Chapter 2 #2
We crunch uncomfortably on our cheese and crackers until Ele breaks the tension.
“Has anyone heard from Monroe?” she asks hesitantly.
Both Vivienne and I shake our heads.
“God, this is so fucked. You two heard the rumors, right?”
My head snaps up. “No! What rumors?”
“Should I light a cigarette for this?” Viv asks.
Ele scrunches her face. “You’re smoking again?”
“I don’t need your judgment,” Viv huffs, pulling another cigarette from her bag.
“At least go over to the window,” I point.
Viv flips her arms in resignation and waits to light her cigarette until she’s leaning halfway outside.
“What rumors?” I ask again.
“That it was Kieren,” Ele says.
“Of course it was Kieren,” I say, my face contorting into a disgusted grimace.
“He’s still here, right?” Vivienne asks from the window.
“You mean here as in not back in rehab or some mental institution where he fucking belongs?” I quip. “As far as I know.”
“Dude, what happened here last semester?” Ele asks rhetorically. “My parents bought me ten things of pepper spray and four tasers. They’re in one of those bags,” she says, motioning to her luggage sitting right inside the door. “I almost thought they wouldn’t let me come back.”
“They’re claiming they were suicides,” Viv adds.
“Who’s ‘they’?” I ask.
“The police.”
“The police don’t know shit,” I grumble. “Weren’t those two girls in sororities?” I ask.
“Both Tri Delt,” Ele comments. “One was a freshman, the other a sophomore, I think.”
“I know suicides happen here because Dornell is a fucking pressure cooker, but I refuse to believe that’s what happened to those two missing girls.”
“You never know what someone is going through,” Viv states.
“I know, but I just have this sickening feeling that whatever is going on with Monroe is somehow connected to these missing girls.”
“Listen, the world is fucked,” Ele states. “I saw my sorority Little a few weeks ago in Manhattan for coffee, and she said people are scared to be out alone at night. Like maybe this could be some serial killer.”
“I’m the worst big sister,” I lament, rubbing my forehead. “I haven’t spoken to my Little since before I went abroad.”
“What about Monroe’s Little, Kasey?” Viv asks. “Maybe the three of us should adopt her.”
It’s not a bad idea, I think, making a mental note to reach out to Kasey so she doesn’t feel abandoned.
It’s important for younger sorority members to have a Big Sister, someone they can lean on and ask for advice.
The situation with Kasey is unique because she’s technically Monroe’s Grand-Little, but Monroe’s Little transferred to UCLA at the end of her sophomore year, leaving Kasey without a Big.
Sorority lineages can be unnecessarily complicated, but suffice to say Kasey, now a sophomore and living in the sorority house, is adrift and in need of mentors.
“When did Jace get a motorcycle?” Viv sneers from the window. I spring to my feet with more eagerness and curiosity than I’d like to admit.
I peer over her shoulder, studying the crowd now formed outside Tommy O’s. Ele joins our cluster, wedging herself into the triangle of space between our shoulders.
“Isn’t it too early for the bars?” Ele comments.
“I guess people are getting a head start,” Viv responds. “Senior year and all,” she says, blowing out a puff of smoke.
The distinctive tattoos covering both arms are unmistakable.
For whatever reason, I’ve never met another Ivy League boy with as many tattoos as Jace.
Kieren has them, although Monroe said his tattoos are mostly on his chest and back, places where clothing can keep them hidden from Kieren’s grandfather, who apparently disapproves.
Jace just does not give a fuck. He once told me they were an act of defiance against his parents for making it clear that Jace’s brother, Reid, was the golden child and Jace was the unplanned fuck up.
He decided to lean wholeheartedly into his role as the black sheep of his family, much to his parents’ displeasure and his sickened delight.
Jace straddles the seat of a motorcycle wearing a tight black T-shirt and jeans. The small crowd outside Tommy O’s has all turned to stare as he removes his helmet.
“So, he became a walking thirst-trap,” Ele jeers.
“Such a fucking cliché,” I say through clenched teeth.
“You two still hate each other, right?” Viv asks.
“With every bone in my body,” I retort. Viv and Ele know I dated Jace our freshman year, and that our relationship ended badly.
Well, badly is an understatement. Viv, Ele and I didn’t become close until we lived together in the sorority house our sophomore year, but at that point, all I wanted to do was forget.
Only Monroe knows what really happened because she was there, holding my hand, when I shattered into pieces.
Judging by Jace’s continued wrath for me over the past two years, he never learned the truth either, which is fine by me. It’s better that our hate remains mutual. In some ways, it makes it easier.
Jace saunters up to the front of the line, cradling his helmet under one arm, and gives the bouncer some obnoxious bro handshake.
It happens in an instant, but I see it – we all see it.
His eyes flick up to the windowsill where the three of us stand gawking, his stoic expression unreadable, and then, without any acknowledgement whatsoever, he turns to disappear inside.
“Gabi,” Ele pokes a finger into my side.
“What?” I snap, turning my head.
She gives me a knowing look.
“You stopped breathing.”
“Goddammit, I fucking hate this!” I yell, flinging my eyeliner pencil into the sink hard enough to leave black smudges on the porcelain.
“What’s wrong?” Ele shouts from her adjacent bedroom.
I white-knuckle the edges of the countertop as I fight back tears. When I don’t answer, Ele snakes her head around the doorframe to check on me.
“Shit, Gabi,” she soothes. “Hey, we don’t have to go out.”
“No, we do. It’s the first night of our senior year, and… she would want us to go out… if she were here.” I clench my jaw in anguish as tears streak down my cheeks, and my shoulders shake.
“Ele’s right,” Vivienne says, joining my meltdown. “We don’t need to go out.”
“Yes, we do,” I growl, pounding my fist against the sink.
“Okay, well, we don’t need to go to Tommy O’s. We can go to The Woods or Gino’s.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I say, swiping at my mascara-stained cheeks. “No one goes there.”
“Everyone goes there,” Ele corrects me. “It’s just our circle of friends who only go to Tommy O’s.”
“Because we’re the cool kids!” Viv says in a sing-song voice.
“Not helping,” Ele scolds.
“I don’t think I can face him,” I admit.
“Who? Jace?” Viv asks.
“Any of them,” I say. If Jace is there, Kieren must be as well, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to contain my hatred for that piece of shit.
He was the worst thing to ever happen to Monroe.
I know he had something to do with her disappearance, and once I get a few drinks in my system, I won’t be able to stop myself from confronting him.
“Fuck, I look like shit,” I say, eyeing myself in the mirror.
“No. No, no, no, see, this is fixable,” Ele says, spinning me around. “Here, sit down, Viv will make you a fresh drink, and I’ll finish your makeup.”
I huff, blowing a strand of hair out of my face as I slide down against the wall.
“Don’t let me do anything stupid tonight, Ele,” I say as she removes the smudged liner from my undereye with a Q-Tip.
“I promise, I won’t,” she assures me. Vivienne comes back into the bathroom with my refill.
“Unfortunately, we’re low on ice,” she says apologetically, handing me the room-temperature mixed drink.
“As long as it takes the edge off,” I say.
“That’s my girl,” Ele smiles.
Tommy O’s is absurdly packed. The three of us hold hands in single file, barely able to squeeze through.
Broad backs and elbows shove into me, knocking me from side to side, but I’m sufficiently buzzed and can’t find it in me to care.
With every foot of progress, we run into another familiar face and scream with glee.
By the time we make it to the counter of the bar, I’ve given at least thirty hugs.
Everyone is ecstatic to see each other, and since I was abroad in Spain the second semester of my junior year, it’s been over nine months since I’ve seen most of these people.
Thirty percent of Dornell’s student population is involved in the Greek system, which is fucking huge when you do the math, yet somehow, our circle of friends feels no bigger than the number of bodies packed into this shitty, matchbox-sized bar.
I’m glad we came out, because even though this bar smells of sour beer and piss like it always does, it’s comforting in a way, and admittedly, there’s no place I’d rather be on my first night back.
I’m beckoned into a booth and haul myself onto the ledge as a classic eighties song blasts across the speakers. Without question, the last song of the night is always Don’t Stop Believin’ by Journey, and it’s sacrilege not to belt it out as loud as humanly possible.
I’m mid-conversation with the girl next to me, another friend from my Delta Gamma sorority pledge class, when an uncomfortable feeling settles over me and chills skate up my exposed arms. My heart palpitates at the eerie sense I’m being watched.
I’ve only felt this sensation once before, when my mom and I helped Monroe clear out her recently deceased grandmother’s house, and it’s unnerving.
I do a quick scan of the bar, but it’s hard to make out faces from my hunched position.
It’s impossible to hear over the music unless the person you’re speaking with screams directly into your ear, so I’ve been huddled over, listening to this girl tell me about every person she slept with over the summer in painstaking detail, for at least twenty minutes.
When I look around, I see so many people packed into this bar that, frankly, I’m surprised the fire marshal hasn’t appeared.
“Are you going to after-hours at Sigma?” she shouts against my hair, and like clockwork, the telltale tune of Journey starts to play over the speaker, building to what I know will be a deafening crescendo.
I give her a look that says, “fuck no,” but she’s insistent. “Come!” she demands. “They’re having a big party; besides, we should be there to represent.”
Her tenacity is annoying, but I know what she means.
In the bizarre microcosm of Greek-system politics, we have to show face at these things lest our lack of attendance be considered a snub.
It’s also subliminal marketing for our sorority, Delta Gamma, and therefore crucial for the new freshman class to see our faces at these parties, especially Sigma parties.
Besides, I’m tipsy enough to be undeterred by my own anxiety.
Sigma has always sat at the top of the Dornell fraternity food chain.
Every guy you hate to admit you want to fuck is in Sigma.
They are pretentious, elitist assholes. They all come from money, and like to make it abundantly clear how superior they are, not only to other fraternities, but to all other individuals on this campus, professors and staff included.
But girls fucking throw themselves as these guys like they’re gods, and it just perpetuates the whole insufferable cycle.
Two years ago, I would have relished going to Sigma after-hours.
At the beginning of our sophomore year, all bets were off.
Monroe had just spent the worst summer of her life burying her grandmother, and I was newly single.
Neither of us could find a fuck to give.
Jace and Kieren were low on the Sigma pecking order as recently admitted brothers, and we savored every opportunity to torment them.
We were fucking belligerent, flirting with Sigma upperclassmen at parties, rubbing it in their faces, and there wasn’t fuck all they could do to stop us.
But when we returned from winter break that year, something changed. Maybe it was the new batch of freshman pledges and the fact that Jace and Kieren no longer had to play the role of indentured servants, but the two of them became monsters. I tried to keep Monroe away from Kieren…
I tried.
The thought makes me vomit in my mouth, just a little, to know my friend was trapped in the vortex of an addict as he descended into madness.
No one knows why Kieren didn’t come back at the beginning of junior year. Everyone assumed he went to rehab. He went no-contact, even with Monroe, and truthfully, his absence was a peace she had never known.
We hugged each other goodbye at the end of that semester – Ele, Viv, and I were headed off to various countries around the world, and Monroe would soon start her reign as president of Delta Gamma.
It was a bittersweet parting of ways, but it was a consolation to know our time apart would be temporary.
And then he came back.