and too-big ears, but was tall and slender, and his voice was deep and almost melodic. That night he was wearing a long, charcoal gray coat and a burgundy scarf that he had wrapped several times around his neck. I had heard of St. Dunstan’s, knew that it was the most elite society at a college that already had its share of prep-school snobbery, and I was very familiar with its location, the Manor, a stone and slate piece of Gothic Revival architecture that broached the northern edge of campus, where Mather spilled out into the urban wasteland of New Chester’s streets. It was a beautiful building, its stonework gilded with carvings and gargoyles, its front door tall and arched, and its windows all of stained glass. It was the type of architecture that had attracted me to the college in the first place. I’d looked at several places, but Mather, a two-hundred-year-old private college with just under a thousand students, had been the only place that felt right. With its gabled brick dorms, its archways, its elm-lined quad, it was like a campus stuck in some earlier time, the campus of a mystery novel set in the 1930s, where boys sang in barbershop quartets and girls in skirts walked briskly from class to class. To the deep dismay of my mother—who had been lobbying for Oberlin, her own alma mater, since I was five—and the unsurprising indifference of my father, I’d chosen Mather.
“Lily,” Eric said, after inviting me to Dunstan’s, “what’s your family name?”
“Kintner.”
“Oh, right. You’re Kintner. I heard you were here.” The way he’d said it sounded a little rehearsed, as though he’d already known who I was.
“You know my father?”
“Of course I do. He wrote Left over Right.”
I was surprised. Most of my father’s fans mentioned Slightest Folly, his boarding school farce, and I had never heard anyone mention his comedy about the life of a London tailor.
“What time?” I asked. I was propping open Barnard’s exterior door and was anxious to get inside.
“Ten-ish. Wait, hold on.” Eric dug into the pocket of his large coat and pulled out a small square card that he handed to me. It was white, printed with a letterpress image of a skull. “Show this at the front door.”
I said good night and entered my dorm. Jessica, my roommate, was still up and I told her about the invite. She was deeply invested in the social life of Mather and I was curious what she would know about Eric Washburn and the Thursday night party.
“You got a skull card,” she said and snatched it from my fingers. Then said, even louder, “You got a skull card from fucking Eric Washburn.”
“What do you know about him?”
“He’s like royalty. I think his great-great-great-great-grandfather basically built Mather. You honestly hadn’t heard of him?”
“I’ve heard of St. Dunstan’s.”
“Well, of course you’ve heard of St. Dun’s. Is the invite a plus one?”
“I don’t think so. He didn’t say it was.”
I went to the party, and I went alone. Eric was there, behind the bar when I first arrived, and he made me a vodka tonic without asking me what I wanted first. Then he took me by the arm and introduced me to several St. Dunstan’s members before returning to his bartending duties. He said it was a rotating Thursday night job and he’d drawn the short straw. I was slightly disappointed with the interior of the Manor, expecting something that more closely matched its Gothic exterior. I don’t know what exactly. Persian rugs and leather chairs? Instead, it was a slightly nicer version of the other fraternities I’d been to my freshman year. Low-ceilinged rooms, tatty furniture, and the ubiquitous smell of Marlboro Lights and cheap beer. I wandered its first-floor rooms, talking to several members, many of whom asked me about my father. After drinking my third vodka I went to the bar to say good-bye to Eric and thank him for inviting me.
“Come next week,” he said, and dug out another skull invite for me from his pocket. “I won’t be bartending.”
When I got home, Jessica pressed me for every detail. I told the truth, that there was nothing particularly interesting about St. Dunstan’s, and that everyone there seemed nice while not being wildly fascinating. I told her there were no secret passageways, or initiation rituals. I told her that there wasn’t a room lined with the skulls of freshman girls.
“Gross, Lily. You didn’t meet Matthew Ford, did you?”
“I met a Matthew. He