“I can’t talk to you when you’re like this.” And then he hung up.

I walked back to Prescott, stewing. Maybe I should just call the cops, but Josh’s words echoed in my head. The last thing I needed was to be arrested on counts of breaking and entering. And, like he said, I doubted they’d take me seriously anyway. So a college student was a slob. They’d laugh me out of the station if I tried to file a missing persons report when the person in question had been gone for maybe a few hours. For all anyone knew, she was still at the library, “help help help” or no.

That opinion was buoyed by the next ten calls I proceeded to make. Mara and Omar were appalled that I’d even think of breaking into someone else’s suite (Mara, like the stick in the mud she was, even threatened to go to my dean with the information, until I reminded her of her Digger oaths); Kevin and Harun laughed and asked how many cracked-out conspiracy theories they could expect from me before this whole thing was over (Kevin even jokingly warned me that if I persisted in arguments along these lines, he’d start to suspect it was me behind the website); Odile said that no matter how angry I was at Jenny, there was no cause to start committing felonies; Ben was out jogging off his ire; and Nikolos, Greg, Demetria, and Clarissa told me little other than to leave a number after the beep.

I stood in the Prescott courtyard. No way was I going to go back to my place and let Josh lecture me. But I had one Digger left, and maybe I could get him to listen. I took the stairs to George’s room.

Light spilled through the crack near the floor, and I heard music, but I had to knock twice before he answered. And when he did, as soon as he saw me, George burst into a grin. “Hey there, cutie,” he said, and pulled me inside. “You ran off so quickly earlier, I thought I wasn’t going to see you tonight.”

His T-shirt was soft and hugged his chest and shoulders, and his similarly well-worn sweatpants sat low on his hips. His hair was tousled and he was wearing his glasses. I love George’s glasses. I love him in his glasses. As soon as we were inside, he crossed to his desk and closed his laptop. Sign of a guilty conscience if I’ve ever seen it. But I didn’t have time to worry about that now. “George, I was at Jenny’s.”

“She behind this whole snafu?” he asked. He was rummaging in his mini-fridge now, and retrieved two beers. “Figures as much. That girl’s a menace to the society. No pun intended.”

“Yes, but that’s not all. She wasn’t there.”

He popped the caps off and handed me one. “I’d be hiding out, too, if I were her.”

“I think she’s been kidnapped.”

He raised an eyebrow over the rim of his glasses. “Really. Why? Find a ransom note? Someone holding her for a million shares in Microsoft?” He chuckled and took a pull on his beer.

“No, I found a half-finished e-mail covered with the word ‘help.’”

This shut him up for a second, but then he regrouped. “Come on, Boo. Who do you think would kidnap her, aside from your average cult deprogrammer?” He leaned back on his futon. “And to them I say, have at it.”

This was beginning to get frustrating. Why would no one take me seriously? I’d been right about the patriarchs last time, but no one had listened until we all lost our summer jobs. “I think it was the patriarchs. I think they discovered she was behind the leak and had her disappeared.”

At this, he really started laughing. “Right. We’ll find her with cement sneakers at the bottom of New Haven Harbor. That’s not those guys’ style.”

“What about last spring?” I argued, though my pique was fading fast. Eight discouraging conversations were about as many as I could take.

“Wrecking a couple of undergrad internships is about as criminal as these dudes get. I thought you were over this whole Rose & Grave mythology thing.”

“I was until I went into Jenny’s room.”

He pulled me down beside him on the futon and started rubbing my neck. “Just relax for a second. You’re freaking out.”

I felt his thumbs dig into the tightness near my shoulder blades and bit my lip. Okay, I was. Freaking out again, just like they expected me to. I’d been named Bugaboo for a reason—I was the one who knew the least about how the society worked, who would be most prone to paying attention to its carefully cultivated legends. But I’d been proven correct during Reading Week last semester. A bunch of the patriarchs had banded together to ruin our newly tapped club, and they’d almost succeeded. However, George was right. They hadn’t been doing anything illegal. Just unethical.

Still, the deeper George kneaded my flesh, the tighter my throat grew with unspoken words, and yes, even unshed tears. The rest of them hadn’t seen what I saw.

George pushed my hair to the side and began to kiss the back of my neck. “Listen,” he whispered between nibbles. “My dad was a Digger, and so was his dad and his dad and his dad, and the closest anyone ever got to breaking the law was a couple of campus pranks. Kurt Gehry and his gang like to talk big, but they’d never do anything dangerous. They’re a bunch of punks with power, that’s all.”

Man, did I want to believe him. I hadn’t been with George since the day the site went live. We’d been too preoccupied to get…occupied. And it did make a lot of sense. The professional bullying of a bunch of undergrads sounded a lot more realistic than actual cloak-and-dagger stuff. And now that I was sitting here, half in George’s arms, the idea that Jenny was in danger—that she was indeed tied up in someone’s trunk or sitting in a dark room with an interrogation light swinging overhead—well, it sounded patently ridiculous. No wonder everyone had laughed at me. “You really think it’s okay?”

“I know it is.” He took me by the shoulders and swiveled me until I faced him. “Relax. This is all going to blow over. It’s just the latest in a long line of society scandals.” He lowered me until I was reclined against the futon. “Let’s get your mind off of this.”

Strange and unnatural forces must be at work, for here I was in the presence of George Harrison Prescott, yet I found myself not in the mood. Okay, maybe some of my suspicions were over the line, but that didn’t mean I had to disregard all of my instincts. I sat up. “What were you doing before I came in?”

“Working. Why?”

“Working on something so private you needed to shut your screen?” I folded my arms. “Do you think I’m an idiot?”

“Boo—”

“It’s okay, you know,” I said quickly. “We have no understanding.”

“So then, why does it matter?”

Because I was curious. “IM-ing with some chick? Surfing MySpace profiles for pretty young things?”

He laughed. “Come on, now. I’m a player, not a pervert.”

I shook my head. “You’re so ready to claim that title.”

“I don’t need to claim it, baby,” he said, leaning in. “The Diggers already dubbed me Puck.”

But I was temporarily immune. “What were you doing?”

He collapsed back against the futon. “Are we really going to start doing this? I thought you were cool.”

“I am.”

“Then, what?” He studied me. “Is this some kind of turn-on? You want to know what other girls I’m with?”

An enumerated list? Hardly. “I want us to be honest.”

“And I want things not to change.”

Translation: He was seeing other people, but thought telling me would make me mad. Right now, I couldn’t be sure what I was feeling, since I was already mad. “George, if I decided to stop sleeping with you, how would you feel?”

He considered this for a moment. “I don’t know. Why, are you going to?”

“I don’t know.”

We sat there for a moment, not looking at each other. Finally, he spoke. “The truth is, I’m not seeing anyone else, and I haven’t since we first got together.”

Probably a lie. And I was picking a fight with him because he wouldn’t help me. What a screwed-up relationship this was.