Lookaway, Lookaway

by Barnhardt, Wilton

  “I know what you want to drink, Kippie—my steamin’ cream!”

  Frank: “Joey, shut up and listen, willya?”

  A student at Indiana University, after drinking heavily during Hell Week, fell and fractured his skull and no one got him help for days. Kip reported that two days after being admitted to a hospital he passed into an irreversible coma and was taken off life support.

  “Awww, Kip, Kip, look how sad you are: one less rod for you to suck!”

  There have been alcohol-poisoning pledge-related hospitalizations in the last few years at the University of Illinois, Ohio State, the University of Nebraska. In between Kip’s narrative, faded high school–era photos of the lost boys dissolved on and off the screen. Pledgemaster Joey D looked to the ceiling while the others on the pledge committee looked at Joey D; as each tragic occurrence was related, they checked to see if any of it registered. At Kip’s own Kappa Sigma at USC, a pledge choking to death on the raw meat he was forced to eat. A frat at Stetson University shocking pledges with electrical devices. An Ohio State frat feeding their pledges nothing but salty snacks for days, locking them in a dark closet with nothing but plastic cups so they could collect their own urine if they were thirsty …

  “That’s freakin’ brilliant,” Joey D marveled.

  “We’re not doing anything remotely scatological this year,” Frank announced. And since Joey D looked puzzled by the word, Frank clarified: “Nothing to do with piss or shit.”

  Grayson: “Or naked guys, or guys in wet underwear. That’s just gay.”

  Skip: “No vomiting. We just have to clean it up.”

  Joey D stood up. He’d seen enough of the “anti-frat propaganda.” He crushed the beer can, belched loudly and flung the can behind the TV set.

  Later he pulled his fellow pledge committee members aside, Skip and Justin. There was a way to bring Shelly back from the dead.

  * * *

  Lightning struck. The planets must have moved into single file. Surely all the zodiacal signs scurried into their right moons—or however that stuff worked. After Pref Night, Jerilyn had two matches: Theta Kappa Theta and, stupefyingly, Sigma Kappa Nu!

  “Oh my God,” screamed Becca as the slow opening of the bid envelope took place in the dorm room, Jerilyn scarcely able to complete the physical act with her shaking hands. “I mean, that’s the wild one, right? Drugs, booze, and boys!”

  “Well, my mom was in Theta…” But this little pretense of weighing her options was too exhausting to finish. Of course she would move heaven and earth to make herself agreeable to Sigma Kappa Nu. Phone calls to Bethany and Mallory revealed they were making their peace with their second and third choices, having to separate, not getting interest from the same house. They screamed in delight for her when she told them: “My God, Jerilyn Johnston is a Skank!” (Well, that’s what even they called themselves at ΣKN, tongue in cheek.)

  She knew the night would be a glorious celebration, and so, dead tired, dragged out from a week of death-by-shmoozing, she lay down for an afternoon nap. She skipped ENG 101 yet again. But what a coup! She had only wanted to see inside Sigma Kappa Nu when she crossed the street from Theta. She was thinking of it like a Farewell Tour: here, Jerilyn, is where the future rich and powerful frolic, here is the place you’ll never be … She stood before the ΣKN chapter house, three stories with a grand columned porch, azaleas and two giant magnolias, all menaced by a muddy construction project, the dug-up yard, and a terrible sewage smell.

  “Don’t run away!” It was Layla Throckmorton from Mecklenburg Country Day. Despite a long painful acquaintance, Jerilyn was still a little surprised super-popular Layla remembered her. “Hoo, I know it smells like manure every-damn-where. This work was supposed to be finished the first of August.” Layla was threading a careful path on flagstones through red-clay mud to reach her. “I’m on the New Members Committee,” she said, breathless. “Long story short—we all are this close to probation if we don’t get our GPA up. And then I was looking out the front door and I saw you and I went, hold everything, maybe we can get our hands on Jerilyn Johnston, brainiac!”

  Jerilyn had thought it was wrong, back in high school. Layla, a confident senior to her terrified junior, expected Jerilyn to just hand it over, their homework, last night’s chemistry or social studies take-home. Jerilyn had castigated herself for how weak she was to let her cheat, someone who had it all, really, who was smart enough to study but didn’t, just rode around in rich boys’ sports cars and always dressed in casual designer-labeled clothes, oh and she always smelled so nice.

  “Aw, I’m not that smart,” Jerilyn said, “I just work twice as hard as the smart ones. At least in a house like Sigma Kappa Nu, you know at the end of all that work there is some serious playtime.”

  Layla gave Jerilyn a hand up to the porch, then looked at her intently. “I see our reputation precedes us. And Jeri, I just love the short hair!”

  Jerilyn was led past the columned portico and inside toward the thumping bass of a hip-hop song. It was lovely inside … a little battered, but rich wood paneling in the front downstairs rooms, solid dark wood furniture upholstered in strong earthen colors, pastel hallways to living quarters and the kitchen … and then a step through a brief sheltered walkway between buildings to the dining hall, where the girls were gathered.

  Jerilyn had floated light-headed through the whole process. She relived it all, every conversation, every successful attempt at wit … how had she done it? Adrenaline, poise, a lifetime of practice for just such an occasion: she had charmed and smiled, performed her light girlish laugh which had been declared attractive, and she cleverly managed to strew hints of her old-family connections. Jerilyn Jarvis Johnston, yes, a Johnston of Charlotte, some tenth cousin once removed of Joseph E. Johnston, the Civil War hero.

  “Well,” Jerilyn sang, “he surrendered North Carolina and the whole of the South to Mr. Sherman, officially sealing the Southern defeat, so less said about that the better!”

  (Cue her infectious laugh.) Yes, daughter of Duke Johnston, the city councilman in Charlotte, Republican, for about six years, back in the 1980s. There was a baby photo of her being held aloft by her father at a victory rally; there were red campaign buttons and an autographed picture of Daddy standing beside President Reagan. And then there was her Uncle Gaston, Gaston Jarvis! He was even more famous, the bestselling author of March Into a Southern Dawn, all those Civil War romance and battle series that everyone reads. “Though,” she added, “I’ve never finished one of them yet!” occasioning good-natured laughter.

  “I’ve read all of them!” cried a gorgeous blonde named Tiffany. “You tell your uncle I should play Cordelia in the movie versions! I sometimes put the books down and give her speeches to my mirror—I am so obsessed!”

  Squeals, some hugs, more laughter.

  Jerilyn: “I’m hoping, since he’s a gazillionaire, he’ll kick in big for my debut next year.” Oh she’d done it. She’d dropped every clue of class and privilege and money, and made it seem like they pulled it out of her. It was, without compare, the greatest sustained social performance of her whole life. Of course, Layla would expect Jerilyn to do everyone’s homework and get Layla’s sorry lazy butt across the graduation line. Layla was a user, but Jerilyn was rolling up her sleeves and getting ready to use Sigma Kappa Nu as well.

  She would turn the page on decorum-blighted Jerilyn Johnston. She knew that the PG-13 summer-movie sorority stereotype of the wild, hot girls, barely contained in clothes for all the suds and water that came their way, and the male-model-hot fraternity stud, beer in one hand, cell phone in the other, hooking up with the girls like a harem—she knew all that was a cartoon image of sorority life, but it was precisely the movie stereotype she was curious about; she now wanted to immerse herself in this too shallow pool. And if a frat brother was a cad, two-timing her with another sister, if there was face-slapping and tears and throwing herself into his frat brother roommate’s arms … wasn’t that all Life? Excit
ement, drama, action? For once, someone should say, That Jerilyn Johnston! Back at Carolina, she was a wild one! And everyone knows these frat boys eventually knuckle under, pass the bar, say yes to being in their dad’s law firm, partner in eight years. God, it was all going according to plan!

  Her chance to be Wild Jerilyn Johnston came up fast:

  “Here’s the thing, okay?” Layla had pulled Jerilyn aside after the pinning ceremony. “How life was back at MCD was one thing. How we live our adult lives here is another. I mean, you’re gonna find out anyway about the cocaine, so I wanted to feel you out on the topic.”

  Jerilyn looked especially blank.

  “Oh come upstairs, I’ll show you.”

  Layla led Jerilyn to her room where two older girls awaited, Brittanie and Taylorr.

  “Girls,” said Layla, “this is my old friend from our private school I was telling you about, Jerilyn Johnston.”

  Jerilyn smiled and looked at what the girls were looking at, a table with a baggie of white powder, and a few lines of coke arranged on the polished cherry tabletop.

  “You cannot keep the weight off without this, Jerilyn,” Brittanie said with authority.

  Taylorr: “Nope, won’t happen.”

  Brittanie: “Look, it’s not addictive, but it will spike that metabolism and let you have that extra ice-cream cone. The day I leave Sigma, I’ll never touch it again.”

  “Me neither. Because by that time, I’ll be engaged to future-governor-of-the-state Kevin Flaherty—or that’s the big goddam master plan!” Taylorr added, shrieking with laughter.

  Jerilyn cleared her throat. “I’m not sure if I…”

  Layla put her arm around her. “Now Jeri, you don’t have to do it, a lot of the girls don’t—”

  Taylorr coughed a disbelieving laugh.

  “Tay-lerrrr,” said Layla, exhaling a huff, shaking her head. “Okay, everyone does it, just not every night. Doesn’t matter one way or the other, but you cannot talk about it. Your mom knows my mom. It just cannot get out into the Charlotte gossip universe. And you know Skip Baylor, right?”

  “We went to the prom together.”

  “Oh that’s right. Well, he’s our source—he and that Benjy guy at Zeta Pi, with the white-boy dreadlocks.” She rolled her eyes.

  “Well, I’m not a gossip or a tattletale, Layla. You know that.”

  “I didn’t say you were! But you see how you have to be so friggin’ discreet.”

  Taylorr was snorting her line, followed by Brittanie.

  Layla smiled down at Jerilyn. “You’ve done it before, haven’t you?”

  “Uh, well…” She’d smoked pot once, to no effect, no pills or coke or meth or anything else. Jerilyn had only been drunk a few times in her life, one of those times thanks to Skip Baylor at the prom. She once took a second codeine pill too close to the first pill, after her wisdom teeth were pulled—that was really something. “I’m more a booze and pills kinda girl,” she announced.

  The girls laughed. “Don’t worry,” said Brittanie, “we got plenty of that, too!”

  “If I thought,” Layla said, almost whispering, “that you weren’t cool with this, and that you might tell someone, some family member, and it would work its way back to my mom, well … well, I couldn’t see offering you a place here at Sigma, much as we’re dear friends.”

  “Layla! Please, I would never tell my mom anything and I assume, no matter what I get up to, you would never, you would never tell my—”

  “Hell no, of course not,” she said. Jerilyn’s readable terror of being thought untrustworthy prompted Layla to add, “Oh calm down. Skip said we had to take you, and though we never take orders from Zeta Pi…”

  “If Skip and Benjy are happy,” Taylorr chanted, “then we’re happy!”

  Layla was now kneeling before the table to take her line. She vacuumed the whole of it up her nose, pressed a nostril with a finger and waited a moment, a smile spreading on her face. “Aw that’s good stuff,” she murmured. Then she looked up at Jerilyn. The fourth line was cut for her.

  Jerilyn bent down to the table. If she was too goody-two-shoes to do it, then there were three blackballs right here in this room, Skip or no Skip. She sniffed too vigorously and it all went up her nostril in a clump. Then she was aware she was giggling too much as she stood, then sat, then sprawled on Layla’s settee. “It is good stuff,” she said to be agreeable.

  And it was good stuff. Her heart raced a bit as she sat back on the bed but within moments she was giddy, uncontainable, a little breathless. She was going to be Sigma Kappa Nu, people! She belonged to the coolest party sorority on campus! And secondly, the issue of boys and figuring out ways to meet them, talk to them, attract them—that seemed about ninety percent solved. Tonight, a new life would begin on that front. Mom could just put those expectations of Jerilyn the Career Girl on the shelf with Annie being a society matron and Joshua marrying and having children and Bo being a lawyer and politician like Daddy. Her siblings broke free to do their own thing—why should she alone march to the family orders?

  “You feeling all right, Jeri?” Layla checked on her.

  “Why yes!” she said too eagerly, to everyone’s amusement.

  “Mellow out and enjoy,” Taylorr advised, inhaling another line. These girls would show her how to live, Jerilyn decided. And do it in a size four, and at 110 pounds … Suddenly she had the inspiration that it was at last time to call her mother with this new assertiveness—this woman who stood in the way of so many pleasures and normal college experiences that awaited her. She had to deal with Mom sometime anyway. She popped off the bed and walked down the stairs to the little garden in back of Skankhouse.

  And suddenly she was on her cell phone with her mother.

  “… I suppose, Mom, I wanted to let you know, not so much as asking permission but as a courtesy, information, information that may interest you—”

  “Jerilyn, honey, what on earth are you talking about?”

  “I have decided to be in a sorority, Mom. Sigma Kappa Nu. It’s just who I am.”

  There was a pause.

  “I know, Mom, like, you said it wasn’t a good idea but I’m an adult now and I can make my own decisions concerning these things and I know it goes against your general principle that I should not have one bit of fun up here in Carolina where no one would talk to me if I just was a plain old student and—”

  “My land, child, how much coffee did you drink today?”

  Jerilyn realized how fast she was talking so she stopped, then couldn’t remember what her thread of argument was.

  “There is no money for this sort of thing, Jeriflower,” her mother said calmly. “It’s thousands of extra dollars. Dues, parties, trips to Tijuana or wherever the kids go for spring break these days. And then you have to have new clothes all the time, the most expensive this or that, or the girls will think you’re poor. Well, we are poor, Jerilyn. We can cover it up well enough in Charlotte but our finances are very stretched.”

  “Well, whose fault is that?” Jerilyn exploded. “Why haven’t you made Dad go back to work?”

  Another pause. Somewhere, far back, there was a depth charge from the remotest areas of the brain saying nooooo that should not have been spoken, dial it back … what was her mother now saying?

  “I very much do not appreciate you speaking of these matters so vulgarly. And should your father take up his law practice again, I assure you that it will be for reasons other than your wanting to waste thousands a semester inebriating yourself and abandoning your studies at Chapel Hill.”

  “You got to be in a sorority but I don’t—that’s how it works, I see. I rushed your house, Kappa Theta Kappa, by the way—”

  “Theta Kappa Theta.”

  “That’s what I said, and I told them my mom was an alumna, but … but they didn’t invite me back,” she lied. “Do you know what I accomplished here? Do you know how many rich girls from good families are in Sigma Kappa Nu—some of your friends’ daughters l
ike Layla Throckmorton and Corrine Hutchinson who is the president—”

  “Stop talking so fast, Jeri; you’re breaking up. The Sigma Kappa girls had morals that would shame a Babylonian in my day, and I suspect little has changed there. Their mothers were wild as hyenas, too. Maybe if you’d let me know you were attempting Theta, I could have made a phone call.”

  Jerilyn, in a crunching flash of self-doubt, thought of how she had kicked Theta to the curb, how she most assuredly would have been given a bid and a rubber-stamp vote for admission, whereas here … some of their pledges will be judged not good enough after the pledge period. Sigma Kappa Nu was famous for that, actually. Maybe they were discussing her inadequacy, up in Layla’s room right now. And when it comes out she doesn’t have the money to hang with the others, Jerilyn imagined the mock sympathy in Corrine’s we’ll-have-to-let-you-go speech.

  “Sell one of the paintings!” Jerilyn cried out, the thought just finding itself on her tongue.

  Another pause. “Sell off the family’s legacy—your legacy—so you can get drunk at a sorority every weekend?”

  “Skip Baylor is in the brother frat … what’s it gonna seem like if I drop out because we have no money? It’ll be all over Charlotte that you and Daddy couldn’t afford to keep their daughter in a sorority.” In her mother’s renewed silence, Jerilyn hoped she had at last hit paydirt.

  “Well, then it shall happily make its way around Charlotte that I thought turning you into an alcoholic and being a plaything of rich drunk boys, and watching your grades go down the pan, was not acceptable to me and your father and we would not pay for it.”

  “Okay then, like, as I said, I’m just letting you know what the case is, Mother, and I’m not so much asking permission. It’s going to happen—they’re voting in two weeks. I’ll find a way to pay for it.”

  “I have no objection to your paying for it.”