Secret Society by Tom Dolby Page B

me. Unfortunately I picked your father, who after twenty glorious years, decided that he’d had enough.”
    â€œMom, I know. Dad sucks. But there’s nothing you can do about it.”
    Her mother continued, “I never had time to develop my talents. At your age, you need to take advantage of every opportunity.”
    Lauren wanted so badly to tell her mom about her internship, but her mom’s advice was so contradictory. She would tell Lauren to take every chance she had, and then she would chastise her for not doing well enough on her schoolwork. She wouldn’t approve of the internship, would dismiss it as nothing more than working in a shop.
    She wanted to ask her mom about the Society, to see if she was a member. But from the sound of it, her mom had no clue. Besides, she had promised the Society that she would keep it all to herself.
    Her mom was in another world, anyway. “It’s so good that you have friends,” she said. “Stick with your friends, honey. They’re the ones who will really support you.”
    Lauren excused herself to use the powder room—she needed a break from her mother for a moment—and when she returned, Diana had fallen asleep on the couch. Lauren draped a beige cashmere throw over her mom, deciding to let her sleep. When she dimmed the lights, the glittering windows of Park Avenue shone through the sheer, gauzy drapes, illuminating her mother’s petite frame.
    That evening, Lauren set her alarm early, in case her mom slept through the night and needed to be woken before the household staff arrived.
    Lauren knew one thing: She would never be like her mother. She would do everything within her power to make sure that didn’t happen.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
    I t all started with the ankh.
    Late that night, Phoebe was at home, looking at her canvases again. She had stopped by the gallery after school, as her mom needed her to pick up some papers, and the owner, Michelle Schrader, had come out to speak with her. She said she’d heard that Phoebe had been working on a series, and she’d be interested in taking a look at it. Did she have any images she could send?
    Phoebe felt short of breath. How had Michelle heard about her art? Maybe her mother had told her.
    She rushed home and started looking at her pieces, laying them out on the floor and strategizing what to do with them. They were mixed media pieces, combining abstract painting, collage, and screen printing. They had potential, but theyneeded something else. Her book from the library—she figured she could take the Egyptian one out without attracting suspicion—caught her eye. The ankh. Her hand went up to the bandage on the back of her neck. Still healing, she assumed.
    She went to her laptop, did an image search, and skimmed through a number of the sites. The ankh symbolized immortality, the union between male and female. It could protect against bad luck or attract good fortune. She even learned its Latin name, crux ansata, meaning “cross with a handle.” But no mention of the Society.
    It didn’t matter; it was better that the ankh wasn’t publicly associated with the Society. She looked back to her artwork. She was inspired by the Egyptian imagery, by the possibilities it might allow her.
    She got out her sketchbook and started planning a new piece.
    Â 
    Down in Soho, Nick waited nervously for Jared Willson at a new lounge, Persepolis, that had a vaguely Middle Eastern theme. Although the idea of doing a party at Twilight was exciting, it also made Nick uneasy. Jared wanted to do the party on Thursdays, the prime night in the club hierarchy, as Fridays and Saturdays were thought of as being for amateurs.
    Nick wasn’t sure, though, that he could trust Jared. He had heard the rumors: that Jared was a hard partier, that he was on drugs, that he was a dealer. But Nick thought about allthe awful things he had heard people say about him and how they