Pretty, Nasty, Lovely

by Rosalind Noonan

  “Fuck . . . ,” I breathed, sweating under my scarf.

  Desperate, I found a student toward the front of the line who was buying a pack of Scantron paper. I paid him five bucks for one sheet—a deal for him—and raced out of there with the precious paper tucked into a notebook in my backpack.

  The first drops began to fall as I darted out of the student center. I’d made the mistake of wearing my suede jacket. I slowed down to pop my scarf over my head, then took off again, this time motivated to move. But the rain pelted me, making it hard to see my way. I veered off the path and stepped into a mass of sodden leaves and mulch. My foot slipped and I went down, suddenly hugging the wet bricks.

  The sting of my torn skin, the cold of the soaking rain, the stab of humiliation and defeat—everything combined to hit me with a cosmic slam.

  I wasn’t going to make it to class, and what was the point, anyway? I was going to bomb the exam.

  The tears came hot and heavy as I pulled myself into a rumpled mass on the paving stones. The numbness I’d felt over Lydia’s death had given way to shifting bouts of anger and despair. I was so angry at Lydia for pulling us into her troubled life, furious with her for not being strong enough or considerate enough to stick around. In that moment, with dirt under my fingernails and the cut on my knee smarting, I hated her. Yes, I hated her.

  Some passing girl asked if I was okay, and I waved her off. Nothing was broken, just my former life. The downpour gave me license to cry all the way home without anyone noticing. I slipped into the back door of Theta House, careful to avoid Dean Cho or the cops or even Mrs. J, who had been a pain in the ass lately. Like a criminal, I sneaked upstairs to my room. None of my suite mates were around. Whatever. I finished crying in the shower, then sat in my pajamas, trying to compose an e-mail to my Anatomy and Physiology professor that didn’t sound sniveling or melodramatic.

  Since my friend and sorority sister killed herself, I have found it hard to focus.

  That made me sound like a tepid moron.

  The recent suicide on campus was my friend Lydia, and I am still reeling from the news of her death.

  Better. I rewrote it a few times, copied Dean Cho, and finally sent it off in surrender. Let him fail me if he wanted to be an ass.

  I was tanking. A missed exam and no focus. I had the police, Dean Cho, and Mrs. J breathing down my neck, and I’d barely slept in the last twenty-four hours.

  Sleep was what I needed.

  I took two over-the-counter sleep aids, dried my hair, and crawled into bed. Hugging my pillow, I prayed for sleep to dull the thudding anger and despair. How great it would be to feel nothing.

  CHAPTER 16

  Emma’s Freshman Year

  Despite the stories of mean girls, hazing, and supreme bitchery connected to sororities, I enjoyed rushing and pledging Theta Pi. After a month of knocking around on campus, trying to make friends among the ever-shifting faces of thousands of students, I’d found instant friends while rushing. Maybe it was our own insecurity, but as soon as we found one another in our pledge class, Isabel, Angela, and I stuck together like glue, helping one another with schoolwork and just kicking back to talk.

  I immediately wanted to adopt Isabel, with her round eyes and baby bird–thin body. Hard to believe she’d once been overweight, but she told me she had gone through years of binge eating in high school when her parents’ divorce had uprooted her. I got that. She still suffered from abandonment issues and PTSD, and she said she had her weight under control, though I rarely saw her eat anything besides raw veggies and water.

  Angela and I had been the ones to choose Theta Pi, based on the incredible reception from girls like Kate and Theta Pi’s rep on campus.

  “They’re not as focused on getting wasted as the Deltas,” I said, “but they know how to kick it.”

  “And the Thetas aren’t dirty girls, but they’re not the God Squad, either,” Angela said. “I’m kind of feeling like Goldilocks with the three bears. For me, the Thetas are just right.”

  It didn’t hurt that Theta House was one of the nicest hubs on campus, with plenty of bathrooms and small living suites instead of the massive sleeping porches that lots of sororities in the Pacific Northwest had to occupy. Orphanage-style barracks with more than a dozen triple bunks in the room. Not for us!

  Sorority life seemed magical that first semester. At last, my mantra was becoming a reality. “Are we having fun yet?” I would ask my friends, and Isabel and Angela would laugh and high-five me.

  The senior sisters welcomed us and spread their wings wide, introducing us to guys they knew, tutoring us in difficult classes. Kate was like a big sister to all of us, and Suz Ingrassio could make us laugh on the gray days. They made us feel like royalty. After years of a lonely, difficult grind, I was happy to be in the throes of an eternal sleepover.

  Of course, there were the celebrity connections to elevate our status. India Taylor’s father was a Hollywood film producer. Tori Winchester was rich and beautiful and hysterically snarky. Lydia Drakos was prim, from old European money. And one sister was rumored to be a cousin of Lady Gaga, but she played it down, saying she didn’t want to be judged on something so “ancillary.” I didn’t mind ancillary. They thought it was cool that my father was a musician. Most girls had never heard of G-Dan, but they were impressed by his profile on Wikipedia.

  Halloween night, when I met Sam, was the ultimate party weekend. We had finished the work on our homecoming float, that time-consuming paper dragon with the theme “Theta Pi leaves the others draggin’!” We’d made it through midterms, and Angela, Isabel, and I were making plans to move into Theta House after winter break. I had found my family of sisters.

  I should have known that it couldn’t last.

  My downfall was a guy. I was sure Sam Mattern was the one. He wasn’t always kind to me, but when he was, the sun shined on my world and held me in a warm glow. I wanted sunshine 24/7, and I began to plot ways to make him love me.

  Around the same time, my friends began drifting and fading into their own issues.

  Isabel was sick all the time. “I have a tummy ache,” she would say when I came to her room in the freshman dorm. She would crawl into the corner of her bed as I curled up beside her and told her about how Sam hadn’t called me for two days or how I’d seen him laughing with a pretty Zeta girl at Starbucks. As Isabel had less experience with guys than I did, she fought off her fatigue to listen. “What are you going to do, Emma?” she would ask.

  “Just keep trying,” I said.

  By November, we had to coax Isabel over to Theta House for meetings. Although she remained cheerful, she seemed to fade off while other people were talking, and she was always shivering cold, even after the room warmed up. Forget about hitting a party; Isabel could barely make it down the street.

  Angela was spending more time with Darnell, having cooled on Theta Pi. She attended mandatory meetings and events, but never just hung out.

  When I asked Angela about it, she swore me to secrecy and made sure no one was listening at nearby tables.

  “I overheard some sisters talking about me,” she said. “They were wondering why I hadn’t pledged a black sorority.”

  “Who said that?” I asked.

  “I’m not giving names ’cause you can’t tell anyone anyway. You promised. But I’m just saying—you can probably guess.”

  “Tori? Violet?” I kept guessing, but Angela just scowled at me. “It can’t be one of the seniors.”

  “Would you shut up and listen? Then she said, ‘A girl like that doesn’t belong in our sorority.’ After I went through pledge week and initiation? I’m a fucking Theta Pi sister, and now they’re saying I don’t belong?”

  “Oh, Angie, I’m sorry!”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “But I feel bad for you, and pissed that we have a racist in the family.” I picked at the seam in my paper coffee cup. “So what are you going to do?”

  “Nothing.”

&nbs
p; “But you have to say something. Come on, Ang. You’ve never been shy.”

  “What do you think anyone will do if I tell them what I heard? You think your beloved Kate and her Rose Council are going to stick up for me and punish two of the older sisters who are about to be running the damned sorority next year? That will never happen.”

  Hope sank in my chest as I realized she was right. “What about chapter relations?” I said quietly. “You can send a note to chapter relations, anonymously, and ask them to address the problem. No one will get in trouble, but at least they’ll talk about it and build awareness.”

  “Chapter relations?” Angela frowned. “Emma girl, you are so naïve. Chapter relations was the one doing the talking.”

  Chapter relations was Lydia Drakos.

  * * *

  My little family of sisters was drifting apart, and I couldn’t let it happen. “Come on, you guys,” I told them one Sunday morning when Angela and I brought Isabel bagels. “We made a pledge to be sisters of Theta Pi, and we’re going to stick with it. I know it won’t always be easy. The glitter has already faded from the time we pledged.”

  “Everyone was nice to us back then.” Isabel, uninterested in eating, was hugging a pillow. “The senior girls spent time with us. They really seemed to like us. Now, they barely say hello.”

  “Not all of them,” I insisted. I wanted to defend my big sister, Kate, but even she had pulled away with the excuse of preparing for a nursing job that would begin in January, during her last semester of college. “The seniors can see the end of their run. In a few months they’ll be moving on into the real world. Getting jobs. Kate says it’s a stressful time.”

  “It’s like they already left us,” Isabel said quietly, “and we barely know the other girls.”

  “We’ll get to know them better,” I said. “They’re our sisters.”

  “Some of them in name only,” Angela said. “I’d like a shot at those sisters who trash-talked me.”

  “Angie . . . ”

  “Seriously, I’m rethinking this whole sorority thing with the pretty white girls and their crazy theme parties and fake tans. What if we were set up? What if they bait the girls who are rushing? We think they select pledges based on qualities like personality and honesty. But what if they pick girls with parents who can pay the dues? It might be that simple.” She picked the soft dough from the inside of a poppy bagel and rolled it in a ball. “They hook them in to collect their dues.”

  “You know that’s not true,” I said. “We know a few girls who didn’t get bids from any sorority. We’re the lucky ones. But we have to keep it together. The three of us need to stick together. I’m just saying, I’ll always have your back.”

  “Aw,” Isabel gushed, giving me a hug. “Of course I’ve got your back. You’re the best friend, ever.”

  “Same.” Angela patted my back as she hugged me. “You guys are the real deal. But you can’t make me like the other sisters.”

  “I know,” I said. Baby steps.

  * * *

  When I moved into the suite with Angela and Isabel in January of freshman year, I could feel things getting back on track. The planets that had been swinging out of orbit were aligned now, and our stars were shining brighter than ever.

  “I feel like someone just let me out of a cage,” Angela said as she helped Isabel string a set of red chili pepper lights up over the window. Her single room in the dorm had been like a cell, and she was sick of being the guest in the grotty dude shack that Darnell was sharing with some other players.

  “The air here feels more peaceful and balanced,” Isabel said. “Much healthier than the dorm. And with access to the kitchen, I’ll be able to eat right again.”

  After a scary episode in which someone found Isabel passed out in the women’s room at the campus gym, Isabel had confided that she had an eating disorder. Angela and I had suspected, but it seemed best to have Isabel tell us on her terms. She said she had it under control now, and though she still had the body of a frail bird, her new diet gave her enough energy to get through the day.

  “When do you think Sam will be by to check out our new place?” Isabel asked. Going along with the pretense that I had a real boyfriend, she had offered to vacate the bedroom we shared whenever necessary so that Sam and I could have privacy.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “He’s been so busy.” Hanging out with everyone else but me.

  Once again I texted Sam, inviting him to Theta House, telling him I would meet him downstairs and sneak him up to the suite. So many times over the holidays I’d considered ending it with Sam. He was only available on his terms, rarely when I needed or wanted him. And I knew he was hooking up with other girls. He said no, but the signs were there. I’d seen him walking and laughing with other girls on campus. And all those nights when he didn’t answer my texts. Those weekends when he wasn’t available. The entire winter break when I had begged him to meet me in Portland or Seattle so that I could escape my father’s small apartment and get a Sam fix. I had missed him. But Sam had left me hanging, later saying he had “family stuff.”

  Are we having fun yet? Not quite.

  When I considered the true dynamic between us, it was an off-balance symbiotic relationship. Sam was the bird that landed on my back and ate away the pesky insects. It felt so good when he dropped by to pick at the bugs, and he benefitted from it, too, but I could never count on him to land on my back when the bugs were biting.

  Maybe we’d moved to a sexual relationship too quickly. But no one I knew held back sex when they were into a guy. And sometimes I worried that the sex was the only thing that kept him interested. When Sam teased that I was a “wild woman” inside, I felt hope for the rest of our relationship.

  Until he left, and disappeared for four days.

  Being a bit more jaded than the rest of us, Angela didn’t buy into the magic of love. After a few weeks of watching my relationship with Sam, she brought it up one day when Isabel was off at class.

  “You know,” she said, her eyes on her cell phone, “you don’t have to put up with his shit. Tell him how he needs to behave. If he doesn’t step up, then dump his ass.”

  “I know he’s unreliable, but nobody’s perfect.”

  “Unreliable? Is that a nice way of saying ‘lying piece of shit’?”

  My eyes stung with humiliation, but I didn’t want to cry in front of her. “Wow. I thought you liked him.”

  “I did, but now I can’t stand the way he’s working you over.”

  I softened. “I don’t like it, either, but what can I do?”

  “Lay down the law. Show him that he’s got to treat you right if he wants to be with you.”

  “That won’t work with Sam.”

  “Then cut him off. You got to have respect for yourself, Emma.”

  The thought of breaking up made my stomach ache with dread. How could I give up on the best thing I’d ever had? Sam had so much potential. He was my future.

  “He hates when I try to control him, but I’ll talk to him again about communicating better,” I said, trying to keep that pathetic whimper out of my voice. “I don’t want to lose him.”

  “You’ll be losing a lot more if you let him sniff around any time he wants.”

  I turned away from her, humiliated that I was getting this kind of talk from a friend. What the hell was wrong with me? A feminist. A nasty girl. When people tried to push me around, I knew how to push back.

  “Listen,” Angela said. “I’m not judging you. Really, I’m just trying to show you a way out.”

  “I know that. Look, I’ll figure this out. I promise.”

  That week I caught the flu. Although I managed to make it to class in between the bouts of nausea, I was in no mood to see anyone, Sam included. When Saturday rolled around and he hit me up to join him at an off-campus kegger, I told him I’d meet him there. I still felt queasy, but I figured that a decent meal and a shower would give me the boost I needed.

  But as I s
tarted across campus with two other Theta Pis attending the party, the dizziness churned inside me again before we even reached the bridge into town. “You guys better go ahead without me,” I said. India and Haley made sure I was okay, then continued walking.

  Inky darkness loomed between the streetlights, but I felt too sick to care. I sat for a while on a park bench, and then vomited into a big smelly bin that reeked of dog poo. What kind of flu hung on for more than a week? Was I dying of something? Right now it felt that way.

  After puking one more time, I pulled myself together and crossed the bridge leading into downtown. After a quick stop at the twenty-four-hour CVS on Main Street, where one of the older sisters had been looming, flirting with some guy, I headed home.

  Back at Theta House, I used the guest bathroom downstairs. Just in case any of my suite mates were around upstairs.

  Ignoring the knocking on the door, I sat on the toilet and stared at the stick long after the pink plus sign appeared. Minus meant negative, plus meant positive.

  Staring at it didn’t make it change. Plus, plus, plus.

  I was pregnant.

  CHAPTER 17

  The desperate moan scraping from my throat pulled me out of the nightmare. Paralyzed, I stared up at the ceiling as my heart raced. The dream had been so bizarre I’d known it wasn’t real, but still, it had sent me crashing into a panic.

  One minute, Lydia and I were laughing about something, our feet dangling in the water of the fountain in the quad.

  The next, she had fallen into the fountain and her body was rolling and floating in the dark-blue water, her skin pale as the moon against the cobalt tiles of the fountain. I thought she was lolling around, relaxing, until I saw that her limbs had ballooned and her face was bloated.

  “Get her,” someone whispered from behind me. “Help her!”

  “Lydia!” I was reaching for her when everything shifted again. My legs kicked and thrashed frantically as I tried desperately to land on solid ground. This time she was down in the river and the landscape sank, down, down, down, as I knelt from the bridge two hundred feet above her.