Shatter (Club Grit Trilogy)

by Brooke Jaxsen

  “But where am I supposed to go? This is my home!” insisted Emma.

  “I’m sure your parents can figure something out, easily,” said Pearl.

  “You don’t belong here,” I said gently.

  “I did everything you asked,” Emma almost shouted, pushing her hands onto the table as she stood before Sam put a hand on her arm.

  I regained my composure and said, with a sharper tone, “That’s why you don’t belong. We don’t want pushovers. We want people who are strong and independent. You’re neither of those things. Would you have ever gone to Club Grit if we hadn’t invited you? Would you have ever said no? The fact you feel some need to please us, to grovel? That’s pathetic. That’s not Omega House behavior.” I knew if I didn’t say anything, Pearl would make me pay for it later, and I couldn’t afford more drama, not right now. I could tell myself I was doing Emma a favor, helping her get out of Omega Mu, but I had no idea what the rest of Pearl’s plan entailed yet.

  As Emma walked away, Pearl came up behind me. “You did a good job,” she said with a short chuckle.

  “I did what had to be done,” I said, turning. “But what you did...that wasn’t necessary, at all. What’s your plan, Pearl? What’s the game this time?”

  “Emma will go whine to her parents about getting kicked out, they’ll make a generous donation, and the sorority will be flush with the kind of cash that pays for your scholarship, Kim. Don’t forget, you wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the generosity of alums and their family, so don’t pretend you’re somehow above this,” she said in a way so sweet that it was patronizing, as if she had to talk so slowly and calmly because I was unable to understand her any other way.

  “At least I’m not the one playing games,” I retorted. “I’m not like you, Pearl.”

  “You’re right, you’re not. You’re just a pawn,” she said with a giggle, and I ignored her, going up the stairs and to Becca, the only person I wanted to see.

  I knocked at Becca’s door and she replied, “Don’t come in, I’m busy.”

  I opened the door anyway. “You can’t leave,” I said, nervously.

  “I can, and I will,” said Becca, brushing me off.

  “No, what I mean is...I don’t know what I’m going to do if you leave,” I said quietly, fidgeting with the wristlet I carried everywhere.

  “Whether or not I’m here stopped mattering to you a long time ago, Kim. You’re not the girl I grew up with. I knew it was a fun game for us, as freshman, to pretend that we weren’t from Compton, to pretend that the life we had was better than the life we’d had, but unlike you, I’m open and honest about that part of myself now. You know I opened up about it. You, on the other hand, just kept lying. How long are you going to be able to get away with it? Do you seriously think that the girls are always going to believe your lies? You and I both know your dad isn’t a rich businessman and your mom is not a model. We both know your dad died, and that your mom had to raise you on her own. I don’t see why you think that’s shameful. If you were open and honest about who you were, where you were from, and the life you had, I’d respect you. I don’t care how many Chanel purses you have, or how many you pretend are real. I cared about you, Kim, but you’ve made it apparent you don’t care about anyone but yourself. I can’t help you anymore, not as your social chair, and not as your friend.”

  “So what? I’ll leave; you don’t have to, Becca. I’ll resign and you can stay,” I promised.

  “It’s not you, Kim. It’s all of this. Maybe it’s the sorority, maybe it’s this house, but I can’t stay here anymore. I’ve changed so much since coming to this college, and I never thought I’d be a sorority girl, you know that’s not what we thought we’d be, back in high school, but I’m turning into someone I don’t like. I don’t want to become like you, or like Sam, or even like Emma, and I will if I stay here any longer. Maybe I already have become like one of you, and maybe it’s already too late, but at least I’ll always know that I tried to get out once I realized how fucked up this was. At least I’ll know I tried.”

  “Please, just consider it,” I said pathetically, and I wiped away the tears I knew were forming, looking up to make the liquid redistribute itself over my eyes.

  “So, then what? I can be attacked? You don’t just have a standing army, you have a lying one too.” Becca said it loudly, but she didn’t yell. She didn’t need to. She knew how true it was, and that the truth was raw enough to hurt on its own, with no need for sharp tones.

  The room was quiet except for the sounds of my books hitting the bottom of a cardboard box until I finally broke the silence. “What are you going to do with that stuff?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, I’m probably going to sell it online, or else I’ll give it away to my cousins or something. I know they’re not in the sorority but some of them like the colors or like flowers. One of my cousin’s just had a baby girl and really likes this preppy stuff,” said Becca with a giggle. “I guess I never really did. You know I was never into the pearls and the diamond lavalieres.”

  I said, “I’ll buy it from you.”

  “You don’t have to. I know that you have all this stuff,” said Becca, wary.

  I blushed and turned away, chin up in the air. “It-it’s not for me. It’s so I can resell it next year. I’ll pay you three hundred dollars for it, for all of it, and I’ll be able to resell it next year for six hundred. It’s a business thing,” she said, trying her hardest to look haughty, but of course, the fact she couldn’t do it convincingly when she needed to was the greatest irony.

  “Okay, deal,” said Becca, “But it doesn’t make what happened okay. There are some debts you can’t pay off with cash. Money isn’t some magical Band-Aid that fixes everything.”

  “I know that,” I said, my eyes starting to water as I turned away. I wished that Becca would take me into her arms, pull me close, and make everything better like only she could, but she didn’t, and I went to my room, digging through the box of counterfeit purses and finding a wad of cash. I took the fifteen nicest twenties, bundled them with a rubber band, wrote a note, and left them in her room, before going back to mine to cry.

  All I wrote on the note was “Goodbye”.

  Chapter Eight:

  A MONTH PASSED: the loneliest month of my life. I didn’t even call my mom. What would I tell her about what had happened at Omega House? Would she even understand? This wasn’t the world she was from was like, and she’d been so proud when I’d become a sorority sister. Just because my experience had been ruined didn’t mean that I had to ruin her perception of me, her little girl, the only person she’d had left since Dad died.

  Becca didn’t come back to the house, and neither did Emma. Pearl only cared about the second half, and she heard through the grapevine that Emma was perfectly fine with Skylar, the bouncer, and that Emma wasn’t planning on coming back to the sorority, ever.

  “Even for her stuff?” Sam had asked one night, and Pearl smiled, for the first time since she’d started to hold weekly meetings with me and Sam to figure out how to get Emma back, each time failing to come up with something.

  “That’s a good point. She did leave a lot of stuff here...and what kind of people would we be if we didn’t try and return it?” she asked, rhetorically, throwing her head back to laugh.

  Pearl wouldn’t tell me what she had planned until I agreed to do what she asked of me without question, but I had one condition: it’d be the last thing I ever had to do for her, and afterwards, I’d get to just have the rest of the year to myself, the few weeks that remained, at least. I was tired of the games and it was senior year, for God’s sake. We were supposed to be better than this, but Pearl was harassing and bullying a fucking freshman. I knew whatever she could do to Emma, someone she barely knew, was nothing compared to what she could to do to me...at least, that’s what I’d thought, until she explained the plan, but there was no backing out.

  That weekend, Emma arrived at the house and Sam greeted her
first, and then, it was time for me to make my entrance.

  I walked to the pair. “How very nice to see you again, Emma. I am sure that Samantha has explained that you can come back to the sorority now that your punishment is over.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to come back, Kim.”

  “I don’t think you get it, Emma, there’s no leaving Omega House, at least, not on your own terms.”

  “No, I don’t think you get it. I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do. I don’t have to join your sorority. I don’t even have to come back to Omega House again after this. I’m here for my stuff.”

  “You can have your stuff. But, it’d be a shame if we released your sex video.”

  “Sex video? What sex video?” asked Emma.

  “Oh, of you and DeAndre, of course. That night at the frat house, Pub Night? There’s video footage of you two drinking, smoking and not just smoking cigarettes, but what I suspect is weed, and of you two fucking, in his room. You’ll never be able to press rape charges if that gets out, plus, if we release it onto the Internet, everybody will know about you and DeAndre’s little fuck fest.”

  “I...I need to think about it.”

  “We understand. But you have twenty-four hours, and after that, we send the file to your parents, as concerned citizens. Don’t worry, there is only one copy, but we only need one.”

  Emma left the house...but then there was another knock at the door. DeAndre was the one that answered it and once he saw who was on the other side, he tried to close the door. A man jammed a foot in the crack. “Nice to see you again, DeAndre.” Skylar.

  “Skylar, this is between your slut girlfriend and her sorority,” said DeAndre with a laugh. “You know that Emma fucked me, right? And I have the tape to prove it?”

  “That’s nice, but you know, I have footage of my own, DeAndre.” DeAndre opened the door and let Skylar in. Skylar followed DeAndre to the living room, still done in Omega’s traditional whites, pinks, and golds, where all the sorority sisters were. I cringed: I was hoping that Emma would want to come back, and wouldn’t need coercing, and the party was already set up, complete with a banner reading, “Welcome Back Emma”.

  Skylar opened his phone; a Samsung Beam with a projector built into the top instead of something sleek and sexy like an iPhone, and opened the videos menu. He played a clip, projecting the image onto the plain white ceiling. He didn’t even need to have anyone dim the lights.

  In the clip, DeAndre was seen dragging a girl into the coatroom at Club Grit. She was unconscious and barely breathing. In the clip, he was taking her clothes of. He was on top of her. He was raping her. There was no way she’d agreed to this; no way she could in that state. And then, there was the coat check girl who must have been on break, who came back and saw what was going on. There was DeAndre getting up to explain but she was already gone, to get help. In came Skylar and the rest of the bouncers, dragging him away, rousing the girl, who was then taken away by paramedics. Although they were comforting her, she was crying. There was no audio and of that I was glad but it was obvious she was being raped.

  DeAndre turned but Skylar didn’t. Instead, he smirked as DeAndre came to the sudden realization that his secret was not only now known by Skylar, but by everyone else in the sorority too. They knew the truth, and it was out in the undeniable open. Hands were brought up to mouths

  I hadn’t actually seen the video before. I’d stupidly believed DeAndre when he approached me and said that he was innocent, that there was no proof that he’d tried to rape anyone because he hadn’t. He swore he hadn’t. My stomach fell as inside, I was screaming. I had let this monster near Emma, near the pledges, and hadn’t done anything when they’d come to me and said that DeAndre had gotten “aggressive”.

  Skylar was right: I was a monster.

  Skylar cleared his throat and DeAndre turned to him. “You have two options, DeAndre. You can confess to the police about what you had done to Emma and the other girl, and you can argue for a more lenient sentence. You’re a shit bag who doesn’t deserve anything less than the worst of punishments but I’m not a judge, jury, or executioner, just a bouncer. Or, I can make you disappear.”

  “Is that a threat?” asked DeAndre. He was trying to play tough but we all knew he was a coward now.

  Skylar laughed sarcastically. “Ha! No. Threats are empty. What it is is a warning. There’s information I have about you, about your past, that could incriminate you and ensure you live the rest of your life behind bars. Am I going to have to put you in prison, permanently? Or, are you going to be a man about this?”

  “That doesn’t change things. She still has to stay here. She has to stay in Omega House!” I insisted, gripping the clipboard closer.

  “If she stays here? It’ll be by her choice only, not on your terms. If she stays here? Get fucking prepared to have me over, every goddamn night, beating the shit out of you if you ever come near her again, DeAndre. It’s Emma’s choice, but I’m not going to let her be blackmailed into this bullshit. I see why my boss fucking banned your sorority from Club Grit, Kim,” he snarled, and suddenly? I felt very, very small. “That’s right, I know exactly who you are, and no, not because of Emma,” he added, as he saw her eyes dart towards me and narrow into a glare. “I know you think I’m stupid or low class, but as observant as you are and as slick as you seem, you’re not, Kim. The fact I knew your name before I even met Emma, ever since last year when you started to become a regular, means that you were doing something wrong. You weren’t playing the game you should have been playing. You weren’t discreet. You can walk around with your stupid little clipboard, but that doesn’t mean that you’re worth shit. It’ll never make up for the fact that Daddy never loved you.”

  The room let out a collective gasp. Nobody had ever talked that way to me, at least in front of anyone else. None of them knew why Skylar’s mark was especially cutting: because it was true, but not for the reasons he believed.

  My eyes narrowed. “What did you just say to me?” Skylar had no idea what he was saying. I got that he was mad at me because of what had happened to Emma, but there were certain things he didn’t know about me, certain lines he shouldn’t cross, and boy, had he crossed a line. I didn’t have someone like him here to defend me, but I did have myself and my own two fists, which I kept firmly on my clipboard to stop from doing something stupid.

  “Nothing will ever make up for the fact that Daddy. Never. Loved you.” Skylar gave me the biggest shit eating grin possible and I snapped. I’d told myself that it wouldn’t happen, that I would be able to control myself. I hadn’t hit anyone since my schoolyard days, except for a single fight in high school. Nobody had ever seen me get violent during my time in the sorority. I’d broken up a few fights but always emerged unscathed and unscathing. However, even I had a breaking point, and whether or not Skylar knew about it became irrelevant as I became irrational and let my temper get the best of me, a temper that had been building up over the past few months, never granted release, until today.

  I lifted up the red and black clipboard to slap Skylar across the face. He didn’t move out of the way, even though he had time, and as I felt it hit his face, I instantly regretting hitting him. It wobbled and almost bent on impact and left a mark as red as its trimming as Skylar’s eyes became as black as its surface.

  The room was quiet...even as Skylar plucked the clipboard right out of my hands. I cringed, ready for Skylar to hit me.

  But that’s not what he did.

  He put a knee up on the expensive French sofas.

  He took my black and red clipboard in two hands, one on the top, one on the bottom. He unclipped the papers attached but leaving them on the surface.

  And he lifted the clipboard up.

  He brought it back down.

  It shattered.

  Into a million tiny fucking plastic shards, and it ripped his jeans as it slashed them like the vase had slashed the garbage bag before, but the paper shot into the air and flutt
ered like a million dying doves.

  He threw the clipboard into the air and when it landed on the ground, he used his black Converse and fucking ground the pieces into the carpet, the shards shredding the tufting like the mouths of an undying army of termites, each footstep ruining it more and more, leaving a stain of black plastic with the red disappearing and consuming it.

  And that’s the moment I knew that my own life had shattered too.

  Chapter Nine:

  EVERYBODY ELSE LEFT THE ROOM: I could understand why. What had just gone down was fucked up and weird and awkward and frankly, not their problem. At all. What had happened was shameful and the last part of my dignity was gone. I’d been Pearl’s agent in person, the one who delivered her terrible messengers, and messengers with bad news always get killed, or, at least, treated as if they’re long dead in Omega Mu.

  What I didn’t understand was why, as I picked the pieces of sharp plastic out of the carpet, Rina, of all people, came to sit with me and help me pick up the shards, and why Laura did as well. I didn’t know why they’d go get a dustpan and come sit with me and just silently help me pick out the pieces of my broken life out of the shag carpet.

  “You know, I know what it’s like here, Kim,” said Rina, finally. “And I know it must be hard for you.”

  “What do you mean? Did you and I just see the same thing?” I said sarcastically.

  “No, not that, I mean...dealing with Pearl. Omega Mu would be great if it wasn’t for her, because people like you and Becca are great, but Pearl...she just turns everything she touches into something terrible. I know that a lot of the things you do that suck are due to Pearl’s meddling, but I also know that the nice things you do? That’s all you, Kim,” said Rina gently, rubbing my shoulder. I looked over at Laura, who gave me a sad smile as if to say she too knew what I was going through, that she understood how shitty it could be to live at Omega Mu.