I told her no, thank you, I was full, and I was. Then she was gone. She suddenly remembered a farmer’s market she wanted to check out in nearby Camoville. She asked me if I wanted to go, but I told her to go ahead without me. After she left, I just sat there for a moment. It felt like I couldn’t even move. I guess I was feeling sorry for myself. I’m lucky to have a friend like Patty. She accepts me for who I am, and she did make me a healthy lunch based in greens. I stood up. What a klutz. I knocked over the Yuban coffee can, which spewed out this large sludge-pile of bacon grease all over the carpet. Oh my God. Crawling out of the can was a creepy-crawly water bug. I couldn’t help it. I ran to the bathroom and threw up in the toilet. All those healthy greens gone to waste. This hasn’t been a good day.
What if I don’t get into Alpha Beta Delta? Then what? Does that mean college becomes the same as high school? I never once got picked for the debate team. I was always told they had enough reporters for the school newspaper. And Jennifer Goodenow, the president of the pep club, once told me I could help sell bake sale tickets for Spirit Week decorations, but when I reported for duty at the next pep club meeting, she said, “Your name is? You’re here for? Whatever I promised, I was very much mistaken. Sorry.” I tell you, that was one lousy day.
I wonder how Mom got through this. She might have some good advice for me. Maybe I’ll e-mail her before I go to bed. I should probably go to bed early tonight so I can wake up extra early tomorrow morning to make up for all the sleeping I did today. Classes start soon. I’m looking forward to it, though I do think it’s silly that we have classes and then we’re off four whole days for Labor Day. I’ve been overhearing lots of students planning parties and outings. Maybe if I’m a pledge by then, I’ll get invited to a party too. Maybe more than one! Wouldn’t that be awesome?
From: cindybixby
Date: 18 August
To: mom
Subject: Good News!
Hi, Mom!
Guess what? I went to the Smoker meeting at Alpha Beta Delta, your old sorority! It was so much fun. I’d tell you all about it, but it is secret (as I’m sure you remember! Ha!).
Now I have to wait and wait and wait to hear if they’ll invite me to pledge. Ahhhhhhh! Any advice for a (hopefully) prospective pledge on how to deal with all this pressure?
I miss u (and Dad and Lisa, too),
xxoo
Cindy
From: Mail Delivery Subsystem
Date: 18 August
To:
Subject: re: Good News!
——The following addresses had permanent fatal errors——
(reason: 550 Requested action not taken)
550 5.1.1
From:
Date: 18 August
To:
Subject: Can You Print This?
Attachments: Good News!
Hi Lisa:
Can you do me a big fave? I can’t seem to get my e-mails through to Mom. Maybe there’s a glitch in my account, or with the Rumson U. server, but who knows? I’m not technical, and the messages I get back when I try to send her stuff all read like gibberish.
Could you maybe print out my message and give it to her? Please?
xxoo
Cindy
From:
Date: 18 August
To:
Subject: re: Can You Print This?
Dear Sis:
I am s-o-o-o not your e-mail bitch.
But I am a nice person. I asked Mom if there was anything wrong with her account, and she told me, “Absolutely nothing. It’s working fine.” Anyhoo, I printed out your “Good News!” thingie and put it on her desk, right next to this month’s issue of British Vogue, so I know she’ll see it.
You can never thank me enough for this.
Like I Have Time,
Lisa
August 21
Dear Diary:
Classes started with a bang. Mr. Charles Scott is my Masterpieces of Western Lit I professor, and he looked very distinguished in his cardigan sweater with dark brown patches on the elbows (just like real writers wear). Luckily, I was prepared, since I’d already finished reading One Hundred Years of Solitude and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and we were only supposed to have read the first one by today (I didn’t have anything else to do yesterday).
In fact, I practically led the discussion about One Hundred Years of Solitude, along with Professor Scott, of course. He was so happy to see that I was able to discuss not just José Buendía, but practically all of his descendants. I heard a few snickers behind me, and after class something felt funny. Then I realized that there was a thick wad of gum stuck in my hair in the back. I guess I could be down about that, but it is a core-curriculum class, which means there are students in there who aren’t literature majors.
Riffraff, as Lisa would say.
I bet they won’t do that to me when I’m a pledge. If I’m a pledge. Oh God, nothing yet. No news is good news, right?
August 22
Dear Diary:
News, news, news! I still don’t know if I’m invited to pledge yet, but Shanna-Francine told me all about the Blackballing session with Meri and Gloria when we met, by chance, at Long John Silver’s (she likes Chicken Planks too!).
“Oh God, I really shouldn’t be telling you this,” she blurted, but then she proceeded to tell me everything, or at least it sure felt like she did, and I didn’t even have to ask. Here’s what happened:
“Okay, let’s begin,” announced Meri as she went over all the pictures of prospective pledges from the Smoker. “Anyone over one twenty-five, out.”
“Wait a minute,” blurted Shanna-Francine. “We’re not allowing for freshman bloat?”
“Uh-uh, not this year,” Meri answered serenely.
See, this is Meri’s last year at Alpha Beta Delta, and she wants everything about it to be 100 percent perfect—including the new inductees. She also wants to make sure everyone’s predisposed to casting their vote for her once it comes time to elect this year’s house president.
“Oh, but why wouldn’t they be?” I eagerly asked.
But Meri’s a careful and conscientious girl, as Shanna-Francine explained. Then she scrunched up her face.
“Oh God, I really shouldn’t be telling you this,” she blurted, but I swear I didn’t ask her to tell me anything at all. “Remember all those wires I was tangled up in when we first met?”
“For the DSL, right?”
Well, that’s what Shanna-Francine thought they were for too, though at the time she had her suspicions.
“Look over here,” whispered Meri at the Blackballing session. She pointed to her exquisite antique armoire. “I had it all installed over the summer.” Then she swung open the armoire, revealing state-of-the-art DAT surveillance equipment.
“We’re bugged?” asked a disbelieving Gloria.
“Mmm-hmm. The entire house. Dean’s office and Teacher’s Lounge, too, along with selected bathrooms, dorm rooms, fraternities. It’s still in the works.”
“Wait a sec,” blurted Shanna-Francine. “What about outside? All that wiring in the trees. For the DSL.”
Meri shook her head.
“You bugged the poplars?” gasped Gloria.
But Meri put them both at ease. It would only be for a little while. Still, before continuing, she instructed Shanna-Francine to make three fat-free mocha cappuccinos with whipped cream and chocolate shavings on Meri’s private cappuccino-espresso machine. The whirring of the frothing cup drowned out their voices. She whispered.
“Of course, as your president-elect, I don’t know anything about this, and can’t know anything about this. I need absolute and complete deniability. Understood?”
&nb
sp; Gloria nodded, then they both looked at Shanna-Francine.
“What?!” she blurted, dropping the frothing cup.
As she continued her story, Shanna-Francine gave an involuntary shudder. “Then we went back to the pictures, and we got to yours.”
Uh-oh. I should have known what was coming. Meri laughed at my picture. Just laughed.
“There’s always one little bow-wow,” snickered Gloria, and she reminded Meri that it was Shanna-Francine, not her, who’d invited me to the Smoker.
My heart sank—probably lower than it has in ages. Great. So I’m a “little bow-wow.” Fine. I guess that’s nothing new. I’m so stupid. Stupid-stupid-stupid. I actually thought I had a chance. I foolishly allowed myself to imagine a better life with friends and fun and a future. I tempted the gods. And I lost. Why can’t things go smoothly for me for once? Is this my future? Will I always be fate’s pincushion?
I walked home as the sun was setting and considered suicide. Not seriously, just in terms of how people would react, and how sorry they’d be that they were mean to me, and didn’t take me seriously, and didn’t befriend me or include me in any of their groups and outings. Dad would cry (I know it) and I’m pretty sure Mom would too. I don’t know if Lisa would cry, but she’d be awfully upset that I wasn’t around any longer to sharpen her claws on. And her triumph as a superslutty Christina Aguilera singer probably wouldn’t feel as complete as it would have if I’d been around for her to flaunt it over. But who else? I don’t think Bud would really care. And though Shanna-Francine likes me—after all, she did invite me to the Smoker—we aren’t close-close. Not yet, anyway. I do think Patty would probably miss me. I think she’d cry, too, and then proceed to diagnose me in terms of the events that led up to my untimely demise. Maybe I’d even become the subject of one of her psychology term papers. I’d be reduced to a case study. And then I’d be forgotten. I shuddered at the thought and felt lonelier than ever. But I didn’t cry. Frankly, I think I’m all cried out.
August 23
Dear Diary:
No news is good news. Right? Please? Please-please-please?
August 24
Dear Diary:
I couldn’t even open my dorm room door when I came back from the library today. There’s now so much garbage and papers and empty food containers inside the room that I had to shove the door—really, really hard—in order to get it to budge even an inch. I know Patty doesn’t want me to “enable” her, but I’m not sure how much longer I can take this. I couldn’t even find my bed at first.
Still no news from Alpha Beta Delta.
August 25
Dear Diary:
I hate everyone and everything. When I was walking through the main campus square this afternoon, I was suddenly hit in the face by a small, soft, round object.
“Whoa! Money shot! Right in the face!”
I looked up. There was Bud, along with his new best friends, Nester and Randy, doubled over laughing, slapping five. Bud jogged up, picked up the little round thing that had hit me, and smiled stupidly. He does that so well.
“Yo, sorry. We were hacking. And I aimed wrong.”
“You were what?”
“Yo, Hacky Sack. Footbag.” Then he kicked up the little bag with his foot and bounced it to his other foot on the back side. “That’s called the platter serve.” Then he kicked it up again and bounced it off his behind. “That’s the pooper-shooter. And the money shot’s when you hit someone in the face. You know, like in a porno movie when a guy . . .”
“I know what that means, Bud. I’m not an idiot.”
“Yo, Cyn. Chill.”
“And what’s with this ‘yo’ stuff? Are you from the hood all of a sudden? Bud from the Hood? Ooo. The superscary hood of Marietta, Ohio.”
I laughed. I thought that was pretty funny. And Bud was talking weirdly, after all. But I stopped laughing when he leaned in to me and whispered, “I told ’em you gave me a b.j.”
“You what?!”
“At the prom. Yo, I’m looking out for you, Cyn. For your rep. Want everyone to think you’re a lezzie? Nester likes you, you know. I said you were good. No teeth.”
I kicked him in the balls. Hard. He doubled over just like before, only this time he wasn’t laughing. And for a split second I thought of my dad—dancing in the strip joint, lighting his big, fat cigar. I whipped around. A guy had just walked past me smoking a cigar. Am I going crazy? I whipped back around. Bud looked ready to explode with anger, and for a second I really thought he might haul off and punch me. He bellowed.
“So that’s it, huh? You’re a slot-sucker?”
Okay, I’d like to take a moment here to say that I’m just as liberal as the next person, and I’m fairly comfortable with the occasional use of dirty language and crude double entendres, provided the context is appropriate and there’s at least a small attempt at humor. However, I did not like being called a lesbian just because I objected to the notion of giving Bud a “b.j.,” which is something I would never, ever do in a million years, and I certainly didn’t appreciate being called a “slot-sucker,” which was more than crude, it was disgusting. By the time I had left the main square and turned the corner to my dorm building, Bud was once more doubled over. This time he fell to the ground and stayed there—because I had kicked him in the balls again (extra-extra hard). I could hear him screaming in the distance.
“I’m filing charges! Yo, I’m taking you to court! I have witnesses!”
Fine, you do that, I thought. I’ll take my chances in court. It might be fun to be on the witness stand.
“Yo, your Honor, ’sup? I did it. I did it twice. Be lenient, ’kay? I’m Cindy from the Hood. The superscary hood of Marietta, Ohio.”
Something like that might even make my college experience worthwhile, since it looks like nothing else will, and it looks like I can forget about Alpha Beta Delta. I know I’m feeling sorry for myself, but it didn’t help my self-esteem this morning when I passed Bethany Conova Ponds, one of the prettiest girls at the Smoker, in the Lit Building main hallway. She was very subtle. When she walked past me, she gave a little snort. It was perfect, really. Since it wasn’t a full-out snort, an innocent bystander might have thought she was suffering from mild allergies, or maybe a cold, and was just lightly clearing her nasal passages. But I knew better. I knew what that snort was; it was a dig, a way to say, “Guess what? We all had a good laugh when you came to the Smoker, and we’re still laughing now.” It’s amazing how one little snort can ruin the rest of your day. That probably explains why I’ve been so full of anger. It probably also explains why I had the nerve to kick Bud in the balls (twice), something I’d normally never do (really—I am absolutely not a violent person). Come to think of it, maybe that little snort wasn’t such a bad thing. If that’s the price for seeing Bud crouching in pain on the ground, maybe it was worth it. Thank you, Bethany. I hate you, but thank you.
August 26
Dear Diary:
Okay, I’ve had it. It looks like Alpha Beta Delta’s not going to happen. Fine-fine-fine. But that doesn’t mean I have to live in a pigsty. I didn’t have classes today, so I spent practically the entire day carrying out huge bags of garbage from the dorm room. Maybe I’m enabling Patty (I know what that means now, and I frankly don’t see how being messy can be equated with serious drug addiction and “enabling” the addict, since being messy is just plain inconsiderate), but I really didn’t care. Patty cried when she came back tonight and saw the room.
Hazing Meri Sugarman Page 4