Mean Sisters

by Lindsay Emory

  It was clear that life as a Sutton police officer was boring as heck. No wonder Hatfield didn’t know what to do with me tonight. I was so outside his comfort zone.

  ‘Can I make my phone call now?’

  Hatfield rolled his eyes. ‘You don’t get a phone call.’

  ‘I know my rights.’

  ‘You’re not under arrest.’ He paused, seeming a little uncomfortable. ‘You were accidentally transported here.’

  For as long as I can remember, I have never been really, truly speechless. Accidentally transported to a holding cell? Of all the inept, low-rent, unprofessional, amateur-hour moves … I wanted to rail and rip this guy a new one. And remind him again that yes, I knew people and, yes, those people knew people that could maybe, potentially get him fired. But there had been a tragedy tonight and I needed information from Deputy Do-Right.

  ‘What comes next?’ I asked, ‘For Liza?’

  ‘Who?’ The exasperation on my face made him self-correct. ‘Oh, Liza. Liza McCarthy. Yes, she’ll be checked out and released to her family.’

  ‘Checked out?’

  ‘For cause of death.’

  ‘I’d like to be there.’

  ‘For an autopsy?’ Hatfield asked, like no one had ever asked that before.

  But that wasn’t what I was asking. ‘No. To talk to her family.’

  Hatfield frowned, deeply. ‘Who are you? Are you family?’

  In a sense, yes. ‘She’s my sister,’ I said simply. ‘Delta Betas are there for each other.’

  Hatfield rubbed a hand over his face like he was super tired. It sounded like he mumbled something like, ‘mother of God,’ but that didn’t really make sense.

  I decided to spell it out for him. ‘Look, I know you don’t get it. But like I said, there are a bunch of traumatised young women back at the chapter house. With Liza gone, I’m going to have to take responsibility for the chapter and I’d appreciate you respecting that.’

  ‘Right,’ he bit out. ‘And I’d appreciate you respecting the legal authority of this police department as we investigate this matter.’

  Okay, fine. He had another decent point. I saw where he was going with that. A Delta Beta woman always respected the law. But as Hatfield drove me back to the Deb house, I wondered why he seemed to think there would be an ongoing investigation of Liza McCarthy’s sudden stroke or heart attack.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  After a death in the chapter room and a quasi-accidental arrest, my immediate response should have been to call back to Delta Beta headquarters in Atlanta. And I did that. Sort of. I called someone back at HQ, just not my immediate supervisor. Casey Kenner was the Delta Beta Director for public relations and my best friend at HQ.

  The hoarse voice that answered told me I may not have called at the best time.

  ‘Do you know what time it is?’ The growling on the other end of the line was disconcerting.

  I looked at my rose gold Michael Kors watch. It had been a present from the UCLA chapter after a particularly difficult semester, grade-wise. I had helped them institute a new study buddy system and regular study hours. After just a semester, the chapter had reached a C average. They had been thrilled. ‘It’s not that late in my time zone.’

  ‘Girl, we’re in the same time zone. North Carolina and Georgia are practically neighbors.’

  Love that Casey. Smart as a whip.

  I briefly went over the events of the evening and, like I predicted, Casey was all over it since deaths and arrests were kind of sort of related to public relations. ‘You’ve been there half a day,’ Casey moaned.

  ‘And isn’t it a good thing I was here!’ I exclaimed hotly, thanking Jesus that I was sent to the right place at the right time. ‘The chapter needs me, now more than ever.’

  Casey yawned audibly over the phone. I didn’t have the heart to point out the incredibly bad manners on display at two in the morning.

  ‘I have to call Mabel. She’ll want an update, too, but I wanted to give you a heads up before things get crazy in the morning.’

  ‘Thanks.’ The word was a little flat, but like besties always did, Casey came around. ‘Do you need me? Are you okay?’

  Once again, for the fifth or five hundredth time that day, my heart nearly burst with love for a true Delta Beta friend. ‘I think I’ll be alright,’ I assured myself as much as my friend. ‘Thank you for asking.’

  After I got off the phone with Casey, I called Mabel Donahue, the Vice-President of Collegiate Chapters. She also reminded me of the time, but as soon as I explained what was going on, she forgave me. When I told her I had already called Casey, she said that saved her a step. And then, because Mabel is a true Deb, smart and sharp even in the middle of the night, she asked me – ME! – to take over the Chapter Advisor position at Sutton College on a temporary basis, while the whole mess got sorted out.

  It was a huge honour. I was not going to let my sisters down.

  *

  I couldn’t get to sleep after the conversation with Mabel. I was wide awake with ideas and dreams of where I could take my chapter. I was staying in the guest room on the second floor of the sorority house, which is essentially a supply closet with a spare bed. I didn’t mind; I was used to staying wherever chapters could find room for me. At least I had a door and a place for my suitcase here. I rolled out of the twin bed and pulled on a Sutton College sweatshirt over my nightgown.

  Ten years ago, I had pledged this very chapter of Delta Beta. I was eighteen and fresh from my small hometown in the Florida panhandle. Growing up, I had dreamed of going north for college, where campuses were covered in ivy and girls wore flannel and LL Bean boots for necessity’s sake.

  I got as far as North Carolina, which was just fine with me. During January of my senior year of high school, I had visited a college in Connecticut. That visit made me rethink the whole ‘northern school’ thing.

  Here at Sutton College, I had all the ivy and woods and LL Bean that a Florida girl could dream of, plus a winter that was frosty but not arctic-y. I traced the walls of the hall with my fingertips, in the dim light of emergency bulbs set every few feet into the ceiling. Every step brought back a memory: of college, of friends, of my final days of childhood.

  Childhood really lasts through college, doesn’t it? Sure it’s in its waning days, but the world still seems as bright as a new penny: hopeful and huge. My four years in this sorority were the last incubation period, my final cozy womb until I burst out, ready to take on the world. And if I had partially stayed in that Delta Beta cocoon by becoming a semi-permanent Sisterhood Mentor, well, who would blame me? It was fun. And happy. Except when people died at Chapter meeting. That part was kind of a bummer.

  I headed downstairs to the kitchen to get a drink of water. I used the back stairs where every square inch of wall was covered with Delta Beta history. I didn’t think anything had changed in fifty years, much less ten. I pushed open the door to the kitchen and there was movement in the dark. With a jump and a squeal, I slapped at the wall and turned on the lights. A young college-aged man in khaki shorts and an untucked polo shirt was just as startled as me when I screamed. He held his hands up. ‘I’m sorry! I’m just finishing up!’

  I put a hand to my chest, where I found my racing heart drumming a tattoo. ‘Who are you and what do you think you’re doing?’

  Men were only allowed in the public areas of the first floor of the sorority house between the hours of eight am and eight pm. And they were strictly forbidden in the chapter room. It was inviolable Delta Beta law.

  ‘I’m the house brother,’ he said nervously. ‘Hunter Curtis.’

  Well, that explained it. A house brother was a young man, generally a fraternity member, who was hired to do light housework and/or heavy lifting around a sorority house. It was usually someone who many of the sorority members considered a friend or even a little brother and there were strict rules about his conduct in the house. Hunter looked trustworthy enough, with friendly brown eyes, sun-strea
ked brown hair and worn-in Sperrys.

  ‘What are you doing here? It’s after midnight,’ I asked again, this time with the crazy turned down.

  ‘With the police here, I couldn’t finish sweeping up after dinner. So I came back to make sure it was all ready for the morning.’

  I relaxed a little bit. ‘I appreciate your hard work, but you really shouldn’t be here this late.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. He seemed like a nice young man, just doing his job.

  ‘We’ll let it go this time.’

  ‘Ok, Miss …?’

  Where were my manners? ‘Margot Blythe,’ I said, reaching out to shake his head. ‘I’m the temporary Chapter Advisor.’

  Hunter’s expression altered when he heard that. Like I said, respect changed people.

  I locked up after Hunter left via the kitchen door and padded through the halls with my cup of water until I found what I was looking for: four framed pictures, hung chronologically. The chapter composite pictures, compiled each school year, featured portraits of each sister, memorialising their youth and beauty for all time. The pictures were alphabetical and thanks to my last name, I was near the top for my sophomore, junior and senior years. I went back to my freshman year. Here, I was closer to the middle, as pledges were placed after the active members.

  Written in calligraphy, my name was under a portrait of a girl I barely recognised. Fresh from having my braces removed the summer before college, I sure liked to show off all those straight, pearly teeth. My natural brown hair was thick and virgin, free of dyes. One of only two brunette pledges that year, I knew what it was like to be a minority.

  As the composites went on, my hair lightened as more and more highlights were magically added by the sun. My hair was almost all brown again now. Traveling as much as I did, I didn’t have time for all the upkeep that a good head of highlights required. The freshman in the picture had hated her full cheeks. Now, at the ripe old age of twenty-seven, I appreciated what a little baby fat could do to a face.

  Self-consciously, I brushed thick bangs off my face. Six months ago, I had been talked into bangs with a picture of Zooey Deschanel distracting me. Zooey Deschanel was a better woman than I. It took me three weeks before I decided to grow them out. Now they just looked like an awkward brown flap at a strange length. They were just long enough to flip behind my ears, where they would stay for about three seconds before slipping out again.

  I placed my hand on the faces of my sisters, too, wishing them well, wherever they were. I reached my big sister’s portrait, beautiful and self-assured as always. It would be fun to get to hang with Amanda while I was in Sutton again.

  Still not sleepy, I had another pilgrimage to make. I tiptoed up to the third floor. There were fewer bedrooms up here and most girls didn’t like to carry all their shoes all the way to the third floor. It was popular with the older sisters and the really studious ones who liked the quiet. Needless to say, I had lived on the second floor. I tried the door handle at the end of the hall. Luckily, it was open.

  The room was nearly pitch black. There were no emergency lights in here, as it was basically a floored-in attic space where the chapter stored rush props and the random detritus of college women. I was sure, if I turned on a light, I could find enough supplies to survive on a desert island. I walked slowly, keeping my hands out in front of me, feeling for furniture or boxes. I stubbed my toe almost immediately, but then I saw the silvery light coming in through a window.

  Sorority row sat on the south side of campus, the sorority houses lined up like proud Rockettes on a rise that wasn’t apparent from the street until you were up here, on the third floor looking over the edge of campus, the town beyond and the Blue Ridge Mountains in the far distance. I don’t remember when I discovered the view from here, but I would escape to this little nook on the days when things got too loud, too dramatic, too much to deal with on the floors below. The town of Sutton looked like a Norman Rockwell dream, all red brick and straight edges with elm-lined streets. Everything made sense up here. The world looked perfect. And it reminded me that perfection was possible. All you had to do was look at the world in the right way. Stay positive and you’d see the most amazing things. I was pretty sure that Mary Gerald Callahan or Leticia Baumgardner would agree.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The next morning was bright and clear as I made my way across the Sutton College campus. It was easily one of the prettiest college campuses I’d ever been to and in the last six years as Sisterhood Mentor, I’d been lucky enough to visit nearly forty institutions of higher learning across North America.

  Brick buildings were built in the colonial style and wide tree-shaded pathways snaked through campus, in curves, rather than the straight-lined sidewalks found at most other campuses. During my undergraduate years, students would joke that the campus planners had been drunk when the sidewalks were built, but I preferred to think that they just liked taking their time when getting to their destination. Kind of like I do.

  Even though I had a meeting scheduled for nine, I took a bit of extra time strolling on campus. Each building had a special place in my heart, each bend in the path was another precious memory to relive. There, at the Harrison-Peterson Cafeteria, was where I saw Kirby Jones cheating on me over a spaghetti lunch with an Epsilon Eta Chi sorority sister. And there, at the War Memorial fountain, was where my cute exchange student boyfriend Felipe told me he was married and had three kids back in Chile. And the ivy arbor next to the psychology building was where I found my ex-boyfriend macking down on a Beta Gamma Chi. College days were the best.

  My destination this morning was the Commons, or the student centre, specifically the basement offices of the Panhellenic Council. Panhellenic is a nationwide quasi-governing organization of the national sororities, kind of like the United Nations. Similar to the United Nations, joining Panhellenic is political and voluntary and rule-making is toothless. The bite of the Panhellenic is more often found at the campus level and Sutton College was no exception.

  In fact, almost fifteen years earlier, there had been a big kerfuffle between the Epsilon Eta Chis and the rest of the sororities when the Epsilon Eta Chi chapter had, unbeknownst to anyone, invited all the women hoping to join a sorority to a kegger at a private house. The Panhellenic Advisor had taken Epsilon Eta Chi’s side and then it was discovered that she had been an Epsilon Eta Chi! The drama and fallout was sufficient for a Bravo reality show. From then on, the Panhellenic Advisor at Sutton College has to keep her sorority membership a secret in order to remain impartial.

  It was a really good rule, overall, and I wished other campuses had adopted it. It would do a world of good avoiding the wrath of Epsilon Eta Chis and their ilk. I sat across from the current Panhellenic Advisor, a skinny, perky woman with long, enviably straight blond hair and a knack for eye makeup. I made a circle with my thumb and forefinger. I nonchalantly put the circle over my heart. This was the part that was hard to hide in public. It’s just not a gesture that people do very often. The Panhellenic Advisor did the same over her heart.

  We smiled at each other with big, goofy grins, the kind you get when happiness is too hard to keep bottled up.

  ‘BIG!’ I yelled, getting up from my chair.

  ‘Little!’ Amanda yelled back. That’s right, the Sutton College Panhellenic Advisor was not only a beautiful, smart Delta Beta, but she was my one and only big sister.

  Now Amanda’s office showed some imagination in decor. Deputy Hatfield could take some lessons from her. The rug really tied her office together. You never would have guessed her office was underground. Every inch of the space showed true Panhellenic spirit, with pictures and postcards and posters all depicting the most fun times of sorority life. It was like I’d died and gone to heaven.

  ‘I can’t believe you’re here!’ She said after we’d hugged each other’s breath out.

  ‘When they told me I was coming back to Sutton, I could hardly stand not calling you,’ I admitted. ‘I wanted it
to be a surprise.’

  ‘Total surprise! Last I heard, you were in Atlanta.’

  ‘For just a few days,’ I said. ‘Before that it was Jacksonville, then Austin, then Portland …’

  ‘So glamorous.’

  I nodded, thinking of life out of a rolling suitcase, doing laundry every few weeks and sleeping on spare beds. My life was great but definitely not glamorous. ‘How’s your family?’ I asked.

  Amanda tossed back her perfectly straight hair. ‘Fine, I’m sure. Mother is headed to Brazil this week with her new husband.’

  ‘Really …’ Amanda’s mother changed husbands like some women change their handbags.

  ‘My sisters are both pregnant. For the third time. Each.’ Amanda added.

  ‘So exciting! Do you just love being Aunt Amanda?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Amanda said flatly. ‘Have you heard anything new about the old gang?’

  I told her how I’d run into various pledge sisters and friends around the country. It was one of the perks of my job. I was still the social butterfly of our Deb chapter, always meeting someone in every city after we’d scattered post-graduation.

  ‘How does Kelly Jo look?’ Amanda asked about a friend of ours that I’d just seen in Austin. ‘I heard she wasn’t keeping well.’

  ‘She’s twenty-eight,’ I said. ‘She looks twenty-eight.’

  Amanda smoothed a hand over her hair, which made me self-consciously do the same with my growing-out bangs. ‘That’s a shame,’ Amanda said.

  ‘You look great,’ I said, totally sincere. ‘Not a day over twenty-two.’

  Amanda was a year older than me, at twenty-eight and I thought she’d like to hear that.

  She smiled, pleased with the compliment. ‘Can’t beat good genes and sunscreen,’ she said.