by Kiley Roache
It’s not a lack of intelligence; it’s a lack of curiosity. There was none of the thirst for knowledge like you can see radiating from people like Alex, like Jackie.
I wanted to be like that. That’s why I left. I needed to look for more than what the kids talked about at home—who was dating who and where the next my-parents-are-out-of-town party would be—I just knew if I stayed much longer, I’d suffocate. But I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be smart enough to have anything real to say.
We make it to the top again, and I take a deep breath.
“You’re right—this is pretty amazing.”
“Again?” she asks when we reach the ground. She smiles, and it lights up her whole face.
“I have to go soon,” I say. “I have dinner with a family friend at eight,” I lie.
She nods and picks up her water bottle, the official one all the athletes are given, a status symbol. She raises it to her lips for a second, then scrunches her nose. “Empty.”
We leave the climbing area and head to the general gym.
“Ugh,” she says as the glass door closes behind us.
“What?”
“I forgot the athletic gyms are closed today because of training limits. Which means all the meatheads are at the Muggle gym.”
I look around the room, and sure enough, the whole place is littered with giant men lifting weights. Not exactly your typical Warren student.
We push past all the scrawny freshmen loitering at the edge of the room and wait in line at the watercooler.
Jackie is reaching for the faucet when a brick wall of a guy steps in front of her.
“Hey, dude, there is a line!”
He doesn’t turn around.
She reaches up to tap him on his shoulder. He swats behind him, like Jackie’s hand is a fly, before looking over his shoulder. I recognize Duncan, the football player from down the hall. “What?” He takes out one earbud.
“There’s a line.”
He laughs and continues to fill his bottle. “I’m in the middle of varsity conditioning. I think I need it a little more than you and whatever elliptical crap you’re doing.”
My jaw drops. I turn back to Jackie.
“For your information, I’m an athlete, too,” she says, then stands taller and shows him her water bottle.
“Okay.” He laughs. He screws the cap back on his bottle and then pulls out his phone, taking his time to select a new song while he continues to block our way to the water, his chest in a sweat-stained shirt like a wall.
Finally he steps away, shoving his phone back toward his pocket but missing and slipping it into a fold in the fabric instead. It clatters to the floor, ripped from his headphones, and slides across the linoleum to my feet.
Duncan turns around, panicking.
“Don’t worry—the screen didn’t crack.” I step forward to hand it to him. I glance at the screen for only a second, but long enough to see that the song he had chosen was by One Direction.
“Nice taste in music.” I press the phone into his hand.
He turns white as a ghost. “You can’t—Oh my God.” He grabs my arm and pulls me farther away from the watercooler. “You can’t tell anyone.” His voice is earnest.
“What? That you were super-rude to us? You didn’t seem bothered by that a minute ago.”
“About, you know, that playlist. My sister bought the songs, and, I don’t know, I just kind of like them, but my teammates can’t know, okay? So don’t say anything.”
He seems genuinely freaked, so I resist the urge to laugh.
“Yes, sure, calm down. I’m not gonna tell anyone. I really don’t care.”
“Okay, thank you.” His shoulders drop half an inch as he relaxes.
“Whatever.” I walk back to Jackie.
God, masculinity is fragile.
Chapter Eight
Rush continues to pass without a hitch. When the first weekend and the first round of cuts comes out, I’m one of the few who receives an invitation to the Delta Tau Chi Rush Retreat. Luckily, the email invitation also mentions that the members of Pi Beta will be joining us, so hopefully I will be able to continue inconspicuously, or, at least, less conspicuously than if I was the only girl.
When I was at Catholic school, “retreat” meant three days at a sleepaway camp, holding hands, praying, lighting candles and sharing secrets.
I have a feeling that’s not what we’ll be doing.
It’s six thirty in the morning and cool, because the sun hasn’t burned off the haze when we line up to get on the buses. They’re big yellow ones, rented from the local elementary school.
Four actives are loading countless cases of beer through the handicap entrance in the back.
I spot Jordan as I’m climbing on board, and I instinctively smile and raise my hand to wave.
He looks away.
Jordan hasn’t spoken to me since that day in Sociology. He always comes in late and sits as far away from me as possible. I’m not quite sure what I did. I mean, I get we’re competitors now, but that doesn’t seem like a reason to treat me like a pariah. We could both end up here, and then what?
So maybe he isn’t mad. Maybe he isn’t anything.
That’s not only more likely; it almost seems worse, that he isn’t mad but just doesn’t care at all.
Which is fine, I guess. It gives me the chance to stay focused, to play my role perfectly.
I lose him as we pile on the bus, me sitting near the Pi Betas but still with the DTC guys.
“This is so much better than our house retreats,” a bottle blonde with a blue Pi Beta tank stretched across her white-bikini-clad, fake-tanned breasts tells her friend.
“I think we just went to get our nails done my year,” her brunette friend answers.
“Ugh, you are so lucky.” She flips her hair. “We sat in the house basement, where we had to recite some weird poem, and then we passed around a candle and told first-kiss stories.”
“Oh my God, I remember that!” a girl behind me yells. I turn instinctively. She has bright red hair and porcelain doll features.
A sorority with a white girl with brown hair, a white girl with red hair and a white girl with blond hair? Now that’s what I call diversity.
“Good thing we do ours after Rush,” the blonde says. “Otherwise I would have been, like, fuck this shit.”
The brunette nods in agreement.
The blonde turns toward me, leaning across her friend. “I’m sure yours will be a lot better.”
“I’ll make sure of that,” the redhead says. She pops up from her seat behind me and leans on the back of mine. “I’m Pledge Mom!”
Suddenly I’m surrounded by Greek letters and hair bows. The smell of tanning lotion and cheap beer is making me nauseous.
I open my mouth to explain, but the words elude me.
“Hey, I’m so sorry, cuz this is so rude of me, but what’s your name?” Blondie asks.
“Cassandra Davis. Cassie.” The words stumble out. I should explain I’m not pledging, but how do I?
“Cool! I’m Kelley, I’m the new president.” She splays a French-manicured hand over her heart. “My apologies, I’m still getting to know all our little babies.”
“Oh, I’m not a—”
“Oh! Are you the girl who transferred from the Cal Alpha chapter?” The redhead practically bounces up and down with every word. “I didn’t mean to call you a frosh.”
“My brother goes to Berkeley, too!” the brunette adds.
“No, I go here.”
Kelley nudges her friend. “Katie, don’t be rude.” She leans over her to me again. “Welcome! She just meant, like, you used to go there.”
“No, I’m a freshman, I’m just—”
Something changes in her eyes. The pageant sparkle drops out of them. �
�Wait, you are a Pi Beta pledge, right?”
“Uh, no.”
They look at each other, their heads turning exactly in sync, like they share one brain.
The blonde purses her lips and turns her head to the side. “Not to, you know—but, um, who invited you?”
“The guys,” I say. Not a lie. I was actually invited quite formally, with a letter slipped under my door.
The one behind me sits so quickly the cheap bus seat makes a weird swooshing sound.
The others shrink away from me, back into their own side of the aisle.
“Classic DTC—Warren girls aren’t hot enough for them,” the brunette tells Kelley.
Like I can’t hear them.
“Always on to the new blood.” Kelley cuts her eyes at me. “It happens every year with Rush. The upperclassmen always warn you, but the sophomores never listen. The events become all about the hot new girls, and the actives end up standing there like, hello, we’re still here. At least it used to be our littles, though. Now they’re just shipping in girls to fuck.”
Ew, ew, ew.
I want to defend myself but don’t even know where to begin. That I’m not trying to sleep with them. That I’m not even trying to be friends with them. That I’m just trying to exposed the fucked-up-ness of a system that has these girls saying stuff like that.
We used to be the whores of this frat, and now what are we? Just the madams?
So much for sisterhood.
They’re part of an organization that’s supposed to lift up women, not pit them against each other, and for what? To get the attention of some spoiled undergrad drunk off his ass and threatening to fight everything that moves, knowing Daddy can cover the legal fees?
I turn silently to face the front of the bus.
The doors finally close, and people start to pass the beer around. Some DTCs fiddle with the radio for a bit, struggling to get anything but static.
Music erupts from the speaker just as the overloaded bus lurches forward.
I chug beers and take shots of Fireball like a pro at eight in the morning as we head down the 101.
Someone yells something about shotgunning, and I stand up.
Someone else hands me a can of Natty.
“Does anyone have a key?” the guy in front of me asks. He has coifed hair and is wearing expensive brand names, even though we’re all dressed for the beach.
“Here, like this,” I say. I hold up my can and use my canine tooth to make a hole, just like Alex showed me once.
His eyes go wide like quarters. “Did anyone else see that?” he asks, turning around to address the crowd.
“Do it again!” he says, handing me his beer. I laugh, a feminine, sly laugh, not at all like my naturally loud, brash one.
I do it again, this time with an audience. After I bite it, I make the whole bigger with my thumb carefully so not to cut it, and then lick the beer off.
“Yes, that’s my Cassie! Killin’ it!” Marco yells from the front of the bus.
I blow him a kiss.
“All right, let’s do this,” I say, handing the boy his beer back.
I don’t need to look at the girls to know they’re seething. I catch myself smiling. God, their game is messed up, but it’s pretty damn thrilling to beat them at it.
The alcohol starts to go down easier, and soon we’re all standing and dancing, and the world is a swirling, beautiful, bright place. God, day drunk is the best.
The music cuts off in the middle of a song. Some people sit down; others just stand there, drunk and confused.
A skinny black guy in a Warren baseball cap stands at the front of the bus, a radio-style microphone in his hand.
“Aaaaattennnnntion, passengers. So, we’re currently experiencing some technical difficulties, by which I mean Carter tripped over the aux cord when he went to throw up in the trash can that he—” our unofficial cruise director looks down “—seems to have missed anyway. All right, cool. We’re working on getting the radio back, but in the meantime, this is DJ Chase coming at you. Here’s ‘Trap Queen.’”
And then he not only sings every single word, but also mimics all the little electronic sounds.
Everyone kind of looks at one another, and then there’s a silent agreement to roll with it.
We stand and dance again, and I can’t stop laughing at Chase imitating Fetty Wap’s voice, and how ridiculous and fun this shit show of a bus is.
They get the music back on after Chase’s fifteen minutes, and everyone claps as he stands on his seat and bows. The bus driver starts to yell at him in Spanish, and he sits down sheepishly.
The shotgunning guy turns around. “What’s your name again?”
“Cassie,” I say, over the music.
“Sebastian.” He shakes my hand.
“So how are you liking Pi Beta?”
I open my mouth to answer, but before I can, a shrieking sound rips through the bus. I turn around to see a member of Delta Tau Chi standing on his seat and urinating outside the window.
What he doesn’t seem to realize in his apparent bliss is that the pee is coming back in the window a few rows back and spraying on a couple of traumatized Pi Betas in a rainbow of ruined designer bikinis. They scramble out of their seats, squealing.
“OMG, Vivian, that’s your boyfriend! Do something!”
A petite blonde pushes through the aisle.
“The motherfucker’s interned for NASA. I can’t believe he doesn’t understand that his pee will catch the wind.”
The music cuts out, and Chase is back on the loudspeaker. “Attention, Mr. Harris, please sit down and refrain from urinating further until the bus has come to a complete stop.”
We finally arrive at the beach, and there actually is a lot of peeing in the bushes by the guys and, God bless, a few girls who squat in the parking lot.
The guys unload the kegs, and when someone says we forgot cups, I get a fabulous idea.
That’s how I end up doing a kegstand in a bikini as thirty people cheer me on and count (fifteen seconds, not bad for my first try) until I shake my head and am helped back to the ground, half laughing, half coughing.
I’m playing this role better than I ever thought I could.
And then something weird happens.
I realize I’m having real, genuine fun.
Chapter Nine
Rush Retreat leaves me hungover as shit for my first interview session.
I sit with my head in my hands in a room with cold metal walls and industrial lighting, and try to focus on not dying.
The room—“your home for the next year,” as Professor Price referred to it in her email—is empty save for a stark metal desk and a big window on the opposite wall, a one-way look into the room on the other side, where study participants will see only a mirror.
I drag a small recycling bin from the corner of the room to the desk, just in case. I’m really hoping I don’t throw up in this Nobel Prize winner’s trash can, though. Even if my hangover was acquired in the name of our project.
There is no part of the project proposal that specified Fireball shots, you idiot.
I can’t believe I actually thought that was fun yesterday. We laughed and laughed, but nothing was clever; nothing was actually funny. We weren’t friends. We were just people getting fucked up near each other.
The digital clock on the wall reads 10:02 a.m. We’re already almost an hour behind, and there’s probably still twenty minutes until we begin.
Outside, volunteers from Price’s class are having the subjects sign forms, taking down their information and lining them up in the order they’ll enter.
They’re being paid twenty dollars an hour, plus a free catered lunch.
Price stops by briefly to ask if I need anything before leaving to catch a plane and save the world.
Exhaling, I open my MacBook.
So far, when I log in to my project portal there are only my journal entries and my notes on the books and studies about frats Professor Price has been having me read. Technically, that’s all the Stevenson people wanted, but Price demanded funding for the interviews, because sneaking into one frat and having only their stories is not science, she said—it’s reality TV.
I like it because we can see what they actually do versus what they say in the interviews. It’s only a piece, but an important piece to develop a real picture of what these communities are like.
The idea is when the findings go public, people can read through my journal entries, with Price’s scientific findings and commentary interspersed or in a sidebar. Keep the human element up front, Madison says. But then use the facts to show this isn’t just me ranting, Price always qualifies.
I glance at the clock blinking on the edge of my screen. I may as well work on the Kardashian element while I wait for the science.
In her most recent email, Madison told me my updates so far were “totally fab!” but asked if I could write an introductory entry.
Introduction:
I, Cassandra Davis, an eighteen-year-old girl, a freshman at Warren University and self-declared ardent feminist, am about to join a frat.
I’m doing so with funding from the Stevenson Foundation in order to study the culture of fraternities, which have long been a bastion of the university system, but have also become a center of controversy in regard to diversity in sex, race, sexuality and socioeconomic status. My study will focus on sexism and the treatment of women by these groups.
The fraternity I have chosen is Delta Tau Chi, the oldest frat in existence at Warren. The chapter is currently under probation for creating a “hostile environment for women.” This is based on complaints last year about a party with a misogynistic theme.
But DTC has long been the center of the social scene on campus, and the incident has not altered that.