Pretty, Nasty, Lovely

by Rosalind Noonan

  “I’ve got fireballs and pumpkin shots,” he explained as Angela reached for the tray.

  “No, no, not those,” I said, pulling Angela away.

  “Thanks, anyway!” Isabel smiled sweetly as the prisoner dude shrugged and moved on.

  “But they looked so festive,” Angela said, falling back into my arms. “Especially the orange ones. Happy Halloween!”

  She was pretty wasted from the apple-juice-and-rum mix that had been circulating at the pre-party back at Theta House. “Apple yums!” Isabel had called them. We had powered down a few “yums,” then filled flasks with rum and Coke to take with us, as no one wanted to take the chance of getting roofied or going over the edge with something like grain alcohol.

  “Drink from the flask, girl!” I said. “We’re not going to let anyone take you down!”

  “Theta Pi forever!” Angela shouted, straightening up to pump a fist in the air.

  “Forever!” we chanted.

  Our costumes bobbed as we danced and laughed together. In our search for a theme costume for our threesome we’d found way too many costumes that exploited women. A cleavage-hugging leather bustier and tiny rag skirt for the pirate wench, red fishnet stockings for the sexy nurse, a bare midriff top with fringe for the “Indian Princess.”

  “Really?” Isabel had winced. “Who comes up with this shit?”

  In a total reversal, we had decided to be “Rock, Paper, and Scissors” with large cardboard costumes dangling from our necks over black tights and tees. We thought they were sexy enough without shouting, “Use me!”

  As the song ended, I saw a few of our sisters waving from the side of the dance floor, where a sliding door was open to a patio and the cool October night.

  “There’s Kate!” I said, guiding my friends over to my Theta Pi big sister, who was hanging out with other senior girls. Kate Sun and her friends were dressed as superheroes, and as we approached she put her hands on her hips to part her cape, revealing her red, white, and blue leotard. Her dark hair was curled at the ends and pulled back with a gold crown with a red star at its center.

  “Wonder Woman, have you come to save us from evil?” Isabel asked.

  “You three seem to be fending off the villains pretty well,” Kate said as she gave us all hugs. “I mean, who can beat a united Rock, Paper, Scissors?”

  Although everyone loved Kate, as her little sis, I felt a special bond. She was a “live in the moment” girl who worked hard to bring out the best in the people around her. Angela had pledged Theta Pi because she liked the loving tone Kate set as the sorority’s leader. “That and the fact that they’d chosen an Asian-American girl to be president,” Angela had told me. “I figured that if they could go there, they could accept someone like me.”

  “Have y’all met any of the Delta Taus?” asked Belle, whose long red hair covered the shoulders and back of her Supergirl costume. “Some of them are really nice guys.”

  “They’re kind of like us when it comes to recruiting,” said Tara. At least, I thought that was Tara under the Batgirl mask. “No assholes allowed.”

  We all laughed, partly because it was the truth. Theta Pi was a middle-of-the-road sorority in many ways. Girls weren’t chosen based on looks, academic success, family ties, or wealth. We weren’t all type-A leaders, but we weren’t wussies, either. So what was the common thread? I had joined because I saw compassion in these girls.

  “We’ve just been dancing and chillin’,” Angela said, throwing an arm around Isabel and leaning heavily into her. Isabel stooped under the weight.

  “Come out on the patio with us,” Kate said, supporting Angela from the other side. “We’ll introduce you to the guys we know.”

  Moving as a group, we went out back. Braced by the cool air, we snapped out of the fuzz a little and joined in with a bunch of guys who were telling stories and passing a bong. The details from there are kind of fuzzy for me, but I remember laughing and feeling uninhibited enough to tell my own stories.

  That night, my friends and I met guys who became our boyfriends. I fell in with Sam Mattern from the first flash of his blue eyes, and we sealed the deal when he loaned me his jacket in exchange for a drink from my flask. We joked about how sharing a flask was like swapping spit, and the next likely step was making out on a chaise at the edge of the patio. I was just drunk enough to not care when his hands began to roam over my shirt, and my response went quickly from permission to participation as his fingertips created a fire inside me.

  * * *

  Isabel split from Gabe pretty quickly, Angela is still seeing Darnell, and me? Well, I managed to hang on to Sam for a few months under the impression that if we stayed together long enough, Sam would mature out of that stupid boy brain that told him he was too young to be tied to one girl. A false impression. I didn’t know that some guys never mature out of the asshole phase. In retrospect, I wish I’d let him go long before that.

  CHAPTER 9

  Mrs. J was still droning on at the front of the room. “I don’t know what else to say.”

  Please, not one more word. I needed the lecture to end.

  “All right, ladies. I guess I’ll pass the meeting on to you, Tori.” Mrs. J moved off toward the doorway as our chapter president rose from one of the white leather sofas.

  All attention shifted desperately to Tori. Honestly, she was like eye candy as she moved to the speaker’s spot in front of the fireplace with the long-legged grace of a gazelle. Tori Winchester was probably the most strikingly beautiful Theta Pi girl. With a thin, finely boned face, gilded gold hair, and a kickass body, Tori had model potential, while the rest of us were average chicks with a determination to make the most of our looks and personality.

  “Ladies, my heart is aching, and I know yours are, too.” Tori pressed a manicured palm to her breast, and I noticed that the black-and-white nail art matched the black embroidered pattern on her white shirt. Perfectly.

  I picked at a loose cuticle on my thumb, and then quickly buried my hand between my thigh and the sofa. I could lose Rose Points for these crappy fingernails, but no one was watching me. All eyes were on Tori. The sisters didn’t seem too broken up over Lydia, but they were definitely interested in hearing what one of Lydia’s best friends had to say.

  “Lydia was our sister and friend, a bestie to many of us. There’s so much to say, but at the same time, the words get caught in my throat.” A glimmer of emotion squeezed her voice as the room grew silent. In that moment, I believed that Tori actually liked Lydia. The air was thick with love as Tori spoke about what Theta Pi had meant to Lydia. Although most of us didn’t know Lydia well, Tori plucked the strings of the chord that bound us together, and one by one my sisters began to cry. Not so much for Lydia, but for the sisterhood. Contagious tears.

  I held it together, watching. Tori knew how to work an audience, grabbing you by the collar so you couldn’t look away. The girl had a gift.

  Tori finished with a message of hope, her eyes sparkling as she went on to say how Lydia would want us to carry on and do the speed-dating pancake social as planned.

  “Pancakes?” I muttered, looking at my friends for a reality check. Angela rolled her eyes, but Isabel and Defiance were under Tori’s spell. As if anyone was going to be in the mood for midnight pancakes or rapid hookups after this.

  “Hold on a sec.” I waved a hand and pushed off the sofa. Granted, I was only a sophomore, but I was a year or two older than most other girls in my grade, and I wasn’t afraid to speak up. “Shouldn’t we postpone the pancake social? It seems wrong to sponsor something so festive so soon.”

  Tori fixed her eyes on me cautiously, as if sizing me up for a wrestling match. “We could cancel it, but then everyone on campus would think we’re unreliable.”

  “And it’s a campus tradition,” Courtney added. “Besides, if we don’t do it, some other sorority will steal our idea.”

  “Y’all need to look at the sunny side. Lydia loved the pancake social. Think of it as a tribu
te,” Violet said.

  The thought of flipping pancakes and rapping with drunk guys made me nauseous. I wanted to shut the thing down. Now. “Can we take a vote about postponing it? Just for a week or two.” I surveyed the room and was happy to see nods of encouragement.

  “No, we cannot take a vote,” Tori said indignantly. “Voting takes place only during general meetings. This”—she extended her pointer fingers like an airline attendant—“is an emergency session. It’s not the proper time to conduct business. Sorry, Emma.”

  Her fake sincerity made me all the more determined to nix the pancake thing. Later, behind the scenes. I dropped back onto the sofa, plotting another strike.

  Violet stood up next, a gloomy expression on her face as she fluffed her loose red curls over her shoulders. Violet was the second of “Charlie’s Angels,” the secret name we had for the top three leaders of Theta Pi. Now that Lydia, our own uncool Lucy Liu, was gone, we would need to drop it.

  “I talked to National, and they were just devastated. They’re sending us little black mourning ribbons to wear under our Theta pins,” Violet announced. “And there’s a special ritual to do in Lydia’s memory, but they said we should wait a week until . . . till . . .” Her voice quavered and dropped off. “After the hurt settles down a bit.”

  Tori patted Violet’s shoulder and took the floor again, reminding people of their committee assignments for the pancake social. Business as usual. While I understood the wisdom of moving on after a crisis, this seemed a little too slick and fast, but the meeting was not open for comments or suggestions, and there was really no time. Some of the girls had evening classes, and Mrs. J had emphasized that there would be no ex-cusals due to Lydia’s death. Harsh, but we all knew we could weasel a day or two out of a professor if we needed it.

  As I headed toward the back stairs with my friends, Mrs. J called to me.

  “Do you have a minute?” She pressed back a strand of silver hair and it immediately fell back in her face. The aging hippie look had appeal.

  “Sure,” I said politely, though I wanted to bolt. I couldn’t imagine that this involved anything good. Sisters peeled off around me as they headed out of the meeting room.

  “I wanted to give you a heads-up about the police.”

  Her words had the impact of a bucket of ice water. “What about the police?” I asked in a feeble voice.

  “They wanted to talk with you this afternoon when they checked out Lydia’s room, but you weren’t here. I checked your schedule, saw that you were in class. Detective Taylor said she’ll be back tonight or tomorrow, but you might hear from her. I gave her your cell number.”

  I shook my head. “Why does she want to talk to me?”

  “Apparently, you’re mentioned in Lydia’s journal, and they’re interviewing everyone close to her. Don’t be nervous. This is standard procedure when someone commits suicide. They talk to family and friends, look for reasons why it happened.”

  “But why me?”

  “You seem surprised, but I told the detective how you two spent time together of late. You girls think I don’t notice, but I saw you sitting with her, listening to her. In some of these last days, I think you were one of her few connections to the outside world.”

  “Me?” She was making too much of something simple and stupid. “We weren’t close.”

  “But you were there for her, and that was big of you, Emma. I knew you were connecting, and I knew Lydia was depressed. I wish I’d known the extent of her crisis, but then I’m not a health care professional. Still, I’m kicking myself now.”

  “I know what you mean, but . . .” I had to tread carefully. “Lydia had tons of support. But I guess no one can really know what’s going on in someone else’s mind.”

  “You’re right. Wise for your years. It’s just that . . . I’ve never lost one of my girls before and . . .” Her voice was hoarse now, and I stared down at the floor, respectful of her personal space as she pulled herself together.

  The awkward moment seemed to span an hour, but when it passed I told her I would be sure to talk with the detective. “Although I don’t have any special insights,” I insisted.

  “You’re too modest. You meant more to Lydia than you realized.”

  Thanks, but no thanks, I thought as I extracted myself. As I took to the stairs I felt the new weight of worry over the police pressuring me, as well as the question of the journal. What had Lydia written about me? Had she been idiot enough to scribble down the secrets we had shared? Or was it just a perfunctory mention of my name? Maybe I was overreacting. She might have written about half the sisters of Theta Pi.

  But during the meeting, Mrs. J hadn’t pulled anyone else aside.

  Just me.

  CHAPTER 10

  On the way from his office to the admin building, Finn was fighting images of the dead girl in his mind when he encountered a collection of students quietly working on one of the lawns on Greek Row. Only a week into November, it was early to be stringing Christmas lights, but that was exactly what they were doing, stringing white lights around the Theta Pi sign on the front lawn. As one of the girls stepped back from the sign, he noticed a few bouquets of flowers and votive candles placed around the base of the sign. Oh. A memorial.

  “What’s going on?” he asked two guys in flannel and down vests, who stood watching from the edge of the road.

  “It’s a memorial for the girl who jumped,” said the tall beanpole of a guy. “What was her name?”

  “Lydia Drakos,” the other guy answered, shifting from foot to foot. “She was a Theta Pi.”

  “It’s sad,” Finn said with a nod toward the flowers and candles. “Did you know her?”

  “We were just walking by,” the tall guy admitted.

  As Finn moved on he recalled Lydia mentioning something about a sorority when she’d asked for an extension. Something about pledge week or rushing or some Greek function—all a load of crap when it came to excuses, but he liked to give his students some play. No use making college deadlines tighter than deadlines in the real world, which, in his experience, usually had some latitude. There was enough pressure in the world without ramping up fake stress.

  Up ahead, the North Campus Bridge reached across the ravine, its steel posts forming defiant Xs against the pewter night sky. He slowed at the staircase leading up to the bridge, then pushed ahead. As the roadbed came into view, he saw police tape at the center of the walkway, and a campus security guard strolling past it. A handful of pedestrians crossed, heads down against the wind, pausing briefly to view the site.

  Nothing to see, as a cop might say. Just yellow tape rattling in the wind. Still, there was an eeriness in the air, an emptiness, as if a vacuum lingered at the center of the bridge. Finn knew he was probably projecting, trying to assign a loss and sadness to a death ritual that was cold and without meaning.

  Suicide.

  He’d danced with that one more than once. Posttraumatic stress could lead a person to dark places.

  Finn slowed his pace as he came up on the campus guard assigned to the bridge. “How’s it going?” Finn asked casually.

  The guard nodded. He had craggy skin, sunken eyes, and an outlaw mustache. Probably in his sixties, most likely a retired cop. Finn valued experience.

  “Are you here through the night?” Finn asked.

  “Until after sunrise.” The man gave a sad look at the yellow tape. “But I don’t know how long they’ll keep someone on duty here at night. Not in the budget.”

  “True,” Finn said, and he knew some of the students would be resistant to having a police presence on the bridges. “Well. Stay warm.”

  The guard nodded, already shifting his attention to a trio of young women coming from the east side, the spires of Chambers Hall lit against a gloomy sky. Beneath the cliff-side building, the gorge was a black hole, dark fingers of shadow. Nothing to appreciate by night, but come the sunrise, the view below would be nothing short of spectacular.

  Walking on
, Finn considered the dilemma of the bridges and gorges. He knew the cops would have shut down the bridge during the investigation if they could, but the closure would have crippled the north end of the campus, where the campus had spread across the river into the town of Pioneer Falls. Dormitories, classrooms, sports complexes and stadiums, and food courts peppered both sides of the gorge. Merriwether was a campus of bridges.

  There was no denying that the rocky, varied landscape drew students from across the country, but the stunning gorges were a mixed blessing. The natural marvel of waterfalls and creeks carving their way through ancient rock offered beauty as well as a simple means of suicide.

  The admin building was a squat Tudor-style structure, far more impressive from the outside, as its hallways were warrens and the rooms inside were too small and dark to hold classes. His key card allowed him access to the front door. From there it wasn’t difficult to find Dean Cho’s office—the only open door with a rectangle of amber light in a glum second-floor hallway.

  “Looks like you’re the only one working late,” he called, mostly to give her some warning of his approach. When he swung into the open doorway, she was at her desk typing.

  “I like the quiet,” she said. “It’s the best way to get things done.” She clicked the mouse, and then turned toward him.

  Although he had met her before at a campus meet and greet, the light back then hadn’t been nearly so flattering. In the warm glow of the desk lamp, her smooth skin and finely angled cheekbones lent her a movie star grace in that high contrast way of old black-and-white movies. With dark hair cut so that it angled in at her jawline and almond-shaped eyes, she possessed lovely features that couldn’t be disguised by dark-framed glasses and an oversized cardigan. “I’m Sydney Cho.”

  “Scott Finnegan.” He reached out and they shook. Damn, she had a strong grip. “We met before. I was the professor who requested that you review the policies of the university counseling center.”