by S. L. Stacy
“Good riddance!” Tanya yells, slamming the door behind them. “They’re ridiculous. Like we had anything to do with it. It doesn’t even make any sense.”
“Right. It makes no sense,” Carly says, frowning. The suspicious stare she gives me could cut through steel.
Tanya plops back down on the couch. Her slim, blonde ponytail swings back and forth behind her as she frantically surveys the living room. “This place is a mess. Everyone knows rush starts tonight!”
Relief washes over me as Carly turns her attention to the state of the house. “I sent out a reminder email about chores. No one ever listens to me.”
“It’s not really that bad,” I assure them. Except for the pile of shoes by the front door, a few backpacks on the floor and some hoodies strewn over the couches, the living room looks fairly neat and clean. “Just tell people to come pick up their stuff, or you’re throwing it away. We’ll help you clean after the meeting.”
There’s a rustling outside the front door, then someone swipes their card key in the lock. Victoria and Liz come inside, Victoria flushed after a morning run. Liz and Carly regard each other uneasily.
No one brings up the video as we sit in a semi-circle on the floor at Tanya’s feet. I wonder if they’ve seen it. Even though a cool draft has followed them inside, I feel uncomfortably hot. Victoria can’t find out about my role in the sex tape getting posted.
As I desperately try to come up with an excuse, just in case, something nudges at the back of my mind, begging for attention. I zero in on it, drawing it out of the shadowy corners. It expands, pulsing eagerly as it curls itself around the memory of my conversation with Sam and Alec. Victoria had told us that Olympians have ways of blocking thoughts from each other. With my mental shield thrown up, she won’t be able to probe this particular memory.
Tanya brings up a PowerPoint presentation on the laptop. On the first slide is a picture of a girl with blonde pigtails holding a set of pompoms. A caption underneath lists her name, age, hometown, major and a few hobbies.
“I’ve called you all here this morning because you’re our best recruiters,” Tanya says. “The young women in this presentation are believed to be legacies of Gamma Lambda Phi. We can’t know for certain yet if they are true descendants, but Victoria and I want to stick our best people on them from the start. As I go through the slides, take a moment to memorize each face, name and basic information. We also need to decide which of us will be the primary contact for each girl.” Tanya pauses so that we can study the first photo. “She was a cheerleader in high school, so I think either me or Siobhan should take her.”
I shrug. “It doesn’t matter to me.”
“Okay. I can.” Tanya moves on to the next slide. The portrait looks like an old yearbook picture, and the girl’s long brown hair and bright blue eyes are familiar. It’s not until I look at the profile that I realize who she is:
Vanessa Johnson, 19
Hometown: Allentown, Pennsylvania
Major: political science
Hobbies: painting, sculpture
“I know her,” I tell them. “She’s Max’s cousin. I don’t think she’s a descendant. She’s definitely something, though.” A little over a week ago, she had a vision about me. I can still see the whites of her eyes and hear the deep, demonic voice that came out of her, warning me of danger, telling me to get out. At the time, I figured she was talking about Farrah. Now I realize she probably meant Jasper.
“Well, since you already know her, I think you should take her,” Tanya says.
“Siobhan just said this girl isn’t a descendant,” says Liz. “We shouldn’t even bother trying to recruit her if she’s not a descendant.”
Tanya shoots a wary glance in my direction. I know what my roommate is thinking—that I’m not one of Nike’s descendants, either. “We still have to participate in formal recruitment, Liz—just like all of the other sororities.”
“I just meant we shouldn’t stick one of our best people on her,” Liz says quickly, smiling at me.
“Vanessa will be glad to see a familiar face. We can’t have the other girls going through rush thinking we’re a bunch of snobs. Everybody good?” Tanya clicks to the third slide.
As we go through the profiles, I count about forty women going through recruitment who are possible descendants. If at least thirty of them are true legacies, and all or most of those thirty agree to join, that will bring us back up to the size we were before Farrah kicked all of our human members out. Some of the tension gripping my body begins to ease at the thought.
“That’s it,” Tanya says, closing out of full-screen mode. “Does anyone have any questions, comments or concerns?” She pauses and assesses our shaking heads. “Great. Then we’re done.”
Rummaging through the hall closet, I find a few brooms and pass one to Carly. I hold the other one out to Tanya. She stares at it like I’m trying to hand her a dead ferret.
“I have…stuff…” She points at the ceiling and flees upstairs. I sigh and start sweeping up dust, glitter and crumbs of food from underneath the kitchen table.
Carly and I clean in silence. After I’ve finished sweeping, I begin throwing the shoes, clothes and other random things lying around the living room into a garbage bag.
“You’re not really going to throw people’s stuff away!” Carly cries from the doorway to the first floor bathroom. She’s wearing yellow latex gloves pulled up to her elbows, wielding a toilet brush in one hand and a bottle of bleach in the other.
“Of course not,” I say. “I’m just getting them out of the way. We can store them in the laundry room until people come to claim their stuff.”
“Oh. Okay.” She watches as I toss another pair of shoes into the dark green bag. “I know you had something to do with that video.”
I straighten up, dropping the lip of the bag. “I didn’t post it. I swear.”
“I know. You didn’t post it. That’s Alec’s room in the video,” she continues. “That’s his roommate with Rebecca. I knew you guys were plotting something.”
“We weren’t ‘plotting’ anything. We were discussing.”
“Don’t be like them, Siobhan,” Carly blurts, pointing the toilet brush at Farrah’s room.
“In case you missed it, we already are like them.” I take the bag by the end, knot it as best I can and drag it toward the stairs.
“You know what I mean.” Carly steps in front of me, blocking my way upstairs. “You’re lying and manipulating people, just like they would.”
“I’m not lying! I didn’t post—” Carly’s necklace winks at me from her throat, and I lose my train of thought. I squeeze the bag harder, fighting the sudden urge to rip it off her. I feel ashamed as I look back up at her face. What the hell is wrong with me?
“You can’t rationalize your way out of this! I don’t like what’s happening to you. To us,” Carly says, looking around the otherwise empty room. “You know, I never even wanted to join a sorority.”
“I didn’t, either,” I recall. “Tanya talked me into rushing.”
“But when I came here, when I met Victoria and the others, I just felt…” Carly’s smile is almost sad. “I wasn’t popular in high school, like you. I wasn’t a cheerleader. I was a mathlete. And people made fun of my hair. I didn’t have a lot of friends. Here, I didn’t just find good friends, I found…a home.”
“I did, too. It’s my home away from home.”
“That’s not what I mean. You have two parents back in Laurel who love you. A home to go back to over breaks. This is my home.” Carly’s chin trembles slightly. “But we’re turning into something that I’m not proud of. The non-Greeks already think we’re a bunch of dumb, alcoholic sluts. I always wanted to prove them wrong and believed that we could. But all this fighting and lies and gossip…we’re becoming much, much worse than any stereotype. We’re bad people.”
“You keep forgetting: We’re not ‘people’ anymore. Now, please get out of the way. I need to take this upstairs and get to clas
s.”
Carly hesitates, her baby blue eyes glistening with unshed tears. She ducks away and disappears into the bathroom to finish cleaning. I feel like an elephant is sitting on my chest as I trudge up the stairs, pulling the garbage bag behind me. Carly’s the last person in this world I should snap at. She brings a voice to my conscience, the part of me that knows that what I asked Sam and Alec to do was wrong—that I might as well have posted the video myself. The part of me that thinks I’m acting just like—
I stuff the garbage bag in the laundry room and shut the door. That chapter of my life is closed, for good. There’s nowhere to go but forward.
***
That evening, I open the front door to a mad house. The downstairs is as sparkling as I left it, the gold and green streamers and balloons up now, but my sisters are running around like blind-folded mice in a maze.
“We need more balloons!” Victoria yells at the two sophomores standing over a helium tank. “Hey, how was World Myths today?” she asks me. “Has Eric said anything to you yet?”
I shake my head. “He doesn’t acknowledge me at all. It’s just like I’m any other student. He seemed like he was in a better mood, though.” His jovial smile was back in full force, and he infused his second lecture about evil with more sarcasm and humor. I think he even trimmed his beard. Apate didn’t attend class—or at least I couldn’t see her. Either way, it was a good move on her part. I just might have lost my cool and ripped out her tongue, as promised.
“So strange. I don’t know what to make of it. Well, thanks for the update. Ladies, you can’t eat those yet!” she suddenly shouts, running over to shoo some of the girls away from the buffet.
Upstairs, I curl my hair and slip into tonight’s outfit: gold leggings and our green and gold house letters. My stomach rumbles, but I don’t have time to eat dinner before the first party. When I go back downstairs, there’s already a tunnel of sisters leading into the living room from the front door. Everyone bounces in place with nervous energy.
Tanya grabs my arm and pulls me into line. “You go here.” Farrah glides down the aisle, brandishing a perfume bottle. I flinch as my face is bombarded with a floral scented spray.
“It’s time!” Victoria whispers loudly, propping the front door open. The sound of chanting and cheering from the other sorority houses drifts inside, mingling with the excited voices of the girls waiting on our doorstep. Victoria counts off with her fingers, and on three, we launch into our own cheer.
I recognize the first girl to come in as the cheerleader with the blonde pigtails from the slide show. Cheeks pulled back in a huge grin, Tanya meets her and ushers her into the house. As each rushee enters, the next sister in line goes up to greet her. All are dressed to impress in dresses or skirts and blouses, except for one girl wearing a pair of jeans, oversized gray t-shirt and dirty tennis shoes. Her brown hair is swept back into a severe ponytail, and her pale face looks like she sucked on a lemon before coming here. Carly quickly turns her cringe into a smile and goes up to shake the girl’s hand. Vanessa hovers behind them, blue eyes peering around the living room. I catch Vanessa’s gaze as I approach her, and she smiles with relief.
“Hi Siobhan!” she cries before I can say anything. “It’s so nice to see you again!”
“You too,” I tell her. “Welcome to our house, Vanessa.”
“Oh, thank you. I’m really excited to be here,” she says as I guide her over to an empty spot by the TV cabinet. A simple, sleeveless black dress hugs her slim frame, and red patent leather heels give her a few inches of height over me. “You have a beautiful house.”
“Thanks! Our National Headquarters redecorated it just a few years ago.”
Vanessa inhales deeply. “It smells really good in here, too. Like apples and cinnamon.” That would be the incense Farrah is burning in her room. Several of the rushees tentatively sniff the air, frowning. The incense smells unpleasant to humans. I take a deep breath, getting a whiff of honey vanilla.
“So, how do you like Thurston so far?” I wonder.
“It’s great! I really like my classes. My favorite one is World History, but only because the professor is really hot.”
I briefly bite my lower lip, the sweetness of my lip balm grazing my tongue. “Um, let me guess…Dr. Mars?”
“Yeah! How’d you know?”
“He teaches one of my classes, too.”
“Ugh, he is just so gorgeous.” Vanessa shakes her head as though she can’t fully comprehend his sexiness. “The TA is kind of weird, though. She seems a bit…off.”
I laugh as I try to think of another topic of conversation, anxious to get off the subject of Dr. Mars and Apate. All I can seem to come up with is Max, but asking Vanessa why her cousin is such a creepy stalker isn’t acceptable rush talk. Past her shoulder, I see Carly’s fingers flickering behind her back, broadcasting our signal for help. Apparently things with Lemonhead aren’t going so well.
“It’s kind of funny I should run into you here. Well, I mean, I knew you were in a sorority,” Vanessa rambles. “I just meant it’s funny you’re the one I get to talk to. You’ve been on my mind lately.” She lowers her voice. “I…I still get visions about you.”
Speaking of inappropriate rush topics. Even so, when she pauses I can’t help myself from pressing her. “Like what?”
Vanessa’s lips move silently as she searches for the right words. “When I get a premonition, it’s not an event that’s necessarily set in stone. We make choices that define our futures. From any point ‘A,’ I often see countless pathways and possible futures. It gives me a headache.
“Anyway, my premonitions about you have been different. Nothing overly specific—flashes of faces and places, surges of crippling emotions. I’ve seen many possible paths you could take. But the end point is always the same.”
I stop breathing. “Well, what is it?”
“You die. Only this time, you don’t come back.”
Chapter 10
Vanessa covers her mouth with her hand. “Oh, my God. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“It’s okay,” I assure her even as I feel my surroundings slipping away from me. Unlike the Olympians and my fellow demigods, I still have a soul, which gets reborn after I die. Only if what Vanessa is saying is true, the next time I die, I’ll vanish just like them. I’ll be nothing.
Nothing.
“No, really, I’m sorry—”
“I’m not feeling very well.” The words rush out of me as I stagger past her. “Excuse me.”
I sneak into the kitchen, closing the door quietly behind me. My back bumps against the counter as I crumple to the floor. There’s an iron weight pressing down on my chest, and I can’t remember how to breathe. I don’t know how long I crouch like this before there’s a lull on the other side of the door. Tanya makes a quick speech to close out the party, and my sisters take up their chant again as the rushees leave.
The kitchen door flies open.
“You of all people know not to just leave someone without—” Tanya sees me on the floor, hugging my knees. “What the hell happened?”
I steel myself, then get up, pretending to smooth out my shirt and fix my hair. “I’m sorry, I just—I wasn’t feeling well.”
“Well, I hope you’re feeling better. I need you out there, Twin.” After giving me a pleading look, Tanya turns and goes back into the living room. I force myself to forget about the premonition and follow my roommate. Five minutes later, we’re lining up again for the second party.
The rest of the night seems to go smoothly, at least for everybody else. I know I’m not at the top of my recruitment game. My mind keeps drifting to my conversation with Vanessa, and each time I have to consciously push it away.
The last party is the largest one. Loud, animated voices press in on me from all sides, making my head throb.
“—and my senior year of high school, I was Editor-in-Chief of our school newspaper,” drones the girl
I’m supposed to be chatting up. She furrows her brow at me, her brown eyes searching my face. I can’t even remember her name. I think it starts with an “L.”
“That’s great…Lisa,” I try. Her breath whistles out in annoyance.
“Um, I don’t mean to be rude, but I need to use the ladies’ room,” she says.
“Oh, of course. It’s right over there,” I tell her, pointing.
“Thanks.” She scurries away as fast as her six-inch heels will carry her. I sigh inwardly. I don’t know if she’s a legacy or not, but she probably won’t be coming back tomorrow either way. I go up to the buffet table and grab a translucent pink plastic cup brimming with punch. Sipping it carefully, I watch the minute hand on the clock by the TV inch closer to eight.
A piercing shriek erupts above the din of voices, and some of the red liquid sloshes over the side of my cup, dribbling onto the floor.
The door to the bathroom opens, and Not Lisa stumbles out, her chest, neck, face and hair dripping with water. Conversations fade out.
“There’s something wrong with your sink!” Not Lisa shouts into the now silent room. Water is shooting straight out of the drain, splattering the bathroom ceiling and floor. The entire house seems to groan, then water starts spewing from the pipes in the bathroom. I glance at the closed door to the kitchen. A puddle of water seeps from underneath it, swiftly spreading onto the hardwood floor. Popping sounds echo around the room as the emergency sprinklers click on. Sisters and rushees scream as the spray pelts their faces and quickly soaks their clothes.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, it’s just water,” Victoria mutters, coming up behind me. Raising her voice, she says, “Let’s take this party outside!”
Tanya holds open the front door, and everyone files out, heads hung, hair and clothes dripping water onto the sidewalk. Dry, smiling girls emerge from the other sorority houses to the sounds of chanting and clapping. The first night of recruitment is over.
I look up and realize Not Lisa is standing next to me, futilely tapping her face and neck with a tissue. “Sorry about that,” I tell her. She glances at me without moving her head. “That’s never happened before, but we’re going to have facilities management look into it. Anyway, I just wanted to say it was really nice getting to know you tonight…Lynne.”
