Secret Society (14 page)

A
few days later, during the week leading up to Thanksgiving break, Phoebe got a call from Michelle while she was walking home from school.

“There's a problem, sweetie,” she said. “The works I told you about that were sold? They were picked up from the gallery, but not actually paid for.”

“What do you mean?” Phoebe said. “Where are they?”

“That's the awful thing—we don't actually know. The client came recommended through a reputable art consultant, but we had never dealt with him before. He took the pieces on approval with the intention of buying them, which means he had the option of bringing them back if they didn't work out. We do this all the time; people like to test things out in their own homes, to live with a piece for a few days. But now
we haven't heard from him.”

“Did you get a credit card number or something?” This was so crazy. The money she was making was supposed to be saved for college. Now what she thought were some of her best works, the works that had contained Patch's imagery, were gone.

“We did,” Michelle said. “But it turned out to be fraudulent. The authorization went through a few days ago, but then we were informed today that the card was a stolen one. I'm so sorry, Phoebe.”

“This is absurd,” Phoebe said. “So I don't get paid?”

“If you recall your contract, client damages are not the gallery's responsibility. It's rare that it happens, but it does. Phoebe, you have to remember that the rest of the show is terrific. You've been getting great notices. You'll be fine. Listen, I have to go. Talk later?”

“Sure,” Phoebe said, snapping her phone closed and throwing it into her book bag. How could Michelle be so nonchalant about her works being stolen?

She looked at the caller ID. Michelle had called from the gallery, so she was sure to be there. Phoebe wondered if there would be any point to confronting her in person, but she decided against it. To push the issue with Michelle could get ugly, and it might put her mom's career at risk.

As she headed home on the subway, she blinked back tears, amazed that no one on the train noticed she was crying.
Maybe this was nothing more than the disappointment of life, the disappointment most people had learned to accept.

When she arrived at the townhouse, she collapsed onto her bed, exhausted, falling into a restless sleep.

 

A few hours later, Phoebe was woken by her cell, which she answered groggily.

“Phoebe, this is Parker Bell, Nick's father. There's a matter I need to speak with you about.”

“Okay…” Phoebe said hesitantly, still dazed.

“I saw a preview of your show at the gallery, before your paintings were sold.”

“They weren't sold,” she said quietly. “Supposedly, they disappeared.”

He ignored her comment. “I need to know where you got those photographs. You didn't take them yourself, I presume?”

“I had never seen them before in my life.” She didn't know what to say. “I got them from someone in my class. I think you know him, he's a friend of Nick's?” She immediately realized what she had done and felt like an idiot for saying too much. Patch had specifically asked her not to reveal her source. “Mr. Bell, I'm not even sure they were really from him. I mean, I got images from all over: newspaper clippings, the Internet, old movies. It's hard for me to know which ones you're talking about.”

“I think you know exactly which ones I mean. Did you ask him for the images, or did he give them to you?”

She thought back to that evening. She had asked Patch for the images, but the question of which images had been up to him.

“I don't know,” she said. “I can't remember.”

“As you know, the gallery can't sell those works. They have to be destroyed.”

“What?” she asked, shocked. “Were
you
the mysterious buyer?”

Mr. Bell paused. “No, I wasn't. But some very concerned Society members arranged for them to be removed from the show. They found them quite disturbing.”

Her works were
disturbing?
What were they talking about?

“Mr. Bell, they can't destroy my work! I mean, you must see how wrong that is.”

“You have to understand that this is all for the best. They're only looking out for your interests.”

As she had suspected, it had all been too good to be true. The dream always ended at some point. What was next? Would Michelle take down the rest of her show?

“Phoebe, this is important. We need to know the exact nature of the transaction between you and the individual who gave you the images.”

Phoebe looked out the window, unsure of what to say. In a
moment of panic, she disconnected the call, hoping Mr. Bell would think her signal had dropped. She stood in her bedroom, out of breath. Who could she tell about this, besides Lauren? She couldn't mention it to Nick; he would find it too upsetting. She had no idea his dad could be so unpleasant.

She crumpled down onto the floor, barely able to breathe, and didn't move for several hours.

L
ate that night, unable to sleep, Phoebe knocked on her mother's door. There had been multiple voice mails on her phone, but she had ignored them all. Parker Bell had left her three messages, and there were two from the Administrator requesting a meeting to discuss the “gallery incident.” Nick had sent her multiple text messages, but she didn't know how she could talk to him without telling him about his father. She wanted to call Anastasia, or even Lauren, for advice, but she was too ashamed.

“Mom, I need to talk to you.”

“What is it?” Maia turned on the light and pulled out a pillow, motioning to Phoebe to sit on the bed with her.

Phoebe started sobbing. It felt as if the room were spinning. “I don't know where to start. There are these people,
there's this group that I joined. It's so stupid. They're like this secret group, and they seem to know everything about me, and it's like I don't have any freedom anymore, and everything's messed up.”

Maia looked at her strangely. “I'm not sure I understand. I mean, Phoebe, sweetheart, you're not making any sense. I know there was some confusion about one of Michelle's clients, but I thought all that had been resolved.”

“Mom, there are these people. And they're really connected. They can do anything.” Phoebe kept trying to explain her involvement with the Society to her mother, but she only managed to sound loonier each time.

“I think we'd better get you to a doctor,” Maia said. “It sounds like your imagination is running away from you.”

“No!” Phoebe screamed. “It's not my imagination. It's all real. Look at this!” She pulled away her hair and showed her mom the tattoo.

Her mother looked at it carefully. “Okay, so you got a tattoo. I can't say I'm thrilled, but it's nothing to get hysterical about.”

“You're not understanding! We all have them. Everyone in this group. We're not supposed to tell anyone that we're in it.”

“Why's that?”

“I don't know. They told us not to.”

“Phoebe, honey, get some rest. I'm pulling you out of
school tomorrow. It's the last day before break anyway. I'll get you an appointment with a therapist. I think all the anxiety from the show has been getting to you.”

Phoebe nodded, temporarily mollified. Maybe it would help to talk to someone about this, someone who could be objective. She used to have a therapist in Los Angeles, right after the divorce, but she hadn't seen anyone since moving to New York. She walked back to her bedroom, and even though her phone was still blinking with messages, she went right to sleep.

 

The next day, Phoebe and her mother took a cab up to Mount Sinai Hospital, where they were to see a well-respected psychiatrist, Dr. Alexander Meckling. Maia insisted on sitting in on the session. Phoebe explained what was going on with her, everything she was so upset about: the secret society, the gallery exhibit, the missing artwork.

Dr. Meckling gave her a saccharine smile. He was in his fifties, balding, and had a large red birthmark across the top of his head. “Phoebe, it sounds like you're suffering from what people call paranoid delusions. Are you really sure you saw all these things?”

“I know I saw these things. We all did. We were all there.”

“Of course you were. Do you have any actual proof of all this? Besides what your friends say?”

Phoebe shook her head, thinking back to the printed scroll that she had dutifully destroyed back in September. “I have the tattoo. I told you about that.”

Dr. Meckling nodded. “Yes, it's common for teenagers to get tattoos. You got it illegally, I suppose?”

“No, you don't understand—they gave it to me! I didn't have any control over it.”

“Phoebe, that's a highly unlikely story. Why don't you tell us what really happened?”

“I already told you: There was a party, and they gave us this drink, and I don't remember much after that, but I know we walked out of there, and we all had these tattoos on the backs of our necks.”

“Phoebe, this is all ridiculous,” her mother said. “Just tell the doctor what really happened.”

“Mom, you don't understand. Why won't either of you believe me? Where did you find this guy?”

“Who, Dr. Meckling? He's a friend of Daniel's.”

A shiver ran to Phoebe's stomach. Daniel, who was also in the Society. She glared at Dr. Meckling.

“I'm out of here,” Phoebe said, getting up.

“Phoebe! Sit down!” her mother said.

“Mom, you don't get it.”

Dr. Meckling sat in his chair with a self-satisfied smile. His right hand went up to scratch something on the back of his neck.

Phoebe could guess what it was.

She couldn't believe any of this. Was her mother part of it, too? She was probably oblivious, but clearly she wasn't going to believe anything Phoebe said.

She took the elevator down alone, leaving her mother in Dr. Meckling's office. When she reached the street, Phoebe felt short of breath. She knew she should be in school, but she couldn't face it. She didn't even know if she felt safe going home. As she walked to the corner, she started seeing signs of the ankh everywhere: on buildings, in graffiti, carved into concrete. Maybe her mind was playing tricks on her. She hailed a cab and took it all the way downtown. Once home, she locked herself into her room, the only place she felt safe. She wished she could call Nick, but she felt too embarrassed about everything that had happened.

Her mother returned home an hour later. “Phoebe? Are you in there?”

“I'm not coming out. Not until you apologize. I don't know why you wouldn't believe me.”

“The doctor gave me some prescriptions that I had filled. I'm going to leave them next to your door. You can come out when you're ready. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day. You can rest until you feel better.”

Phoebe said nothing.

Later that day, after she had spent nearly five hours alone, she opened the door a crack. There were two vials sitting in
the hallway. She snatched them up and read the labels: Xanax and Klonopin. She knew kids at school who would kill to get this stuff. She put the medications by her bedside table, not willing to take them, not yet.

N
ick drove his Jeep out to the beach house late on Wednesday evening. He was meeting up with his family, including his grandfather and Nick's two brothers, Benjamin and Henry, who were coming home from Yale. It would be good to be out at the house, but he was nervous about Phoebe. He hadn't heard from her in two days, despite multiple texts and voice mails. He had done everything short of showing up at her house; he was worried that might seem like he was stalking her. He darted in and out of traffic on the Montauk Highway, passing luxury cars and minivans full of families, aware that he was driving too fast.

Things were not right. Phoebe had never not responded to him.

Everyone else had arrived earlier in the day, but Nick had
wanted to have his own car there. His Jeep was a broken-down old Cherokee, with a slight rattle whenever it started up and seating with a baked-in leather smell. It had been passed down from his two brothers, and it was a Bell family point of pride to be driving it. It was constantly going in to the shop, and Nick estimated that they had probably spent more on repairs than a new car would have cost, but it had become a family institution.

The gravel crunched under his tires as he pulled into the front drive. The Bells' main house was a classic 1920s shingle-style built on twelve acres in Southampton, two of which directly faced the beach. There were two tennis courts, a swimming pool, a formal garden, the cook's vegetable garden, a pool house, and assorted outbuildings, including a caretaker's cottage.

When Nick arrived at the house, he saw that Gertie had left a plate of meatloaf and string beans for him in the warming drawer of the white wainscoted kitchen. After he finished the meal, he padded back to his room to unpack. He had a whole wardrobe at the beach house, so he never needed to bring much. It was always comforting: tattered old jeans, ratty sweaters, the kind of clothes that fit perfectly and made you feel at home.

Before he got to his room, he heard a voice from the living room. The two double doors were closed.

“Nicholas, is that you?” It was his father's voice.

“Yes,” Nick said, opening one door.

There was a roaring fire in the fireplace, above which was one of his family's most valuable pieces of art: an original Jackson Pollock painting. When it was up for auction at Sotheby's, his father had deemed it too modern, but his mother had prevailed, arguing it was appropriate that they show a local work, given that the painter had created it only a few towns away.

Nick's father sat with Nick's grandfather, Palmer Bell. His grandfather was an austere-looking man, lean and fit with a shock of white hair. He rose to greet Nick.

“Don't get up.” Nick rushed over to him, but it was too late. Palmer Bell stood up to his full six feet four inches. Even though Nick was six-feet-two himself, it always seemed that his grandfather towered over him. “Give your granddad a hug,” he said.

“When did you get back from Palm Beach?” Nick asked.

“Just this afternoon. Got in a round of golf this morning and then flew directly here. Can't believe the traffic at East Hampton Airport! Every jerk with a credit card flies private these days.”

Nick nodded, not sure what to say.

His father broke in. “Nick, I'm afraid we have a bit of a situation.”

Nick sat down. “What's that?”

Nick's father looked at Palmer. “We are among friends here,” he said. “We can speak freely.”

“Okay,” Nick said.

“There is something we haven't been telling you. Your grandfather and I are very intimately involved with the Society. We didn't feel it was right until now for you to know.”

“Involved how?” Nick and the other Initiates were so separate from the Society's leadership that he had never asked his dad more about the group. But now he remembered all the clues he had stumbled upon: the checkbook in his father's desk, the various comments Society members had made over the past few months.

The truth, he thought, was that his father hadn't exactly been forthcoming, and Nick hadn't really wanted to know.

“Were you there during the initiation?” Nick asked.

His father chuckled. “I was not. The Society leadership doesn't attend such functions of the junior membership.”

“The Society leadership?” Nick was confused.

“Let me put it bluntly,” his father said. “I am the current Chairman of the Society. That means I am in charge of all the Elders and of the Council of Regents.”

A chill ran through Nick. “What are the Regents?”

“The Regents are the ruling body of the Society. None of your fellow Initiates know any of this, and they are not permitted to know until the annual retreat.”

“The annual retreat?”

“Son, you must have noticed how your grandfather and I are away each year between Christmas and New Year's?”

“For your hunting trip, right?”

“We don't go hunting,” Parker said.

Palmer snickered. “Haven't gone in twenty years. Almost wish I had.”

Parker continued in a serious tone, “The annual retreat for the Society is on Isis Island. A private island off the coast of Maine. Not even on some maps. We welcome the Initiates; all the Regents, the Conscripts, and many of the Elders will be there.” He paused for a moment.

“Nick, your grandfather, you should be proud to know, is the Chairman Emeritus of the Society. He was head of the Society for twenty-two years. Led it through some of its best times. Before things got, well, distasteful. The world has changed so much. With the way things are headed now, there are economic realities we must face. We can't afford to let our way of life be compromised over petty matters.”

“What does all this have to do with me?” Nick asked.

“These are desperate times, Nick,” Parker continued. “We must do what we need to do. And we have a problem.”

“What's the problem?” Nick asked.

“The problem,” his grandfather said, “is your friend Patch.”