Secret Society (11 page)

O
n Monday at school, Patch heard his name and turned around to find Lauren Mortimer, who barely ever gave him a second glance, running down the hall to talk to him.

“Hey,” she said, slightly out of breath. “I know this is really random, but I have a favor to ask you. Do you have a second?”

Patch nodded, as Lauren rested her book bag on a windowsill.

“I read about your show. It's so exciting. I mean, I love the vlog, but a show—that's really cool. I was wondering if you'd be able to film my seventeenth birthday party? It's in a few weeks.”

Patch looked at her skeptically. What kind of show did she think he was doing? This wasn't going to be some bogus
reality show about girl stuff. Or was this party some sort of Society gig? If so, maybe that was a good thing. Maybe that would get him more of the footage he was looking for.

Lauren laughed at his confused expression. “I'm sorry. I should explain what it's all about.”

By the end of her explanation—everything from the party's location to its theme to the guest list—he was sold.

 

The next day, while she was in the library, Phoebe got an email from Michelle: “I love your pieces. Do you want to come in and talk about them?”

Was this really happening? The bell rang for next period, and she realized she needed to respond. Phoebe wrote back that she would drop by later that afternoon.

She packed up her books and headed to class. Was it really this easy? Maybe it could be, if she would only let herself do what she was good at, if she didn't always allow her worries and doubts to get in the way of her dreams.

Later that day, she took the train down to the gallery, finding its white walls and concrete floors almost familiar. A frosty
gallerina
(the art world's fancy name for “receptionist”) was sitting behind a desk and talking to a young woman who was holding a large black portfolio. The gallerina smiled at the woman curtly and said, “I'm sorry, Ms. Schrader isn't viewing new submissions right now.”

“When will she be looking at new work?” the young
woman asked. Phoebe guessed she was newly out of the fine arts program at Parsons or Pratt.

“I can't really say. We're completely booked right now.”

The woman thanked her and then turned around abruptly and left.

The gallerina turned to smile warmly at Phoebe. “Phoebe, Michelle told me all about you. I'm Sophie.”

Phoebe smiled awkwardly as they shook hands, and Sophie led her into the gallery office. She had never paid much attention to Phoebe the past several times she had been in the gallery; apparently, now that had changed.

“Phoebe!” Michelle came around a corner into the main office, shoving a stack of papers into Sophie's arms. “I'm so glad you could come in. Let's talk about your work. Sit down. Sophie, get her a water, okay?”

Phoebe sat down at the oval marble Saarinen table that served as a meeting area.

“So talk to me about the work,” Michelle said. “These four pieces.” She slid open a laptop and clicked on Phoebe's four images. “They're fantastic. So fresh. It's exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for. I'd need to see them in person, of course, but I'm getting a good feeling about them from these photos.”

“Right,” Phoebe said, thinking back to the exchange she had witnessed at the front desk.

“What was your inspiration?”

Phoebe took a breath. “Those four pieces are about how the media has totally infiltrated our lives. How we can't get away from it.”

“Can you do some more?”

“How many were you thinking?”

“I would say, twelve to eighteen. If you can produce that many, I have an opening for a show in November. An artist whom we had booked had to drop out.”

Phoebe gulped. It struck her as highly unusual to get a show based on four paintings. Did the gallery have some connection to the Society? She didn't know. More important, she feared she wouldn't have time to complete so many new works, but if she wanted this show, she'd have to. The four she had created were all derived from ideas she had already worked through, stuff she had spent months thinking about. Could she come up with enough ideas to sustain a show of twelve to eighteen works? She didn't know. But it would be foolish not to accept the challenge.

“Sure,” she said. “I can do it.”

O
ver the past few days, Lauren had searched for inspiration for her new jewelry line and had done a dozen more sketches. It was all retro-inspired, the types of pieces worn by Lana Turner and Grace Kelly in old movies. She scoured the flea markets in Chelsea and Hell's Kitchen, the jewelry dealers at the Brooklyn Flea Market in Fort Greene, the little shops in Midtown and the Village.

A week later, she had assembled a portfolio of eight finished sketches to show to Sabrina at the store.

At Giroux, she knocked on the open door of the basement office, where Sabrina was flipping through designer look books for the coming season.

“Lauren,” Sabrina said, “come on in. What do you have here?”

Sebastian Giroux popped his head in. “Sabrina, do you have a sec?”

“Of course. Sebastian, you might want to see this. Seems Lauren has some designs she'd like to show us.”

Lauren felt herself reddening.

“Ah, a budding designer! That's what we like to see. What's going on?”

Lauren handed him her sketchbook. The first was a pendant, then a bracelet, then a pair of earrings. He peered at them intently, examining the details. “Well, well, well,” he said.

Oh, God,
she thought. She was so stupid to think she could do this. Phoebe was the one who had the artistic talent, not her. She had heard about her friend's gallery success and was a bit envious.

Sabrina gently pulled the book from his hand. “Ooh! I like. Could we make this?”

“It's very Tony Duquette,” said Sebastian, referring to the legendary, over-the-top designer. “But modern. Wearable.”

“Salable,” Sabrina said.

Lauren wasn't sure if Sabrina's question had been a rhetorical one. Maybe they couldn't be made. Not all the designs might be feasible.

Sebastian scratched his temples. “You know, I think we could.” He looked at Lauren as if it were the first time he had acknowledged she was in the room. “Can we try a prototype?”

“A prototype?” Lauren said. “Of course! I mean, sure.”

“You would be involved, of course.”

“Right.” Lauren nodded, still reeling from the praise.

“When can you have them ready?” Sebastian asked Sabrina.

“Maybe two weeks, if we put a rush on it,” Sabrina said. “The workshop in Brooklyn, I think, would be the best place for it?”

Lauren had a brainstorm. “I have an idea—I'm throwing a party. I think we could get some press from it. Like, you know, have the waitstaff get all dressed up, model some prototypes, that kind of thing? It would be different, right?”

“I like the way this girl thinks,” said Sebastian. “You could make a splash. We could invite some buyers from other places, stores that carry Giroux.”

Lauren nodded knowingly. This was turning out better than she had expected.

 

Simone, Patch's producer, had given him an editing suite over in the far West Thirties to work on the pilot for his show. They were roughing together an opening sequence that would introduce all the characters in the traditional format of reality television. There were several Chadwick students who featured prominently, including Nick, although Patch wondered if he would be able to get enough later footage in order to include him. He knew Nick had to be part of it—that was
what made all the footage of the secret society initiation so relevant. Patch wondered if he would ever be able to fix things with Nick to the point where he could be part of the project without having an issue with the Society stuff.

The opening sequence of the pilot showed them going to school, going out at night, playing sports, shopping downtown, and even at home with their families. The footage Patch had so far hinted at fights and drama, but the difference was that if the show were produced, Patch would have full access to people's lives. It wouldn't be only snippets—it would be total access to five different Chadwick students, complete with their signed consent.

He didn't know if Nick would be one of them.

Patch found Simone extremely persuasive—she had produced hard-hitting documentaries on teen pregnancy in the Midwest and crystal meth labs in New Jersey. Patch imagined she thought prep school kids would be a cakewalk.

“All right, look,” she said to him one night, “I've been watching the rough cut you made. You need a story, a throughline. It's not enough to have a bunch of random kids partying and going to school. If we're going to make this happen, I need to see something better. Something crazier.”

Patch cringed. He hoped she hadn't remembered his comment about the Society footage—in their second meeting, he had mentioned that he had some material of a club initiation that he thought would be compelling. But maybe she had for
gotten that by now.

Since their meeting, he had kept it stored deep on his hard drive, protected by a password. Unfortunately, though, he realized that, legally, she had a right to it—he remembered that line, after all, in his contract: “In the creation of the pilot episode, Eyes Wide Open Productions has access to all footage taken of Chadwick students by Patchfield Evans.”

A
week later, Phoebe and Lauren were getting blowouts together at a cheap salon on First Avenue. Phoebe loved that even though Lauren could probably afford to get blowouts from Frédéric Fekkai himself, she opted for the inexpensive, simpler solution. People didn't know this about her: that underneath the veneer of fashion, she was, at heart, a practical girl who appreciated forty-five-dollar blowouts as much as the next person.

Her practicality was one of the reasons Phoebe suspected that Lauren hadn't been hanging out with her friends Chloë, Victoria, and Irina. Those girls wouldn't know a bargain if it jumped out of their Birkins.

Or maybe it was the fact that Lauren had been chosen for the Society and the other three hadn't. Phoebe had noticed
how Society membership separated people. If you knew someone wasn't a member, you were a lot less likely to want to hang out with them.

That afternoon, they were getting ready for Nick's new club night at Twilight. She supposed she should have been excited by it, but Phoebe was exhausted by the social whirl. There had been a party at the Beatrice Inn, a downtown hotspot, and also meet and greets with alumni from Yale, Princeton, and Brown, all organized by the Society. She was starting to feel like one of those overscheduled kids she read about in articles, the type who never have a moment to enjoy the fact that they're sixteen and don't have to pay taxes or work. She was sick of her entire life in the past month revolving around Society events—after all, how many times could she hear about how much real estate everyone's families owned?

She asked Lauren if she ever got tired of the whole social game, particularly the Society stuff. She knew they shouldn't be talking about it in public—they technically weren't supposed to talk about it at all—but it didn't matter at the salon, as their voices would be drowned out by the sound of the hairdryers.

“Sure,” Lauren said thoughtfully, while chewing on a fingernail, “but we don't really have a choice. It's mandatory attendance, you know.”

“Don't you think that's sort of bogus?” Phoebe said, though
she remembered a story Nick had told her about the ostracism you could face if you didn't attend every event. Kitty Stapleton, the Administrator, kept tabs on exactly which events people had attended, right down to whether or not they had been on time.

“Yeah, I guess so. I don't know.”

“You seem distracted.”

“What? Yeah.” Lauren gave a shy grin.

“Let me guess…it's a certain smoking-hot Argentinean you're thinking about.”

Lauren smiled. “He texted to ask if he would see me tonight.”

“Did you write him back?”

“Not yet,” Lauren said, with the weary attitude of someone well versed in being chased by boys.

“You really like him, though, right?”

“Yeah,” Lauren said. “I think I do. He's really sweet. And he's not what people think he is.”

Phoebe nodded. Lauren could have been describing her own feelings about Nick. She wondered, though, if things would ever reach a level where she could let him know how she felt about him.

 

Nick was getting ready for his club night at Twilight, all the while thinking about how things had gotten so messed up with Patch. He had sent him several emails letting him know
about the night and had made sure to put him on the list “plus party,” which meant Patch could bring as many people as he wanted. The only people who ever got such a designation were celebrities or important socialites.

When he got to the club, it was a contrast to his last experience at The Freezer. Twilight was a slick, multilevel venue, complete with tables for bottle service, several lounges, VIP rooms, and even secret VVIP rooms. In New York, it seemed there was always a better room to get into, and now Nick had access to them all. He had seen the club once before during the day, but at night was when it really sparkled. The glossy black walls had been polished to a shine, and the cream suede banquettes looked like they were brand-new.

“Hey, Nick, my man!” Jared slapped him on the back as he greeted him.

“So what do we need to do?”

“Dude, grab yourself a drink—you don't need to do a thing. The cleaning people finished up this afternoon, the lighting's all set, the DJ's in place, I just got authorization on our insurance certificate, and the guest list has been checked, rechecked, and alphabetized. The doormen know the rule-two ladies to every guy—because we all know it's the chicks who bring in the guys, and it's the guys who keep ordering the bottles. You know what I mean?”

Nick nodded. It was all a bit much—the bottle service, the “chicks” (a word he never used himself). He wasn't sure
his crowd would be into this. They liked things to be more relaxed.

“You seriously don't need me to do anything? I'm a little more used to having to clean up last night's vomit or make sure the club got the shipment from the liquor sponsor.” He was joking about the vomit, but Jared, looking at him in horror, didn't seem to get it.

“Relax, you're good. It's all on autopilot.”

Autopilot. Even though autopilot might be easier, it wasn't as much fun. Nick had always liked the problem-solving aspect of his club nights. After all the build-up to this night, all he had to do now was stand around and drink?

Jared handed him fifty or so glossy black cards. “Here's a stack of drink tickets. Give those to the important people, you know?”

Jared wanted all Society members to have a good time. If they had fun, they would spread the word to their friends, and before they knew it, Thursday night at Twilight would be a must on everyone's calendar. Nick looked at the crowd of investment bankers and models who had already started trickling in. This was nothing like a night at The Freezer, and for a moment, he truly missed that club's shabby appeal.