Premature Evacuation (Underground Sorority #1)

by Rachel Shane

  “Plus, we’ll be the most popular house on campus with the boys. No dumb Greek Org rules to abide by.” Except the ones I created, but I didn’t say that. I wanted the new Rho Sigma to be popular, but also respected.

  A long moment of silence passed. My hands went numb.

  Then Bianca squealed. “Oh my god! This is awesome!”

  “Wait—” Erin squinted at the invite. “What’s 435 Euclid?”

  I sucked in a deep breath. “Corey’s place.” I bit my lip. “He helped set this all up and therefore I think he should be an honorary member.”

  Erin tilted her head. “Will that prevent frats from wanting to hang out with us?”

  I shrugged. “Why would it? It’s just one guy. A guy with a girlfriend,” I added, earning a questioning look from Erin. “He’s not a threat.”

  A wicked grin crested Bianca’s face. “You can’t let Layla be president again. This is our chance.”

  I beamed back at her. “I was thinking you could be president. You’d make a great one.”

  “I totally would,” Bianca agreed. “And my first order of business will be a decree: no fraternizing with the evil Out House unless said fraternizing involves kicking Harrison Wagner in the balls.”

  Erin and I snapped our agreement. Our first unanimous decision as an underground sorority.

  A few days later, I found solace at my graphics studio. My iPod filled the room with the pulsing beats of every song Corey and I had ever danced to at Quigley’s. I clicked play and leaned back to watch my newest animation for the showcase: a three-minute short film with a personified blue 16oz cup as the lead character who must overcome the hurdles of losing his red companion. They’d been stuck inside each other during packaging, but got separated at a party, each passed around a variety of hands crowd-surfing style. The main character ended up in the middle of bowling pin formation during beer pong. After being filled up and emptied several times, he landed in the hospital where doctor tools poked and prodded him, straps held him to a bed, and an IV punctured his plastic. Eventually, the doctors released him by tossing him into a trash bin where he was reunited with his long lost love just as a trash compactor crushed them.

  It was a tragedy.

  The animation style consisted of close shots of the cups and hands with hand painted textures to give the whole piece the consistency of a moving painting. I couldn’t wait to show it off…after I fixed the wonky animation sequence in the middle to look a little more realistic. My head bopped to the music and my tongue hung out of my mouth as I straightened and moved my mouse to a keyframe in the timeline. There, I tweaked the spline curves to smooth out the motion. The door to the computer lab swung open and the dark bob of Layla Davies caught my eye.

  My hand slid off the mouse. I swiveled in my chair and presented her with my best bitchface. “Come to grovel?” I asked.

  Bianca helped deliver invites to all the girls who lived in the house and Erin handled the ones who lived outside. Both of them conveniently forgot to extend that invite to Layla. I would have been in full on panic mode except we all agreed to keep my involvement in the resurrection secret until the first chapter meeting. So why was she here?

  Layla’s stilettos, skinny jeans, and rather slutty bar top that accentuated her boobs seemed extremely out of place among the hum of computer consoles. “No, I came to warn you.” She leaned over my shoulder to inspect my animation. “Oh good, you’re doing even more to advertise the worst day of my life.”

  I balled my hands into fists at my sides. “The worst day of your life was the day I went to the hospital?”

  “Obviously I was referring to the day Rho Sig got shut down.” She rolled her eyes. I clicked save on my animation just in case she decided to delete it for kicks. Then I backed it up to the cloud. “Do you know how bad it will look on my resume that the sorority fell while I was president?”

  “Probably as bad as it would look if you’d been caught with Molly.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Speaking of getting caught…I know you’re trying to start Rho Sigma illegally.”

  Her words were an ice pick through my gut. She inched forward in a clear attempt to get me to cower away. I lifted my chin. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I’ve seen the invitations.” Spit flew at my face.

  I fastened my best glowing halo to the top of my head and lied through my teeth. “The ones for the rally I’m organizing?”

  Her lips twitched. “What rally? I’m talking about the invites you had your cronies hand deliver to—”

  “Right. The ones that suggested they join? It’s for a rally to promote sobriety.”

  Her mouth opened and closed like a fish. She backed up a step, her brow furrowing. “So you’re tricking them then? Because they all think you’re starting Rho Sig as an underground sorority. And if you do that, it’ll ruin everything I’m trying to set up with the Greek Organization.”

  I snorted. “You mean the absolute zero progress you’ve made with them since you started pestering them?” I tapped my fingers on the desk. I knew I should keep my mouth shut but I couldn’t stop myself from getting in one more jab. Because for once I had the power to exclude her. “And here’s the thing about underground sororities. They don’t abide by the rules of the Greek Org.”

  Her nostrils flared as she breathed hot air onto my shoulder. “But fraternities do. Which means any parties your little wannabe secret society throws with them could result in their suspension.” She stomped toward the doorway, letting her new threat hang in the air.

  THE BLEAK GRAY SKIES of winter stopped caging us into an everlasting sunless existence and gave way to a more hopeful atmosphere. Without the barrier of several feet of snow towering over us on either side of every campus walkway, students donned sunglasses and short sleeves, believing that if it wasn’t negative fifteen degrees outside, it was warm. The long trek to Corey’s new place was getting a lot easier without the biting wind thwarting me.

  I hoped the girls wouldn’t mind doing this journey several times a week.

  Corey sat on the couch in his living room, dressed in jeans and an Up Yours logo t-shirt I’d made him. I made one for everyone else too, using my first paycheck as restaurant hostess to cover the cost. Each screech of a tire on the street outside made my stomach lurch. In only a few minutes, the first members of our new sorority would show up, followed shortly by the rest of the clan.

  The doorbell rang and Corey sprang for it.

  Bianca hopped on the front step, shivering from the cold. March had finally reached a balmy thirty five degrees.

  She swept past Corey and stomped inside, Erin trailing behind. Corey stood there holding the door, looking out of place in the only place he now belonged.

  Bianca studied the space like an interior designer deciding which pieces needed to go before a big house staging. “Okay, I think the space will work, but”—she pivoted on her heels to face Corey—”if this is your place, I’m assuming that makes you the house dad.”

  Corey pursed his lips before nodding. “A very attractive house dad. One that you girls have an Oedipus complex with.”

  “Good, because our house mom at Rho Sig did all the cleaning.” She plucked a dirty t-shirt off the back of a chair and tossed it at him. “And this place needs a deep scrub.” She glanced at him expectantly.

  “If by scrub you mean spray Febreze? Then yes.”

  “That’s what pledges are for!” Erin settled into the couch next to me.

  Twenty minutes later, former Rho Sigma members trickled in, grabbing t-shirts from the stack by the door and defying all fashion laws by putting them on immediately like pledges always do on bid day. Large smiles graced every face, but none were as large as mine.

  “Thank you,” Kiera Chan told me, placing a palm on my forearm. She was another sophomore like me. “For saving us.”

  My heart swelled.

  Bianca perched on the top of the couch and placed two fingers in her mouth to whistle.
The chattering ceased at once and everyone dropped to the floor like we were practicing a fire drill. “Ladies…and gent.” All heads swiveled toward Corey. “Welcome to the first chapter meeting of Yours. I’m going to run things a little differently than Layla, so—”

  “Where is she?” one of the girls in the back piped up.

  “She threatened to turn us in,” I shouted. “Which breaks essentially our only rule. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”

  That made all the girls shut up.

  “First order of business.” Bianca slammed her hand on the couch cushion like a gavel. “The kick off party.”

  A few girls snapped. Several others shouted their consent, officially abandoning the procedures old Rho Sig that required voicing your agreement without your voice.

  “It’s not going to be with a frat,” Bianca continued.

  The girls on the floor looked around, confused. I tilted my own head at my new fearless leader.

  “One thing that always bothered me about the way we used to run is we put so much focus on social events that we forgot to think of each other. And so I’m instituting a new requirement for members. We all support the shit out of each other.”

  Snaps followed.

  “Which means our first party will take place next Friday night at the opening reception of the student art show. I expect you all to be on your classiest behavior and snap the loudest when our founding member Mackenzie Shaffer’s short film plays.”

  The girls closest to me nodded their heads. One or two groans rang out in the back, residual hold overs from my past mistakes.

  “But,” Olivia Marquez shouted. “She’s the one that got us into this mess.”

  Bianca craned her neck around the room until she spotted the betrayer in the back. “Olivia, please stand up.”

  Olivia stood up, crossing her bony arms over her thin frame.

  “Strip,” Bianca demanded.

  Corey clamped his mouth shut, clearly stifling his urge to hoot.

  Olivia lifted her Underground Rho Sigma t-shirt over her head and dangled it out in front of her.

  “You can leave it by the door on your way out,” Bianca instructed.

  Olivia blew her bangs out of her face, eyes narrowing to slits. She stomped over the seated bodies, taking the terrain like a mine field. A blast of cold air whooshed into the room when she opened the door. The loud slam made my teeth clatter.

  “And that,” Bianca said. “Is one way I’m doing things different. I won’t tolerate turning on another sister.”

  “Or brother!” Corey added.

  Silence filled the room as Bianca waited for anyone else to interject in a suicide mission. No one spoke up. In only five minutes, Bianca had them all eating out of her hands.

  “All right, now let’s move on to the next most important order of business. The second party, which will take place here, immediately following the art show. Who wants to suggest a theme or a frat?”

  The night of the student showcase, I squeezed my curves into the way-too-sexy dress my dad had given me for Chanukah. It revealed too much cleavage and clung to my hips. Fallon helped me shape my hair into a classic ballerina bun in the hope it might tip me toward the classy side of the scale.

  Even though the reception wasn’t until seven p.m., the gallery expected me by four to direct the paintings that would surround the movie-screen sized display of my animation. The students who were part of the show from the other grades didn’t share my same fashion sense. Instead of classy, they all went for the “creative artist” look: paint splattered jeans, deconstructed shirts, primary colored hair dye, bags under their eyes. I looked like I was headed to a White House dinner compared to them.

  People milled about the barren room with pale gray floor and oppressive white walls. A table for refreshments cut the space in two. The movie screen took up almost the entire back wall. When my animation played, it would snatch everyone’s attention. Gulp.

  The purple-haired junior snickered at my display of paintings outlining the screen. He’d painted the exact same landscape scene over and over again in various styles—dots of pointillism, dripping with surrealism, with sharp Caravaggio lights and darks. He waved the others over to view my work as though it was some kind of tragic entertainment, an opening act to the main event.

  The senior who’d gotten more paint on her outfit than she did on her canvases pursed her lips as she studied my pieces. “Quite literal,” she commented.

  I rolled my eyes. Sometimes I hated art school.

  Her paintings hung floor to ceiling on the far left wall, each one stark white except for a tiny dot of colored paint placed strategically somewhere on the canvas like some dumb reenactment of Where’s Waldo?

  Sometimes I hated my teachers and their ridiculous decisions. I spent weeks painstakingly modeling 3D characters, rigging them with virtual bones, adding lighting and texturing, and animating three minutes worth of short film. She quite literally couldn’t have done anything less than sticking a tiny dot of paint somewhere.

  “Quite obvious,” I said to her.

  Her lined eyes narrowed. “How is my work quite obvious?”

  I’d seen her work on display in the painting studio and a few other kids critiquing it, so maybe I wasn’t being fair by cheating. But still. “Let me guess. It’s a statement about how invisible we all are?”

  Her mouth opened, then closed.

  “Like I said. Quite obvious.”

  I strutted away to stand next to the only other student’s work I admired. The freshman girl who hid in the corner as if the three of us were a pack of rats. Her pieces consisted of mixed media with large black letters in a variety of fonts cut out and pasted onto canvases to showcase only parts of the shape and highlight the negative space. The small corner on the inner cut out of a capital H. The slithering curve of a lowercase S. The serif hanging dramatically off the stem of an uppercase F.

  After all the pieces were hung under strategically placed spotlights, I stood behind the wall waiting for my cue to enter. The chatter in the room grew louder and louder, the large space making the voices echo. The other three students looked bored as hell. One kept sneaking out to smoke cigarettes—or maybe pot. The freshman girl balanced her sketchpad on her lap and ignored everything. Her eyes kept sweeping to me, and I was tempted to check out what she was drawing, but I stayed still, in case I was unknowingly posing for her.

  Professor O’Brien came behind the wall. “Filling up. Lots of students here. I’d say even more than the alumni.”

  “Is everyone impressed?” the purple-haired kid asked. The implied part of his question, “With me?”

  “They’re most certainly impressed with the curtains hiding your work.”

  The purple-haired kid’s face matched his bangs. I snickered under my breath, if only to calm my nerves.

  Shushes filled the room while Professor O’Brien began his speech by talking about the history of this honor. He went on to introduce the older students from the show. Each time he talked about one of us, he discussed our accomplishments and why we were chosen. At my turn, he raved about how my 16oz series utilized a motif I continued to showcase in new and innovative ways.

  “It’s my pleasure to introduce you to…” A few catcalls interrupted his final words and the crowd broke into cheers even before he could finish. “Mackenzie Shaffer.”

  I strutted out from behind the wall to find the entire crowd filled with familiar faces. From the girls in my art classes, Fallon included, to all my sorority sisters, who once abandoned me completely but now stood by me—by mandate of Bianca, but still. To Holly and Nate standing in the center of the crowd. And finally to Corey, who’d staked out a front row spot in front of the animation he’d already watched a bazillion times.

  The lights dimmed and Professor O’Brien gave the signal to start the movie.

  Blue and red lights danced off the crowd’s faces as I watched them gaze at the piece of art I’d poured my heart—and my blood alcoh
ol level—into. They smiled at all the right places: when the two cups nuzzled against each other in an attempt to avoid separation. They gasped at the heart wrenching scene when Red fell to the floor and a gum-laden sneaker hovered over her. Tears fell as the trash compactor loomed closer. When the credits rolled, I received a standing ovation.

  Okay, so everyone was already standing. But the impact of their hands slapping against one another and the whoops and hollers made it seem like I’d earned one.

  The crowd swallowed me whole with everyone desperate to tell me they loved my film. But only one person fought through the crowd to tell me something else.

  That he loved me.

  COREY FIT THE KEY into the lock and swung the door open to his apartment. Fifty girls stood behind him, rubbing their hands over their bare arms to ward off the not-quite warm temps. We had about twenty minutes to finish setting up before our first party officially kicked off. When Bianca had asked for suggestions for which frat to do a mixer with first, by unanimous decision we agreed to do one with all of them. Not a mixer but a Crush Party, like the one we’d had last semester where Corey and I had broken up the first time. Each sister (and lone brother) invited five guy friends to attend tonight. It would be the perfect way to introduce Yours to the campus with a bang. Plus it helped make Corey feel like he actually belonged.

  I gasped when I stepped inside his place. Silver glitter covered the carpet like breadcrumb trails while tinsel streamers glinted off the strobe lights revolving from the ceiling. Noisemakers clung to the walls via tape and paper tiaras dangled from the curtains. A large tinfoil ball hung from the ceiling in the center of the room like a disco ball.

  Corey tugged my arm. “Look, it has a pulley system. So I can drop the ball at midnight!” He held up a string. “I’d demonstrate, but I’m afraid I’d never get it back up there.”

  We’d decided on New Years in March as the party theme because this was a new beginning for Rho Sigma.

  Corey slid a tiny black remote out of his pocket and pointed it toward the entertainment center. A Clever Trevor song bounced through the room. The girls bobbed their heads in the living room while others headed for the keg in the kitchen.