Chapter 8 - Gabi
GABI
Present Day
Istuff the thick course packets and textbook into my backpack. It’s heavy but manageable. Delta Gamma is a solid mile walk from the campus store, but after my unnerving interaction with Jace, I need answers. I’ve got to find Kasey.
I have no idea how to track down a person who doesn’t want to be found.
And what did Jace mean by Monroe isn’t innocent?
Innocent in what? In allowing Kieren back into her life?
In being unable to let him go? Like that wasn’t obvious.
Monroe thinks I don’t know about the ongoing relationship she had with Kieren during our sophomore year.
She’s a terrible liar. I knew she was still sleeping with him.
The all-nighters she claimed she had to pull in the library were a ruse to see him.
He had a hold over her in a way I can’t explain or understand.
When I first met Monroe at Dornell, she was na?ve and inexperienced, which was not her fault, given her tumultuous childhood.
It’s one thing to have a deadbeat dad. It’s another thing to have an unstable mom with dubious morals who fell for a mob-affiliated con man and landed herself in prison.
Spending her teenage years in Ohio, living with her grandmother, certainly didn’t help.
It’s like Kieren could smell her insecurities from miles away and hunted her down with his money and dominance like she was prey.
He was so controlling of her during our freshman year, always present, always around, always listening, and ready to whisk her away to his childhood home in Connecticut to do God knows what the moment she exhibited a semblance of confidence.
Monroe would say Kieren set her free. I would say he exploited her for his own sexual sadism.
Jace told me Kieren was known to have a fondness for BDSM, going so far as to chain past girlfriends to the bed.
And while I absolutely am not kink-shaming my best friend, a large part of me does wonder how much of their sex life was dictated by Kieren’s desires.
But, I guess Monroe liked Kieren’s brand of bedroom play enough to keep crawling back.
Honestly, I think she became addicted. I recall spending hours freshman year researching Stockholm syndrome.
All I know is that things must have gotten unspeakably bad for Monroe to leave in the manner she did.
I wonder if there is a way I can check her student status.
Maybe she arranged a formal leave of absence with the University, like Kieren had when he was gone the first semester of our junior year.
I would feel hopeful if that’s the case, because it would mean she intends to come back.
The front door of Delta Gamma is surprisingly open when I arrive, but I’m grateful for the ease of entrance. I shed my backpack as soon as I’m through the door, and it hits the ground with a loud thud. My long, dark brown hair sticks to my sweat-drenched back as I fan out my tank top.
The bottom floor of the sorority is empty, so I assume everyone is either upstairs or out running errands in preparation for classes on Monday.
I probably should have waited until our chapter meeting tomorrow to find Kasey – who knows if she’s even here right now.
Someone must be home, however, and if Kasey’s not here, at least I can get her number from one of the girls in her pledge class.
I make my way up to the second floor, peeking my head inside each room I pass. Unfortunately, so far, no one is home. Footsteps creak above my head from the third floor, and I’m relieved that my poorly timed visit won’t be entirely in vain.
“Hello?” I ask as I ascend the stairs. “Hello, is anyone here?”
A girl with dark, curly hair emerges from a room at the end of the hall.
“Hey,” I say with a smile. I’m sure I’m a stranger to her, and I don’t want her to panic. “I’m Gabi, I’m a senior in DG. I’m actually looking for Kasey. Do you know if she’s here?”
“Are you Gabi Pimentel?” the girl asks eagerly. I must look at her like I’m surprised she knows my name, because she explains, “We were required to memorize all the members of DG when we joined, and your headshot is so pretty. You kind of stand out.”
Her face flushes when I brush off the compliment with a teasing scoff.
“You're too kind. But hey, are you friends with Kasey?” I ask, redirecting the conversation back to my initial question.
“She’s my roommate, actually,” she offers hesitantly. Her bubbly expression deflates like a balloon at this admission, but I pretend not to notice.
“Oh!” I exclaim, excited by my luck. “Is she here?”
The girl shakes her head. “The last time I saw her was yesterday afternoon.”
“So, she didn’t come home last night?” I ask.
The girl shakes her head again, and I start to open my mouth when I realize my line of questioning might sound intrusive and accusatory. It’s not abnormal to spend the night with someone, certainly not when you’re in college. This place is just one big cesspool of unbridled hormones, after all.
“I met Kasey last night at Sigma, and she was about to give me her number when we got separated,” I clarify to soften my approach. I don’t want to come off as a judgmental senior. What did Kieren call us last night? Right. Geriatric cunts.
“She was at Sigma?” the girl asks, her eyes going wide with worry.
“Yeah, why? Is something wrong with that? With her being at Sigma, I mean.”
The girl nervously shakes her head. “It’s not my place,” she stammers.
Shit.
My mind quickly works through ways to get this girl to tell me more.
“What’s your name, by the way?” I pivot. “I’m sorry, I’ve been rude not to ask.”
She gives me a shy smile. “Adrianna.”
“I love that name,” I gush. “My favorite cousin is named Adrianna,” I lie, and her smile widens.
“Would you mind if I came inside? When I saw Kasey last night, she looked really out of it, and it looked like she was with this guy named Kieren who used to date my best friend.”
All color drains from Adrianna’s face.
When I see this happen, I push inside her room so as not to give her an opportunity to turn me away. This girl knows something, and I need fucking answers.
“Shut the door,” I say in a hushed voice to Adrianna as I take a seat on the circular rug in the middle of the room and wait for her to join me.
Slowly, she lowers herself down with uncertainty and sits cross-legged in front of me.
I sense this girl is on the verge of tears, which, as fucked up as it is, I use to my advantage.
I blow out a long, steadying breath. “Monroe is my best friend,” I begin, “and I think something really bad happened to her last semester.”
“She disappeared,” Adrianna interjects. “She stopped showing up to lead chapter meetings. The other Delta Gamma juniors said she stopped responding to emails and texts…It was so strange.”
“Did you know she was dating Kieren? You know Kieren, right? I mean, I just assumed by the way you reacted a second ago when I said his name in reference to Kasey.”
She nods. “Yes, I mean, I know who he is, everyone does. He’s the guy who showed up with a bouquet of roses for Monroe during rush. Kasey and I were so thrilled when we both got into Delta Gamma – it was our dream. We were roommates my freshman year also.”
I can’t contain my nerves anymore. I need answers and not a walk down memory lane. “What’s going on?” I blurt out.
Adrianna goes quiet, gathering herself, and then shakes her head. Tears fall from her cheeks, and she uncrosses her legs to pull her knees into her chest.
“Hey, it’s okay,” I soothe when she starts to rock back and forth. As much as I want to smack her and tell her to snap out of it so she can tell me the rest of what she knows, I take a page from Monroe’s book and play the empath.
“I know,” I say in solidarity. “Something isn’t right. I wasn’t here last semester, but I feel it, too. When I was at Sigma last night for after hours, even before I saw Kasey, I could sense things were off.”
Adrianna sniffs and wipes at her face. “She can’t talk about it,” Adrianna says. “The only thing I know is that at the beginning of last semester, she got initiated or something.”
“Initiated to Delta Gamma?”
“No,” Adrianna says, “to Sigma. Not as a brother but… she said it was like being a little sister. She was close with a bunch of guys in the house, not Kieren or his year, but other freshmen. She described it as an honor – like you’re given extra special treatment, always get right in for parties, and you can go upstairs, that sort of thing.
But then she was there every weekend, all weekend. And each time she came back…”
Adrianna trails off and begins to cry again.
“She just wasn’t the same,” she breathes.
“I don’t know anything else about Kieren other than what Kasey shared, which wasn’t much.
She made him sound like a god. She did say once that Monroe was there,” Adrianna pauses, and uses her fingers to make air quotes when she says, “looking after the girls.”
“Looking after the girls?” I repeat in question. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. Kasey said she couldn’t talk about it.
I started to get concerned when she was gone every weekend, but when I asked her about it, she said it was her duty or something.
Like an obligation. I told her that was stupid and to just not go the next time, but she seemed genuinely scared at the idea of not showing up. ”
I pause to take in the information, because what in the actual hell? Is this like a fucking cult or something?
“But I saw what they did to her,” Adrianna whispers.
“What do you mean? Did they hurt her?”
Adrianna looks around the empty room like someone might jump out of the closet at any second.
“Please promise me you won’t say anything,” she asks.
“I promise,” I assure her, though I sure as fuck am telling Ele and Viv.
“I think they branded her,” Adrianna says in a voice so quiet, I have to strain to hear, even though she’s sitting three inches in front of me.
“Branded her?” I ask, nearly choking on the words.
Adrianna nods. “She was getting dressed one day, and I happened to glance over right as she was putting on her underwear. It was this ugly, red welt on her ass. I gasped when I saw it, and she immediately covered herself. I asked her what it was, and she played it off. She said it was nothing. But I couldn’t keep my fucking mouth shut, so I kept asking, until finally she snapped.
She told me to pretend I didn’t see it, to never ask about it again, and to never tell anyone.
She said if I tell anyone, they’ll find out, and they’ll take it out on her. ”
I suck in a breath and try to process the horrifying concept of a freshman girl getting branded all because she wanted to be someone special to a bunch of feckless frat boys.
A disturbing thought occurs to me.
“Adrianna, did you tell anyone else? I mean, maybe accidentally, after a few drinks or something.”
She peers over her knees, now clutched so tight to her chest that I could roll her out of this room like a ball.
“Only a couple of the girls in our pledge class, when they started asking why Kasey wasn’t showing up to events.” The horror on her face makes me feel like I’ve stepped into some sort of movie. “I…,” she stammers. “They said they wouldn’t say anything.”
Because a house full of thirty chatty sorority girls isn’t a swirling cauldron of gossip…
Right.