Diana Peterfreund - Ivy League 3 Rites of Spring

Acknowledgments

FOLKS ID LIKE TO THANK

1) The readers of Secret Society Girl and Under the Rose

2) The Venerable M.A.E., footnoter extraordinaire

3) Tracy Devine, master titler

4) Pam Feinstein, Lynn Andreozzi, Carol Russo, and all the others on the Bantam Dell Team

5) Deidre Knight (and the gang at TKA), who always rooted for Poe

6) The Sistahs, TARA, WRW, CLWOW, and the Non-Bombs, for being the only societies I need

7) Holly Black, Libba Bray, Cecil Castellucci, Margaret Crocker, Cassandra Clare, Maureen Johnson, Jaida Jones, and Justine Larbalestier, for the (in)sanity

8) Marley Gibson and Cheryl Wilson, who always have my back

9) Erica Ridley and Carrie Ryan, for screaming in text and in person at the shower scene

10) Julie Leto, who saved my storyline

11) The bloggers, blog readers, and lurkers galore

12) My family, family-in-law, and friends

13) Fellow sons and daughters of Eli

14) Those fabulous secret sources

15) My husband (!!!)

Also by Diana Peterfreund

S ECRET S OCIETY G IRL

U NDER THE R OSE

About the Author

DIANA PETERFREUND graduated from Yale University in 2001 with degrees in geology and literature. A former food critic, she now resides in Washington, D.C. Her previous two novels, Secret Society Girl and Under the Rose, are available now from Delta. Visit the authors website at:

http://www.dianapeterfreund.com.

AND WATCH FOR

The Conclusion of Diana Peterfreunds
Secret Society Girl Series

On Sale Summer 2009

Please turn the page for a special advance preview.

I hereby confess:
Everyone wants
to be one of us.

You arrived in a state of awe, of wonderment. Maybe youre the latest in a long line of your family members to matriculate to our fine university. Maybe youre a celebrity, or foreign royalty, or a sports star, or a genius at the near-lost art of lute playing. Maybe youre a Westinghouse scholar; a national debate champion; or the valedictorian of your elite, East Coast boarding school where your name was on the register from the moment you were born. Or maybe youre none of the above. Perhaps youre just handy with the SATs, rocked grades nine to twelve, and charmed the heck out of the middle-aged lawyer who interviewed you one evening in his satellite office on behalf of his alma mater. Whatever way it happened, you ended up at Eli.

And from the moment you stepped on campus, you heard about us.

For all that we were secret, we remained one of the constants of your college career. You could hardly get to your dorm freshman year without passing our tomb. And you wondered, even if you wouldnt admit it to your roommates or your singing group friends or your lab partner, what it would be like to be one of us. What we did at our weekly meetingssequestered, sacrosanct, silent except for the occasional scream.

You hoped that someday youd find out.

The season is upon us. We, the members of Rose & Grave D177, are graduating and are thusly charged with the tapping of new souls to fill our robes, take up the torch of our traditions, and stand beside us as members of this illustrious, rarefied order. It is a lofty invitation and one that no man (or woman) should accept lightly. We are the standard bearers of a New World Order. We are the key that will unlock the life youve only imagined.

You will be judged. Will you be found worthy?

For this is what youve always wanted.

Isnt it?

I hereby confess:
I like being his.

Pledges

As many of my friends (and a few of my enemies) will tell you, I have a tendency to overanalyze. Im aware of this characteristic within myself, and I do my level best to overcome it. As a result, I have occasionally been known to make snap decisions that, in retrospect, were probably mistakes.

But heres what I think now. Life is a bit like a standardized test. Not putting down an answer because you fear it could be wrong will lower your overall score. So remember what those nice folks at the Princeton Review told you: Make an educated guess. But be careful. You never know where that decision is going to take you.

Almost a year ago, I accepted the tap from Rose & Grave, Eli Universitys most powerful, exclusive, and notorious secret society. I knew my life would change. What I didnt realize was how. I figured my induction into their order would net me some contacts in my preferred field of business, add an extra oomph to my rsum, and provide an insurance plan for the future that loomed just beyond the next set of final exams.

What I didnt expect was that it would open my eyes to a whole world of my own potential. I no longer even wanted the job Id once hoped Rose & Grave would help me get. I also didnt know that Id have a host of new friends, some of whom Id never dreamed of associating with beforea few of whom Id actively disliked. But now Id move mountains for any of them. I certainly never knew how much danger one little club membership could net me, though Id spent the last year being threatened, thwarted, chased, conspired against, and even oncebizarrelykidnapped.

But most of all, I didnt realize that the following March, Id be sitting on a couch that looked like it had been fished out of the trash, staring at a guy Id never even have looked twice at, and wondering if I dared take a risk answering the following:

AMY HASKEL, ARE YOU IN LOVE?

a) Yes

b) No

c) Insufficient data to answer this question

Oh, hell, its c, which is why there was no way I was going to let our Spring Break fling end. He couldnt do the secret hooking-up thing anymore? Fine. Lets try something new.

Im really sick of secrets, I said, and kissed him.

Brilliant as Jamie Orcutt is, it took him several seconds to parse the meaning of my statement. And when he did, the kiss turned from hesitant to heated in no time at all.

Somehow, we shifted on the couch, from a relatively decent and G-rated side-to-side to something that rated the sort of parental supervision we had zero interest in at the moment. And, say what you will about how the couch looked, it certainly felt comfortable once I was sandwiched deeply between the cushions and Jamie. I clung to his shoulders as if I were drowning and he knotted his fists into my shirt, sliding the material away from my skin as his mouth moved south over my throat.

Ja I said on a sigh, and then, as his tongue flicked over my collarbone, Puh

He lifted his head. You are never going to get it straight, are you?

Unlikely. I slid my hands down his back, to where his sweatshirt ended and his skin was bare. Its already a tough enough effort to think of you as Jamie and not as Poe. I stopped myself in time to avoid a fine.

This is troublesome, he said. But then again, thats your society name. He tapped my nose.

Bugaboo. Yes, and hed probably chosen it, too, now that I thought about it. You want to know whats even more troublesome? I scooted up. Our real names rhyme.

He chuckled. Yeah, they do. I never thought of that.

People are going to laugh whenever they say things like, We should invite Amy and Jamie to the party next weekend or Lets go on a double date with Amy and Jamie.

He frowned. Im now required to go on double dates with your friends? Maybe this isnt such a good idea.

Neither was bringing up my friends, the majority of whom had no particular love for him. Im just saying, Amy and Jamie sounds a bit lame.

But he was smiling. I was just thinking how nice it sounds.

I blushed, and just as quickly, the concerns started crowding into my head. What kind of person gets into a relationship less than two months before graduating from college? Was I mad? Jamie was in law school, here, at Eli, for the next two years. I had no idea where Id be. When I left town at the end of May, theres no way our relationship would be ready for the long-distance thing (if it even lasted until then), and I had no intentions of sticking around New Haven for a boyfriend Id just started dating. This was silly. I was setting myself up for an even worse heartbreak come commencement.