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1.

Crooking


Some people pledge to lose weight for their New Year’s resolution. Others quit smoking, or promise to do their homework before Sunday night, or swear that they’ll never again, no matter how many pomegranate martinis they’ve imbibed, give in to temptation and drunk-dial their ex-boyfriends, ex-lovers, or ex-friends-with-benefits and invite them over for a nightcap.

Instead of resolving any of the above (and that last one sounded pretty good), I promised to commit a felony.

On December 31st, as the clock struck twelve, I held aloft a glass of champagne and solemnly swore that I’d join my secret society brothers in their quest to steal back one of our treasured relics from a rival society. At the time, I thought it would be a relatively straightforward operation. Sneak into the Dragon’s Head headquarters, snatch back the knee-high stone statue of Orpheus, and hightail it back to Rose & Grave’s High Street tomb, booty in tow.

Wrong.

Dragon’s Head had grown suspicious over Winter Break, indulging their more paranoid sides. I knew from intimate association with my fellow knights that no one in our crew could have tipped them off on purpose, but perhaps we weren’t as discreet as we should have been during one of our many reconnaissance missions to their York Street abode. Perhaps they had as many hidden cameras trained on our tomb as we had on theirs. Whatever the cause, intel showed, clear as infrared, the Dragon’s Head members removing the purloined Orpheus statue from their courtyard late the previous night. If they were worthy of their admission to Eli, they would have hidden it out of reach in their house’s safe, a move that would make things tricky—but not impossible—for us thieves.

Wait a second. Reconnaissance? Infrared? Intel? What’s going on here? I was a Literature major, for crying out loud, not a CIA recruit. And yet, in the nine months since I’d been tapped into Rose & Grave, my inner spygirl had gestated and emerged as a black-clad, code-speaking, secret-handshake-knowing, card-carrying acolyte of the New World Order.

Or at least, the wannabe New World Order. Despite all the 007 talk, this mission of ours cut a little closer to fraternity prank than military coup. But whatever the flavor of the operation, the practicalities were the same: I was spending my first night back on campus lying in the slush in an alleyway behind the Dragon’s Head tomb, waiting for orders, while my black ski mask painfully crushed my ponytail holder against my scalp.

However, that wasn’t what was causing my headache.

“I say we go now,” said the society brother lying in the slush to my left.

“Bond directed us to wait for his signal,” said the one on my right.

“Listen, old-timer,” said Lefty. “Maybe in your day, you sat around waiting for someone to hand you an engraved invitation, but that’s why we’re running the show now. Your ways are out-of-date. Don’t you agree, Bugaboo?”

I shifted in the slush. Time was, I would have made precisely that statement, and had. But last semester I’d been involved in espionage activities with the guy on my right, and he’d proven quite handy in a pinch.

Whereas the guy on my

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