Handpicked

by Dani Oden

  "They can drop it off in the entryway, but they can't go upstairs without an IB. House rules."

  Hannah piped up, "We don't want people wandering the halls by themselves. Sorority secrets, right?"

  Danielle snickered, her curly, highlighted hair bouncing around her face. "Honey, it's only your first day. Give it time."

  "New members in the front!" Sister President was calling from behind a podium at the front of the dining room, waving her arms to lure us forward. The entire chapter had arrived for lunch at practically the same time. "Best seats in the house for the best new members in the best house in the Greek System."

  The dining room was completely converted from the night before, but still impressive in the daylight with its soft gold walls, warm wooden furniture, and brilliant purple cushions on each chair. The far wall was all glass, with French doors opening onto the patio, letting in fresh air and sunlight.

  Lindy, Hannah and I found seats near the podium, as instructed. There were six identical settings sat at our round table, with fancy silverware and what I think was china. Underneath each plate, a colorful packet of papers waited. I started to peek through pages but Lindy poked me before I could see anything.

  "Don't," she whispered.

  "Do you know what they are?" I asked.

  "The background checks they did on all of us?" Hannah joked.

  “Why can’t I look?” I said.

  “I would guess they’re under our plates for a reason,” Lindy said.

  Three more new members approached the empty seats at the table. I recognized one from my same preference party the night before, but the other two were completely new to me. Their nametags read Olivia, Shelly, and Cammie. I learned that Olivia, the one from the party, and Shelly were cousins, and Cammie was from Idaho. That was as far as we got before Sister President called for attention by tapping her water glass with a butter knife. We promptly turned our chairs to face her.

  She gripped the podium and grinned, her eyes sparkling wildly. "Oh...my...gosh, ladies," she began, and actives in the back cheered and clapped. "We are so excited about each and every one of you. I am so serious. In this pledge class, we have three valedictorians, five team captains, three cheer captains, seven who were on homecoming court, three prom queens, two yearbook editors, one newspaper editor, and thirty-six of you who are beautiful, inside and out.” She took a sip of water, giving us all a moment to absorb the syrupy sweetness of what she’d just said.

  Next, she held up copies of the forms we were all trying not to read. “Now, I encourage all of you to lift your plates and review the information we've provided. It will help you get settled over these next few days." She launched into this exhausting thirty-minute speech about what each form was for. There was the pink one, which was about meals and diet information, a purple one which covered basic house details like the door code and quiet hours, and a green form which covered our financial responsibilities. She took great care to introduce the yellow one, the pre-quarter calendar, emphasizing that we were all expected to attend that evening’s Bid Day Surprise, in cocktail attire.

  Around me, girls began to whisper excitedly. “What’s cocktail attire?” I asked Lindy.

  “Dresses, like last night,” she answered.

  Sister President masterfully waited for the room to quiet down before continuing. "I promise I need just another minute of your attention before we can enjoy our food. I have a few people to introduce. Ladies, this is Kayla, our Vice President of New Member Development, who will be overseeing your pledge training and Jenna, our former President, who will also be working closely with you during your pledge period."

  Jenna was like a beauty queen, standing and waving next to the other girl, who was plain with freckles and mousey brown hair. While Jenna seemed quite comfortable with all of us staring at her, the other girl gave a shaky smile so tight that her chin wrinkled.

  “What’s her deal?” Hannah murmured from my right.

  Lindy leaned over from the left, “I can’t tell if all this rah-rah-go-IB stuff is bullshit, or if they actually mean it. They’re good.”

  "Really good," I said, making eye contact with Sister President while I gulped my water. Why did it feel like she was looking right through me?

  FOUR

  After the crazy-extravagant lunch feast ended with cheesecake and espresso, Hannah, Lindy and I spent the first part of the afternoon unpacking. Just as predicted, our luggage had been dropped off while we were in our meeting and our parents had been turned away. Lindy brushed it off, assuring me her mom would explain things to my parents.

  My three roommates finally appeared, briefly. They included another new member, this girl named Tasha who seemed super shy but apparently was famous in her hometown as Miss Apple Orchard or Peach Blossom or something along those lines. She was out to tea for the afternoon, literally, with her Mom and Grandma, who were also Iota Betas. I'd never known anyone who actually went out to tea. And, the two actives sharing our room were twin sophomores named Mindi and Mandi who were on the varsity cheer squad, so I wouldn't be seeing much of them during football season. They had taken it upon themselves to deck the walls out with our school’s posters and paraphernalia, which I appreciated.

  "It's better this way," Lindy advised me, opening and closing the other girls' closets to see if they'd even unpacked before disappearing again. "If I could, I would totally choose busy roommates, too. With ninety other people roaming the halls, you'll like that your room is quieter. You can always open the door to welcome other girls, but you can't kick roommates out of their own space."

  "Great point," Hannah added, propping her feet up on the couch. "We'll make sure to come in here when we need peace and quiet."

  "Or, we could always go outside to cry behind a plant," I teased.

  Hannah recoiled, and my face grew hot. Her eyes narrowed briefly before she dissolved into laughter.

  "Gotcha," she said. "You totally thought I was upset! I was just fucking with you."

  I shook my head at her as Lindy cracked up. "I'm glad we heard you this morning. You were a good find," she declared, sliding onto the couch next to Hannah. "What would you have done if we hadn't been there?"

  Hannah pretended to be thoughtful, scrunching her dark eyebrows and pale forehead in faux concentration. "I don't know if I even would have gone back inside. I was like, two seconds away from running to Evan's house and crawling under the covers. And, he's on a sleeping porch too, so you know it was bad if I was willing to hide out there."

  "Are you glad you stuck around?" I asked gently. I was on the floor across from them, leaning against the soft yellow painted wall.

  “So far," Hannah said. "I'm more excited now than I was this morning, that’s for sure.”

  “Me, too,” I said. At the same time as Lindy shrugged and said, "Eh."

  "Eh?" I repeated, wondering if she would have felt differently if we, or if she, ended up in the house she wanted.

  "My mom told me so much about what to expect, it's like I've already been through it."

  "Wow, that's shitty." Hannah said. "Do you know what we're doing tonight? And why we’re supposed to dress up?"

  "Well, no, but still. She warned me today would be a lot of matching shirts and pictures and moving in and just general hoo ha and she’s been right so far."

  A chipper voice came over the intercom, announcing, "Iota Betas, just a friendly reminder that we're meeting on the front patio in one hour! Remember, come in your cocktail attire and be ready for an awesome time!"

  Lindy sighed, "What are we going to do for another hour?”

  “Get ready?” I suggested, unaware that we weren’t enjoying ourselves already.

  “We’ve been getting ready all week, I don’t want to spend another hour on it,” Lindy said.

  “Me neither. We could explore?” Hannah said hopefully.

  “Explore what?” I asked.

  “The house.”

  Lindy sat up straighter. “I like that idea.
”

  “Haven’t we seen the house already?” I said. On that day alone, we’d been on the front patio, in the living room, in the dining room, and up and down the hallways on the second floor. Plus, we’d been given tours during rush week, too.

  “But, isn’t there a downstairs, too? We haven’t been there at all today,” Lindy said.

  “That part was quick on the tour,” Hannah added.

  They both stared at me, waiting for my answer. I shrugged, still not completely sure why they were so eager. “I guess we can go look around.”

  The hallway was quieter than we’d seen it all day, with only the sounds of low conversation, closets and drawers opening and closing, and pop music wafting through the doorways. “I’m not even sure I know how to get past the first floor,” I admitted as we bounded down the front staircase.

  “I think I do,” Hannah said. “This was the first house where I took a tour, so I remember it pretty well. The stairs are by the guest bathroom.”

  “We have a guest bathroom?” I said.

  “It’s next to the coat closet,” Lindy informed me.

  “What coat closet?” I asked. Had they been taking pages of notes I didn’t know about?

  Hannah led us to the front hallway, through the mailroom, and around a corner to a carpeted stairwell I would have sworn I’d never seen before.

  “The house tour went down here?” I asked.

  The stairway took us down into a small sitting area decorated just like the main level, with warm lighting, soft carpeting, fresh paint, and generous vases of flowers on crisply dusted end tables. It was vaguely familiar. “Oh,” I breathed. “I think I have seen this.”

  “The laundry room is down that way, there’s an extra TV room and storage somewhere…” Hannah trailed off. “What about those doors? Did we see those on the tour?”

  About ten feet in front of us, on the right-hand wall, was a set of grand double-doors. Unlike the rest of the house, they were made out of wood so dark they were almost black.

  Lindy went straight over and put her hands on the handles. She pressed down, then up, then tried pulling on them. “Locked,” she reported.

  “That’s weird,” Hannah said.

  “Why is that weird?” I asked.

  “Aren’t all of the spaces in this place supposed to be shared?” Lindy said over her shoulder.

  “What do you think it is?” I said, trying to hide the fact that I still had no idea why they were so interested.

  “I think it’s a secret room,” Lindy said excitedly.

  I considered the bold doorway, unsure of how she could call it a secret.

  She must have read my expression, because she added, “I mean, the entrance obviously isn’t the secret part. But I bet that’s where the secrets are kept.”

  “Yes,” Hannah nodded her head. “Like, where we have meetings and talk about official sorority things and rules and—”

  She didn’t finish, because the door opened.

  Lindy jumped and blurted out, “We didn’t think anyone was in there.”

  It was Sister President. She watched us for a few moments with one eyebrow cocked, long enough that uneasy sweat formed under my armpits. “Just a couple of us,” she finally smiled sweetly, opening the door to reveal two other older girls seated around one of two huge tables near the back of the room. It was a huge space, decorated in the same dark wood as the doors, with rows of grand bookcases that I'm sure were functional a decade or two ago, but were pretty old-school now.

  “The library,” Hannah said. “Now I remember.”

  “You remember?” Sister President said curiously.

  “We were just trying to retrace our steps from the tours we got during rush,” Lindy said. “We couldn’t remember what was behind the doors.”

  “Of course,” Sister President said. She held her arm out, motioning to the impressive room. “You’ll come here to study or for meetings. It’s usually unlocked twenty-four seven once the school year begins but I’m sure our house manager just hasn’t gotten to it since classes are still a few days away.”

  “It’s nice,” I commented.

  “Isn’t it?” she said, not really expecting us to answer. She glanced back, as if only just noticing that we were still in our pledge t-shirts. “Do you ladies know Bid Day Surprise starts in less than an hour? You probably want to get ready soon, some of the girls will be pretty dressed up. I’d hate for you to feel out of place.” She placed a hand back on the door knob and tilted her head, waiting for us to go.

  On our way up back upstairs, Lindy and Hannah were laughing sheepishly about not remembering the library on the house tour, but I had a nagging feeling. If the doors were locked by the house manager, how and why were they all inside?

  Back upstairs, girls were darting all over the hallway with dresses, heels, and make-up bags in hand, with cords from curling and straightening irons hazardously dangling behind them. Layers and layers of varying floral and fruity perfumes permeated the air, and someone had put their iPod and speakers in the bathroom, blaring party music over the lively chatter. “This is how I imagined sorority life,” I said to Lindy, who nodded in agreement.

  I borrowed Lindy’s yellow dress and got ready with moments to spare. My best friend wore a simple black mini-dress, while Hannah had on a pink strapless one that showed off her tanned arms and bright bracelet cuff hugging her wrist.

  Under normal circumstances, I would have felt a little overdressed for the lingering daylight we found outside. However, my first evening as a sorority girl wasn’t a normal circumstance. Nearly a hundred of us were gathered in front of the house in different shades of silky fabric and clicky high-heels. Photos snapped, girls posed, and an aura of anticipation rumbled through our crowd, like we were standing in line to get into somewhere really exclusive. With the sun hitting on the sequined dresses and rhinestone-covered shoes the other girls wore, I swear, even just being around them, I had never felt so fancy in my life.

  The older girls wasted no time with getting us pledges to stand in lines on the sidewalk. Once we were in place, Sister President, who was now in a shimmering pink dress, signaled for quiet.

  As soon as we hushed, a series of catcalls and whistles erupted from the fraternity boys across the street. Lindy nudged me and raised her eyebrows, while I blushed and tried to spot the guy with the rose. None of them were even half as hot as he was, so this couldn’t have been his house. I’d have to check the tag, still somewhere in my suitcase, and figure out just where his fraternity was.

  Sister President ignored our neighbors. "Iota Betas, it's my pleasure to kick off one of our favorite events of the year, Bid Day Surprise.” She gestured down the street and we all turned in the same direction, trying to tell what she was showing us.

  "What is it?" the girls around me were asking. "Can you see anything?"

  "There they are!" someone called from the end of the sidewalk.

  “What’s going on?” Lindy nudged me.

  “I can’t tell,” I said, standing on my tiptoes.

  Finally, in the direction of the shouting, I saw a line of stretch limos slowly cruising down the street towards us, going what couldn't have been more than ten miles an hour.

  Limos. Like for effing movie stars.

  "Hell yeah!" Hannah said, clutching my arm.

  "Are they serious?" Lindy asked in disbelief.

  "I hope so!" I called over the noise.

  There were so many cars that they had to park all the way down the block, which made me feel a little bad for the girls in other houses who were out on their balconies watching us. All the limo windows were down and the radios were tuned to the same station, blaring the same party song clearly chosen to set the mood. Our group surged down the street, and Lindy, Hannah and I were soon getting pushed into one of the cars.

  For the first time, Lindy seemed to actually be interested in something that had to do with our new sorority. "Are you glad to be here yet?" I called to her over the music, s
liding onto a spacious tan leather seat. Girls I didn't know squeezed in around us, packing in so tightly on the bench seating that someone's lace dress pushed into my right thigh, pressing a flower pattern into my skin, and a satiny orange one invaded from my left.

  "Getting there!" she shouted back.

  After ten minutes on the highway, and twenty minutes down back roads, we pulled through an ivy-lined gate onto a dirt drive. Our car rumbled over the gravel through the dust clouds created by the car in front of us, and eventually slowed to a stop in front of a grand winery lined by acres and acres of grape vines.

  "Oh, good, now we'll get to drink," one of the girls said, pointing to a sign advertising their tasting room hours.

  "Yeah, right," Lindy murmured. "They know better."

  I didn't say anything. Wineries were too familiar for me, my parents had been running one since I was a kid. Though, this one was owned by an alum, or so we were told as we streamed out of the limos. It was made of rustic bricks, had an entire wall of windows facing their vineyards, and was full of grape-themed trinkets.

  Nice, but not very original, if you ask me.

  Lindy, Hannah and I stuck together, navigating through the sea of girls before finally settling on a spot next to a giant, untouched buffet table full of platters and plates covered in heaps of appetizers. Before I could ask what we were supposed to do next, a staff of pourers came around and introduced us all to their special non-alcoholic sparkling grape cider.

  "What the hell?" Hannah whispered to me, sipping from her glass. "This is a damn winery. They're teasing us!"

  “We’re here for something else, I’m sure of it,” Lindy predicted. “Mom told me the first couple days would be G-rated. They don't want to scare us and they want to test us out before things get too crazy."

  “I hope that’s not the case,” Hannah sighed.

  Some of the other girls were hovering around us, inspecting the food spread. So, we moved toward the corner. A few feet away, Sister President was standing with two of her Vice Presidents, chatting in low voices. One of them was Danielle, the girl who'd poked her head into Hannah's room, and the other was an Asian girl with a stylish bob haircut and a super-short black dress. I was pretty certain they were the other two girls we’d seen over Sister President’s shoulder down in the library earlier that day.