The air in the arena was cold and still. I blinked rapidly, my eyes struggling to adjust to the dark. There were others, I could hear them rustling, but the space around me was pitch-black.
Minutes passed in near silence. I waited and watched, gradually able to make out shapes in the darkness. People arrived in twos, one leading another to a spot on the stone steps. As more people arrived, the rustling got louder, but no one spoke.
Then out of the silence:
“Congratulations! The evaluation is over. The eleven of you have passed our test.” I recognized the voice of the serpent figure, mechanically distorted as before, but the air of formality was gone. His voice was kind and casual, familiar even, despite the distorted edge. “We know you have questions. Who are we, where are we, what’s with all the masks.” There were little bursts of nervous laughter in the darkness. “I promise you, all of your questions will be answered very soon. For now I can tell you this: we are hoi oligoi sophoi. The Wise Few. Or, simply, the Few.”
There was an explosion of light below as the stage lit up in a ring of fire. The serpent stood in the center, wearing an oversize gold crown. He reminded me of Prince John in the old Robin Hood cartoon, and I had to bite my lip not to laugh.
“You have been chosen,” the serpent declared, raising his voice over the crackle of the fire. “Now you must choose. If you join us, you will be asked to dedicate your lives to the service of others. To use your gifts for the betterment of mankind. You will be called to a grander, more significant purpose. To see the world not for what it is, but for what it could be.”
See the world for what it could be. That was exactly what the Doubt did. It gave you the eyes to see beyond the moment you were in. A grander, more significant purpose. Yes. That was what I wanted. To live for something other than myself.
“Initiation is in two days,” I heard the serpent say. “You have until then to decide. Choose wisely, friends.”
My right knee was throbbing. I was standing at the foot of my bed, holding a black velvet knapsack cinched shut with gold rope. My Gemini was lit up on my bed, my Notepad open on my screen:
Put ice on your knee.—L
I looked down at Hershey’s jeans. The right knee was scuffed with mud. Stepping out of my shoes, I yanked open the knapsack. Inside was a robe cut from crimson red velvet, a zeta symbol, and the number thirty embroidered in gold on the lapel. “Woo-hoo!” I yelled, doing an awkward victory dance.
I was in.
25
SUNDAY CRAWLED BY in a thick haze of anxiety, excitement, and hope. I was anxious about Griffin’s recovery, excited about initiation, and hopeful that Dr. Hildebrand would have the answers I so desperately needed. I spent the day on North’s couch, weeding through my schoolwork, surprised to hear that Hershey was all caught up on hers. She said she didn’t want to be behind when they let her back in. There was no “if” in Hershey’s mind. She was determined to be back at Theden in time for finals. It was still a little weird for me that she was staying at North’s apartment, knowing all that I did about how hard she’d come on to him the night they met, but she was out of money and didn’t have anywhere else to go, and North, being North, had invited her to stay. So for now she was a permanent fixture in his living room.
I forced myself to go back to campus on Sunday night for dinner. I’d run into Rachel and Izzy at brunch and they’d commented on how little they’d seen me. It wasn’t until they said it that I realized how much time I’d been spending at North’s. I hadn’t eaten dinner in the dining hall all week. There was no requirement that we eat on campus, but the Theden app tracked our dining hall check-ins, and I assumed that meant the administration was tracking them too. I didn’t need anyone asking questions about where I was spending my time. Now that we knew Tarsus was watching my every move, North and I were being careful to keep our relationship off her radar. He couldn’t afford to have someone looking too closely at his life. The facade he’d built was too thin.
Liam came up behind me at the pasta station. “Hey,” he said, reaching for a plate. “I need to ask you something.”
I slid my tray down to make room for his. “Okay.”
“That blanket on your bed,” he said in a low voice. “The one with the pink stitching. Where’d you get it?”
“My mom made it for me. Why?”
“Your mom,” he repeated. I nodded.
“It was my baby blanket,” I explained.
“It’s a Fibonacci spiral.”
“I know that,” I said, a little surprised that Liam did.
“Why would your mom sew a Fibonacci spiral onto a blanket?”
“I don’t know,” I told him. “She died when I was born. Why do you care so much?”
“Because the pattern on your blanket is the map of our tomb,” Liam replied, his voice even lower now.
I looked at him blankly. “Huh?”
“The society’s compound. Underneath the cemetery. It’s ten rooms, with Fibonacci proportions. Identical to your blanket.”
I dropped the tongs I was holding. They clattered onto the stainless steel counter. “Really?”
“Yeah. Of all the designs for her to put on that blanket, she picks that one?”
“My mom went here. She was in the society.”
Liam took a step back. “Your mom was one of the Few?”
I nodded. “Upsilon ’13.” I showed him my pendant. “This was hers. She left it for me. She didn’t break her vows or anything,” I said quickly.
“How come you never mentioned any of this be—” Liam stopped as Izzy stepped up to the fettuccini pan.
“Hey,” Izzy said, reaching for the tongs I’d dropped. “What’re y’all all hush-hush about?”
“Nothing,” Liam and I replied in unison. Izzy gave me a knowing smile.
“I’ll text you later,” Liam said, and walked off.
“He’s so your secret boyfriend,” Izzy squealed.
“No. He’s definitely not.”
Izzy pouted. “Well, boo. Then who is?”
“Still not telling people,” I said, wondering how long I could pull this off. Izzy was heaping fettuccini Alfredo onto her plate. Lux had definitely not sanctioned this meal. “Hey, did you preorder the Gold?” I asked her. The first shipments of the handhelds were supposed to arrive at the campus post office the next morning.
“Didn’t everybody?” was her reply. The answer was no, because I hadn’t. I didn’t want it anymore.
By lunchtime the next day I was in a very small minority. I hadn’t seen a single person on campus who didn’t have a Gold strapped to their wrist. According to the latest numbers, the tiny device had already broken the record for the fastest-selling handheld of all time. Two hundred million had already been shipped, and they were expecting to sell more than twice that over the next two days. That meant that more than half a billion people would be using the Gold by week’s end. Griffin was still in the hospital after his surgery, and Gnosis was milking that for all it was worth. The hashtag #GoldsForGriffin had been trending on Forum since Friday night, ever since Gnosis had promised to donate a percentage of the proceeds from Gold presales to stroke-prevention research.
I left after history to meet up with North. We were taking the one-fifteen train to Cambridge, hoping to catch Dr. Hildebrand on her way back from lunch. When I knocked on North’s door, Hershey answered, wearing skinny black pants and a V-neck cardigan that I’m pretty sure was intended to be worn with a T-shirt underneath. Hershey had opted for a lacy black bra.
“Don’t worry,” Hershey said when she saw my face. “This isn’t for your boyfriend, it’s for mine.” She stepped back to let me inside. “Yours is in his secret room.”