Next Semester

by Cecil R. Cross

  “I can’t believe you just played her like that, cuz,” Fats said, shaking his head in disbelief.

  “Yeah,” Fresh agreed. “That was cold as hell, G. Can’t say I blame you, though, but damn.”

  “I ain’t even thinkin’ ’bout that girl, blood,” I said confidently. “After what she put me through, as far as I’m concerned, she doesn’t exist.”

  After Dub-B’s debacle, the encounter with Kat and a few shots of Patrón, the party really started jumping. Every ten minutes or so a huge gust of foam would squirt onto the dance floor. I don’t know where it was coming from, but after a few hours, I was damn near up to my knees in suds. I had a weird urge to wash dishes. And my Jordans were all but ruined, soaked from the inside out. The good thing about it was, for some reason, the foam was driving the females wild. They frolicked in it like it was winter snow. By the time Ludacris finally the hit stage, it was nearly two in the morning.

  “You tryna hit this after-party?” Fresh asked.

  “After-party? Man, it’s already damn near two in the morning. You know the first day of class is tomorrow.”

  “I know, but it’s supposed to be live though, G,” he said. “At least that’s what I keep hearing. Let’s just fall through for a minute. If it’s bogus, we’ll dip.”

  “That’s cool,” I said. “Where’s it at anyway?”

  “Near the campus,” Fresh said. “Matter of fact, they say it’s poppin’ over there right now. That’s where all of the upperclassmen are partying. You ready to dip?”

  “Let’s do it!” I said.

  SIX

  THE AFTERPARTY

  We just left in time to catch the last shuttle heading back to campus. Thank goodness, because it was cold outside and the walk back to campus woulda been no joke. The closer we got to campus, the more I had second thoughts about going to the after-party. Partially because I was already tired and needed sleep for class in the morning. But mostly because I was sweaty, my clothes were wrinkled and my Jordans had been stepped on at least twenty times in the club, not to mention soaked by the suds. And if there were going to be upperclassmen at the party like Fresh said, I would have preferred to be looking and smelling as good as possible. The shuttles dropped us off in the Elman parking lot. From there, I followed Fresh to a house just around the corner from campus. I could hear the base pumping from the speakers a full block away from the house, and by the look of all the cars outside, I could tell the party was crackin’. But for some reason, I still didn’t wanna go.

  “You think there’s some kinda dress code for this party?” I asked, trying to back out.

  “Not that I know of,” Fresh said. “We’re about to find out, though.”

  The closer we got to the house, the more I noticed Kappa Beta Psi tags on all of the cars. There were others, too—mostly Delta Delta Theta and Alpha Pi Alpha—so I knew there were gonna be some fine girls up in there. The music was coming from a house that was painted red. In the middle of the front yard, three huge, five-foot-tall letters—KBP—painted red and white, were standing upright.

  “The party is at the Kappa house?” I asked as we scaled the stairs.

  I suppose the question was so stupid it didn’t deserve an answer, because Fresh just kept on walking up the steps without ever turning around to acknowledge it. We didn’t have to knock on the door. As soon as we reached the porch, one guy wearing a Kappa jacket stumbled out of the house with two girls escorting him down the stairs—one kissing his earlobe the other rubbing his chest. I was so busy checking out the two chicks, I didn’t even get a chance to see his face, but I read the back of his jacket as clear as day. Konceited.

  “Damn!” I said. “It’s like that? Maybe I do need to join.”

  “It’s funny you should say that,” Fresh said, laughing as he opened the door.

  I didn’t know quite what he meant by that. But after being in the party for less than five minutes, I didn’t care. There had to be six girls to every guy in that house. And damn near all of ’em were drunk. Plus, it was dark. The only light in the house was coming from under the microwave in the kitchen. I heard whispers of an open bar in the kitchen, but it was so packed, we couldn’t even make it that far. Everywhere I turned, there was a female grabbing on me. It was as if I’d walked into heaven. I couldn’t miss. Fresh wasted no time pushing a girl up against the wall and getting freaky when the DJ slowed it down and played a slow jam. By the end of the first verse he had scooped ol’ baby clean off her feet and was grinding on her as he held both of her legs up and she gripped the back of his neck. I was in the middle of the living room, all up on some chick I’d never seen before, grinding like a blender. I couldn’t see how cute she was, but I didn’t need light to tell she was a super freak. I’d only been dancing with her for half a song when she stuck her hand down my pants. I didn’t know whether to keep dancing or sneak her to the bathroom. All I knew was all of a sudden, I was harder than a football helmet. All I could do was smile and shake my head. That’s when baby girl retracted her hand and leaned in to whisper in my ear.

  “What’s so funny?” she asked.

  “You just had your hand down my pants and I don’t even know your name,” I said.

  “They call me Peaches.”

  “Why do they call you Peaches, baby?”

  “Because I’m thick like a peach, sweet like a peach, juicy like a peach,” she said very matter-of-factly, before taking a huge sip of her drink.

  “Is that right?” I asked.

  “Yep,” she confirmed. “And if you ever get your letters, call me. I can’t wait to put it on your fine ass!”

  Before I could respond, she stepped off. I wondered, damn, is it really that easy when you’re Greek?

  “C’mon, let’s grab a drink,” Fresh said, grabbing me by my shoulder with one hand, motioning for me to follow him to the back with the other.

  I looked at my watch and saw that it was already fifteen after three. There was really no reason to have another drink when I knew I had class in less than five hours. But peer pressure is a mutha, so I followed Fresh’s lead. The closer we got to the kitchen, the stronger I could smell something burning. It was an unfamiliar scorching scent like nothing I’d ever smelled before. I was a few steps away from the kitchen when the countdown began. There was a guy, wearing a long-sleeve shirt sitting at the table with one sleeve rolled up. He was surrounded by guys who I presumed were Kappas based on how they were dressed, and the fact that they were all in on the countdown.

  “Kappa!” they yelled in unison.

  The guy sitting at the table lowered his head into his hand.

  “Beta!” they screamed excitedly.

  That’s when I noticed the guy at the table’s knees shaking profusely. He was a nervous wreck. Two of the larger guys in the kitchen grabbed his arm, one at the shoulder the other at the wrist, holding it steady.

  “Psi!” they hollered.

  That’s when a guy holding what looked like a bent wire hanger rushed over from the stove with it red-hot and steaming, and mashed it into dude at the table’s forearm. He held it there for about three seconds, but just watching it felt like an eternity.

  “Aaaaaaargh!” the guy screamed, as his arm sizzled like bacon, the skin peeling back like a banana, revealing the white meat, blood oozing around toward his elbow and down his wrist. I turned away momentarily, becoming light-headed and weak at the knees. I couldn’t believe anyone in their right mind would voluntarily allow someone to burn the shit out of them like that. I was blown away.

  “For life!” everyone said together, clapping and slapping high fives.

  The guy at the table stood up, grimacing in pain as he proudly showed off his badge of honor—a perfect circle with the letters KBS in the center.

  “Want a Jell-O shot?” a girl asked, carrying a full tray of those little really small, plain paper cups you get in the hospital.

  After what I just saw, I figured I needed one, just to get my mind right. My hand was hoveri
ng over the tray, when I felt someone yank my arm back with so much force it damn near popped my shoulder out of the socket.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Fresh yelled in his most abrasive whisper tone. “You tryna get yourself killed up in here?”

  “What’s the big deal?” I asked. “You’re the one who brought me over here to get the damn drink!”

  “Do you want one or not?” the girl asked, still holding the tray out in front of me.

  “No thank you,” Fresh said. “We’re good.”

  “You’re trippin’, blood,” I said, rubbing my shoulder.

  “I’m trippin’?” he asked. “I might’ve just saved your life, fool! Did you not see all of those Jell-O shots were red?”

  “So they were cherry Jell-O shots,” I said. “Duh. What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Look, just know you don’t need to touch or put your mouth on anything red up in here if you’re not a Kappa,” he whispered in my ear. “That was a setup. And your ass almost fell for it.”

  I was green to virtually all of the dos and don’ts of fraternity life, mostly because I never gave joining one much thought. Back home, the only thing niggaz from my hood ever talked about joining were gangs. And even that was rare in Oakland. Where I’m from, it was all about the neighborhood or “turf” you were from, as opposed to what gang you were in. We pretty much left the gangbanging to L.A., so I never really had to adhere to any organization’s rules and regulations. Besides, I didn’t even know I was coming to a frat house party in the first damn place. I was just out to have a good time.

  “Having fun?” someone asked.

  I figured it was probably someone I knew from Marshall Hall. But when I spun around, I was standing next to a complete stranger. He was a light-skinned, slender guy with a goatee, and stood a little taller than me. I could tell he was intoxicated because he was leaning up against the wall, cheesing so hard I could see his front tooth was chipped. I noticed he was wearing a silver Kappa dog chain around his neck, so I deferred to Fresh to respond to him.

  “Hey, w’sup, Dex,” Fresh said. “This party is juking, folk.”

  “Do I know you from somewhere?” Dex asked.

  “I go to school at U of A,” Fresh said. “I don’t think we’ve ever formally met, though. My name is Lamont but everyone calls me Fresh.”

  “It’s a pleasure meeting you, Lamont,” Dex said. “Who invited you to the party?”

  “Well, we heard about the party…”

  “Who is we?” Dex asked.

  “Me and my boy, J.D.”

  “Who?”

  “James Dawson,” I said, extending my hand. “This party is turned up, blood. It’s crackin’ in here!”

  “Turned up,” he repeated. “Crackin’. You must be from the West Coast. Where you from?”

  “The Town,” I said.

  “Oh, Oakland, huh? Okay. I’m from L.A.”

  “That’s what’s up,” I said.

  “So who invited y’all, again?”

  “Nobody really,” Fresh said. “To keep it one hundred with you, Dex, we just kinda came.”

  “Why?” Dex asked.

  “We heard a lot of good things about your organization, and we were interested in learning more,” Fresh said.

  “Oh, so y’all are interested, huh?” Dex asked obnoxiously loud so the other guys standing around could hear him. A couple of them peered over his shoulder to get a look at us. “Stick around for the after-party.”

  Something about the way Dex said that and walked off left me with an eerie feeling. Besides, I thought this was the after-party. I jabbed Fresh in his ribs with my elbow.

  “How you gon’ volunteer me for pledging a fraternity?” I asked. “That’s not something you do!”

  “It’s not pledging,” he said. “It’s not like we’re on line or anything. I just let Dex know that we were interested. Worst-case scenario, we might do a little prepledging, but nothing too serious.”

  “Prepledging? Are you serious right now, blood? I’m not even sure if I wanna pledge….”

  “Ssssshhhhh!” Fresh hissed, placing his finger over his lips. “Keep your voice down, joe.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said, whispering. “I’m not even sure if I want to pledge once, let alone twice!”

  “It’s not what you think,” Fresh said, pulling me in the back hallway. “The Kappas only bring out new lines once a year, in the fall. So it’s not like we’re gonna have to do too much this semester.”

  “Look, I’m not saying I don’t want to get down,” I said. “But if they’re not bringing out a line until the fall, what’s the point of doing anything this semester?”

  “It’s the only way we’ll even have a chance of getting on the line in the fall!” Fresh said. “Do you know how many niggaz show up to try to get in this frat? Hundreds! And they never have a line over ten. So you do the math on that. The shit is rigged, joe. Prepledging is the only way in.”

  My eyelids were getting heavy. I looked at my watch again. It was almost four in the morning.

  “That’s cool,” I said. “But on some real shit, I ain’t feelin’ sticking around for no after-party, blood. I’m hella tired. The first day of class starts in a couple hours. I gotta go.”

  The second I said that, the music stopped and someone cut the lights on. The DJ thanked everyone for coming out, and people started to file out. Fresh leaned up against the wall, staring me down. He was determined to stay. I had a different agenda. I was on academic probation. I had more at stake and I didn’t want to get the semester started on the wrong foot. I decided to try to mix in with the crowd and discreetly duck out. I made it all the way to the porch and thought I was scot-free when I heard someone call me.

  “What’s crackin’, West Coast?” someone hollered out.

  I kept walking as if the question wasn’t directed at me, knowing good and well I was likely the only person from the West Coast leaving the party.

  “Yo!” the guy yelled. “I thought you were gonna stick around for the after-party, James.”

  I was hoping he hadn’t remembered my name. I could’ve just kept on walking and pretended I didn’t know he was talking to me. But there was no getting out of this. Now, I had to face the music. Either turn around and tell him that my sleep was more important than their after-party and ruin any chance I’d ever have of getting in, or…

  “Hey,” I said, spinning around wearing a fake smile. “I didn’t know you were talking to me.”

  “C’mon, now,” he said. “You know it ain’t that many of us out here from the West Coast. Where you going, homie?”

  “I was…” I said, struggling to find the words to complete my lie. “I was just coming out here ’cause I thought I saw this girl I knew.”

  “Oh, okay, because it looked to me like you were tryna bounce, dog,” he said.

  “Nah,” I said. “I was gonna come back in.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to,” he said. “I mean, if you’ve got something better to do, handle you business. It’s just that inside, I thought you said you were interested.”

  “I am,” I said.

  “Well, come on back inside,” Dex said, throwing his arm around my neck, and half-playfully, half-forcefully, walking me back inside. By the time we made it up the stairs to the porch, surprisingly the house was dead silent. Everyone had cleared out. When Dex opened the door, he patted me on back, then kind of shoved me inside.

  The front room was pitch-black and there was no one in it. I stumbled over a beer bottle and gripped the wall with both hands, attempting to get my bearings. I could vaguely hear someone talking in one of the rooms, but I had no idea where the voice was coming from. I quickly spread my legs shoulder-width and assumed a defensive stance, ready for whatever. But inside, I was terrified.

  “C’mon, man,” Dex said, grabbing me by my arm, leading me down a narrow hallway, then down a flight of wooden stairs that creaked with every step.

  “What’s down here
?” I asked, nervously following him.

  We were almost at the bottom step when I heard the door slam shut behind me. I had no idea anyone else was even in the house. That’s when I really got scared. The basement was extremely dark, too. One small lightbulb hung in the middle of the ceiling emitting a dim light. Although it was too dark to make out any faces, I could sense there were at least fifteen Kappas standing on one side of the room. On the opposite side, there were seven guys lined up, each of them crouched with their knees bent in a squatting position and their backs against the wall. They were grimacing. Their knees were shaking. And all of them had their hands stretched out with their palms up.

  “Go ahead and have a seat in the chair at the end of the wall,” Dex said.

  “Chair?” I asked, slowly looking around the room.

  “Yes,” he said, sighing deeply in exasperation. “The imaginary chair up against the wall. C’mon! Don’t play stupid. I ain’t got all night to be up in here with y’all!”

  I took my spot on the wall right next to Fresh and assumed the position. Immediately, I knew why the other guys’ knees were shaking so vigorously. While sitting in an imaginary chair with your arms straight out looked easy to the naked eye, actually holding that position was hard as hell. In less than two minutes, I was trembling, too.

  “So y’all wanna be Kappas?” Dex asked, pacing to and fro in front of us, his red-and-white cane in one hand, a bottle of water in the other. “What y’all know about Kappa?”

  “Not a damn thing!” one of the guys standing behind him said.

  “They just wanna twirl canes on the yard,” Dex said. “And look pretty like me.”

  “They could never do that,” one said.

  “Yeah, you’re right,” Dex said. “Maybe they wanna join Kappa Beta Psi because they heard we get all the girls on the yard. Maybe they think getting these letters will mean they’ll be able to get with any girl on the yard.”