Chapter 10 Malena
Malena
After successfully completing three MCAT practice tests, I decided that I deserved one of the lemon drops I eyed Cora making when I took my last study break.
“Oh, she’s definitely gonna have sex with him,” I overheard her say as I walked into the living room. She sat on the couch with her laptop open next to her, grinning wide.
“Who’s having sex?” I asked and took a seat on the sectional, pulling the throw blanket over my legs.
“You are, with Conrad Hastings,” Cora answered, handing me a glass. She looked at the screen and Sabrina smiled. “She invited him over.”
“Mal invited a guy back to our place?” Sabrina screeched.
I never invited guys over. Too much potential for evidence.
Apparently Sabrina’s semester abroad wasn’t going to stop Cora from filling her in on everything.
“Not for that.” My face scrunched. Although, there was something there.
Probably best to ignore it though, since he was right.
I was an imposter in his world. And while I didn’t know if he’d meant it the way I heard it, it wasn’t any less true.
And I hated the feeling of sticking out.
I would get what I needed and get out, write the piece, and win my award.
“We needed to lay down ground rules for the article. You know, the one I wasn’t supposed to tell either of you about? ”
“We aren’t going to say a word.” Cora gestured as if locking her lips.
“Be careful with him, Mal. Conrad has a… reputation,” Sabrina warned from the other end of the screen.
“Good-looking, rich, and sleeps around? Shocking.”
“So you do think he’s good-looking?” Cora gave me a wolfish smile.
I ignored the question. My eyes narrowed on Sabrina; it was late over there, and if I did the math correctly, her classes would be starting in just a few hours. What was she doing up? “Don’t you have class soon, Sabrina? Everything okay?”
Sabrina had struggled with nightmares for as long as I’d known her. Cora and I used to stay up all night with her when she couldn’t sleep, taking turns making tea and choosing what movie to watch on one of our laptops. But over the last year, it’d seemed like they were getting better.
“I couldn’t sleep.” Sabrina shrugged off my question and looked at Cora. “Were they flirting?”
“Oh yeah…” Cora drawled.
“I flirt with everyone,” I dismissed. It was a victimless crime and flirting was fun. It kept me on my toes, and occasionally I’d find a half-decent sparring partner.
“All I’m saying is that I know these kinds of guys,” Sabrina added. “They’re charming and witty. But for them, they have the girls they marry and the ones they screw.”
“Careful, Sabrina, I might swoon,” I teased.
Sabrina’s face crinkled in thought. “You’re sort of like a perfected version of them, Mal. You have the guys you screw and the guys you… well, I guess that’s it.”
“Oh.” Cora snapped her fingers, standing up in a flash and making her way down the hall. “You should add him to your bracket.”
Sabrina craned her neck and watched Cora wheel an easel out from her room.
One side was a vision board, but when you flipped it over, it was the remnants of our annual March Madness bracket. Some names were crossed out in red and others remained—the ones we never got to since Cora came in as a dark horse and won the whole thing week one.
“It’s a little early for that, don’t you think?” I asked. “Spring is months away.”
We did it a little differently than sports fans.
We each made a list of three guys, and whoever had sex with everyone on their list first, won.
Things got interesting when there was overlap—like in the case of last year’s hot biochemistry TA.
Whoever had sex with him first won the whole thing, hence Cora’s victory.
“It’s never too early,” Cora added with a grin. She took another sip, her eyes moving across the couch as she raised her index finger in the air to pause the conversation. “Speaking of bracket potential. Your burner just got a text.”
She leaned over and reached for my phones. While I studied, I tended to leave both my actual phone and burner on the couch. It was my attempt at trying to remain disciplined, but as I sat here drinking a cocktail and laughing with my friends, I realized my strategy probably needed work.
She handed me both—the two were nearly indistinguishable aside from a star sticker on my burner phone’s case.
Conrad: You have plans tonight at 8
Conrad: Meet me in front of our building
I checked the time and sprang up; I had forty minutes.
Me: Gee, thanks for the heads up, do I need a ballgown this time?
Conrad: I’m no genius, but doesn’t giving you tons of details defeat the ‘secret’ part of a secret society?
I could practically hear the sarcasm. A skitter ran down my fingers, anxious to type something back. Before I could, another text came through.
Conrad: It’s casual. Wear what you’d wear to a bar.
Ignoring the teasing from Sabrina and Cora, I disappeared to get ready.
A half hour later, I passed through the lobby doors, coming face-to-face with a butterfly-inducing tableau.
Dark pants with a light brown crewneck sweater that fit just right. A light breeze moved through his brown hair that was just long enough to get in his eyes when he didn’t swipe it back.
He leaned against a motorcycle, casual, like it didn’t short-circuit my brain.
Ugh. Why did he have to be hot? It was a distraction when I needed nothing more than to focus.
I walked to the curb. “A gentleman knocks at the door.”
“For a date,” he said with dry amusement. His lips slid together and curved for a moment. “Not blackmail.”
“You see being forced to do your own work as blackmail?” The sudden urge to spar ignited. “That’s a touch dramatic.”
His jaw tightened and he shoved a helmet in front of me, whatever brief playfulness I registered gone. Okay then, no more jokes. Noted. “Let’s go.”
“I’m not getting on that thing.” I took a step back. I was all about new experiences, so much so that I’d crafted a perfectly stable web of lies to ensure I could have them, but this felt like the fast track to an early grave.
“Why?”
“There are piles of data correlating motorcycle injuries to lasting traumatic brain injury,” I pointed out like it should have been obvious.
“You must be a riot at parties,” he drawled. “Is that why you have to crash them?”
My molars ground together. “Interesting word choice.”
He sighed. “It’s perfectly safe.”
“Easy to say for someone who—” I stopped myself before I said something unnecessarily mean.
He took a step closer, his eyes narrowed. “Who what?”
My pulse flickered.
Something about his smugness made me want to twist the knife, but I bit back the urge. “Nothing.”
He shifted his eyes as if strategizing what to say next. His shoulder dropped a bit. “Figures, teachers’ pets are always so—”
“Easy to say for someone whose future isn’t contingent on functioning brainwaves.” The words rushed out of my mouth.
A satisfied smirk dug into the side of his cheek.
“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” he cooed mockingly. “And again, it’s perfectly safe.” The polite tone wore thinner. “It’s a short ride—”
“Then let’s walk.”
His jaw flexed. He leaned in closer, his face just a few inches from mine, and lowered his voice.
“Either stay here…” His piercing blue eyes pinned me in place. “Or get on the bike, Malena.”
The words hardened to metal and sank to the bottom of my stomach.
I got on the bike.
“Fine.” I pushed the helmet on. “But if I die, Sabrina Alders will have you killed.”
His response was muffled when he put his own helmet on. I skimmed both arms around him and held his unreasonably solid body tight.
To his credit, Conrad wasn’t lying. He took it easy, and it was a quick ride. I wasn’t sure if that was meant to placate my anxiety, but it was… nice. Away from campus and about a mile down High Street, we came upon our destination.
At the end of a line of Victorian-style homes was Scroll & Ivy’s mausoleum. Their “clubhouse” of sorts.
With five towering columns, each supporting an archway, it stood proud on the corner of the block.
The structure looked like a smaller version of the Pantheon and was partially covered in vines that spindled their way up the veined marble columns and bricks.
A wrought-iron fence ran along the perfectly manicured lawn, standing tall and ominous.
Conrad got off first, removed his helmet, and then helped me down. I swung a leg over the bike and steadied myself against him for a quick second, then pulled off the helmet and gave my hair a gentle shake, hoping it wasn’t matted down.
As I handed the helmet back to him, he looked frozen.
“What?” I asked.
The cords along his throat shifted, and he blinked a few times.
“Nothing,” he grumbled. “Are you done with your slow-motion hair flip?”
“You see me in slow motion?” I taunted, tapping him on the chest. “You should probably get that checked out.”
A dimple screwed into his cheek. “Let’s go.”
Walking inside the quiet—and empty—foyer was like walking into a Dickens novel. A stark difference from the exterior, it had wood-paneled walls extending up two floors, with paintings neatly arranged on them. Everything from stern oil portraits to lush landscapes.
My eyes followed the carved wooden moldings to the grand doorway in front of us. The sound of chatter could be heard from between the heavy double doors that were slightly propped open. Flanked by a staircase on either side, my attention was drawn to the words etched above the threshold.
“‘Verbum numquam mori,’” I read aloud. I’d looked up the meaning after it worked to unlock the first invitation, and its translation from Latin was “Stories never die.”
From my sleuthing in the archives, I knew each secret society on campus had a clubhouse, or a mausoleum. They all looked a little like this one from the outside and were interspersed throughout campus, but Scroll & Ivy’s dated back to the late 1700s.
“What’s the goal here?” I asked.