Skin Deep

by Sung J. Woo

  Before I knew what was happening, the bottom of a sneaker landed between me and Hajira. Which was impressive, because Hajira and I were basically stuck shoulder to shoulder. The foot cleaved us and pushed us into the bodies of the farmers, who were then pushed into their neighbors—a domino effect that irritated everyone.

  The foot belonged to a very tall guy, the same guy with the Tau Beta Alpha sweatshirt I’d seen earlier arguing with Brent Kim. His long gait turned him into a giant step from bleacher row to bleacher row, making his way down to the court.

  “What did you say to him, Grace?” he screamed. His voice was so piercing that I half thought he was miked up; maybe his larynx was extra long, like his body. It was kind of amazing that just seconds before, this gym was so loud that I couldn’t hear my own voice, and now that this commotion was happening, the entire place fell to eerie silence.

  The tall guy was now down to the first bleacher. All eyes were on him.

  “What the fuck did you do?”

  Now all eyes went to Grace. With everyone staring at her, she did something that only made sense after I thought about it: she folded her arms and turned her back on the guy.

  This, of course, infuriated him, but the moment he stepped onto the floor, Brent Kim grabbed the guy, spun him around, then placed him in some sort of a painful arm lock that made him very cooperative. Another one of Brent’s flunkies was right behind, I guess for moral support, because Brent sure as hell didn’t need any help in subduing the tall guy. The two members of the special security coolly marched down the sideline and headed for the north exit of the gym.

  “That’s my cue,” I told Hajira. “Thank you for showing me around.”

  “You’ll follow that tall man?”

  “That’s my job, following people who get thrown out of basketball games.”

  “Well,” she said, “okay.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. “This is what I do.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” she said. “Regardless, please be careful.”

  40

  Heeding Hajira’s advice, instead of trailing Brent straight on, I took the east exit and walked around the gym. I peeked around the corner and watched Brent and his cohort drag the tall guy to the parking lot. They stopped in front of a red hatchback. Chirp! The car door opened, and now Brent was saying something to the guy. The guy wouldn’t look at him, so Brent grabbed one of his ears and made sure there was eye contact. Then he pushed him into the car, and Brent stepped away, with his arms crossed, waiting for the tall guy to leave the premises.

  My car was still parked in the visitor’s lot, so I ran to it as fast as I could. The red hatchback was already turning onto Route 9, headed south towards Lenrock. This was not a well-traveled road, so I didn’t want to be right behind him. As luck would have it, a pickup truck was also about to leave Llewellyn, so I allowed it to get in front of me and used it as a buffer.

  With the moon and stars obscured by clouds, Route 9 was darkness itself. I thought of Grace and her rude little pirouette on the court. It was a move befitting a girl of privilege and power. She knew someone —in this case, Brent Kim—would take care of this little problem, because someone had always taken care of problems for her.

  At the junction of Route 43, the truck took a left towards the town of Auburn and the hatchback took a right towards Athena. The tall guy was returning home, as I’d suspected. Two cars got between him and me heading southbound, which was my preference for tailing.

  We got on Route 31, the heart of our hometown’s commerce. The hatchback turned left on Brown Street and climbed the hill. It was Thursday night, which meant Lenrock was quiet and subdued; as a top twenty school in the country, it was known for its academic rigor during the week and big-time partying Friday night through the weekend.

  I followed the hatchback as it crossed University Avenue, passing by the beautiful old gothic arts and sciences buildings on the left and the ugly blocky engineering buildings on the right. A few more turns later, I saw the sign for the fraternity, Tau Beta Alpha. Tau Butt Alpha, technically, as the middle letter of the wooden sign was replaced with a photo of a man’s hairy, naked butt placed sideways. I guess the Womyn of Llewellyn weren’t the only ones pulling pranks. As we made our way up the driveway, I was basically tailgating him.

  For a fraternity, TBA was surprisingly not a train wreck. Just a few crushed beer cans in the parking lot, and the house actually looked fairly intact. In my day, I’d been to a fair share of frat parties to know what kind of hellholes they could be.

  The tall guy and I got out of our cars at the same time. He rubbed his arm, the one Brent had commandeered. He trudged toward the front door.

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  He turned. “Yeah?”

  There was a time when you could tell people you were lost, but in the days of GPS and Google Maps, that lie didn’t fly. Besides, I could see this kid was in no mood.

  “I saw what happened at Llewellyn. At the gym.”

  It took him a few seconds to put things together.

  “You followed me? All the way from Selene?”

  “It’s not that long of a drive, but yes.”

  “What are you, like stalking me or something?”

  “No, nothing like that. I just have some questions.”

  With his wide shoulders sagging, he looked like he was about to tell me to fuck off, but then he stopped. And thought.

  “You know what? You’re better than nothing.”

  “Okay…” I said. “I’ve been called worse. You’ll answer a few questions?”

  He looked at his phone. “Yeah, whatever. I’m already so late. Jesus, they’re all gonna hate me. Just play along.”

  41

  If there was one word to describe Tau Beta Alpha, I’d choose “crestfallen.” Maybe because that was the first thing I saw when I walked through the foyer, the red and gold crest of the fraternity, the wooden engraving nailed on a ceiling beam that ran from one end of the wall to another. And fallen because of the faces of the boys I saw, faces that had momentarily contained hope but which instantly turned to disappointment upon my entrance.

  There were five guys standing around an antique octagonal table. They were dressed up, a sweater or sweater-vest over a starched shirt and a nicely ironed pair of slacks. The guy in the middle was wearing a blazer which gave him an air of authority.

  “God damn it, Beaker, not only are you an hour late, but what the hell is…this?”

  I was glad to be able to attach a name to the tall guy, even if it was a nickname.

  “You said to bring girls from Llewellyn,” Beaker said. “I brought one.”

  Blazer guy looked at Beaker, then looked at me, then looked at Beaker again.

  “This is not…” he said. Then he turned to me. “No offense or anything, but…”

  “Siobhan O’Brien,” I said, extending my hand. “No apology necessary, I know I’m past the expiration date. Am I correct in assuming you are the president of this fraternity?”

  “Drew Callahan,” he said as he shook my hand. “How did you figure that?”

  “You just look like someone in charge, Drew.”

  A little compliment goes a long way, and he beamed like the little big boy that he was. Now that Drew was off his guard, I felt the best way to get him to trust me was to tell him the truth, that I followed Beaker here. When I got to the altercation on the basketball court, he got angry all over again.

  “Why the hell did you do that, Beaks?” he said.

  “Because he’s our brother, Drew,” Beaker said. “Or have you already written him off?”

  Before they could continue to argue, someone knocked on the door.

  “Shut up,” one of the other well-dressed guys said. “We got one. Finally.”

  “We’ll pick this up later,” Drew said to Beaker, and then the five brothers were all hellos and smiles as they greeted the kid at the door. Beaker gestured for me to fol
low, so I did, past the large dining room with cafeteria-style tables and through the swinging door that led to the kitchen, which had a line of gigantic pots and pans hanging off a 2x4 suspended on chains from the ceiling. Whoever did the cooking around here probably needed to bench 300. Next to a gas range with eight burners was a griddle that would make any cook proud.

  Beaker dipped his entire body into one of three industrial refrigerators and came out with a plastic-wrapped dish. He popped it into the microwave and grabbed two empty glasses from the shelf. He drew water from the faucet and offered me one.

  “This is our fall rush,” he said. “I think that might be the first guy to walk through the door tonight.”

  “Don’t Lenrock fraternities and sororities hold rushes in the spring?”

  The microwave dinged and he took out his rapidly vacuum-sealing meal.

  “If you are in a fraternity that isn’t teetering on its last legs and has to beg people to join, then yeah, you don’t have to do what we’re doing now. Unfortunately, that isn’t us.”

  Beaker took his fork and poked a hole in the plastic wrap in the middle of what looked like mashed potatoes, and the steam escaped through the opening. It smelled yummy, the plate heaped with slices of turkey and gravy.

  “When I first walked in, Drew seemed angry that I was the only female you’d brought from Llewellyn.”

  “Drew gets angry about a lot of things.”

  Beaker led us back to the dining room, where he pulled up a chair for me and actually waited until I sat down before he took a seat himself. And people say chivalry is dead.

  He might have been well-mannered in gender etiquette, but apparently he’d missed the lessons in table manners, as he ate like a woodchuck ripping through wood. Bits of food flew within a one-foot radius of his dish as he ate and talked. I slid my chair back a bit, in case he got a little carried away.

  “I was supposed to return with a carload of girls.” Spit, spit, spit. “Usually they take the van that runs between Lewie and Lenrock.” Spew, spew, spew. “But because of the Odd-Even basketball game, it wasn’t running tonight.”

  Beaker shoved his empty dish away and sat back and quietly belched. Maybe it was the low lighting in the dining room, but the bags under his eyes made him look older than me.

  “So instead of chauffeuring a few girls back here to brighten up your event, you got thrown out by Grace Park’s bodyguards.”

  Beaker closed his eyes and sank into his chair. “She owes me an explanation. I don’t care who you are or how much money you have. Christopher ran away because of her, and the least she can do is tell me why.”

  “Who’s Christopher?”

  “He and I were going to room together this year. We rushed Tau Beta Alpha together as freshmen last year. He’s my best friend, and now he won’t talk to me. He won’t talk to anyone. We’re supposed to be a fucking brotherhood, and nobody else gives a shit that he’s gone.”

  “And Christopher is gone because of something Grace did or said?”

  “Christopher is a super sensitive guy, and that bitch did something to him, or to Penny, or…”

  “Penny? Penny Sykes?”

  “You know her?”

  “I’ve been hired by her mother to find her. That’s what I’ve been doing for the last week.”

  Beaker looked at me like I was the dunce of the class.

  “I thought you said you were a detective.”

  “That I am, though I bet from what you’re about to tell me, maybe not a very good one.”

  “Penny’s at Krishna, same as Christopher.”

  He saw the blank look on my face.

  “You have no idea what Krishna is either, do you.”

  Beaker took out his cell and thumbed his way to whatever he wanted to show me.

  “Here you go,” he said, and handed me his phone.

  42

  The smallness of the screen did not diminish the natural beauty of the place. Serving as the background of the website was a dramatic photograph of a lake surrounded by green mountains. The panorama scrolled ever so slowly, like a camera panning, and then the season slowly dissolved from summer to fall, which is probably what it must look like now, red and orange and mustard yellow dominating the landscape. In a quiet sans serif font in the center of the page, the word “Namaste” faded in and out like a heartbeat.

  “I could look at this all day,” I said.

  “It is kind of addicting. There’s sound, too—you can choose a chant, rainstorm, a babbling brook, they add new ones all the time.”

  The Krishna Center for Yoga and Wellness was in Hawthorne, in the heart of the Adirondacks, overlooking Saranac Lake. Tapping the “About Us” link showed me a gray-bricked building that was embedded on the face of a mountain. It wasn’t a tall structure, perhaps three stories high, but it ran wide and flat, rather like my old elementary school. Splotches of ivy beautified the exterior, but its plainness stood in juxtaposition to the imposing terrain that surrounded it.

  “So is this like a retreat where people go to get away from their busy lives?” I asked.

  “That’s what it looks like. I’ve never been there.”

  I clicked on the “Your Stay” link, then scrolled down to the daily rates.

  “Place ain’t cheap.”

  “There’s some volunteer program, or something like that. That’s how Christopher usually goes there. I don’t know about Penny.”

  “I don’t get why you’re worried when it looks like he’s gone to heaven on earth.”

  “He didn’t just go there—he basically ran away in the middle of the night.”

  “When?”

  “Like a week ago.”

  A little after Penny disappeared, so the timing made sense.

  “You said you and Christopher were going to room together. Is his stuff still in your room?”

  “Well, yeah, he just up and left.”

  “You mind letting me see it?”

  After a slight pause of deliberation—I guess he was wondering if it was worth his time to continue to deal with my perceived (and possibly correct) ineptitude—he shrugged. Ah, the shrug, the ever-dependable go-to gesture for the young. I was grateful for its indifferent existence.

  After Beaker bussed his dishes, he led me back to the foyer and the base of the impressive red-carpeted staircase. The kid who’d entered after me, who I figured was like a prospect, was being told about the history of the crest. Drew, in full tour guide mode, stole me away from Beaker.

  “And here’s one of our sisters from Llewellyn I was telling you about. Siobhan? Meet Samir.”

  “Hi there,” I said.

  “Umm…hi. Are you…like what grade are you in?”

  To Samir, who looked scrawny enough to still be in junior high, I probably looked like a teacher.

  “I’m a grad student,” I said. “Getting my doctorate in linguistics.”

  “Oh, okay,” he said, visibly relieved.

  “It’s very nice of the guys here to let me still party hardy with them. We go back. Way, way back.”

  Drew cleared his throat and turned his attention back to Samir. “Thanks, Siobhan. Be sure to come by Saturday night for our little thing.”

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” I said.

  Samir and Drew moved onto what looked to be a meeting room, with built-in bookcases and leather chairs. Beaker led me up the main stairs, which were wide enough for a double-dating couple to walk up side by side. The house was actually quite beautiful, probably dating back to the early century, with an understated black chandelier above the foyer, decorative wooden panels along the walls, a little built-in bench on the middle landing that overlooked the first floor. A few of the oak banisters were missing, but by and large, the house was in livable shape.

  “Very smooth there with Drew,” Beaker said.

  “If this detective thing doesn’t work out, maybe I can try improv.”

  “
I’m sorry if I was being harsh. I just thought you’d know about Penny and Krishna, because, you know...”

  “I’m the detective.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I might have gotten a little sidetracked with all that’s going on with Llewellyn.”

  “Understandable. It’s the main reason why we haven’t had as many girls come this semester, because they’re all legit mad about the integration.”

  “You can understand why, though, right?”

  At the top of the landing, we cut a left and then a right. Along the way, I saw two guys playing video games, another two playing chess, and one in bed, napping. College, I miss you.

  “I guess. I don’t want to sound like some chauvinist or anything, but a women-only college is not an accurate representative of the world out there. I never quite understood why it was seen as something that would prepare a woman for her future if they excluded the other half of the human race.”

  “It’s why I never wanted to attend one, but you can see that some women have difficulty finding themselves when there are men around. You guys are just louder—more aggressive—by nature.”

  “I guess. I don’t know. It depends. The guys in our house aren’t like that.”

  “Which is probably why you’ve had a sustained relationship with Lewie girls.”

  Beaker stopped.

  “This yours?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I never realized just why we meshed so well with Llewellyn until you just explained it.”

  “So maybe I should be a shrink when I grow up,” I said.

  Beaker laughed. “Maybe. So here it is, our little man-cave.”

  Behind the door, a member of the Swedish bikini team greeted me.