Tap & Gown Read Online Free Page A

secondary concern?”
    Cue another half hour of rigorous debate. This did not bode well. If we couldn’t even agree on how we were going to pick the taps, how in the world would we ever agree on whom we’d pick? I recalled Poe’s description of last year’s deliberations. He claimed to have argued against the inclusion of women until his voice gave out. Was this how it worked? The person with the energy to debate the longest was the one who won? The knight willing to browbeat the others into little puddles of mental and physical exhaustion got his or her “unanimous” vote by default?
    From the raspy sound of Soze’s voice, he’d reached the end of his rope already. “Can’t we just trust that D176 knew what they were doing when they designed it the way they did?” He looked at me with a plea in his eyes. What? I was supposed to jump to the defense that D176 were some kind of masterminds, just because I was dating one of them? My personal mastermind thought the plan his brothers had devised was a terrible one, and had made that perfectly clear to me on the steps out front last spring.
    Although that wasn’t all I’d heard about last spring. Their so-called secret deliberations hadn’t been entirely secret, either. Malcolm had told me, at least, how they went about choosing who would be Page 15

    assigned a female tap.
    “They didn’t design anything,” I said. “They drew straws to see who would be the ones to tap women.”
    “So you think we should draw straws?”
    “I think if the argument is that we should do it like D176, then we should base that argument on the way they actually did it. They didn’t assign gender tapping responsibilities to certain knights, which is what we’d be doing if we said all the women had to tap women. They did it randomly.”
    “I could roll with that,” Thorndike said. “Fifteen of each, and we all have a 50/50 chance. With the understanding, as I said before, that transgendered people are to be considered according to their self-defined gender identity—”
    “Tell me again,” Lucky said, “which of us you think is going to be looking to tap someone transgendered?”
    “You have a problem with that?” Thorndike snapped.
    And on it went for another half an hour.
    “My problem,” Soze said wearily, “is that I don’t think they had fifteen of each. I think they picked the ratio of six to nine and drew straws that way.”
    “ Gosh ,” said Puck. “If only someone in here had the phone number of a patriarch, so we could call and verify. Who might have that on her person?” He looked at me. I shrugged and pulled out my cell phone.
    Let’s just finish this and go home .
    “So what?” Thorndike says. “Poe’s word is now our law? Haven’t we spent this entire year doing basically the opposite of whatever that dick says?” She glanced at me. “No offense.”
    Whatever. A few months ago, I would have been glad to hear someone else say it. And even if I was offended that she was impugning my boyfriend, I had to admit that Thorndike had a point. I hardly ever agreed with Poe’s take on society traditions, and he outright hated ours.
    Funny how I’d forgotten all of that down there in the Florida heat. Was it saltwater poisoning that had so addled my brain? Back at school, in this tomb, I was constantly reminded why it was that I had always butted heads with my now-boyfriend.
    Whether or not he could help us in our present predicament wasn’t the point. I didn’t want to turn to Poe at the first sign of trouble or discord. We could do this ourselves. We didn’t need the help of patriarchs. For once, I wanted to prove that we, the knights of D177, could handle something on our own.
    Especially since it was the last chance we’d have to do so.
    I put my cell phone away and sighed.
    Forty-five minutes later, Puck was either nodding off to sleep or pretending to, Angel had lapsed into silence, and both Lil’ Demon and Graverobber had long since given up