by Rachel Shane
Harrison’s arm shot out, blocking me. “If you’re going to try to sneak into my room again, don’t bother. There’s someone up there standing guard.” He lowered his voice. “But if you want, I’d be happy to escort you up there myself. My offer still stands.”
My body thrummed at that suggestion, imagining the end result. Us. Alone. In his room. A repeat performance of the knee fiasco. Yes, I thought. Instead I said, “I told you before. We’re not friends. So stop teasing me. Stop cockblocking my attempt to get recruits. And stop convincing my members to deactivate.”
A wrinkle indented his brow. “You think I’m the one convincing them to join the ranks of the uninitiated?”
I challenged him with a raised brow. “You’re not?”
He leaned in close to me, hot breath coating my neck. “Of course I’m not. You’re missing the obvious.”
He typed a few things onto his phone and held it up to me.
145 Driscoll Drive. 6pm. Sunday.
I squinted at him. “What’s that?”
“A clue to where your members went.” He patted the top of my head. “Now it’s your turn to be the investigative journalist.”
A KEG OF FOAMY beer rested on a blue tarp at the edge of our backyard while streaks of pink and orange sky in the background demanded an Instagram-worthy photo. Colorful balloons drooping with every kind of paint—stolen from the art rooms by Fallon—filled a giant Tupperware tote. Our square of grass that counted as a backyard plus the tiny swatch of concrete that tried to pass as a driveway would have to do in terms of space. On the one hand, I hoped for a huge turn out but on the other, it might be better if people came in shifts. Stand up heaters from Home Depot banished some of the cold air, but only if you stood directly under one.
We’d decided to start the party at six P.M. to hopefully snag a few people before the other frat parties began. But it was already six thirty and only official Rho Sig members had shown up. In addition to the Out House potentials we’d invited last night, we’d slipped an invite under every freshman dorm room. I’d thrown myself into this task, planning it like any other PR project. Anything to stop thinking about accepting Harrison’s offer.
Mackenzie checked her watch. “This is bad, right?”
My chest ached that she might be right, but I tried to stay optimistic. “People are always fashionably late to parties.” I plopped a thick stack of envelopes containing official bids into Underground Rho Sigma onto a chair on the small wooden deck. The normal sorority recruitment process involved three different rounds where houses whittled down girls and the girls whittled down their house choices from fourteen to six to three and then ranked them in order of preference. If the girls’ ranks matched the house’s picks, they’d get a bid. We didn’t have time to wait for three rounds so I’d instructed the current members to pass out bids to anyone who seemed normal enough after a simple conversation. Sorority pledge classes usually only contained forty new girls but I’d printed one hundred fifty bid envelopes.
I figured we’d need numbers if we had any chance of kicking Harrison’s butt out of our old house.
But an hour later still no one showed up. The current members milled around, standing in clusters, their jackets still covering their white t-shirts. Corey’s iPod playlist of lame rap and chill college rock crooned through the area.
Erin plopped onto the back steps. “We’re a joke.”
My throat tightened. “We can’t give up. This party may have been worthless—” And expensive. My eyes flew to the full keg. “But we’ll think of something else.”
All of a sudden everyone’s heads perked up as a pack of freshman ambled around the back. Excitement shot through me, making me straighten. Their eyes were wide in fear, but they’d taken the invite instructions seriously by donning white shirts and pants they wouldn’t mind getting ruined. For girls, this seemed to translate into cheap leggings and for boys: pajama bottoms.
Mackenzie rushed over to collect their cover charge and Erin plopped foamy beers into each of their hands. Once they’d each had a sip, Corey tossed water balloons at them, which splattered on contact. A rainbow of red and orange paint drops collided with their shirts. They lifted their hands in the air and cheered.
We all circled them like a pack of wolves. “Thanks for coming,” I said in my cheeriest voice. “What are your names?”
They all looked at each other apprehensively, squeezing their beers. One of them mumbled under her breath, “Should we say?”
Corey let out a raspy laugh. “We’re not going to bite.”
They shuffled their feet. “We heard if we joined this house, we could get put on academic probation or expelled since it’s underground,” a tall guy said.
The first girl glanced at her shoes. “We only came on a dare.”
I crossed my arms to keep my emotions in check. “Where did you hear that rumor?”
“There was a flyer slipped under our door warning us.”
My hands balled into fists. Harrison. Getting me back for trying to steal his recruits; an eye for an eye.
Through gritted teeth, I said, “Well, it’s true, we are underground. But not for long. We’re gearing up to get our old house back.” I went on to list all the advantages of joining our house versus another.
They all exchanged glances before the first girl shrugged. She extended a hand. “I’m Amber and I’m interested in joining.”
For the rest of the night we all kicked back and drank beers and chatted. Amber was a 3D animation major and the two hit it off instantly. Two of the guys were freshman on the lacrosse team and were eager to join a club that wouldn’t bench them immediately. The other three were English majors and kept the convo going with witty quips. We may have printed one hundred fifty envelopes and filled three hundred unused balloons, but if the six people who showed up tonight actually joined, that was good enough for me.
145 Driscoll Drive. 6pm Sunday.
The campus directory didn’t know it. Google Maps claimed it was in the bad part of town, the one I’d never dared to walk through alone or…ever. So I decided I needed reinforcements if I was going to follow Harrison’s sketchy lead. Mace. Binoculars. Cell phone cued to nine one one. And an army.
Or at least my best friend who insisted on wearing the cute camouflage pants she picked up at the mall the other day.
“Army would make a great party theme though, right?” Erin said as she hopped out of her giant SUV that we parked several houses away. Each one was boxy and rundown with graffiti in the windows and dirt where grass usually sprouted. Not exactly picturesque.
A cool breeze whipped my dark highlighted hair over my shoulders. “Depends on who the party’s with. Out House? Then yes, I would need to prepare for battle.”
She chuckled. “The battle of the loins?”
I rolled my eyes. “Not a thing.”
She pouted as her sneaker crunched against a broken bottle. “Oh come on, Holly told me about the Out House recruitment party. You two are hot for each other.”
“Hot headed,” I corrected.
Cars jammed the skinny driveway and lined the road in front of house one forty five. Dilapidated blue shingles hung from the windows, and a lamp post shone a spotlight on a balloon attached to the mailbox, waving in the frigid breeze. Erin turned to me with eyebrows raised. “Now what?”
“Now we spy.” I squinted at the window where a silhouetted shadow passed through the main room. “I can’t make out who that is though.”
She sucked in a breath. “I’m taking a wild bet that we might not want to know.”
The hair on the back of my neck rose, and not just from the cold. The thought had crossed my mind too. Maybe Harrison had sent me on a fool’s errand. After all, six o’clock was exactly when our Underground Rho Sigma Chapter meeting took place. I’d instructed Mackenzie and Corey to run it without us, but what if Harrison’s plan all along was to get me out of the house? So he could destroy what was left of Rho Sigma entirely. If any of the fresh
man from last night planned to accept our bid—and we’d instructed them to bring anyone they thought worthy for an auto-bid—they’d be showing up for today’s meeting to give us their official (except not really official since it could never be) word.
A second shadow passed across the window. Then another. And another. “There’s more people.” In fact a whole line of shadows paraded across the windows as if they were migrating from one room to another. To one that didn’t contain windows.
Erin grabbed my wrist. “I think we should leave.”
I shook my head. “I need to know if Harrison is lying.” Because worse than the idea of him tricking me was the idea that he was right. This was where our members went.
After a few minutes without shadows, I crept closer to the house, ducking beneath the windows to prevent outing myself before I even concocted a plan of action. Peering into the room the people had just fled revealed folding tables set out with bowls of fruit, chips, and M&Ms. I bristled. Regular Rho Sigma never served snacks at Chapter. I’d done it to help make the girls feel more at home, give them some sort of incentive. Did these people steal from my playbook?
Erin wrapped her gloved fingers around the windowsill. “A party?”
We circled around the back of the house, checking every window we could find but discovering nothing. And I meant that quite literally. Nothing. As in, most rooms contained zero furniture, just clouds of dust. It was as if whoever moved in here had decided to only furnish the place with the essentials. A table for snacks. That was it. Done.
Then I spotted the basement window, a notebook-sized rectangle about one inch above the ground. I wouldn’t be able to duck, so I sighed and flattened myself on the dirt. Gooey sludge oozed around my stomach. This now-ruined shirt was a small sacrifice in my quest to find answers. Erin hopped back a step, clearly afraid to get even a speck of mud on her new fatigues. I pressed my face up against the glass—and gasped.
Layla Davies paced the basement wearing her own form of drill sergeant chic: all black, whistle in mouth, intimidating glare. Her second-in-command, Olivia Marquez, patrolled with her. In the center of the basement, kneeling on the dirty floor, were approximately fifty girls all clad in white. I recognized every girl who’d deactivated Underground Rho Sigma. Aimee Hollander. Tara Easterly. Kiera Chan. Chelsey Wolf. Emily Ostrom. Kelly Murphy. Amanda Simon. And Jenna Rodriquez, who’d attended our recruitment party last night but must have decided to switch allegiances today.
Scattered among the familiars were a bunch of girls I didn’t recognize .
A whistle blew. All of a sudden Layla and Olivia tossed colorful sprinkles at the kneeling girls. The girls scrambled to pick them up but the sprinkles stuck to their fingers as if their hands were covered in glue. The girls frantically tried to pluck the individual colors off their fingers and drop them into tin bowls separated by color, all while remaining on their knees.
“Do you see anything?” Erin asked.
I grit my teeth. “Yep. Hazing.”
Lame hazing, sure, but this had to be the first night of pledging based on the fact that they had freshman among them and they were starting with this stuff? That meant it would only go downhill from here. Next stop: fat circles. Third stop: forced drinking. Fourth stop: hazing death scandal.
When I’d pledged Rho Sigma, they had a very firm anti-stance on hazing like this. Most of our six weeks of pledging involved fun bonding stuff like passing a candle around at night and each sharing our deepest fears under the flickering glow. Or lessons to promote knowledge about the sorority’s history and the sisters themselves through tasks like interviewing each sister. There were a few mental hazing moments, like being quizzed on the sisters’ names while they wore hoodies and sunglasses to trick us. At the time, I’d stood in front of the sisters shaking at the scariness of the situation. But it was only after I’d talked to Holly and heard what she’d had to do at Alpha Omega Chi that I realized we’d gotten off easy. I’d actually been disappointed they hadn’t hazed us worse. Movies had deceived me. I’d expected to be bloated with alcohol and pushed off the side of a building. Instead I took a written test on the founders.
The worst of it came the last night before initiation when the seniors forced us to wear white, played the same song on repeat for hours (it was some kill-me-now worthy song from Dora the Explorer about a map that to this day makes me never want to have kids) while we separated fruit loops into color piles despite our fingers being covered in glue. We’d actually had the best time doing it and it was one of the nights I’d really bonded with Erin and Mackenzie as we kept sabotaging each other’s piles and then laughing about it.
But these girls were separating sprinkles—far smaller and trickier—while kneeling and as far as I could tell, not talking to each other. Layla had always voiced her complaints that we were being too easy on our pledges and it seemed she took that to heart.
Layla blew another whistle and each girl raced to a shot glass and downed the clear liquid inside, wincing. When they set the glasses down, Olivia filled each back up with straight Smirnoff.
I couldn’t let these girls go through what Layla had in store for them. I pressed my phone up to the basement window and snapped several photos—but my stupid auto-flash went off.
Layla’s eyes jerked up and landed right at the window.
I scrambled to my feet. “Run.”
But it was too late. The back door opened and Layla raced out, her hand pointing directly at us in an accusatory state. “Trespassing! I’m calling the cops.”
I itched to flee but I knew that would only make me guilty. So I swallowed hard and lifted my chin in confidence. “And bring them to the scene of the crime? Serving alcohol to minors is illegal, you know.”
She strolled toward me, her dark black bob swishing along her cheeks. Her perfectly manicured eyebrows arched. “There’s no alcohol here, only water served out of a reused bottle, a song that’s free to play, friends hanging out, and sprinkles that are part of an elaborate art installation. See? Nothing illegal at all.”
I groaned. She’d taken a lesson from the Harrison Wagner Playbook for Breaking Rules While Still Appearing to be Abiding Them. I suspected there had been vodka in that bottle but it was long gone by now. And by the time I called the cops and they arrived, the pledges would be long gone too. “You may not be doing anything wrong right this second, but you’ll slip up. And I’ll be there to take my sisters back.”
She tsked at me as if my words didn’t even rate on her scale of one to threat.
I tilted my head at her as something occurred to me. “What is this place? It’s not your apartment. That’s on Euclid according to the Campus Directory.”
“And I doubt Olivia Marquez lives here!” Erin added, as if she had to stay relevant to this conversation.
“If you’re trying to insinuate that I’m the one trespassing, move along. I’m renting this place as well as my one on Euclid.”
I’d seen her expensive purses and overpriced designer jeans. Her car was worth more than most people’s salaries. She wasn’t renting anything. Her parents were. They’d rented her a hazing lair.
A pang of jealousy shot through me. Her mom was still on her side.
She took another step forward, invading my personal space. And then she reached for my phone and snatched it right out of my hands. I swatted at her, but she was faster. In two point five seconds flat, she’d swiped all the incriminating photos right off my phone and into the trash bin. She must have had a lot of practice removing naked selfies from guys’ phones.
She presented the cell back to me. “Now leave. Or I take the rest of your sisters. Your version of Rho Sigma is going down in flames while mine will get reinstated. Mark my words.”
I seethed as I fled to the car. Now I wasn’t just competing with Harrison for my old house. I was competing with another, stronger, (better?) version of Rho Sig.
I SETTLED INTO MY chair at the weekly Newspaper meeting that Friday, my eyes focused on th
e door. Not that I was waiting for Harrison. Nope.
Genevieve strode to the front of the room to start the meeting, clad in tight fitting black, her hair and cheek bones pulled tight. “All right, who wants to go first?”
I squirmed, feeling strangely uneasy that Harrison hadn’t shown up. Genevieve’s eyes zoomed to the empty chair he normally occupied. “Actually, now might be a good time to remind everyone that punctuality is a requirement.”
So his absence wasn’t expected?
Harrison sauntered in twenty minutes late with a crisp button up shirt, wrinkle-free khakis, and plastic-rimmed glasses he only ever seemed to wear during these meetings. It was all a ploy. A ruse. He’d revealed his real self with the squeak of his leather pants.
He delivered me a wink before taking his seat directly across from me.
Genevieve held up her hand to stop one of the comic artists in the middle of his status update. She crossed her arms at Harrison. “How nice of you to grace us with your presence. This is your first warning.”
“Visiting hours,” he said.
The anger drained from her face and she nodded, waving the artist to continue. I tilted my head at Harrison. Who was he visiting and why was it an automatic get-out-of-jail free card for him? In response, he delivered me another wink. So it wasn’t an excuse, it was an outright lie.
Genevieve thanked the artist and straightened. “All right, onto story pitches.”
Harrison’s hand shot high in the air, like it did every week at these meetings. He always had a killer idea that trounced all the others. I’d noticed now people let him have the first word, because it always ended up being the last one anyway.
He kept his gaze locked on me as he spoke. “I have an inside source claiming Tampa’s tampering with their balls, New England Patriots deflate gate-style.”
Several of the boys snickered like immature lametards at the mention of balls. A few looked perplexed. Genevieve’s eyes lit up.
“I think I can catch them in the act at the away game this weekend. I’d need access to the locker room before and during the game and—”
