Read Online Tap & Gown by Diana Peterfreund - Free Book Online

there.
    “Anything I say will just dig myself in deeper here, won’t it?” I asked at last.
    “Likely.”
    Did he have a crush on me way back on Halloween? He couldn’t have. I’d kicked him out of the tomb.
    He’d hated me. But then, I’d pretty much figured he’d hated me last month, when he’d comforted me and took me out for pizza a few short days before saving my life. He’d liked me then. And he liked me now, which was the material point.
    “I’m sorry about the hallway,” I said, after another long silence.
    “Me too,” he said. “Way sorrier than you, I imagine.”
    “Why is that?”
    “I wasn’t the one who would have been kneeling on hardwood floors.”
    Jamie and I did not sleep together that day. Or that weekend. We didn’t talk any more about George, either. Instead, we hung out, studied together, and discussed my short list and how best to approach the remaining two people to get a feel for their behavior. Arielle, of course, I had covered.
    “I just don’t know if I have the choice I’d like to,” I complained to him. I was lying with my head in his lap, pretending to read my Geology textbook. “Arielle is fine, I guess, but she’s not the person I want to leave my legacy to.”
    “From what you’ve said, it sounded like you felt that way about her last year, too.” Jamie patted my hair, then returned to his law books. “So why repeat that disappointment?”
    I lifted my shoulders as much as I could against his thighs and turned a page.
    “She doesn’t need to be on your list just because she mirrors your role, Amy. It doesn’t need to be that literal. You were a … special case.”
    “A charity case, you mean.”
    “Charity for whom?” he asked. “We needed you , remember? You would have been perfectly happy in Quill & Ink.”
    “Who would you have tapped, then?” I asked, sitting up and facing him. “If I’d rejected?”
    He shook his head. “Nope. Sorry. You know our deliberations are sealed.”
    I pounded my fist against the sofa cushion. “I need to know this information. It will help me pick my tap.”
    “How? The person is a senior. Not eligible for tap anymore.”
    Page 38

    “ Person? Not a girl?” Could Malcolm have traded out, too?
    He returned his attention to the book.
    “You’re impossible.” I lay back down.
    So many secrets. In the tomb and outside of them. He never had answered the question about his ex-girlfriends, I realized. Or about the last time he’d had sex. He spent his time alone in this apartment or alone in class or alone in a tomb filled with people who were not his society brothers. No wonder he got used to keeping things to himself.
    “If I don’t include Arielle, that makes my preliminary list really small. I’ve got Topher, whom I’d have to trade for, and whom no one seems to like very much, and then Kalani. So … really just Kalani.”
    “What’s wrong with Kalani?”
    “Nothing. I hardly know the girl. But I’d like to have some options.”
    “Maybe it’s better not to. Court Kalani. Call it a day. Work on your thesis.”
    He had a point. These next few weeks would be way easier on me if I just picked a tap and moved on.
    And Kalani seemed to have it all. A perfect prospective Digger.
    But that wouldn’t be very true to my legacy either, would it? The perfect Digger, I was not. If anything, I’d been the exact opposite.
    Kalani Leto-Taube proved difficult to track down. I got her course schedule care of Jenny’s access to the registrar, but when the junior wasn’t actively in classes, she was usually holed up in her office at the Eli Daily News . It got to the point where I wondered if I’d have to book an appointment with her to get a chance to chat.
    Fortunately, all that activity needed to be fueled by something, and I finally cornered my quarry at a table in the back of a coffee shop. Even among the mug ring marks, discarded sugar packets and stirring sticks, she looked like a queen. Kalani is some sort of