Frat Girl

by Kiley Roache

  “Uh...thanks?”

  He leans forward, and before I can react his lips are pressed against mine. I’m frozen, not really kissing him back, but not pushing him away.

  The sound of the door pulls me out of my trance.

  I lean back. “I...” My sentence fades from my mind as a familiar blue sweater catches my eye over Connor’s shoulder. Jordan is standing in the doorway.

  We lock eyes for a moment. Connor says something, but it doesn’t register.

  The way Jordan is looking at me, his brown eyes like that, it’s almost like he’s...heartbroken.

  But that can’t be right. Because right behind him in the doorway there is a girl and she is in a little black dress, and she’s looking at him so dreamily and now he is taking her hand, and probably leading her back to her dorm.

  And there is no way that look in his eyes is for me.

  There is no way he cares that I’m here kissing this boy.

  And yet...

  He shakes his head, and the look is gone; his eyes are blank.

  “Hey, Wright,” he says, looking at us. “Nice!” And then he disappears, whispering something to the girl that makes her laugh and playfully hit him, and I don’t know what else I expected. He’s just another frat boy, after all.

  I turn back to Connor. “You know him?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “We have a class together.”

  “Oh.” I try to sound like this information is nothing to me, like my question was just polite.

  “So...” His eyes meet mine.

  He leans in again, and this time I kiss him back.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I work all day on my journal in the rare quiet as people sleep off their hangovers.

  I feel like the night before left me with enough material to focus on recording my observations rather than, uh, interacting with my subjects, so I plan to lock myself in my room for most of the day. But by eleven I desperately need to sneak downstairs for some food.

  I’m walking down the hall when the door next to mine opens.

  Jordan is still in the blue sweater from last night, along with red plaid boxers. He looks at me for a second but doesn’t say anything. No invitation to study or eat or watch stupid TV, no overly friendly smile.

  I pass him silently, and I know something has changed; something is broken, ended before it even started.

  My stomach growls at the smell of bacon as I make it down the last few steps.

  Pablo, the chef (yeah, I know, these fuckbois have a personal chef; the world is a very unfair place) has prepared a brunch that makes me want to cry. I decide to brave the idiocy of conversation for the deliciousness of quiche. (Yeah, that’s right, this frat eats like this is the Hamptons, probably because that’s what most of them are used to.)

  I pile bacon, fresh fruit, pancakes and a variety of mini quiches onto my now multiple plates while I wait for my omelet to be ready.

  Sitting down at the end of the long table in the main room, which people were dancing on the night before, I try to enjoy my bubble of brunch bliss before it’s ruined with a sexist/racist/homophobic comment. Spin the Frat Wheel of Fun to find out what one of these highly educated idiots at the other end of the table will say first.

  Duncan glances down the table as I sit but doesn’t say anything.

  “Did you end up getting with that girl again, the one from Wednesday?” Marco asks him.

  Duncan turns back to the guys. “Nah, I wasn’t feeling it.” He takes a sip of his coffee. “Got with her roommate, though.”

  Jesus. I turn back to my food. Even one of the ones who seemed like he might be half-decent.

  “God, that must have been an awkward walk down the hall,” Marco says.

  He shakes his head. “I wasn’t about to have sex in a sorority house. Are you kidding me, man? All that estrogen around, probably wouldn’t even have been able to get it up.”

  That makes no sense. I focus on my omelet. Happy, happy, good food.

  “Dude, don’t you live in a quad?” Marco sees no reason to stop shoveling food in his mouth while he talks.

  “Yeah, yeah, he does. My quad,” Bambi says.

  “Eh, dude, shut up. You were asleep.” Duncan forklifts eggs into his mouth.

  “Yeah, until I was woken up by ‘Ohhh yes, Duncan, harder, like that, don’t stop, don’t stop.’”

  They all laugh—even me, but I feel dirty doing it.

  Peter sits down across from me and nods. He’s the first person who seems to even care I’m here.

  We eat in silence for a few minutes while Bambi continues to reenact the When Harry Met Sally diner scene.

  Peter practically inhales his food. I’ve never been a self-conscious eater, but wow, there’s something about a boy eating in his natural habitat that is next level.

  “Nice hickey, Cass,” he says through a mouthful of food.

  My hand goes to my neck.

  “You’re fine,” he says, standing up. “It’s freshman year—have some fun. Just not with the other pledges, okay?”

  “That’s a rule?”

  “Let’s just say some of the leadership would not be happy. Your being here is kind of a divisive issue already.”

  “Okay...” It’s not like I was going to. And if I was, the only person who interested me seemed more interested in that black-dress girl anyway. But even if I was interested, it seems like an odd rule.

  “What about gay guys?” I ask.

  He stares down at his food, suddenly looking very unlike his Kennedyesque self. Much more like a puppy that just made a mess. “That hasn’t been a problem.”

  “You’ve never had a gay member? The whole time you’ve been a frat? How is that possible? Like, twelve percent of people are gay.”

  He opens his mouth to speak, but before he can, Sebastian joins us and answers for him.

  “No, we haven’t, and we never will.”

  “Why?” My word is so loaded I’m worried it may sink before it gets to his ears. There’s no reason he could supply that wouldn’t be appalling.

  “Listen, I don’t have a problem with it. I just don’t wanna see it, don’t want it in my house.”

  “What do you mean? Bambi basically watched Duncan have sex last night. Are you telling me that’d be different if Duncan was getting with another guy?”

  He doesn’t blink. “Yeah.”

  I want to slam my head against the table. If it was two girls, I’m sure he’d love to watch.

  Sebastian gets up to get more food.

  “Are you gonna do anything about that?” I ask Peter.

  “What? He’s on the exec committee. He has the same veto power I do. If he wants a no intra-house dating policy, we’ll have it.”

  “Why don’t you call him out? Even if you can’t stop him, you should tell him he’s being a homophobic asshole.”

  “Do you really think it would change his mind?” Peter scrubs his face. He looks tired.

  “Double Ds, I swear!” someone down the table shouts. Duncan.

  I glare at him.

  He doesn’t notice, just keeps gesturing in front of his chest while the others look on. Sebastian returns, staring at them with pride.

  “Hey, idiots!” Peter yells down the table. “Don’t kiss and tell. Have some class.”

  They fall silent, Bambi squirms in his seat, and Marco rolls his eyes.

  Peter heads to the kitchen to refill his plate.

  “Easy for him to say,” Marco mutters once Peter’s out of earshot. “We’ve all seen his fuckin’ ten of a Delta girlfriend.”

  “Yeah, and it wasn’t like he didn’t have a rotation of girls coming in and out of the house before they got together,” Sebastian adds.

  “But I never told you about them.” Peter emerges from the kitchen with
another heaping plate.

  Bambi turns white.

  “You are aware that I can hear your big mouth from a room away, right?” He sets his plate down. “Bambi, pull yourself together. I’m not gonna hand out shots when everyone’s hungover, okay? My God.”

  “You didn’t need to tell me, asshole,” Bass said. “I could just sit in the courtyard weekend mornings and watch them climb out a first-floor window. That was the best part. They’d all leave at seven thinking they would be unnoticed.”

  “Could’ve just slept in,” Bambi says.

  “That’s what I told them.” Peter takes a sip of coffee.

  This whole conversation is making me lose my appetite. The very girls they try to get back to their rooms or congratulate their friends on fucking are mocked when they decide to say yes. And these girls, what kind of emotional turmoil are they putting themselves through, making a choice at night and then having to hide it not even twelve hours later?

  But it’s not just the guys who are guilty of thinking we should have to climb out the window. We’re the ones doing it.

  It’s what has always made me uncomfortable about sororities. They have such strict rules about not drinking and not allowing men to set foot in the house, but anyone who’s had any experience with sorority girls—or, in fairness, any girl on a college campus—knows that alcohol and boys are a huge part of the social scene.

  But God forbid you talk about these things with your “sisters.” It’s all “do as I say, not as I do.” It’s passive aggression mastered and tied up with a bright pink bow.

  But for God’s sake, it’s okay to get drunk every once in a while, and you should be able to do it with the girls you call your sisters. And it’s human and natural to want to have safe, consensual sex, whether that’s with a long-term boyfriend or a hot stranger, depending on your personal beliefs and situation at the time.

  So why the fuck do we keep acting like someone will sew a red A on us if we have a little fun?

  As the great prophet (Tina Fey) tells us in the good book (Mean Girls), “You all have got to stop calling each other sluts and whores. It just makes it okay for guys to call you sluts and whores.”

  The Greek culture of hypocrisy creates this culture of sex and partying being guys-only activities, so they have all the control: frats are where you go to drink and have sex. Your own home is where you lie about those things.

  And here’s the worst part. When you associate shame with any sexual behavior or any use of alcohol, you have no way of knowing when there’s a problem and things go too far.

  It happened at my high school back home. We were all “good” Catholic teenagers, but everyone who was dating had sex, and they all lied about it. So my friend Gabby thought her boyfriend’s behavior was normal. That what he did in the back of his Chevy Impala that one night wasn’t something to be talked about, but it was fine, because even though everyone said they didn’t want to, she’d heard everybody did it anyway, so it was normal, right? It wasn’t until two years after they broke up that she realized she’d been raped.

  And here are these frat boys, laughing at the fucked-up culture surrounding sex. There’s so much I want to tell them. But I can’t exactly tar them because of what happened to Gabby back home, even though you can draw lines from these little everyday sexist insults to the normalization of true trauma.

  Fuming, I stand up to wash my plate. I dump my extra food in the compost bin and then rinse my dish. I grab the sponge, scrubbing at a bit of food that just won’t budge.

  “Easy there, Cassie.”

  I turn around, wiping my forehead with my arm, since my hand is soapy. I know my face must be bright red. Duncan is staring, waiting to wash his plate after me.

  I give him a look and turn back to my work.

  “Jesus, you’re in a mood this morning,” he says.

  “I—” I shove my plate into the sink with a clatter. “Do you think it’s cute?” I turn on him. “Do you think it’s charming? Do you think it puts me in a good mood to hear you guys talk about women like that? I mean, it’s one thing to—to parade your carousel of women in and out of here, but at least have the decency not to mock them the next morning.”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “Whatever.” I push past him, out the door.

  “Cassie.” His voice is pleading.

  I stop walking. “What?”

  “It’s not because I like it this way.” He rinses his plate and sets it down delicately. “I’ve never actually been on a date before.”

  I turn around. “How is that—”

  “I went to an all-guys school and spent all my time playing football. And then I came here, and all these girls just...” He sighs. “It’s easier to just flirt with someone at a party who won’t even remember your name if they reject you than to ask out a girl you like.”

  Oh.

  My phone dings, and I reach for it instinctively. He shrugs and walks out.

  I open the email; it’s the pledge rankings. Duncan is at the top—again. And Bambi and I are fighting for dead last, also again. My score is so low, I’m probably at risk of being dropped before initiation.

  “Duncan, wait!” I chase after him, up the stairs. “Do you want me to set you up on a date?”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “You want me to go out with who?” Jackie asks over the phone.

  She’s downstate for a big climbing competition. I’m sitting in the main quad, surrounded by tourists, old people studying maps and parents taking pictures of their babies in Warren onesies, and prospective students, aggressively asking tour guides about their SAT scores.

  “That guy we, uh, met at the gym that one time, Duncan? And I don’t want you to really go out with him. Just...pretend to. So he can practice.”

  “Will he know it’s a pretend date?”

  “No.”

  “Cassie...”

  I stand up. “But I’ll be there, too.” I pace back and forth in front of a stone archway. “And you get a free meal. You don’t have to kiss him or anything. Just go to dinner with him, show him he can enjoy having an actual conversation with a woman, then peace out at the end saying you have to take a call. I’ll let him down easy saying you’re...on and off with your ex and trying to work it out. Or whatever. Something that has nothing to do with him.”

  She sighs. “Okay. But I want Italian. Not some chain place, either. The good stuff.”

  I smile and sit back down on the steps. “I can arrange that.”

  She exhales. “And he can hold my hand, but no kissing. Not even on the cheek.”

  “Okay.”

  “God, why am I doing this?”

  “Because you looove me,” I singsong into the phone.

  “You should know I’m rolling my eyes,” she says.

  “Don’t care.”

  “All right, I gotta go.” The background noise builds, shouts and clapping; she must be at the gym now. “Text me the details.”

  “Yes!” I pump my fist as I hang up the phone.

  Three retirees with cameras turn around and stare.

  “I, uh, got an A,” I say.

  They nod knowingly and one woman says, “That’s wonderful, darling,” while the others return to taking pictures of palm trees.

  * * *

  I’m standing in the strip mall Mama O’Malley’s proudly calls home, by the car Duncan and I came in, when Jackie is dropped off by one of her teammates. She stalks across the parking lot, wearing a white sundress, leather jacket and a scowl.

  “You look nice,” I call out.

  She only half smiles in response.

  Once she has reached me, I say, “He’s inside getting our names on the list.”

  “This whole meeting-in-the-parking-lot really adds to the prostitution feel of things.” She doesn’t stop her progress tow
ard the door.

  I walk quickly to catch up with her. “You’re not a—”

  “I’m a date for hire.”

  “Point taken.” I pull open the door.

  We step into the brightly lit restaurant, greeted by the stereotypical Italian music, loud conversation and toddlers’ screams.

  I scan the room. Most of the tables are booths, about half of which have high chairs pulled up to them. On the wall there are big framed close-up photographs of tomatoes and wheat.

  And an honest-to-God poster from Lady and the Tramp.

  “Great,” Jackie says, slipping off her coat to reveal the thin white straps of her dress, which look beautiful against her tan skin. “Really classy.”

  I smile sheepishly. I may have picked it by Googling “Italian Restaurants Near Warren.”

  She looks around. “There’s no coat check, is there?”

  I shake my head.

  “Cassie!” Duncan is sitting at a booth, waving to us. He’s wearing khakis, a slightly wrinkled button-down and a navy blue blazer. It’s weird seeing him wear anything but a T-shirt and Warren basketball shorts.

  “Hello, I’m Duncan Morris.” He gets up and shakes her hand vigorously.

  She nods. “Jackie.”

  “After you.” He makes a sweeping motion with his arm.

  She slides into the booth.

  “Isn’t this place great?” he says as we sit down.

  “Yeah,” I manage. Jackie just makes a noise.

  “I like the dogs.” He points at the poster. “Reminds me of my brother.”

  “I didn’t know you had a brother,” I say.

  “Yeah.” Duncan smiles. “He’s six.”

  “Hey there.” A woman with a gray ponytail passes out plastic menus. “My name is Annie. I’ll be your server tonight.” She smiles tiredly. “I’ll give you a second to look things over while I grab your breadsticks.”

  A pudgy toddler at the next table spikes his sippy cup at the ground, causing an explosion of chocolate milk. Annie sighs and heads over.

  “So...” Duncan says as she walks away. He’s staring at his water, ripping the edges of his cocktail napkin. “Cassie said you’re an athlete, too?