Our mascot was somewhere in this room, and it was carrying something for me. I shot to my feet, peering into the music-filled dark, when something tickled the back of my neck. I reached to scratch or slap it and my hand froze. A thick lock of hair had uncoiled from its bobby pins, slipped out of the wig, and fallen down my back.
The darkness offered cover. I twirled the lock of hair around two fingers and prodded it back into place under the wig. If the Sharps noticed, they didn’t show it. As they sang, they gazed uncannily ahead, their eyes out of focus, as if they’d left their bodies.
I tried to swallow and nearly choked. My mouth was drier than the yellowing pages of the initiation book. The final candle was barely a stub now, lighting up Isaac’s sharp chin. I turned—and found the crow.
Behind me was the door, painted red. On it hung a massive black flag with the Sharps coat of arms embroidered in gold. It looked disproportionately impressive in the flicker of the firelight, and the two crows stretching out their Latin motto looked almost alive. I reached for the birds. A patch of soft cloth was sewn below one of their beaks, and from the deep pocket, I extracted a silver fountain pen, its barrel cool and heavy.
I turned back to the seven boys, strode up to the initiation book, and scribbled Julian Zhang at the bottom of the list just as they finished a verse.
For a second there was silence.
“Aaand cut,” said Isaac, swiping the book from Trav. He snapped it shut.
The Sharps broke into enthusiastic exclamations. One of them stripped away the heavy cloths from the walls, revealing four round windows that framed porthole views of the darkening campus in thin iron. A wooden chest sat beneath one window, a cable peeking out from the lid, two black sound monitors keeping guard beside it. One of the Sharps broke the puzzle back into a box and slid it behind the chest.
Isaac blew out the last candle, which turned to an undramatic finger of wax in the evening light. A few of the guys closed around me to clap my back, and a nervous laugh dislodged from where it had stuck in my throat. I held my neck rigid, urging my hair not to come loose, overwhelmed by the whirl of chatter.
“—did it by yourself,” crowed a huge boy with dark flyaway hair. “Man, Nihal and Jon barely finished with two people—”
“Fucking nailed it,” said a tall blond kid at his side, and gave me a vicious high-five that definitely sloughed off a layer of skin or two.
“Marcus, lights,” called Isaac, and a boy with shaggy brown hair scampered over to plug in a power strip near the door. Lighting flickered into life: white-gold strip lights that encircled the stone wall, dim orange globes that dangled near each window, a rope of Christmas lights wrapped around one of the rafters. The place warmed a few degrees in the gold wash of light, and the boys became real all of a sudden, solidifying, their eyes bright and their hair shining. Isaac sprang onto the piano bench, rose to his tiptoes, and slid the book of signatures onto a crossbeam.
“So I’m in?” I said, breathless. My eyes prickled with the flood of light. I blinked hard several times.
“You are in,” said Trav, perching on the bench beside Isaac’s feet. “Initiation used to require the rookies to climb out a window onto the roof, too. Fifty-foot fall, if you slip. That’s been phased out.”
“What, did someone die?”
“It’s just the hazing policy,” Isaac said. He hopped down from the piano bench. “No one likes fun anymore.”
I looked around. “Is this a reading room?” There wasn’t a library book in sight, but an aging leather sofa stretched out beside the piano and matching armchairs flanked the door.
“This is the Crow’s Nest,” Isaac said proudly, flopping into an armchair. “It used to be a bell tower, but they took the bell out in the seventies, and it’s been Sharps territory since then.”
“Crow’s Nest,” I repeated. “Like a ship lookout?”
“Yep,” Isaac said. “Except instead of a ship, we’re looking out for the most haunted building on campus, and by the way I’ve definitely seen ghosts here before.”
“Shut up, you have not,” said the tall blond kid from the sofa.
“Scared?” said the dark-haired guy with the flyaway hair, and they engaged in a flurry of elbowing.
Realizing that the Sharps had all found seats, I went for the open armchair. With a creak of ancient springs, I sank a mile into the scraped leather cushioning.
My hair tickled with heat. I brushed a finger around the line of the wig. Still safe.
“So,” Isaac said. “Now that you’ve proven yourself, initiate, let’s do some introductions.” He made a sweeping gesture around the room that involved his whole body. Somehow everything he did seemed to involve his whole body, every motion of the hands, every sentence he spoke. The way he moved reminded me of very giant dogs who think they’re very small dogs and are accordingly careless with themselves.
He lifted a hand. “Again, I’m Isaac, your president. And the one who always looks like he just sniffed paint is your fearless musical director, Traveler Atwood.”
Trav’s nostrils flared. He said nothing.
“You met Erik yesterday.” Isaac pointed at J. Crew Junior. “He’s on bass and VP.”
“VP?” I said.
“Vocal percussion,” Erik said proudly, tilting his nose up. The light glinted on his freckled cheeks. Where everyone else was sitting, Erik was on his feet, stance comically wide, elbow postured against the wall. It really didn’t make him look any larger. I wanted to offer him some of my height.
“Beatboxing,” Isaac explained, interpreting my silence as confusion. “Drum noises. Weird explosion sounds. Whatever we need.” He nodded to the boy with shaggy brown hair, who had curled up to sit in the windowsill. “Other freshman, go.”
The boy waved. He was stocky, and his shoulders were slumped so low it looked uncomfortable, the sort of posture that suggested he wanted to disappear. “Hi. I’m Other Freshman, apparently.” He gave a nervous laugh and cut himself off with a cough. “I’m Marcus Humphreys, and . . . yeah.” Marcus’s searching, desperate eyes landed on the sofa. “J-Jon Cox?”
“Hey. Jon Cox,” introduced the guy sprawled over one arm of the sofa. His golden hair fell over one side of his high forehead, brushing one wingtip of his tortoiseshell glasses. Jon Cox looked more like a mental image of the Sharps than a real person—tall and handsome, with prominent cheekbones. The undone collar of his Polo showed a flushed patch of skin at the divot between his collarbones.
“And I’m Theodore Pugh,” said the guy sitting next to him, whose bulk took up a good third of the sofa. His deep, resonant voice smacked of movie trailers, and his eyes were a startling light blue.
Jon Cox gave Theodore a laughing look. “Bro, don’t even try. You’re never going to get rid of it.”
“Get rid of what?” I asked.
“His nickname,” Jon Cox said. “Call him Mama. Everyone calls him Mama.”
Mama aimed a scowl at Jon Cox. “Why are you so gung-ho about this?”
“’Cause you keep wet wipes in your backpack,” said Jon Cox patiently, “and it’s important that people know this about you.”