“Pledging’s over, bitchesss!” Duncan is already celebrating when I drag my suitcases through the door.
With a semester of setting up for parties and shot lists behind us, and some of my fellow pledges’ academic probations smoothed over by calls from daddy offering multifigure donations, it’s almost time for us to be initiated as full members of the Delta Tau Chi Order.
“Cass!” Duncan pulls me into a hug, and my feet completely leave the ground. “Let me get that,” he says as he sets me down.
He picks up my biggest suitcase like it’s inflated with air and not stuffed with half of everything I own.
We make our way up the stairs, and he recounts his short visit home to see his mom, “my favorite person in the world, and her cooking... OMG, Cass, you would die” and his weeks of practice and team bonding.
We reach the top of the stairs, and he sets my bag down in my room.
“Damn.” He crosses his arms in front of his chest. “We made it. Hell is over, now it’s time for everyone to party.”
“Mind if I sit here?” Peter asks at lunch.
Less than half the house is already back, so there are tons of seats, including near other seniors. Our table is mostly freshmen.
“Sure.” Bambi slides down, leaving space between him and me on the bench.
Peter sits down with a mountain of food.
“Hi,” I say.
He nods. “Are y’all excited for initiation?” Peter asks.
Everyone mumbles something in the affirmative, afraid this may be a trick question that will cost them their bid in the eleventh hour.
“How about you, Cassie?” He stares at me as he reaches for his drink.
“Um, yeah, for sure. A bit nervous, though.”
“Yeah, I would be nervous, too, if I were you.”
Um...
I push my food around my plate and chew over the words I finally risk saying. “Like me especially...?”
“Yeah, you especially.” He looks at me like I should know what he is talking about. “I mean, nationals approved you getting a bid, but we still have to vote on whether the use of male pronouns in the bylaws means you can’t be initiated.”
What?
I cough, trying not to spit water all over the table. “Um, no one told me about that.”
“Really?”
Yeah. I think I’d remember that. “Mmm-hmm.”
“Well...” He cuts his food. “I’m just saying. Keep your head down.” He takes a bite, but that doesn’t stop him from talking. “You upset someone, you might not be living here next week.”
So the upperclassmen get to vote on my fate. Fabulous. And with the president vaguely threatening me before the vote begins, my chances are looking just peachy.
The kitchen door swings open, slamming into the wall and interrupting my thoughts.
“Game tonight,” Marco says, charging through the room, throwing tickets down on the tables.
“Weren’t both football and basketball last semester?” I ask. I didn’t go to the games, but I remember the emails about tailgates and student sections.
“It’s tennis,” Bambi says as he examines one of the tickets. “He means match.”
“Two of our brothers are on the team,” Peter says. “The soccer guys had the idea to try to bring out support for the less attended sports.”
I try to mask my reaction to the soccer guys. Or, really, my reaction to one particular soccer guy. The team had an out-of-town scrimmage this weekend and haven’t gotten back yet. I’m trying not to let myself think about him, at least until I see him and figure out, well, what exactly there is to think about.
“Marco’s trying to make a whole event out of it,” Bambi continues. “Putting it in the social calendar, inviting KAD and everything.”
Great. KAD.
Kappa Alpha Delta.
The “top sorority,” according to Greek Rank dot com and Total Frat Move dot com.
Known on campus as the home of walking, talking, almost-thinking Barbie dolls, not to mention my great friend and ex-roommate Leighton.
Just the setting I want to be in when I see Jordan again.
All afternoon, I debate whether or not I should go. I put on makeup and my cutest Warren T-shirt. I pace my room and check my phone obsessively. No texts from Jordan, probably because he’s still on a plane.
I watch them leave, hauling beer and chanting, from my window. Five minutes later, I grab my keys and head toward the stadium.
Warren is one of the few schools in the country that invests almost equally in all its sports. They’ve built a beautiful tennis stadium with five courts and the names of alumni Olympians engraved before the grand entrance. Filling such a stadium is another matter, though.
I hear cheers from inside as I wait behind a woman in a big white hat to get my ticket scanned. My vision wanders from the entrance.
Next to the stadium is a beautiful oak tree. The kind where the branches split apart after a few feet, creating a flat ledge perfect for a tree house. Or, in this case, for perching a thirty-rack of Natty Light.
Oh my God.
“Enjoy the match.” The red-vested ticket guy smiles at me.
I walk past him, speechless, still thinking of that thirty-rack that they’ve stowed so shamelessly. I make my way to the top of the stands. Below, there are two simultaneous matches going on, but the stands are less than half full. Up here the seats are littered with parents towing kids with Palo Alto grade school sweatshirts and iPads, and old people, the men in khakis and polos, the women in sundresses and hats like they’re at the Kentucky Derby.
And then there are my people. Reclining in their seats, their feet up on the row in front of them. Half of them shirtless, AWRREN spelled out, or I guess, misspelled out, in smeared body paint on their chests.
Mixed in with the guys, sitting in clusters of three and four, are the sisters of Kappa Alpha Delta, all wearing crop tops and short skirts in a variety of colors.
I walk to the end of the aisle and down a few rows.
“Hey,” I say to Duncan.
“Hi!” He looks up at me, eyes bright. “Saved you a seat.” He moves his sweatshirt off the chair next to him.
“Oh, um...” I scan the group around us, looking for a certain smile, a certain pair of brown eyes. “Thanks,” I say as I collapse into the chair.
But he’s already turned back to the game. Match. “Aw, c’mon, ref!” He gestures so aggressively, I flinch, worried I’ll be knocked over. “Bullshit! Flag!”
I turn to him. “Are there flags in tennis?”
He shrugs. “No idea. Never watched it before.”
“Ah.” I nod. “Hey, outside—”
“Beer tree?”
“Yeah, is that—”
“Yep. Ours.” He chuckles. “It certainly isn’t the Golden Girls’.” He nods to a group of old, pastel-clad women a few rows down. “Want one?”
“Sure,” I say.
I expect him to reach in a pocket, or ask one of the guys to run outside and grab a few more, but he just turns to the seat on the other side of him. “Bambi, beer.”
Bambi nods and turns around so that Duncan can reach into the hood of his sweatshirt. He pulls out a silver can and hands it to me.
I laugh and pop the top.
* * *
One of the matches ends and new players take the court. One of them looks vaguely familiar.
One of the upperclassmen stands up and yells, “That’s Dave!”
“Dave, Dave, Dave, Dave, Dave!” they all chant.
The boy looks up and smiles.
Dave’s opponent, a scrawny blond with a menacing look on his face, who can only be described as a white-polo-wearing Draco Malfoy, is less amused.
Dave and Malfoy shake hands over the net, the latter avoiding eye contact, before moving to their respective sides.
Malfoy bounces the ball on the ground twice before shifting into his serving stance, at which point our entire section starts yelling uncontrollably and banging on the plastic seats, like you might do at a basketball game to distract the opponent during a free throw.
The ball goes screaming out of bounds.
The ref moves to the edge of the court closest to our section and calls up to us, “Men, I’m going to have to ask you not to yell during a serve.”
“Yes, sir, of course,” Peter yells back down to the ref. He adds his politician wave.
Dave serves, and Malfoy volleys it back with a loud “Huh!”
Duncan’s eyes light up. He leans forward and says something to the shirtless pals. Dave scores a point, and everyone goes mad.
This time everyone is respectfully quiet for Malfoy’s serve. It lands inbounds, and Dave volleys it back smoothly. Malfoy sends it back, with his signature, “Huh!”
As Dave sprints toward the ball, every member of the California Beta chapter of Delta Tau Chi, barring myself and an upperclassman with a W on his chest who seems to have passed out, stands up and yells, “Huh!”
Malfoy’s eyes go immediately to the stands as the ball bounces twice before rolling past him.
He turns to the referee, who just shrugs.
“You guys are unbelievable,” I say.
Duncan beams.
I find myself smiling and laughing, and almost forget about Jordan. And that’s when I see him. Standing in the aisle at the other end of the row, his eyes searching our group.
He has a day or two’s worth of scruff on his face. Just a shadow, sexy in a Dr. McDreamy way. His eyes are red-rimmed, and his white button-down is disheveled.
But damn, he’s hot.
He’s close enough to speak to, but far enough that everyone else will hear, too.
Through the crowd our eyes meet, and I want to walk over, to talk to him, to say something, anything. But what can I say?
“Jordan, oh my God! I missed you so much over break!”
Well, I guess I could have said that. One of the sorority girls, a bottle blonde wearing a blue halter top, practically jumps out of her seat halfway between us and throws two fake-tanned arms around him. He stumbles backward, breaking eye contact with me.
My stomach plummets.
And it’s funny in the kind of way that makes me want to cry. Because of course he wasn’t really looking at me; he was looking at her.
It was all in my head, this idea that there’s something besides friendship between us. And that returning to school meant we could figure out exactly what that is.
He wanted me when he was alone on campus and bored, willing to talk to the girl with the embarrassing crush on him.
But with everyone back on campus, with a different gaggle of sorority girls parading themselves in front of him every night, with all the girls who swoon at the words varsity sport, why the hell would he pick me?
In seconds he’s overwhelmed with people welcoming him, hugging him, pulling him into a seat and asking him questions.
He looks over his shoulder and waves to me weakly, mouthing something I can’t make out. Or at least, I think he’s waving at me, but maybe that’s just what I want to see.
“Hey! Cassie!”
“What?” I turn to Duncan, eyes wide.
“I said, did you see that play, the way Dave dove?”
“Uh, no.” I shake my head. “Sorry, I was...”
Blue-halter-top girl tilts her head as she laughs at something Jordan says, smiling her stupid toothpaste-commercial smile.
“You’re being so weird. You okay?”
“I, uh, yeah, I’m fine.” I set my beer in a cup holder. “Excuse me for a second.”
I head up the aisle, past the food vendors and families lined up for overpriced hot dogs, trying not to look in Jordan’s direction. I barely make it to the bathroom before the first tear slides down my face. Grabbing toilet paper from the nearest stall, I dab my eyes, then check my makeup in the mirror.
What the fuck am I doing, crying about a guy I could never have anyway? A guy who could get me kicked out of the frat, ruin my project before I’ve even been here a year.
The door swings open, and a group of girls comes giggling in. Two of them, a pale redhead and a dark-skinned girl, shuffle around me to stare at themselves in the mirror.
But the blonde stops in her tracks.
“Oh my God, Cassie!” Leighton flashes me a warm and possibly not fake smile and pulls me into a hug.
“Hey there.” I extract myself carefully.
“Lizzie, Aisha, this is Cassie. She used to be my roommate.”
They wave and smile.
“Nice to meet you.” I struggle to sound interested.
“I’ve missed you!” Leighton’s ponytail bounces. “We never see you at any of our events.”
“Yeah, well, sororities aren’t really my speed.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s just a lot of...” I raise my eyebrows. “You know, like the whole wear-pink-and-monograms-and-search-for-a-husband-to-pop-out-kids thing.”
One of the girls doing her makeup turns around and gapes at me, lipstick halfway to her mouth.
I eye the door over Leighton’s shoulder.
“Is that really what you think we’re all about?” Leighton asks.
Yes. “No. Well, I mean...”
“God, and you call yourself a feminist.”
Yeah, I do, and that’s why I’m not in a sorority. “Leighton, you were the one who thought feminism was ‘not a good look.’”
“That was the first week of school, Cassie. I’m not allowed to learn something in college?”
I step back. “I guess. It’s just—”
“Seriously. It’s a group of women who support each other.”
That’s rich. I close my eyes and bring my hand to my forehead. “Oh, please, it’s a group of women who support each other in blowing frat boys and drinking wine coolers. No, I take that back, they blow frat boys and drink wine coolers, and then judge their sisters for doing the same thing.”
Now all eyes are on me.
“We promote female friendship and create a career network for women after they graduate.” Leighton tallies the points on her manicured fingers. “Not to mention that we were started by women who felt it was unjust that they couldn’t be part of men’s secret societies, aka fraternities.” She says the last word like it’s a swear.
“And yeah, I like to wear pink. And yeah, I want to bake cookies. And maybe I don’t want to manage a hedge fund—maybe I want to raise kids. But I want those things because I want those things, Cassandra, not because I was told I had to by society or whatever. These are my friends.” She gestures to the two other girls. “I like to do this stuff with them. And I think us doing this stuff, despite people like you thinking that a group of women and their interests must be inherently vapid and shallow, is kind of the most feminist thing we could be doing.”
She turns to her friends. “Wanna go back?”
Lizzie nods.
“Yeah,” Aisha says. She drops her lipstick back into her purse and turns around. “Actually, no. I have something to say, as well.” She sighs. “I am sooo sick of you and your white feminism bullshit. You’ve become synonymous with the women’s movement on campus. Because, poor baby, it’s so hard for a girl to join a frat. But do you know what happens to black girls that try to join Greek Life? There are houses on university campuses in the South with portraits of Robert E. Lee over the fireplace and cannons pointed north. Even here, there are girls at Rush who say, ‘Yeah she was great, but she’s black.’ In front of me, they say that. We’re still trying to break through to sororities, and you have to play oppressed by joining a frat?” She sneers. “Fuck off. There are plenty of barriers all sorts of women face just trying to live, not while putting themselves in such an artificial situation. Why the hell aren’t you talking about them instead of pulling this shit?” She pauses, but I have no answer. “You can do all the beer bongs and plastic bottle shots you want, but you are not my feminist hero.” She turns and walks out, her friends following closely.
The door swings shut behind them, and I’m left alone in the bathroom. Astonished. I’m not mad...well, definitely not at them, maybe a little at myself. Okay, maybe a lot at myself.
They were just so right. And now I’m so confused. I’ve been calling myself a crusader for women while viewing groups of them as one fake-blonde, Bachelorette-watching horde. What the hell is wrong with me?
I leave the bathroom but turn away from the crowd and instead head toward the exit sign. I practically sprint back to the house, Aisha’s and Leighton’s words running through my head all the way.
I click the lock on my door, run to my desk and pull out my computer.
C’mon, c’mon. I tap my foot as I wait for the Stevenson website to load. I sign in and start a new entry.
Entry 54:
In defense of sororities...
I type furiously, trying to get down everything that happened today, everything that I’ve seen over the last few months.
Ten pages later, I go downstairs to grab some food. I’m headed back to my room, when the front door swings open.
Jordan walks through, looking over his shoulder and laughing at something Duncan’s saying. Then he sees me and stops, the laughter falling from his face. Duncan stumbles into him, but Jordan doesn’t seem to notice.
I turn away and head up the stairs without a word.
“Cassie.”
I don’t turn around.
“Cassie!”
As I reach the landing, I risk a quick look and see him taking the stairs two at a time. Sighing, I turn and wait.
He grabs the railing to avoid running into me. “I’ve been looking for you. You left early.”
“Yeah.” I bite my lip and look beyond him to the photographs of classes past that line the staircase. “Uh, something came up.”
“Oh.” Then, “I’ve missed you.”
Like you miss a friend? Like you miss your little sister Or...? I don’t ask, of course.
“I missed you, too.” My voice sounds jittery, nervous. I clear my throat. “What’s up?”
He furrows his brow. “Nothing, really.”
“I mean, you said you were looking for me. I thought you wanted to say something.”
“Oh.” He smiles. “I wanted to do this.”
He steps forward, and before I can even process what’s happening, his lips are on mine and he’s kissing me again.
I push him away. “What, are you crazy?” I whisper-yell. “Didn’t you read the email? Someone might see!”
“No one’s here.”
I look around. He’s right.
“Oh.” This time I kiss him. His lips are soft, and this kiss is slower, more sensual. But a thought tugs at the back of my mind. I step back.
“Wait, I’m sorry, but I can’t. I just don’t understand. Before Christmas, you—you ran away.”
“Yeah, uh, sorry. I kinda panicked. I’d been crushing on you all year, and you looked so shocked and I—I don’t know. I didn’t know what to do.”
“Oh.”
He leans in again, but I hold up my hand.
“Okay, but wait, wait. I’m still confused.”
“Why?”
“If you had a crush on me, too, why didn’t you make a move anytime last quarter?”
“Crush on you, too? As in—”
“Answer the question, Louis.”
“Okay, okay.” He smiles. “I... I don’t know. I guess I was just nervous to do it. But, hey, I could ask you the same question. Aren’t you supposed to be this great crusader, going places women haven’t before? And you still think the guy has to make the first move?” He shakes his head in mock disappointment. I laugh and pull him into me.
His lips are soft against mine, and his hands explore my body, sliding over every curve and then pulling me into him. My own hands on his back, I pull him even closer, his hips to mine.
We break apart, our foreheads leaning against each other.
“Let’s get out of here,” I hear myself say between heavy breaths before I can even think.
“I don’t care where we go—I just want to keep kissing you.” He pecks me quickly on the lips.
Footsteps echo along the hall above us.
“Okay, that’s sweet and all, but can you move? Because I really don’t want to get caught.”
He nods. I push him playfully, and we laugh as we scurry up the stairs.
We almost run right into Bass as he heads down. “What are you pledges doing?”
“Just going to bed,” Jordan says. “Not together, we, uh, live next to each other.”
I look at him, trying to communicate with my eyes that if he says another word I will scream.
“You’re going to sleep?” Sebastian pulls back his sleeve to examine an expensive watch. “At seven?”
“Well, you know...” Jordan extends a hand to lean on the wall but misjudges the distance and stumbles forward. “Jet lag.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Sebastian studies us suspiciously.
I smile innocently. “Well, see you in the morning, Bass. Bye!”
I practically run the rest of the way up the stairs.
“What the hell was that?” I say as soon as the door to my room is closed.
“I’m really bad at lying.”
“Ya think?”
He shrugs.
“Ugh.” I press my hand to my forehead. “Well, now you can’t stay here.”
“Why?”
“Because you have roommates. Bass could threaten any of them to make them talk and probably will, because he’s obviously on our trail.”
“Okay, that’s fair.” He reaches toward me and takes my hand. “I’ll leave. But, Cassie?”
“Huh?”
“Can I kiss you one more time first?”
I smile and nod. He tugs my wrist, and I fall into him. His hand brushing under my jaw, he lifts my face to his and his lips meet mine.
And I know what he means. I don’t want this moment to end, either.
“Now I’ll leave.”
He kisses me again.
“Okay, now.”
He smiles and disappears out the door, and I’m left to replay the moment again and again.