Rush

by Sara Bennett Wealer

  Maddy scowled. Easy for Imogen to say. Even after skipping an entire afternoon’s worth of parties, she still hadn’t been cut from a single house. Didn’t she know that nobody wanted to hear how much she “hated” rush? Especially not people who would kill to be in her position?

  Maddy fished a packet of tissues out of her purse and handed it to Rachel. “What are you going to do?”

  “I feel like I should drop out,” Rachel sniffled. “Pretty much none of the houses I liked want me back. Maybe there’s something wrong with me.”

  And that? That terrified Maddy, because there was nothing wrong with Rachel at all. Maddy’s stomach churned as she thought about the four houses that had already cut her. What if more cut her tomorrow? What if the same thing that had happened to Rachel happened to her? How could she show her face back in Chesterfield? What would she tell Logan?

  And how could she make it through the whole rest of the year with Imogen for a roommate if Imogen somehow got into Sigma and she didn’t?

  A tear slid down Rachel’s cheek. She lay down, curling into a ball with her head on Imogen’s lap. Maddy sat at the foot of the bed and held her hand, trying to think of something that could help her friend look on the bright side—whatever bright side there might be.

  They were going to be up a really long time.

  Day 3

  Morning

  TWENTY-TWO

  “Can I have your attention please?” Delia said.

  Cass tugged at the spaghetti straps of her evening gown as she took her place in formation with the other sisters. They all looked up at Delia, who stood on the second step of the grand staircase wearing an old-time movie director’s costume, complete with jodhpurs and a megaphone. “This is crunch time,” Delia was saying. “Each of the girls we’ll see today is someone to impress. We’ve been narrowing down the list of rushees, but now we could get narrowed as well. Yes, we are Sigma Theta Kappa, but we should never take that for granted. We need to make the best possible impression.”

  Cass took a breath, only to feel it blocked by the boning in her dress. Her boobs were spilling over the neckline with straps cutting right up the center of each one so that they looked like they were being sliced in half. Earlier that morning, Ruby had tried to improve Cass’s appearance by raking her curls back in a French twist so tight it tugged at the corners of her eyes. She’d caught a glimpse of herself in the foyer mirror as she came downstairs and saw a big, pale cone head staring back.

  That’s when the latest photo came in. They’d been coming all night as people from Leo’s party posted pic after pic of themselves and each other. Cass’s phone would light up with a notification and she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from looking. There were photos of her choir friends posing by the music school fountain, photos of Leo and the other guys laughing over margaritas at dinner, selfie after selfie of girls pouting into the camera, and photos of people doing increasingly ridiculous things, to the point where Cass had finally had to shut off her phone. Because, in her own sober state, she just didn’t find it funny anymore. Because it was 3:00 a.m. and she needed to get to bed. And because, to be honest, she was jealous as hell.

  When she turned the phone back on a few hours later, she found the expected backlog of stuff posted while she’d slept. Leo featured prominently in many of them, and many of them included girls. There was Leo sticking his tongue in their friend Lakshmi’s ear, Leo in a crush of thigh-baring musical theater majors, Leo watching googly-eyed while Xander Sullivan did a shot from Jenn Sheets’s impressive cleavage. Any other girl in love with her best friend might have been bothered by this, but Cass actually viewed these photos with a smattering of relief. Leo had seemed so different since coming back from Interlochen, and these were at least a return to the norm. Leo had always thrived on attention, and people—especially girls—were more than happy to give it to him.

  This newest photo, however, made her suck in her breath. Compared with the others, it was tame. It showed Leo either asleep or passed out on a couch in the back room of the bar. Slumped next to him with her head on his shoulder was a girl Cass had never seen before. She had almost jet-black hair and a pretty face that looked peaceful in sleep. Her shoulder was tucked up under his, cozily, like they’d been snuggled that way for a while, and his head tilted toward hers so that his cheek rested near her temple. Something about the photo was so intimate that Cass had a hard time looking away. Checking the tags, she found just one person she didn’t recognize—an mlancaster. She clicked through to the profile and saw that it was indeed the girl in the photo. Her name was Mia and it looked like she might be new. There weren’t many other photos of her from the night before, but one of them showed her and Leo deep in conversation at the bar. Together with the pic of them sleeping, it painted a picture of something more than just a fun time between friends.

  Cass wished she hadn’t left things on such a tense note. And of course she wished she’d been able to go out instead of being trapped in the middle of voting. But even if she’d been at the party, she had to admit it was unlikely she could have prevented Leo from hooking up with someone else. She knew she’d have to face facts sooner or later: Leo didn’t feel for her the same way she felt for him, especially with this new person in the picture—a ballerina of a girl compared with Cass, who currently looked like an overdressed Bride of Frankenstein. As if to rub it in, her sorority sisters were all sleek and svelte in their rush party gowns. All, that is, except for Delia. Cass was surprised to see that she didn’t seem as together as usual; her eyes had shadows under them and her hair stood up a little funny, as if she’d slept wrong on one side.

  Delia finished her speech and Cass waited, along with everybody else, for her to do her usual front door countdown. But Delia looked distracted. Instead of counting, she signaled for the sound system to start, then walked to the door and just threw it open.

  After a moment of confusion, the sisters snapped to attention as “Hooray for Hollywood” came blaring over the speakers. It was way too loud—so bad that Cass could barely hear Delia call out the rushees’ names. In addition to fifty sisters, the foyer also held life-size cutouts of Marilyn Monroe, Carey Grant, and other old-time film stars, making the space even more cramped than usual. Cass couldn’t tell if she was getting tapped or just jostled as everybody tried to hold on to their places.

  And then there were the flashbulbs from the girls playing paparazzi. Pop! Pop! Pop-pop-pop! Cass decided that if she couldn’t hear Delia, then she would try to recognize the rushees by sight and make sure the right girls got the right hostesses that way. But it was difficult to do that with lights spinning in her eyes.

  “Hello, Imogen Ash. Welcome back to Sigma Theta Kappa!”

  Cass saw a familiar head of wavy brown hair and stood up straighter, waiting for a hostess tap. Nothing. Or . . . wait a minute. Was that a tap? She’d definitely felt something on her butt, but it was so light that it could have been just one of the other sisters shifting behind her.

  Imogen had already stepped past Delia into the foyer. She stood there alone, smiling expectantly. Cass looked to her side and saw her pledge sister Megan Fitch standing there. Megan would never have been chosen to hostess a girl like Imogen, but nobody else had appeared. Time was ticking away, and Cass began to feel a righteous rage growing inside of her. Who said Megan wasn’t good enough to be a hostess? Besides, Imogen would never know the difference. Cass tapped Megan, and Megan stepped out just as Danica Moran burst through the formation. She and Megan stood side by side, both looking confused, while Imogen, oblivious, continued to smile. Delia’s face went white. Panicked, Cass reached out to drag Megan back. But then Delia grabbed the next rushee in line and swept her through, practically shoving the new girl at Megan while Danica extended her hand to Imogen and led her on into the sitting room.

  When all of the rushees had filed in and the rest of the floaters had joined the party, Delia turned on Cass.

  “What just happened?” she demanded.
>
  “Danica never tapped me.”

  “I saw Danica, and she was just seconds away from arriving at your side when you decided to let Megan out instead. We carefully select hostesses for rushees like Imogen Ash. How dare you take it upon yourself to override those decisions?”

  Cass felt anger and indignity boil over—at the ridiculous stress and the unfair way Megan Fitch had just been treated, at the fact that Delia hadn’t stood up for her when Sophia had been so insulting the night before, not to mention the humiliatingly tight dress that made her boobs look like trussed up chickens. She took a heaving breath and felt a seam rip in her gown. “In case you didn’t notice, I am trying to do my job,” she said. “One, I couldn’t hear you over all that hellacious background noise and two, Danica did not tap me. If I can’t hear you, I don’t know how you expect the hostesses to, either. Your precious Imogen Ash almost didn’t have a hostess at all, let alone one with the special Sigma seal of approval.”

  “Can you handle this job or can’t you?” Delia asked.

  Cass’s jaw nearly hit her shoes. She might not particularly enjoy being the music leader but she’d done a good job, probably better than Leith McClendon would have done. She’d endured all of the meetings, turned down invitations from Leo, and dodged the stingers of Courtney and the other Killer Bees. She’d seen her pledge sisters treated like crap and worried about losing Ruby, the one person who kept her sane. For the vast majority of her time at Sigma, she’d felt like she was under a microscope, being poked and prodded and constantly found wanting. She’d had enough.

  “Yes, I can handle it,” she answered as surprise tears sprang into her eyes. She swiped them away. “Can you?”

  Now it was Delia’s turn to look shocked. She opened her mouth and Cass waited for the comeback. But then Delia clamped her lips shut again and straightened her velvet blazer. “I just need to know that you understand how vital your job is to our success.”

  “I get it,” said Cass. “Believe me, I do.”

  “Good.” Delia started to walk away, then turned back, her expression softening. “Your mascara is running. Why don’t you take a minute to get yourself together? Come back to the party when you’ve touched up, okay?”

  There was something genuinely kind in Delia’s suggestion—like she didn’t want Cass to be embarrassed by having other people know she’d been crying. Cass had stashed her toiletries in the dining room like everybody else. She took the back way and, once there, leaned against a table to let out a few more tears. As much as she wanted to blame her emotions on lack of sleep and the fact that she’d just seen Leo with some beautiful new mystery girl, she couldn’t ignore the fact that Delia’s comment about her ability to do her job had really stung. All Cass had wanted was to get through recruitment so she could get on with her life, and now here she was getting caught up in the plights of rushees, worrying what the house president thought, and weeping in the wings as if this stupid sideshow of a week really mattered in the grand scheme of things.

  Why, all of a sudden, did she care so much?

  She redid her eyes and touched up her foundation. She’d just finished swiping on some lip gloss when she heard laughter coming from inside the kitchen. The only person supposed to be in there was the caterer—a severe-looking woman in a hairnet who had probably never laughed in her life. Curious, Cass crept up and put her ear to the door.

  “I swear,” said a voice belonging to Aimee Wu. “That girl is so thirsty I almost feel bad for her.”

  “Could you believe her yesterday during house tour?” This was Courtney. “I’m interested in leadership wherever I go. I could barely keep a straight face.”

  Aimee’s voice grew high and whiney. “I’m Madeleine Christopher from BFE Chesterfield. Take meeeee! Seriously, what is she still doing here?”

  The voices got suddenly louder. Cass jumped away from the door just as Courtney and Aimee walked through it. Aimee had a bottle of sparkling grape juice in each hand, while Courtney carried a tray of petit fours.

  “Cassandra!” Aimee’s voice sounded friendly but her eyes betrayed suspicion. “Shouldn’t you be out at the party?”

  “Shouldn’t you?” Cass shot back. “Aren’t you supposed to be hostessing?”

  A half smile crept up Courtney’s lips. “We’re taking a break for this party. Hostessing is a huge responsibility.”

  “You should know all about that with your song-leader duties,” said Aimee. “Great job out there with Imogen and Danica by the way.”

  Before Cass could respond, Courtney stepped in closer.

  “I bet you’re happy your new BFF Madeleine Christopher is coming back today. Do you have a crush on her or something? Is that why you want her here so badly?”

  Cass moved backward, trying to keep from getting pushed against one of the tables. “Look, I get that you don’t like me,” she said. “But leave the rushees out of it.”

  “You don’t have anything to do with it,” Courtney replied. “Anyone who’s objective can tell Madeleine Christopher wouldn’t last a week at Sigma. Everybody knows it’s just a matter of time before she gets cut.”

  “But why?” said Cass. “Why are you working so hard to keep one girl out?”

  “Because it’s more than just one girl.” Courtney shook her head, as if Cass were hopeless. “I know, because I’ve seen that it only takes one weak link to bring an entire organization down.”

  “We care about this house,” Aimee added. “And we want to make sure the sisterhood is strong going forward.”

  “It’s strong already,” Cass protested.

  “Oh really? Is that why we came in second in the Greek Games last year? Two years ago we were the top chapter in the nation for grades, and now we’re somewhere around third or fourth. I really don’t think that’s a coincidence, do you?”

  Courtney put on a practical, not-unkind face as she looked Cass in the eye.

  “Let me put this in terms you’re familiar with. You’re not going to let someone who can’t carry a tune into your opera, right? When you go to a Broadway show, you’re not paying two hundred dollars a ticket to see a cast full of understudies. Music is important to you, and this is important to me. I work my ass off every day to be my best and surround myself with people who are committed to excellence, too. I’m not going to have my efforts undermined by people who aren’t up to that level of intensity. Not if I can help it.”

  “But if it means so much to you,” said Cass, “why did you sabotage Rachel Morgan? She was a must-have. I’m pretty sure she would have been committed to excellence.”

  The mention of Rachel’s name caused something to pass across Courtney’s face—something that looked like real pain.

  “Rachel Morgan is committed to Rachel Morgan,” Courtney said. “The assumptions she made about me in Leaders Intensive—the stories she spread—contributed to one of the single most humiliating experiences of my life. So I know what I’m talking about when I say she doesn’t deserve to be here. You might think I’m ruthless, but I do have feelings, too.”

  “Okay, said Cass. “Fine. Rachel Morgan needed to go. But it doesn’t change the fact that Madeleine Christopher deserves a fair chance.”

  The mention of Maddy Christopher erased the emotion from Courtney’s face. She gave a small shrug.

  “Think of it as doing her a favor,” she said. “If Madeleine Christopher did slide by through some miracle of fate, she would only be miserable here at Sigma. You of all people should know that, Cass. Wouldn’t it be kinder to just put her out of her misery now?”

  TWENTY-THREE

  White lights popped in Maddy’s face as she made her way up the red carpet. The toe of her shoe caught the heel of the rushee in front of her and she stumbled. Before she could regain her balance, a sister with a camera jumped in front of her and snapped a photo.

  “You’re a star, baby!” the girl shouted.

  Up ahead, sisters in evening gowns were ushering rushees into the Sigma house. Maddy felt her
smile drooping and pasted it back on, bigger than ever. Two days ago the theme parties had been exciting, but now they were starting to get overwhelming. Especially with all the extra stress she’d been under. She and Imogen had spent most of the night with Rachel, trying to figure out why she’d gotten cut from so many houses at once. And then, once Rachel left, Maddy had lain awake thinking about Logan.

  Pop! Another flash. Up ahead, Imogen struck a pose for the cameras, totally getting into the red carpet act. She and Maddy were back to coordinated schedules, which meant that Maddy’d spent the whole day watching her roommate prance around like she didn’t have a worry in the world. A part of her wondered how Imogen could be so free and easy but she knew it was a stupid question; she’d be free and easy, too, if she’d made it this far without being cut from a single house.

  “Suck it up,” Maddy whispered. She couldn’t afford to sabotage herself with negative thinking. Sigma was where she belonged, but she would have to prove it. And to do that, she needed to be happy and engaging and sophisticated.

  Inside, the sisters were all dressed like starlets at an awards show. Violet, the girl she’d met on the first day of recruitment, approached in a beaded dress.

  “Maddy!” she said. “I’m so glad to see you again!”

  “Thanks.” Maddy let herself relax a little; seeing a friendly face definitely helped. But when Violet took Maddy into the sitting room, all Maddy could focus on was her roommate a few feet away. Four sisters stood around her at once, all of them acting like it was a huge honor just to share the same space as Imogen.

  The lights dimmed. A space cleared at the head of the room and a movie screen came down from the ceiling. A montage of old film clips started to play. Each one was about sisterhood or friendship or stars, and they were all edited to somehow pertain to Sigma Theta Kappa. The video ended with Jiminy Cricket singing “When You Wish Upon a Star,” and Maddy heard a few rushees around her sniffle. Then, as the lights came up, all of the sisters whipped out sunglasses and sang an old Beatles song about driving cars and being stars that ended with a big shouted, ’Cause baby we love you!