“Wake up, bitch! Wake up!”
I roll over, groggy. Although I usually don’t like to respond to derogatory names, the voice is so loud I don’t really have a choice. It’s coming from down the hall, and probably not directed at me, but still...
I’m reminded of when my little cousins used to say, “Hey, stupid!” and then laugh for ages when I’d turn around.
I sit up. The room is still dark; no light is coming through the windows yet.
“What the fuck?” Leighton says.
I reach for my phone and click the clock button: 4:30 a.m.
Leighton’s lamp clicks, and light pools into the room.
She pushes her sleeping mask up into her disheveled blond hair and looks at me with dazed eyes.
“Pledge! Pledge! Pledge!” The chanting continues down the hall.
“Ugh, oh my God, it’s the goddamn frats rolling people out,” she says.
“Rolling what?”
“C’mon, Morris, let’s gooooo!”
So it’s the football player down the hall. My stomach turns to knots. What if I haven’t been chosen for a frat? My life is so weird now.
“Oh my God, I forgot you didn’t know anyone in a frat here,” Leighton says, sliding out of bed. “When clubs and shit pick you for membership, they sneak into your dorm and wake you up superearly and kind of kidnap you.”
She walks over to our sink, getting herself a glass of water. “If it’s, like, chess club, they’ll come at eight and then just take you to get doughnuts or something, but the band wakes people up at four and then makes them take shots and run naked through campus. I hear the lit clubs make you go to class on acid.”
“What do frats do?”
She shrugs, yawning. “How the hell should I know? Do I look like I have a dick?”
Just then there’s a quiet knock at the door.
“Hello?” I say.
Leighton looks confused but reaches to unlock the door anyway, opening it slowly.
“Um, Cassie?” Marco peeks his head through the door.
“Yeah?”
He lets out a sigh of relief and steps farther into the room so he can actually see me.
“I’m, uh, supposed to roll you out. Put on your shoes and let’s go!” He says the second part a little louder, like he’s remembering how this is supposed to go.
I climb out of bed, looking around until I find my Converses under my desk. Leighton gapes at me, then at him, her properly raised, sorority girl socialite brain short-circuiting.
Marco stands there in the middle of my room, avoiding looking at me, taking in my pink bedding and Christmas lights as I slip on my shoes.
My face warms as I realize I’m wearing only booty shorts with “Warren” across the ass and a thin tank top with nothing underneath.
“Okay.” I look up. “I...also need to put on a bra.”
“Oh, uh, okay. I’ll—” He kind of spins awkwardly in a circle. “I’ll wait outside.”
He disappears into the hall, closing the door behind him.
I quickly root through my drawers for a simple nude bra, slipping it on under my shirt.
“What—what the—what was that?” Leighton stutters.
I readjust my shirt and turn around. “I’ll explain later. See ya!”
As soon as I’m out the door, Marco pushes me forward. “Let’s go!”
And that’s how the weirdest rollout in DTC history happened.
I stay tight on Marco’s heels as he runs down the three flights of stairs to the lobby of my dorm.
When we arrive, Morris is standing there in plaid boxers and flip-flops, along with three more actives I don’t recognize.
“Let’s go, pledge—let’s go!” one of them yells at me.
I pick up the pace but can’t help smiling.
They have us stand on the lawn in front of the dorm.
“Turn around!”
We face the building.
The world goes dark as one of the actives pulls a blindfold over my eyes. He grabs my arms like he’s planning to handcuff me and ties my hands behind my back.
The rope digs into my wrists as they spin me by my shoulders and then start leading me forward.
“Shit!”
I hear the unmistakable sound of someone hitting the ground.
“Get him up,” one of the actives growls.
“Uh, you need to step down here,” the active leading me says.
I step off the curb carefully.
“Someone call Peter and tell him we’re ready,” the same voice, clearly the leader, says.
Ready for what? I know it’s not worth asking. They won’t tell us.
I shiver.
Here’s the thing no one tells you about California, especially drought-ridden California: it’s like a desert, even the parts that aren’t technically deserts. Sure, it reaches a nice seventy degrees every day, and we shouldn’t complain. But that doesn’t mean it won’t get as cold as, say, forty degrees, at, I don’t know, four thirty in the fucking morning. Which, when you’re in shorts and a tank, is pretty damn cold.
Finally I hear a car approaching. The engine still running, it stops in front of us, the smell of burning gasoline mixing with the damp, cool smell of morning before the dawn.
I hear the sound of car doors opening, and then someone picks me up, carries me a few feet and throws me into what can only be the back of a van.
I’m lying on the floor—there doesn’t seem to be seats back here—and I can hear and feel other people already here.
Someone lands next to me with a considerable thud. Has to be Morris. It probably took all four of the actives to lift him.
The doors slam and the car takes off, screaming down the street as AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” blasts louder than I ever thought could be possible.
And let me just say that I’ve been to rock concerts and a number of raves with Alex and thought the volume was totally fine. I am eighteen, not eighty, and I do not complain about loud music.
But this is loud.
Whoever is driving is definitely speeding and likes to take turns hard, causing all of us to shift around, bumping into one another.
“Who else is here?” I don’t know if they hear me, and if they reply I can’t hear them over Brian Johnson’s vocals.
The song ends...and starts again.
Oh my God. Where are they taking us? And exactly how many four-minute intervals away is it?
The third time it’s annoying.
The sixth time I want to claw out my eardrums (but alas, my hands are tied).
The eighth time I’m singing along to every word.
When we finally stop they’ve played the song easily ten times. The music cuts off and leaves my ears ringing.
I hear the door open and then, “Let’s go, pledge bitches!”
People start to push. I sit up and scooch forward on my butt till my feet are over the edge. I hop out, and my feet crunch on gravel. I sway for a second, then steady myself.
“Hurry the fuck up!”
I walk forward carefully, and someone bumps into my back, almost making me fall.
Actives are yelling at us, helpful guidance ranging from “Turn right and walk straight!” to “Follow the sound of the footsteps of the pledge bitch in front of you.” Oh, and then there’s my favorite: “Don’t fall, you asshole!”
The eternally helpful list of every vulgar insult in the English language continues.
We walk forward onto grass, which becomes progressively thicker, until the grass ends and I’m pretty sure we’re in a forest of some sort. Branches scratch my legs, and I pray I don’t walk into a tree. The ground starts to slant downward.
And then I hear a splashing sound.
Where the hell are we? We easily could’ve driven the thirty-plus minutes to Half Moon Bay, but that’s developed, I doubt there would be much forest. I guess we could be by a lake, but I can’t think of one that’s close enough, at least not in this drought. I mean, except for...
Oh my God. It occurs to me that we might still be on campus. That they may just have driven us in circles for forty minutes, blasting that godforsaken song.
Those insane geniuses.
“In the water!” someone yells.
We walk forward without question. What if they don’t tell us to stop? What if this is some sort of bizarre human sacrifice?
“Stop!” someone yells when I’m up to my knees in icy water. “Turn around.”
I do.
“All right, pledges! In a minute an active will hand you a beer and a key. When I say go, you must shotgun your beer. The last to finish goes for a swim. If you start early or take off your blindfold, you go for a swim. If you talk back, you go for a swim. Getting the picture?”
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.