Frat Girl

by Kiley Roache

  I look away.

  Get it together, Cassie. It’s tequila, not a fine wine. He’s suggesting a rave, not a romantic evening.

  I reach for a bag, pulling it onto my lap and opening it. Unfortunately, it’s the one with my bras and underwear. I grab a single pair of socks and place them in a drawer, hoping he doesn’t see me blush.

  “This is nice,” he says. I look up to see him checking out my room.

  “It’s a bit small,” I say.

  “Yeah, well, at least you’re not sharing a room with three other guys.”

  “Very true.” I laugh, hoping he doesn’t notice that I set down a practically full bag and reach for another. Luckily this one is T-shirts. I grab a stack and shove them in a drawer. “It may get kind of lonely, though.”

  Of course, that will be less because I don’t have a roommate and more because I’m the fucking feminist living undercover in a frat house.

  “Well, I’m right down the hall, so you can come visit anytime.”

  I open my mouth to answer, but before I can, another boy comes barreling in.

  “C’mon, dude, we’re moving the furniture. We need you.”

  “Oh, sorry, be right there.” Jordan slides off my desk. “I’ll catch up with you later, Cass.”

  I nod and turn back to my boxes. I bite my lip to keep from smiling too big or, God help me, giggling at the nickname. T-shirts, sweats and underwear successfully in my drawers, I turn to the wardrobe.

  Opening the door, I find a half-empty thirty-rack of Natty and a hanger bar slanting at a sharp angle.

  I pull the beer out and stand on the floor of the wardrobe, so I’m basically inside it.

  Grunting, I pull on the higher side of the bar. It screeches and slides down half an inch.

  Well, then.

  There’s a light knock and the sound of the door opening.

  “Hey, you’re back.” I step out of the wardrobe and perch on the edge of the bed.

  But it’s not Jordan.

  Bass looks confused. “How’s unpacking going?”

  I swallow. “It’s all right.” Why is he really here?

  He makes himself comfortable, sitting on my desk like Jordan did.

  “Do you need something?” My voice is high.

  “Just trying to get to know my pledges.” He picks up the tequila, inspects it and then sets it back down.

  He peels at the sticker on my laptop: “Of Course I’m a Feminist.” I’d put it there the first night of school, just to prove a point to Leighton. I’d forgotten about it.

  “Interesting...” He doesn’t look up at me.

  “Hmm?”

  “Feminist, huh?” This time he does look up.

  I swallow and nod. “Uh, yeah.”

  “Brave to set foot here, let alone accept a bid.” He tilts his head in a way that sends a chill down my spine.

  He starts opening and closing my drawers.

  “Can you not?”

  His hand is poised over the locked one. “What? Don’t want everything to be out in the open, then don’t move into the house.”

  He seems to have forgotten about the last desk drawer and crosses to my dresser, pulling a red lacy bra out of the top drawer, as if to prove a point.

  He throws it at me. “Buy something push-up for events. If we’re gonna have a bitch in DTC, she’s at least gonna be hot.”

  I stare at the lingerie in my lap as the door slams.

  What the hell have I gotten myself into?

  My phone rings.

  Taking a deep breath, I brace myself and hit the green answer button.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  “I’ve been trying to reach you all morning, sweetie.” Coming from her, the last word sounds more like a slur than a term of endearment. In classic Midwestern fashion, her words sound nice until you catch her tone.

  “Sorry.”

  “You sound hoarse. Are you hungover?”

  “No.” I mean, not really. “I’m just tired, Mom. I’ve been up since six.” I walk over to the window, looking down at the boys below as they lug their things into the house.

  “And yet you haven’t had time to answer any of my emails?” She means texts, but there’s no point in correcting her.

  “I’ve been unpacking.”

  “Right, into your frat house.” It’s clear that in her mind, prison would be preferable. “Speaking of, darling, I was watching Fox News this morning, and they were calling you a crazy feminist, which is ridiculous, because I know I raised you to be a lady and I don’t want California changing you.”

  “Yes, Mom, don’t worry. My opinion on feminism hasn’t changed.” I’m just as radical as you didn’t know I was when I lived at home and pretended I was a good little passive Catholic girl.

  “Now, tell me—do you find yourself attracted to girls? Because I read this article the other day, and—”

  “No, Mom, I still like guys. And feminist is not the same as lesbian.” Not that it would be bad if I was a lesbian, although she would undoubtedly think so.

  “Okay, I just wanted to check. Your grandmother will be calling me any minute, and she will not be happy. Think of the stress you’re putting on her poor heart.”

  I wonder if one day I can call my own daughter to tell her that her behavior doesn’t comply fully enough with my vision of appropriate gender roles, continue the tradition.

  “Well, good luck with that, Mom. Tell Grandma I love her, talk to you soon. Loveyoubye!”

  I hang up and set my phone on the windowsill. I’m only halfway through a box of books when my phone buzzes again. This time it’s only a text.

  Alex: turn on channel 10

  I pound down the stairs and into the TV room. Two actives are chilling with their feet on a coffee table that looks like it’s lived a hard life.

  “Can I use this?” I point to the television, which is currently off.

  They shrug, and I click the remote.

  I’m not used to the channel lineup here, but as it turns out, 10 is MSNBC. A woman is speaking ardently while a scroll runs across the bottom of the screen that says, “No, Fox, she is not a feminist.”

  “I’ll tell you, Bob, when I said I wanted to see more women in heavily masculine environments in Silicon Valley, this is not what I had in mind. A young, traditionally beautiful girl moving into a frat house? I doubt they picked her for her ideas. This is not progress.”

  “So are you saying this move is antifeminist?” Bob asks.

  She blinks at the camera. “Those are your words, not mine, but I would definitely not describe this Cassandra Davis as a feminist. In fact, if anything, she is a classic straw man feminist. Demanding things we don’t even want. Equality doesn’t mean you let us into your misogynistic organizations. It means you get rid of them.”

  If only they knew. That’s what I’m trying to do.

  I shut off the TV. Not exactly what I’d dreamed of when I thought I would be on TV for my research one day.

  “Don’t listen to that bitch,” one of the actives says.

  “Yeah, it’s chill that you’re here.”

  My heart starts to swell.

  “Shit, be proud you aren’t feminist enough for them. No one likes a shrew.”

  Well, that took a turn. I walk back to my room and plop down on my just-made bed.

  This is not how I wanted my life to be. I’m one of the people who should be on TV saying the kinds of things that newswoman was saying, not living with people who think feminist and shrew are synonymous.

  I get up and lock my door, then pull out my computer.

  As soon as I’m logged in to the secure site, I start furiously recording every detail I can remember.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I adjust to life in my new “frat home.”

 
Every morning I wake up and step over beer cans and half-empty Taaka handles on the way to the shower. I always wear shoes when I leave my room, because a grimy film seems to cover everything in the house.

  I carry Lysol in my shower caddy and try to air out the gross boys-locker-room smell before I shower.

  Sometimes there are girls with messed-up hair and miniskirts loitering around, and I offer them my comb and their choice from the thirty-pack of toothbrushes I picked up at Sam’s Club.

  Then I head off to class, saying a quick hello to the athletes coming back from practice, and those with more questionable hobbies who are waking up wherever they collapsed the night before.

  When I return I am always greeted with the loud sounds of gunshots coming from Call of Duty in the main room or a yell of “pledge,” followed by some sort of profanity.

  And at night I fall asleep to the lullaby that is 50 Cent vibrating throughout the house.

  I spend my waking hours sitting in the corner, pretending to read the same few pages of my sociology textbook while listening for material for my journal entries. And I get plenty: how sex is often seen as a conquest; a guy “got head,” or if he is often successful, “slays.” Saying someone has sex often is a compliment for a guy—“he pulls”—while a sign of weakness for a girl—“she gave it up.”

  “I mean it’s not bad, but we know most of this already.” Madison Macey’s voice is staticky over the phone. She’s on Bluetooth driving through LA and has interrupted her thoughts on gender with bouts of swearing at other drivers.

  I crouch beneath the window of the listening booth I’ve reserved at the library. I can’t exactly take calls like this in the house, but even here, in the soundproof booth, I feel like a fugitive.

  “Know what?”

  “Intense drinking, power dynamics and dominance when it comes to sex—this is not shocking or new.”

  “So?” I run my hand through my hair. “I mean it’s my findings so far. And although it’s the stereotype, I’m not sure if it’s been illustrated with an academic study like this. And even if it has, more proof for a theory is worthy research, right? I mean, isn’t that part of the social science process, to gather more evidence to support the prevailing assumption or to disprove it? We can’t, like, change the facts just to make it novel.”

  She sighs. “‘Frat Just What We Expected’ is not headline making, Cassie. I want something new, something that raises eyebrows, turns heads.”

  How about that rolls eyes? “What exactly do you have in mind?”

  “Well, first of all, you aren’t in the story at all. It’s all I heard this, I heard that. Push it a little more, engage with them. I want to see you in the story. Fuck. Sure, asshole, just cut me off, fabulous.”

  I move the phone slightly away from my head to spare my ears the cacophonous honking. When the noise subsides, I cautiously bring the phone back to my face. “But I’m just the reporter—it’s not about me.”

  “Of course it’s about you. Otherwise we’d just have a bunch of hidden cameras in there, not a coed.” She pauses. “You’re replaceable, Cassie. Remind us why it’s important that it’s you in there, embed yourself. When I read your next entry, I want to be blown away.”

  The line goes dead, and I wonder if she’s done with me or just driving through a tunnel.

  Embed myself. I wish it was as easy as she made it sound. But it’s hard to engage with people who mostly don’t seem to want me in their house at all.

  Not that they don’t like the idea of me. For God’s sake, the Warren chapter and the National Organization for DTC wrote press releases about the great example they’ve set by welcoming me. Their Google News tab has gone from talk of probation to talk of awards.

  But the reality of me actually living there, actually being a member and not a talking point, seems to be an inconvenience they forgot to consider. Everyone seems to view me as an annoyance at best, an intruder at worst.

  I’d like to think the actives are no meaner to me than they are to the other pledges, that this is just the reality of pledging. But then again, I never budge from the bottom of the pledge list, except for the one time I was second to last to a dude named Pledge Bambi.

  But that doesn’t explain the way the rest of the pledges treat me.

  I can hear them most nights, from my window, drunkenly yelling as they gather outside the house to romp around campus, to have nights they’ll look back on when they talk about their glory days.

  Everything I’ve read about frats tells me this is the time when we should bond over our common pain. The people who defend hazing under the guise of “tradition” always say that creating adversity makes people come together.

  But my pledge brothers don’t seem to want to forge any sort of bond with me.

  The only one who seems to want to interact with me, besides the ones who want to torture me, is Jordan.

  I can’t tell if he likes me or just pities me, feeling bad for the kid always sitting alone.

  But he starts inundating me with invitations.

  He pops up at my door at least three times a day, smiling like I’m his long-lost best friend.

  “Hey, Cassie, do you want to study sociology?”

  “Hey, Cassie, do you want to get lunch at the student center?”

  “Hey, Cassie, do you want to sit with me at dinner?”

  “Hey, Cassie, do you want to go to this party/social/sorority mixer where everyone but me will hate your guts?”

  “Hey, Cassie, will you come out of your room so I can stop worrying about my charity project and get back to hanging out with my real friends?”

  Okay, so those two aren’t exact quotes per se.

  I take him up on the studying and eating, and he becomes the only one who can draw me out of my room for anything but class or mandatory pledge events. Granted, he’s the only one who tries.

  And that scares the shit out of me.

  Because he’s the only one I want to try. Which is a bad thought, because I should be focused on the experiment, on interacting in a purely research-based way with these people I hate, not spending the day waiting for a text that sets off butterflies in my stomach, or to see his beautiful face at my door.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Welcome to your first house clean.” Peter stands in front of the whole house, all of us assembled in various states of undress and hangover. I rub my eyes. The kid next to me—Pledge Bambi, who I’ve just met—yawns. Well, at least until Peter’s eyes fall on him, and then he snaps his mouth shut and stands up straight. I look at him out of the corner of my eye. He is pretty tall and lanky. Not to mention his baby face and big eyes.

  “I want to see all of these cans recycled, the kitchen restocked, dishes washed, the floors scrubbed and vacuumed—including the bathroom.”

  The crowd emits a collective groan, but Peter continues unfazed, rambling about disinfectant and no-streak window cleaner.

  I scan the room. Examine the half-congealed pot of mac and cheese on the floor underneath the only still-upright table. The sea of empty beer cans that makes the floor hardly visible. The not-so-empty beer cans spilling onto the tile. Oh God, at least I hope all that yellow liquid is beer.

  I look up to the ceiling, trying not to throw up. Is that...a bra hanging from the fan?

  “All right.” Peter claps his hands and smiles. “I think that about covers it. See you in a few hours.” He spins on his heel and walks toward the door. The other actives do the same.

  “Well, this sucks,” Bambi says. The rest of the pledges mumble in agreement while dispersing.

  I head into the kitchen to grab a few trash bags before making my way to the TV room, which has hopefully been hit less hard by the trash tornado than the main party rooms.

  A few people had the same idea as me, including Jordan, who’s in a white undershirt and penguin pajam
a pants, hair perfectly disheveled.

  I clear my throat. “I, uh, come bearing trash bags.”

  “Thanks,” Jordan says, taking one, but he seems distracted.

  I lean down to pick up a few cans of Natty Light, shoving them in my own plastic bag, extremely aware of the tiny sleep shorts I’m wearing, which are basically just boxers.

  “I can’t figure out why this couch is like this,” Jordan says.

  I stand up and walk over to examine it. Half the couch is a darker green than the rest, seemingly soaking wet.

  “I know!” A guy I don’t really know very well—I think his name might be Alan, or maybe Aaron, walks up. His eyes are wide in wonderment. “I fell asleep there, and I woke up soaking wet. It was so weird.”

  “Do you think one of the actives threw a bucket of water on you?” Jordan asks.

  “Wouldn’t he remember that?” I say.

  “Nope,” Alan/Aaron says with a stupid smile. “I was so blacked that whatever it was, I slept right through.”

  “Jesus,” I say under my breath.

  Jordan rubs his chin, examining the couch like it’s a clue in a murder mystery. “Do you think...” He turns to... Al—let’s just call him Al. “Could it be, uh, pee?”

  I squeal despite myself and jump back from the couch.

  Al turns bright red. “It is not pee.”

  “Okay, okay.” Jordan holds up his hands to calm the witness. “There must be a reasonable explanation for this.”

  “Like a leak?” I suggest.

  We all look up.

  “I don’t know,” Jordan says. “The ceiling looks fine.”

  “Well, maybe it dried,” Al says.

  I scrunch my nose. “I don’t think—”

  “What’s in the room above?” Jordan asks, already on the move. He stops when he reaches the bottom of the stairs. “Cassie, run up the stairs and walk forward on my instructions.”

  “Yes, sir,” I say, dropping my bag of tin cans and running past him toward the stairwell.

  “This is a serious investigation, ma’am. I do not appreciate your sarcasm.”