Chapter Twenty-Two What fates impose
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
What fates impose
I LOOKED AROUND WILDLY, SEARCHING for an exit, anxiety churning within me.
“Did everyone bring their object?” The figure in the veil drew closer, and I could make out her features. It was the woman Honey had introduced earlier as the Theta chapter president, but her name escaped me.
She gestured to Honey, who seemed to be pulling herself together after the argument with Kasem. But with the spotlight on her, Honey snapped back into her usual bubbly self.
She held up her hand, flashing us an expensive-looking engagement ring on her finger. It was gold, with the same elegant finish as the one hanging from my cowrie shell bracelet. A large, glittering diamond was fashioned on the bridge of the gold band.
All the girls squealed, while the guys exchanged knowing looks.
“Who’s the lucky man?” Janette asked.
“It’s a secret,” Honey said, flashing me a wink.
Beside me, Kasem returned to his seat, stiffening and not responding to the engagement news the way the others had. We were the only two who knew that the mystery man was none other than Alaster.
To my surprise, though, Honey pulled the ring off and placed it in the middle of the circle. Everyone started shuffling through their jewelry or objects they’d brought and placing them there too. Someone, the fan boat girl, I realized, had even brought a leather-bound notebook into the circle.
“Sianna will bring hers next time,” Honey said to excuse me. When it was Kasem’s turn, he simply took a shot from his silver flask. A few people had done something similar. Taking a shot or drinking was the only way to get out of offering something to the circle.
Joseph, the guy from Poppy House’s orientation, was among the Sigma brothers. He offered a baseball cap.
“Does that mean you’ll be the host, Kasem?”
Cheers spilled through the room, but Kasem flipped his friends off.
“Like hell I will,” he said.
I turned to Honey, confused.
“We’re doing a summoning,” she said.
“A summoning?” I repeated.
She nodded, a wicked grin on her lips. “It’s tradition.
For the first party of each year, we alternate the host, the one who communes with the great beyond.
Last year, a Sigma brother did a summoning of one of their alumni.
This year, it’s Theta’s turn. Cecilia’s leading the proceedings, of course, as Theta’s president. ”
“So this is a séance?”
“Don’t tell me you’re scared,” Honey said, laughing along with some of the other girls who’d overheard. But the fan boat girl, the Hearst girl Alaster had warned me about, looked nervous. Kasem didn’t seem happy about the circumstances either.
“I think you should go,” Kasem whispered. “Some of the traditions Theta and Sigma have are—unusual.”
“What about the curse?” I whispered back. “Honey told me your ancestors were founding members.”
“I know,” he said. “Why do you think I joined Sigma?”
“And have you found anything from that?”
“Not anything that’s made a difference, which is why I didn’t mention it. I didn’t want you to feel pressured to rush on my behalf.”
Honey cleared her throat.
“Perhaps we should talk about the curse another time,” she whispered.
I spun to face Kasem. “She knows?”
“I said everyone connected to my family knows about the curse. Honey’s family is part of the board of trustees.”
My surprise morphed into anger, and I glared at Kasem for withholding this small yet vital piece of information. “How am I supposed to trust you if you keep just ‘forgetting’ to tell me things like this?”
“He couldn’t be explicit because we technically don’t have anything to do with the curse,” Honey said. “Theta and Sigma have our own traditions to try and protect Westfield students from it.”
A voice across the room interrupted us.
“I think Sianna should be the host,” Cecilia said. “She’s the birthday girl, after all.”
The room erupted in cheers. Hands started pushing me toward the middle of the circle, and in my drunken state, it was hard to see who was reaching and pulling and tugging and yanking me forward.
But then someone circled my waist in a protective grip, keeping me anchored where I was; Kasem, guarding me even as the others kept trying to thrust me in the circle.
“I’ll be the host for the spirit,” he relented. “Sianna will choose the object.”
Shouts of annoyance filled the room, but Kasem ignored them, walking to the center of the circle and sitting crisscross, his eyes pressed shut, his hands splayed out.
Honey stilled at her seat. She watched Kasem and shot me a wary smile.
“He can be sweetly protective sometimes,” she said, her voice strained, aching. I remembered her words from earlier.
If you’re asking if I’m choosing to be with Alaster, I am. But do I want to be? Well, why wouldn’t I? He’s a Saint James, after all. My parents and the Board want to strengthen our ties to their family. So, I guess Alaster will do.
She’d been engaged to Jojo and had exchanged him for Alaster when he’d lost his inheritance. But really, it had been Kasem that she’d longed for, even before he’d been deemed Westfield’s new heir.
“Sianna,” Cecilia said, “join Sigma brother Kasem in the circle and choose the object we will be channeling for the summoning.”
Honey elbowed me to hurry, and I stumbled forward, taking a seat directly in front of Kasem. His eyes were still shut, but our knees touched this close in the circle.
“The object,” Cecilia demanded.
I grabbed one before I could change my mind: the leather notebook the Hearst girl had brought with her. The moment the burnt tips of my fingers touched the leather, the world around me dissolved into fractals of color and time.
Faintly, I watched the Sigma and Theta members gathered around me. Kasem had opened his eyes and watched along with them as the vision consumed me. Suddenly, my view of the present blurred as a new scene materialized: a scene from the Hearst girl’s past.
The vision took me to weeks before, to the day we freshmen had arrived at the dock where we’d be taken to Westfield University.
The Hearst girl, Sarah, was hunched in a corner away from the group and talking to someone on the phone—her mother.
Sarah’s voice was quiet, but in the vision, I overheard her and her mother on the other side of the line clearly, as if I was on the phone myself.
An article was going to come out about a young man named Danny who had reportedly died by suicide, and the boy’s journal entries painted Sarah in a terrible light.
Sarah was desperate for her parents to pay the article’s kill fee.
She’d barely known the boy, she’d claimed.
Everything he’d allegedly written about her was a lie.
Besides, she’d changed in these last six months.
And she was going to be a freshman at Westfield University—practically a new person.
Forget the past. Forget who she’d let die to get what she wanted.
“He was obsessed with me. It’s not my fault—”
The vision jumped further back, and different parts of the past began to run together; her and Danny kissing in his Westfield dorm, his funeral, the heat of his lips against her neck, her preparing the speech at his wake, his hands clasped over his ears as she screamed and laughed and mocked him.
The words she had yelled, the very same ones he’d scored in his journal like poetry.
Weak. Pathetic. Worthless. Then there was his college roommate, who’d discovered a journal with his handwriting two days after he’d been found dead, right here, at Theta House.
No one had known what he’d been doing in Theta House that night.
Cheating on his girlfriend, maybe? Sneaking into each house on Greek Row as a fraternity initiation rite, perhaps?
Whatever the case, a reporter from the city paper had started covering the story. Sarah’s parents had paid them off.
Pain throbbed in my forehead, setting my nerves on fire, collecting at the bridge of my nose in a rush.
Someone grabbed the journal from my hand, and I was pulled back to the present.
At first, I thought it was Kasem, but he, like the others, watched me, unsure, and then in awe.
Everything I’d seen in the vision, I’d spoken aloud. Sarah collapsed on the floor, sobbing.
“I didn’t kill him. It was one fight. I know what I said was wrong, but I didn’t kill Danny. It was this school. It destroyed him.”
In the circle, Honey beamed with pride. “I told you. Sianna is totally Theta material.”
Cecilia nodded, impressed too. “It’ll certainly make our screenings less cumbersome.”
“We would have told you about the summoning and everything,” Honey added at my confused expression.
“But it’s not something we’re able to share with outsiders who aren’t rushing for Theta or Sigma.
We are bound in silence by our oath to our societies.
Those chants we spoke earlier? They ensure that we can only share the events of tonight among one another. ”
Someone tried to help Sarah up, but she screamed, stumbling to where the journal lay on the ground, where she started tearing through the entries, papers flying everywhere as her tears blotted the pages, making them illegible.
I turned, and suddenly Vivian was standing next to me.
Her eyes were wide, her Westfield blazer dripping as it always was.
Like it had since the night we’d arrived at Westfield.
“We need to leave,” Vivian said. “Now.”
But the Sigmas and the Thetas were chanting, Cecilia in her mourning veil, the candle flickering in a violent rage as smoke and shadows filled the room.
Suddenly there was a form; the figure of a young man no older than twenty, with pale skin and blond hair.
He was dressed in the same clothes he’d worn the night he’d died: sweatpants and a Westfield hoodie.
Crimson rimmed his pupils, and blood streaked his temple.
He strode to Sarah, pressing his hand on her cheek.
When she gazed up at him, it was like the light had gone from her eyes, like there was no one there.
Holding the notebook, she strode to the window, hand in hand with the man.
“They lied about what happened,” they both said, their voices joined in one terrible chorus. “Now may the debts we owe to blood be waged in our legacy.”
The creaking window burst open. Screams filled the room. Sarah and Danny glanced down at the three stories beneath us. And then, with a faint smile and the journal torn as it was, yet still clutched in her hand, Sarah climbed the window, ready to jump from the third floor of Theta House.