Mean Sisters

by Lindsay Emory

  I heard shouts and screams, all female and nearly all semi-profane. I broke away from Ty’s arms and ran toward the booth, pushing and shoving my way through the crowd that had suddenly gathered.

  ‘Get!’ I shoved at someone’s back. ‘Out!’ I pulled on a shirtsleeve. ‘Of my way!’ A sharp elbow to a stranger’s kidney. Sorry about that. Sorority casualty.

  Then I saw what everyone else had gathered to see, Aubrey St. John and Callie Campbell, Chapter President and S&M director, screaming into each other’s faces and periodically grabbing a handful of nearly perfect blond hair. The scene almost broke my heart. They both had really good hair.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I put Casey in charge of the mixer, shoved Callie in my car because she was closest and told Cheyenne to take Aubrey home.

  The ride to the house was short and silent. I opened the door for Callie and followed her in, wondering what my job was here. Chapter Advisor was halfway between a boss and a mom and I had no experience with either position.

  ‘Callie,’ I said sharply, after we were safe in our Delta Beta haven.

  ‘Yes?’ Her voice was shaky and tentative. The entry was lit by a single lamp on a table and I was reminded of too many nights in high school when I missed curfew and was chewed out when I got home.

  I sighed. Callie was a good girl, she knew when she’d screwed up. ‘I’ll see you at the S&M hearing in the morning. Nine o’clock sharp.’

  She nodded and I couldn’t tell if that was relief I saw in her trembling lips or guilt.

  Upstairs, there were screams and the sound of a movie explosion. I remembered that the pledge class had their sleepover tonight. The mixers were off-limits for pledges until after initiation. Some called that hazing, I called that wise resource management. I briefly considered joining in the fun, but I had that nine o’clock sharp meeting the next morning and my twenty-seven year old self needed a tad more sleep than any of the eighteen-year-olds upstairs in the TV room.

  *

  As this was a formal Standards and Morals hearing, proper pin attire was required. I dressed in a burgundy Michael Kors dress, my pearls (of course) and my sturdy Cole Haan air pumps. My Delta Beta pin was over my heart and my monogram was on my leather attaché for note taking. Before I’d gone to bed the night before, I’d drafted the necessary S&M paperwork since the pre-filled ones had been stolen during the break in. I couldn’t remember all the details that needed to go in the blanks, so I hoped Callie would be able to improvise.

  Twenty steps down the hall and I was in the chapter room, setting up for the hearing. Three chairs on one side of the table, one chair on the other. I placed a Bible on the table. It wasn’t strictly necessary, but the Law & Order geek in me really hoped to swear someone in one day.

  Callie was the first one to arrive, dressed super cute in a J.Crew wool dress with a flared skirt and stacked wedges. I self-consciously pushed my bangs back when I looked at her perfectly arranged waves that framed her dimpled adorableness.

  ‘Oh, Margot,’ she rushed out, coming to me. ‘I wanted to say how sorry I was for last night.’

  I patted her upper arm. ‘It’s okay.’ I wanted to tell her that I expected better from her. Or that the descendant of Mary Gerald Callahan – her namesake, for goodness sake – needed to be a leader. But I knew she knew those things; it was written all over her face. She felt horribly guilty and I was satisfied that was punishment enough.

  Callie settled into the left chair behind the table and we’d been going over the forms I’d started when Aubrey walked in. Callie froze next to me, her eyes locked onto Aubrey’s entrance. While Aubrey was also dressed appropriately in a twin set and trousers, there was something not quite perfect about Aubrey this morning. And that made me worried. The only time I’d ever seen Aubrey not perfect, she was actually not Aubrey at all. And even then she was almost perfect, except for her choice of clothing. Aubrey had her hair pulled back into a tight, high bun, which I’m sure was a fine fashion choice and probably necessary if she woke up late, but it only accentuated how stressed and drawn Aubrey’s face was.

  ‘Good morning, Aubrey,’ I said in a cheery voice, hoping to alleviate the tension that had just risen in the room. If it was this tense before Stefanie Grossman got here, imagine what it would be like when we kicked her out of the sorority.

  Aubrey sat in the right chair, leaving the centre one for me. I settled in and waited for Stefanie Grossman to appear.

  Fifteen minutes later, the three of us were still alone in the room.

  ‘Callie, do you have Stefanie’s number?’ Callie called Stefanie and it went straight to voicemail. We gave her another fifteen. Now she was thirty minutes late. Callie called again. Still voicemail.

  I peeked at my Michael Kors watch. It wasn’t like I had a ton of stuff to do on a Saturday, but the girls probably had schoolwork, errands and laundry. Still, the hearing was serious business. Our personal lives had to be set aside and Stefanie deserved her due process. I’d even let her object.

  At ten, it was clear Stefanie had skipped the meeting. ‘Is this like her?’ I asked the ladies sitting by me. They looked up from their cell phones.

  ‘It wasn’t,’ Aubrey said with a sassy note in her voice, ‘until she got written up.’

  Callie crossed her arms. ‘Aubrey and Stefanie are BFF’s,’ she explained to me, her voice also dripping with something unpleasant. I had to stop this before it got out of hand. Only one option was available.

  ‘I call this hearing to order,’ I said in my most official sounding voice.

  ‘But Stefanie’s not here,’ Aubrey protested.

  Callie met my eyes and smiled. ‘Section 10.4 of the Delta Beta Standards and Morals manual allows for in absentia hearings,’ she recited from memory.

  My heart swelled with pride. She was so good at her job!

  ‘Okay, let’s go over the paperwork,’ I said.

  It sucks when I am right. This was, without a doubt, the hardest experience to handle in the whole entire sorority. Reading Stefanie Grossman’s name, her pledge year and her violations out loud was heartbreaking. Aubrey kept her arms crossed the whole time, her lips pressed tightly together and it was clear that she had some strong feelings about Stefanie losing her pin.

  Ty Hatfield’s mockery of our rules notwithstanding, the Delta Beta expectations were clear. No behaviour would be tolerated that would subject the sorority to ill repute and, unfortunately for her, Stefanie had been caught, in front of the Panhellenic Advisor, with her boyfriend’s pants down in a bathroom during a football game. And she’d been wearing her letters. It was an open and shut case. I was pretty sure I heard the Law & Order da da DUM playing.

  I made the motion to terminate the membership of Stefanie Grossman for standards and morals violations. Callie seconded. We didn’t need Aubrey’s third. The motion passed. If Stefanie wanted to appeal, she’d have to contact headquarters.

  Ironically, I was picking up the Bible when I heard a word that rhymes with ‘itch’ come out of Aubrey.

  ‘Excuse me?’ Callie demanded.

  ‘She didn’t deserve this.’ Aubrey flung herself out of her chair and stuck her finger in Callie’s face.

  ‘Ladies,’ I said in a warning tone.

  ‘Did you even hear what Margot read? She deserves to have her pin yanked. She’s not fit to be a Delta Beta!’ Callie slapped at Aubrey’s finger in her face. I’m not going to lie, that finger would tick me off, too.

  ‘Okay, that’s it. It’s done,’ I told both of them.

  ‘Hypocrite,’ Aubrey snapped at Callie.

  Callie’s mouth dropped open. ‘What did you say?’

  Aubrey shook her finger again. ‘I know, Callie. I KNOW! You know what I’m talking about.’

  Apparently, I was the only person that didn’t know. And I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to know, at this time.

  ‘If you know so much, why don’t you just say it!’ Callie’s voice rising to a shout. ‘I’m so sick and tired of
you trying to bring me down. Since we pledged, you’ve hated me. Since bid day, you’ve been nasty to me. And I’m done with your stupid jealousy!’

  ‘Look!’ I spread my arms out at both of them, placing myself between them. I wasn’t sure I was ready to actually stop a fight, but I wanted to look like I was. ‘I said, that’s enough! So you two hate each other. Everybody in a sorority hates each other at some point, that’s what sisterhood is all about.’

  ‘I don’t hate her,’ Callie said archly, keeping her glare on Aubrey. ‘She has ceased to exist for me.’ And with that, she turned on a heel and marched toward the door, her blond curls bouncing behind her like a shampoo commercial. Man. Even her dramatic exits were perfect.

  Aubrey yelled at Callie’s retreating back. ‘Whatever Callahan. No one buys your little miss perfect act anymore!’

  Suddenly, I had a raging headache. On a Saturday. And I hadn’t even had anything to drink the night before.

  Aubrey collapsed into the chair and threw her head onto the table, crying. I flipped through the pages of my agenda, ignoring Aubrey’s drama and wondering how it would look for a Chapter Advisor to quit after less than a week on the job. Would it be better or worse than a Chapter Advisor with a phone sex operation? These were difficult questions, even for a philosophy major.

  Finally, I went to Aubrey and gave her an awkward pat on the shoulder. What I’d said was true. Drama was par for the course. Despising a sister who had formerly been a friend was a very common phenomenon. Too many women, too many hormones and too many egos. They didn’t have to be best friends, but they had to treat each other like ladies. It was kind of the whole goal of this organization.

  ‘Do you want to tell me something?’ I asked, the reluctance clear in my voice, praying that Aubrey did not, under any circumstances, start the story of how she and Callie started hating each other over some minor peeve on bid day two years ago. I just didn’t have the energy.

  Aubrey wiped her nose, took a moment to collect herself and then looked up at me, her face red and swollen. I saw the same fear and guilt that I’d seen the night before. She slowly shook her head.

  Inner Margot breathed a sigh of relief. ‘I’ll have to get to the bottom of it soon.’ It was a warning, between adults. Get it together before it hurts the chapter. Work it out between yourselves so I don’t have to get involved. Please.

  Aubrey nodded again in understanding. ‘I’ll end it. I promise.’

  I took her word for it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  There’s a special place in hell for people who bang on a door early on a Sunday morning. I scrambled out of bed, made sure my girls weren’t hanging out of my tank top and mentally prepared a diatribe to be delivered to the first person I saw.

  Unfortunately for me, the first person I saw was a police officer. Back in his official uniform polo, Ty Hatfield stood at the front door of the sorority house, with two other people I didn’t recognise. But I did recognise their blue lab-ish coats and their tool kits. Excitement about seeing reallive fingerprinting in action warred with my high level of irritation at being wakened without a quadruple-shot, non-fat, four sweetener latte.

  ‘What,’ I snarled when I opened the door.

  Ty flipped open his badge, all official like. ‘We’re here to fingerprint the site of the breakin.’

  I crossed my arms. ‘You said you were coming Saturday.’ Not like I was waiting for him, or, I mean, them, or anything.

  ‘We’re here today.’

  Officer Hatfield, King of the obvious. Grudgingly, I had to let them in. As I walked them back to the Chapter Advisor’s office, I caught a glimpse of myself in the hall mirror. My topknot was messy and stringy, my half-outgrown bangs bent every which way and my tank top and boxer shorts were so not professional. I fought back the impulse to go change; I really wanted to see what fingerprinting looked like.

  Fifteen minutes later they were done, which was, like most of my experiences with male visitors on a Sunday morning, underwhelming.

  And they’d left a mess behind. Fine powder coated everything. I walked the group back to the front door and Ty told the fingerprinters to go on ahead. Then he turned to me and laid those baby blues on the rat’s nest on my head, my barely modest pajamas and, finally, my black and gold pedicure, an homage to Delta Beta colours, of course.

  ‘Yes?’ I asked, still a little cranky from being awake.

  ‘Do you have anything you want to tell me, Margot?’

  The question caught me off guard. ‘Are we still doing that? The “you-tell-me, I-tell-you” deal? Because I considered it null and void after you withheld Liza McCarthy’s other job from me.’

  Ty shrugged his shoulders. ‘Wouldn’t hurt to share, would it?’

  Any other situation with a cute guy, I could probably do something with that statement. But not now. Not with my eyes still half-swollen from sleep. ‘You go first,’ I heard myself saying.

  ‘The tests came back on Liza McCarthy’s body.’ He was watching me very closely, making me wish I’d put a bra on before answering the door.

  ‘And they’re not good,’ I finished.

  ‘Why do you say that?’ He was suspicious.

  I threw up my hands. ‘Because you sounded like Dr Huang does on Law & Order: SVU when he has to break bad news to someone about the cause of death, all grim and mysterious. Context clues, Hatfield.’ I wanted to tell him that he wasn’t as good at being cagey as he thought he was, but that wasn’t entirely true. He was pretty good at caginess. I was just getting better at reading him.

  ‘So she was murdered.’ I was surprised at the business-like tone of my voice. This was a murder, after all. Of a sister no less. But I guess my brain had gotten acclimated to the idea.

  Ty nodded, once. I rolled my eyes. ‘Your turn,’ he said.

  I thought about what I could share, since I didn’t have access to fingerprinting dust or toxicology reports. ‘I called the phone sex line,’ I blurted out. That got a reaction out of him. Something very interesting flared to life in his blue eyes but all he said was, ‘And?’

  It was my turn to shrug. ‘Someone picked up. Someone who got real nervous when I mentioned Liza’s name.’

  Then Lieutenant Hatfield glared at me like I was the biggest dumbass ever. ‘That could compromise our investigation!’

  ‘Oh please,’ I snapped. ‘You don’t get to have it both ways, playing games with me, pulling me into the circle of trust and then shoving me back out again.’

  Ty’s brows furrowed together, as if I was speaking an obscure Chinese dialect. ‘I’m not …’

  ‘Have a good day, officer,’ I smiled. And then the front door to the Delta Beta house slammed in his face. Accidentally.

  *

  I had a few hours to kill on Sunday (is that a bad choice of words?) as Casey was busy arranging Liza McCarthy’s memorial service on behalf of headquarters, which I thought was a nice gesture, especially since they weren’t going to be too pleased when they found out about the phone sex side job. Since Ty Hatfield hadn’t strung yellow police tape around the door of the Chapter Advisor office or told me to stay out, I decided that it was my job to clean the office. Again.

  Being a Chapter Advisor was not as glamorous as I’d always thought.

  I pulled in a big trashcan from the kitchen and got ruthless about tossing items in it. The leftover parts of a smashed computer monitor, the poor, unstuffed carcass of Busy Bee and assorted broken knick-knacks all got heaped together. Then I started on reorganising. Again. I stacked manuals, straightened books and filed papers in folders that went into a drawer. At the bottom of the drawer, I saw the address book again, the one with all the codes and numbers. With trembling fingers, I opened it and this time, the codes made more sense.

  The ten digit codes had to be phone numbers.

  I’d seen the numeric codes after those in Liza’s spreadsheet. 812, 409, etc.

  The unpronounceable Eastern European names with no vowels had to be codes, as well.
They made no sense to me and I sucked at code breaking unless it was Pig Latin. And even then I got confused when a word started with a vowel.

  I slipped the address book into my back pocket. Casey would want to see it and maybe he’d have a brilliant flash of insight like he did when he had the crazy idea to Google ‘sorority phone sex number’ the day before.

  After straightening the office, I checked my watch. I had unavoidable Chapter Advisor duty in an hour and I had to look as cute as I could for this event. My hair had to be perfect, my makeup flawless. My outfit of skinny jeans, a trendy top and boots was as fashionable as they came.

  The Delta Beta chapter was headed to the Tri Mu Bowling Tournament. We would all be on the top of our game. It was an inviolable Panhellenic rule that sororities all supported each other. In public. We’d donate our time and money to each other’s philanthropies, sit together at football games and smile and clap in unison during rush. In public, we were sisters. In private we were vicious, catty and downright hostile. I liked to think it taught us about what real life was all about.

  So that’s why, on a beautiful October Sunday afternoon, the sorority women of Sutton College gathered together in a stinky, smoky, dark bowling alley to cheer each other on and support Tri Mu’s national philanthropy, a good cause that we all cared deeply about. It was something about … blind dogs? Disabled dogs? Diabetic dogs? I could never keep them straight.

  During every Delta Beta’s pledge semester, she was taught the history of the sorority she had just pledged. A history that told how, in 1879, best friends Leticia Baumgardner and Mary Gerald Callahan formed a ‘sacred temple of sisters, sworn to love, loyalty and secrecy’ at Walnut Valley College. This was Delta Beta. Leticia and Mary Gerald selected members based on the highest standards of beauty, poise, intellect and charity. In 1880, women who did not qualify for Delta Beta formed their own second-rate sisterhood at Walnut Valley College and called it Mu Mu Mu.