“He’s the one,” I say. “It has to be him.”

She stops and looks up at me, and I see that her eyes are red. “What?”

“That jerk. He’s our mark.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Um . . . no?”

“That’s Brandt Rush.” Andrea sits up, then slumps back against the wall with her chin on her knees, looking hopeless. “Don’t tell me you haven’t heard of him.”

“Should I have?”

“As in, Rush’s?”

“What, you mean the retail empire?” I shrug. “So what? It doesn’t give him an excuse to act like a total jerk.”

“Will . . .” Andrea just shakes her head. “You still don’t get it, do you?”

“I’m new here, remember?”

“Forget it.” She stands up. “It doesn’t matter,” she says. “Go. Now.”

I get to my feet and head toward the door, brushing the shards of wood from the knees of my jeans, then stop and look back. “Who were those guys that you sent to my room, anyway? The ones who were supposed to be Melville and the security guard?”

“Just a couple of friends from town.” Andrea’s still looking down at the remaining pieces of her cello. “They owed me a favor. Why does it matter?”

“So as far as the administration knows, I’m still a student here?”

“Yes,” she says, “but I already told you—”

I hold up my hand, stopping her. “Andrea?”

“What?”

“Game on.”

And I close the door before she has a chance to answer.

Six

WHEN I GET BACK TO MY ROOM, THERE’S A NEATLY wrapped bundle sitting outside my door. I pick it up and peel back the tape, peering down at a perfectly folded blazer and dress pants, white shirt, and tie. My uniform has arrived.

I carry it inside along with my backpack. The room is still a mess from last night’s hurried departure—my bed is unmade and the half-finished orientation paperwork is scattered across the floor. It feels strange to be back after crawling out the window in the middle of the night, but I’m already starting to get used to the idea of being a student here.

I sit on the bed and take a second to get my thoughts in order. From here, one of two things is going to happen. Either Andrea will rise to the challenge—which was really her idea anyway—or she’ll rat me out to the administration for real, in which case I’ll have no choice but to leave for good. But I really don’t think that’s going to happen, because Andrea knows she can’t do that without getting herself in trouble. Besides, I saw the look on her face when Brandt smashed her cello.

She wants payback.

While I’m sitting there contemplating the situation, I get a text message from Andrea117 on my phone.

Meet me after English Lit outside the arts center.

I read the text twice before deleting it and making sure it’s gone for good. The message means she’s either in or at least interested enough to talk through the details. Grabbing my towel, I head down the hall for a shower, mindful of my bruised stomach muscles where Brandt hammered his elbow. When I get back to my room, I try on my uniform for the first time.

The jacket, shirt, and pants fit perfectly. I get the tie right on the first try, then rake my fingers through my hair until it looks halfway presentable. For the moment, the guy staring back at me from the mirror almost looks like he belongs here. I smile. If I can fool myself, then the rest of my classmates should be a breeze.

Five minutes later, armed with my class schedule, I’m speed-walking down to the dining hall for an epic helping of gourmet huevos rancheros with a latte and fresh-squeezed orange juice. The eggs are delicious, light and fluffy, with roast tomato-serrano salsa, corn tortillas, black beans, and fresh cheese, and I manage to polish the whole thing off without getting any on my tie. Meanwhile, it’s almost nine o’clock, which means I’ve got World History 443: Twentieth-Century India and China starting in less than ten minutes. If I hurry, I can make the bell.

I head out of the dining hall, riding on a river of well-dressed, bright-eyed baby billionaires on their way to various training seminars on how to rule the twenty-first-century world. I’m glancing down at the map to make sure I’m headed in the right direction when I see a big group of students up ahead gathered around the statue of Lancelot Connaughton.

Except it’s not the statue they’re looking at.

There’s a student perched on top of Connaughton’s shoulders. He’s wearing nothing but a ski mask and a pair of red swim trunks, and he’s trying to hold perfectly still, like he’s part of the statue, but it’s cold out here and I can see him shivering. Written across his bare chest in what looks like black marker is a stylized letter S. As uncomfortable as it seems, it’s pretty obvious that he’s actually choosing to be up there.

“What is this?” I look at the girl next to me, who’s snapping a photo with her iPhone. “What’s going on?”

“Hazing ritual,” she says.

“For what?”

“The Sigils.”

“Who?”

She glances at me. “You’re new here, aren’t you?”

“Is it that obvious?”

“The Sigils are a secret society on campus. Every year they invite two or three new students to join. Nobody knows who’s in it, but the members always make new recruits do something like this to get in.”

For a second we both stand there looking up at the poor kid. “How long does he have to stay up there?”

“Till his assignment’s over.” She shrugs, and then from behind us I hear a man’s voice shouting. “I guess his time’s up,” the girl says, and I glance around to see two security guards lumbering across the quad, making a beeline for the statue.

“You!” one of them shouts. “Get down from there now!”

The kid in the ski mask jumps off Connaughton’s shoulders and hits the ground running at top speed, with the two guards struggling to keep up. The crowd of students cheers him on. Before the guards can reach him, the kid ducks into a nearby building and disappears. A roar of approval goes up from the crowd.

“Looks like he made it,” the girl next to me says, and the other students are already starting to disperse, heading to class.

“So, this secret society,” I begin. “How long has it been around?”

“Who knows? Some people say that Lancelot Connaughton himself started it as a kind of inner circle. Only the members know who the other members are, or why certain people get invited and others don’t. It’s all very Skull and Bones.”

I’ve started walking again and am consulting my map when a heavy hand falls on my shoulder.

“Hey, hey, there he is.” The voice is grating, intimate, and familiar in a way that makes my skin tighten and slither across my shoulders. “You sure picked a crazy place to end up, didn’t you, buddy?”

I turn around slowly and look at the man standing there smiling at me, wearing an ill-fitting navy suit with a laminated visitor tag dangling crookedly from a lanyard around his neck. Despite the cheap apparel, he’s good-looking for a guy on the verge of forty—a touch of gray at the temples, bright pale-blue eyes, and the kind of two-day stubble you get from sleeping in your car. You might even use the word charming. I give back to him the best smile I can muster, which, under the circumstances, ought to win me an Academy Award.

“Hey, Dad.”

Seven

“TOOK ME LONG ENOUGH TO FIND YOU UP HERE,” HE SAYS, locking one arm around my shoulder and wrenching it tight enough to hurt. “Looks like you’ve already landed on your feet, huh?” He ruffles my hair in a way that probably looks fatherly, then gives me an extra little open-handed smack on the back of my skull. “I missed you, boy.”

“I bet,” I say.

“You really left me holding the bag down in Trenton, you know that? Not that it’s anything your old man can’t handle, but when the authorities dropped by and I realized you’d taken off with the last of our seed money—”