Page 62 of The Debutantes
“Piper—”
“Sorry, but this feels like a pretty conditional situation. I can’t exactly keep it a secret if you’re about to tell me you committed a felony.”
“Okay, fair.” He puts his water bottle down and slumps into a chair. “If I can swear this isn’t related to a federal crime, will you trust me?”
I meet his eyes, searching for a shred of duplicity in their sticky honey brown, but all I see is desperation.
“Fine.” Some instinct for professionalism moves me to offer a handshake, and he takes it. When his fingers close around mine, an almost electric current shoots up to my wrist, but I tell myself it’s because his hand is cool from the water bottle. Simple physics. “Don’t make me regret this, Ortiz. Now where the hell did you get that invitation?”
He lets go of my hand and clasps his own together on the table. “I found it a few days ago, addressed to one of the Deus members.”
“Who?” When he hesitates, I press harder. “If your main concern is protecting the anonymity of some old guy, I’m going to have a hard time trusting you.”
“I know. I’m just trying to figure out how to—” His eyes drop to the table. “Look, there are things going on inside Deus that you may not… know about.”
He’s speaking like it’s physically hard to get the words out, and I realize, suddenly, that he thinks he’s protecting me. My fragile image of my family traditions, how glorious and important it all is.
I cross my arms. “Try me.”
He finally looks at me. “What do you know?”
“I’m asking the questions.”
He gives a small flash of a smile. “You’re killing it with the bad-cop thing, but I’m trying to put this together, too. Maybe help me out a little?”
I want to argue, but there’s something about the way he’s looking at me, all pleading, that makes my brain briefly turn into mush.
“Fine.” I smooth my skirt, suddenly unable to look at him,either. “I may or may not have heard about the Pierrot from Milford on New Year’s. Now what do you know about it? Are you a member?”
“No.”
“Is your dad?”
Aiden gets this look that I hate—one that says there’s something obvious I’m not seeing. “We’re not exactly welcome there.”
An uneasy feeling squirms in my stomach. I think I know why, but still, I ask, “What do you mean?”
“As far as some people are concerned, my dad shouldn’t be in Deus, let alone the Pierrot. I know membership is technically ‘nondiscriminatory’ now, as long as you’ve got the money and connections to work your way in, but there was still pushback from the old guard when Dad joined. Some of them weren’t too happy about having the son of Mexican immigrants in their little club.”
The uneasy feeling deepens. I know about Deus’s ugly, racist roots. Almost all of the oldest Krewes were segregated at first. It wasn’t until the nineties that the city outlawed discrimination, ordering any groups that didn’t comply to forfeit their parade licenses. Most Krewes, like Deus, wised up and changed with the times, but others clung to their exclusionary practices, canceling their public parades and choosing instead to host only private balls. Some of them do to this day, claiming their refusal to be inclusive is some kind of First Amendment right. Still, I thought Deus was different. A week ago, I would have balked at the idea that anyone in our Krewe is so openly bigoted. But now…
“I think that’s why the Pierrot exists,” Aiden continues. “Or at least partly. These old-line guys wanted to go back to a time when they didn’t have to hide who they were, so they started a group that would let them do it.”
As soon as he says it, I know, without a doubt, that it’s true.
“How do you know about the Pierrot?” I ask.
“I first heard about it last semester. The Les Masques invitations had just come out, so Milford’s parents invited all the Dukes and their dads over to celebrate.”
I remember that night. Wyatt and Dad were there. Mom and I weren’t invited, because, like an echo of Milford’s annoying lilt when we made him tell us about the Pierrot:No girls allowed.
“One of the guys from St. Anthony’s said something about an after-party,” Aiden says. “At the Pierrot. As soon as he said it, the other Dukes got really weird. Milford changed the subject, but the way they were all looking at me… I knew. It was like walking up to a group of people when you know they were just talking about you, only I’d been standing there the whole time. I pressed Milford about the Pierrot later, but he said he couldn’t tell me. It was a ‘Carnival secret.’”
It’s the exact same phrase he used when we cornered him in the bathroom, and it makes my skin crawl.
“I asked my dad about it when we got home, and he had no idea what I was talking about. But I couldn’t leave it alone. I had this feeling, like something big was going on right under our noses. So I started doing research. The first thing I found was about Milford’s dad. Last year, when he announced that he was running for mayor, a former employee at his law firm came forward to accuse him of sexual harassment.”
My blood goes cold. “I didn’t know that.”
