joining. We don’t all get our perfect taps.
    AmyHaskel: True. Malcolm didn’t.
    DinkStover: Malcolm did okay for himself.
    AmyHaskel: Oh, so *now* you’re okay with it?
    DinkStover: You know I am.
    I wondered what Jamie would have done had he drawn a girl marble last year. Actually, wait …
    AmyHaskel: Who is your little sib? Mara?
    DinkStover: No.
    AmyHaskel: Who?
    There was a long silence. Jamie was probably trying to figure out the best way to scold me for my lack of observance. Maybe if I were a really good Digger, I’d have memorized the line of succession of every knight back to 1832. I’m sure he had. I didn’t even know who’d tapped Malcolm, my own big sib. Then again, I’d actively avoided Jamie for the first few months of our acquaintance. It wasn’t like I spent much time seeking out the company of either him or the people in the club he’d be most likely to hang out with.
    DinkStover: George was my tap, Amy.
    I blinked at the screen. I was clearly up too late. That made no sense. They never hung out. They weren’t anything alike: Not in background, not in personality, not in interests or majors—the only thing George and Jamie had in common was … well, me.
    AmyHaskel: I didn’t know that.
    DinkStover: Now you do.
    What was the correct response here? I’m sorry you tapped someone I later slept with before I started liking, let alone dating you, with whom I have not slept?
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    Way to nail the issue, Amy. But still, I had to say something; the silence on the screen was turning fatal.
    The cursor blinked at me like a ticking time bomb.
    AmyHaskel: You don’t like him.
    Probably never had, not even last spring. George Harrison Prescott had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, then with the triple threat of his looks, his entirely decent brains, and his significant charm, received the rest of his life on a matching silver platter. He’d never had to work for anything. Not Eli, not girls, and not Rose & Grave. Last spring, Jamie’s class had practically forced the tap upon him. As George was a legacy of one of their most