by Kiley Roache
No one says anything.
“Pledges, when I address you, you will respond, ‘Yes, sir.’ Now, did you understand the instructions?”
“Yes, sir!” everyone yells in unison.
I think I may have joined a cult.
Someone splashes my shorts as they approach. They untie my hands and place a can in my left and a key in my right.
“Go!”
I cut into my can and liquid sprays out at me. I shove the key in my waistband and raise the can to my mouth, holding it up with one hand while I fully open the top with the other.
Beer rushes into my mouth, and I chug as fast as I can. Around me, I hear cans splashing the water as pledges finish and spike them.
C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, Cassie.
Finally liquid stops flowing from my can.
Yes!
I throw it down and wait to hear someone after me, but there is only silence.
Fuck.
Multiple arms push me down, and my feet slip on the muddy bottom. I’m under for only a second before they pull me back up by my armpits.
I lick my lips; the water isn’t salty. I stifle a laugh. There’s no way this is anything but the lake behind the DTC house.
I cough, but before I can catch my breath, another can is being placed in my hand.
“Again!”
I reach for the key, but my fingers feel only the damp fabric of my waistband.
Panic spreads through me. I grope for it, wishing I could take off my blindfold and look. But there’s nothing there; it must have fallen out when they dunked me.
“Fuck.”
Thinking fast, I lift the can to my mouth and bite down with my canine tooth. Luckily the can is flimsy and collapses immediately under the strength of my jaw.
Yes!
“Fuck yes, Davis! That was badass!” someone yells from the beach.
I make the hole bigger with my thumb and finally shotgun. I’m better this time. But of course my late start means I’m behind everyone else.
They dunk me again.
And again we shotgun.
This time I’m ready to bite it right away, but I cut my thumb making the hole bigger.
Which is fine. I’m shivering badly now, but I’ve gotten used to the water enough that I won’t mind going under.
But this time they don’t just push me under. They hold me there, pressing down on my head. I want to scream, but I’m already out of air, and anyway, there’s no one to hear me under the water. My lungs burn, and I start to count: twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two...
I try to remember how long humans can survive without oxygen.
I reach up for the hand holding down my head, scratching with my nails. I think I may pass out when they finally pull me up.
I start to fall forward, but hands hold me up.
“That’s three times in a row, pledge! What do you have to say for yourself?” The yeller is right in front of me, like a drill sergeant. I can feel his breath on my face.
I turn and spit, because there’s lake water in my mouth, but also because I like the effect.
I smile like this is all just good fun to me, not verging on torture. “I don’t know. I guess girls just take longer to finish.”
A murmur spreads through the pledges. No one laughs at my joke, and I guess the sound of a feminine voice has shocked them even more than the words I said.
“No talking back, pledge.” He barely finishes speaking before I’m underwater again.
But this time is shorter.
When I come back up there are a bunch of voices speaking in the line.
“A girl?”
“Is that allowed?”
“Is it some sort of prank?”
“A pledging thing?”
“No talking, pledges! Again!”
I shotgun immediately, but a few people are still whispering about the shock of hearing my voice.
Which is just enough delay for me to break my losing streak.
I hear the splash, and then more yelling. “You lost to a girl, pledge! How does that feel? She’s like five feet tall! Get yourself together!”
We go again, then again.
After six I hear someone throw up in the lake we’re all standing in.
I try to push away the image so I don’t throw up myself.
After eight, I finally hear Peter’s voice say, “All right, let’s bring it in.”
“Take off your blindfolds,” the drill sergeant says.
I reach up and pull mine away. It’s light out now, and I have to blink a few times before my eyes adjust. I was right; we’re standing knee-deep in the campus lake, staring at the house.
“Welcome to DTC, gentlemen,” Peter says from the hill. “And, uh, lady.”
The boy from the bus—Sebastian I think—stands in the water with us. So he was the dunking drill sergeant. “That’s all. You can go now, pledges, but be at the house at eight o’clock tonight.”
I can already tell they’ll have a good cop–bad cop thing going.
“And try not to be belligerent in your classes,” Peter says.
The actives turn to leave, and the pledges visibly relax. People clump together into groups of three or four or five, chatting and laughing.
Except for me.
This is supposed to be the time when we forge friendships over the shared pain. Where the strong bonds of common struggle are forged or whatever.
And I’m sure that’s true for the rest of them. They pat each other on the back. Tell each other they did well if they’re dry. Or they’ll be fine if they’re soaked.
Or laugh about how crazy fun that almost-torture was.
Or, of course, talk about the crazy girl pledge.
No one addresses me; they just speak about me.
They stare at the girl in the clingy wet tank top.
The girl in the frat.
I decide not to hang around. After picking up a few floating beer cans on my way out of the lake, I climb the hill silently.
As I reach the top, I turn back around for a second. The rest of my pledge class, a group of thirty or so athletic-looking, mostly white guys, is still having a good ol’ time.
I make eye contact with Jordan.
Who is staring at me like the rest of them.
I turn back around and head home.
Chapter Thirteen
My mind is swimming as I walk back to the dorm. I kneel on the cold tile floor of the hall bathroom and make myself throw up three times. The online alcohol education class we took said throwing up won’t always sober you up, depending on how much you’ve already absorbed, but I’m hoping this will at least help me not get worse.
There’s no way my body will be able to handle as much alcohol as the guys, some of whom are twice my size.
I drag myself back to my room and climb into bed. I really didn’t want to miss my gender studies class today. We’re talking about educational disparities between boys and girls around the world, and I’ve read the guest lecturer’s book three times. But I can’t exactly show up drunk.
I lie in bed, watching stand-up on Netflix and eating snacks. I try to chug water to fend off the hangover I know is imminent.
Around the time I finish the collective works of Aziz Ansari and switch to Sarah Silverman, Leighton comes home.
“You joined a frat?” she says before she’s even in the door.
I pause my computer but don’t look away. “Yeah.”
She doesn’t say anything for a long minute, and I start to wonder when it’s socially acceptable to hit Play.
“Are you a lesbian?”
“What? No.”
“Good, I put on my room application that I wouldn’t live with one of those. Like, looking at me naked and shit.”
This girl is ridiculous. I open my mouth to explain how absolutely fucked up that thought is, how it’s homophobic and unacceptable. How it would be ignorant from someone raised in the Deep South, but is appalling and inexcusable from someone raised in the most liberal places in America and Europe. Someone who’s attended world-class institutions and given every reason to not be an effing bigot.
But I’m too tired.
“That’s nice, Leighton.” I close my computer. “Can you turn the light down?”
She clicks off the overhead and switches on her laptop.
“Are you hungover?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s four in the afternoon.”
“Yeah, well, I got drunk at five this morning.”
She laughs. “I want to be in a frat.”
“You’d love it,” I say, my voice empty. This conversation needs to end.
“Maybe I can come hang out with you sometime.”
I think of the first week, when she would leave to hang out with her friends and act like I didn’t exist. Of every day but these last two, when our conversations wouldn’t last beyond five words.
“Knock yourself out.”
She rummages around the room for a bit, changing into workout clothes.
“Also you should know you’re all over Twitter,” she says. The door slams.
I reach for my phone, quickly sign into Twitter, and, sure enough, she’s right.
It doesn’t seem like anyone has figured out who I am, but word has definitely spread about the girl who was rolled out for DTC.
I use different search terms, like “girl in frat,” “chick in frat,” “DTC Warren,” and have no trouble finding comments about me.
The tweets range from the simple:
Heard there was a chick in a frat?
Who’s the bitch who rushed DTC?
To the supportive:
You go girl #girlindtc
Way to teach those guys to stop being so exclusive! #girlindtc
Remember that our sex represents 1/100 of the most funded club on campus, but it’s a good start. Way to go, whoever you are. #girlindtc
To the cruel:
I didn’t get a bid, but I guess I didn’t show off the right ASSets.
Didn’t know we were literally supposed to suck dick for a bid.
THAT WHOLE HOUSE IS GETTING LAID! We should’ve let girls rush years ago.
That rush room debate must have been hard. Most guys get one word: nice, cool, or fun. She probably got 3: tits, ass, pussy. Smh #chickindtc
Basically my timeline looks like “Greek letter vagina what?! Man and woman friends?! It hurts my caveman brain.”
I refresh the page. The lovely football player from down the hall has tweeted.
#girlindtc lives down the hall from me. Her name is Cassie Davis
Thanks, man. And thus the last few minutes of my normal college experience ended.
People are even less polite on the anonymous forums.
On Yik Yak my name goes from “girl” and “chick” to “whore,” “bitch” and “dyke.” People think I used my femininity to get in, or that I lack it completely.
I scroll through, dizzy. It takes up 90 percent of the feed, the rest being recycled internet jokes from people seeking easy up votes. When it comes to the buzz around campus, it’s just me, me, me.
There’s one comment that sticks with me even more than the cruel ones. It’s from a woman.
It’s great to see fraternities taking a more inclusive turn, but I worry that they’ll use ‘but we let a girl in!’ as their defense for ridiculous/sexist behavior in the future.
Then she links to a tweet from the official DTC account talking about how it has taken “the historic step” of being the first fraternity to admit women. Acting like this is Seneca Falls, when all they’re doing is letting me play beer pong with them.
I wish I could comment back to this girl, tell her I’m not their tool. That I’m not going to naively be their puppet, that I’m going to take them down from the inside.
I set down my phone, having read quite enough for today. Quite enough for a lifetime. I feel like people will be camped outside my door soon, like on TV when there’s a scandal and you see the reporters crowding all exits, hoping to catch a glimpse of their quarry, who’s hiding out from the cacophony of voices and blinding flashbulbs.
But there’s no one outside my door. My generation is made up of strictly digital vultures.
I wake up to my phone buzzing.
A: You’ve gone mainstream!
The text is accompanied by a link to the website of America Weekly, one of the most popular magazines in the world. I click on it:
Amid rising controversy among fraternity systems about hazing, discrimination and sexual harassment on campuses across the country, one school is making headlines for a very different reason. Delta Tau Chi fraternity, which made headlines last year when an investigation was opened into the environment they create for female students, has just accepted the first female pledge to an American fraternity.
It’s so surreal, I can’t keep reading. I am literally in the news. I scan down and see my name, followed by the words “was unable to be reached for comment.”
Shit.
I check my email, and sure enough: America Weekly, Huff Post, Buzzfeed, Seventeen, NBC, Jezebel, Fox News, Maxim. Maxim?
I close my eyes and breathe deeply. I should run any comment by Professor Price and Madison Macey first, to avoid compromising the integrity of my project or losing my scholarship.
I’m drafting a joint email to them both when I get a second text from Alex.
A: You’ve gone international!
BBC had apparently picked up the story.
I let out an involuntary kind of growling sound and text her back quickly.
Me: this is not funny
A: of course it is
A: and it’s exactly what we wanted to happen right?
Right.
I’m staring at my phone, waiting for an email from Professor Price or Madison Macey to come in, when an email from someone else pops up.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Fame
Yoooooo
Pledge, you are famous!
remember when talking to our friends in the press that we don’t haze or engage in underage drinking
speaking of...
Just wanted to give you a heads-up for tonight
Wear a sports bra and like full panties (idk what they are called, but like the opposite of a thong)
You’ll thank me later
Don’t tell anyone I sent you this
Tell kathie lee and hoda I say hey
—P
What the hell have I gotten myself into?
Before I have time to consider this, the next email comes through.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: No comment to the press yet
Don’t say anything yet. Stevenson people will want you to, but the project, not the buzz around the project, comes first.
I nod, even though she can’t see me.
I type back. Will do, thank you.
Turning off my phone, I set it on my desk before leaving for the house (with a sports bra and spandex on under my tank and yoga pants, which is a little bulky, to be honest).
I walk down the hall and see that Jackie’s door is open; she’s sitting at her desk working. Behind her the postcard wall is finished and looks absolutely dazzling.
“Hey, girl,” I say as usual as I walk by.
She doesn’t respond, and I assume she didn’t hear me, which is fine. I’m gonna be late anyway.
I’m almost to the stairs
when her voice echoes down the hallway.
“You’re pledging a frat?”
I turn around. “Yeah.”
“Why? To make a point?”
I take a deep breath. “No, for real.”
She scrunches up her face. “Then why?”
“I, uh, tend to get along with guys better,” I say, just as I’d planned and rehearsed for moments like this. “Girls are too much drama.”
I avoid her eyes. The words don’t sound like mine.
“That’s some shit, Cassie.” She exhales. “That’s some internalized misogynistic shit.”
“What?”
“I’m gonna lose my only friend on the hall because she wants to go live with the most sexist human beings on campus?”
“You’re not losing me.” I’ll only be three blocks away, and I’ll come back—as much as my class and pledging schedule allow anyway.
“You’re right. I’m not losing you. I never had you. You weren’t the person I thought you were.”
She closes the door, disappearing into a million faraway cities, while I’m left in the blank-walled hallway.
It’s hard enough to see strangers hate you on a screen, but that was nothing compared with this.
Chapter Fourteen
For the first time I arrive to the house by the lake to find the door closed. There are no welcoming people on the lawn or the balcony. There’s no music spilling out from open windows; in fact, the windows are all closed and covered with blinds, curtains or, in some cases, what seems to be tinfoil.
If it wasn’t for the bigger-than-I-am Greek letters still above the door, I would’ve thought they had packed up and moved away.
The rest of my pledge class is waiting on the porch, some sitting on the steps looking bored, others pacing, even more scrolling through their phones.
I don’t see Jordan. In fact, the only one I know by name is my friend from down the hall.
A few guys nod as I approach, and one even says a quiet “hey.”
Duncan doesn’t look at me.
“Thanks for the tweet, man,” I say.
“Hey, you can’t pull a stunt like this and then resent the attention.”