Chapter 4
“Mind you, my biggest piece of advice while going through recruitment is not to treat ‘lower tier’ houses as practice rounds. Use this time to forge genuine connections—that’s the best way to get what you really want out of Greek life,” said the first of Nina’s recruitment counselors, who had clearly just outed herself as a member of an inferior house.
“I totally agree with Jen,” said the second one, who was demonstrably prettier, although there were certainly pretty girls in every house (Nina was at least that charitable).
The difference was in the details, most of which weren’t immediately identifiable because the recruitment counselors were wearing the same shirt.
They weren’t all wearing it the same way, though—the first of Nina’s RCs, Jen, was wearing her shirt adorably large, on top of trendy leggings that Nina also owned.
The second, Mia, was wearing hers cropped, with jeans that fit almost impossibly, as if they were custom-tailored or wildly expensive.
They were a barrel cut, magically oversized and yet impossibly snatched at the waist, in direct defiance of science.
“The important thing,” Mia continued, “is that there’s a house for everyone. Finding your tribe is wayyyy more important than choosing a house just for clout.”
“You heard her, uggos,” mock-whispered a freshman named Dalil Serrano to Nina.
They’d become friends over the course of the previous four hours, wherein they’d visited every house on the row but one.
“Not all of you can be in the hot houses,” Dalil continued in a remarkable imitation of Mia’s vocal fry, “so make your peace with it now.”
Nina laughed. It wasn’t exactly the height of wit, but there was nothing more intoxicating than talking shit after a day of being mercilessly judged.
It swung the pendulum back, just a bit. “What do you tell them you’re looking for?
” Nina asked. “You know, when they ask why you really want to be in a sorority.”
Dalil instantly transformed her face. “I’m just really craving a community,” she said, her voice casually lowered in a way that exuded the perfect amount of intimacy—not too earnest, not too false.
It was exactly the right amount of candor, like when a hot girl does a “get ready with me” video where she talks about her struggles with anxiety.
“I love the philanthropy,” Dalil continued, “but honestly? I want the sisterhood. That’s what appeals to me most.”
Nina was pleased that Dalil had chosen to bond with her, because it meant Dalil, a natural alpha, saw Nina as a peer.
A promising start. Not that Nina felt any pressing anxiety—she told herself the stakes were almost laughably low, because if she didn’t get the house she wanted, she would simply drop the process altogether and conjure up another transformation plan.
It wasn’t like there weren’t countless other ways to fill her time.
Right now, for example, her roommate Simone was at a party enjoying the hazards of her youth among the fray of future Wall Street financiers, and their suitemate Mei, a journalism major, was currently hooking up with the editor of the University paper, which was a helpful reminder that there were other ways to achieve an end.
More than one way to skin a cat, as the saying went, and certainly to reinvent a future.
But then The House came into view, and a flutter of longing in Nina’s belly felt like desire of the most urgent, erotic kind. The kind of craving that had once driven her to fumble with her clitoris until her fingers cramped.
It was clear she wasn’t alone in her desperation. “See you on the other side,” whispered Dalil, no longer mocking.
The lawn was perfectly manicured. The spectrum of pastel beach cruisers belonging to The House’s chosen were tucked securely away from view.
The whole place smelled like jasmine, like fucking roses.
The house itself was Georgian, brick with regal front columns, like a sex dream authored by Jane Austen herself, on drugs.
The front door of the house opened and perfection spilled out in glossy waves, in Hollywood smiles.
One by one The House materialized on the lawn, Nina’s eyes tracking each member through a blur, a growing dazzle of white behind her eyes, like staring too long at the sun.
She felt bewitched, intoxicated, more deeply taken the longer she looked.
Like a sailor tied to the mast, Nina felt an element of torment, an animal longing she couldn’t explain.
A violence of feeling, a palpable hunger.
Desperation to cast herself into the void and be deemed worthy, or perhaps not.
The lure of danger was half the desire; the other half unrealized, still wordless, unfulfilled.
Every outfit was on trend, easily worthy of a street-style feature, notably individualized (not cloyingly matched like the other houses had been, the lifeless equivalent of a dollhouse) but artfully cohesive.
There was no theme, no specified color, no obvious palette, and yet from head to toe each girl was the well-crafted piece of an understood whole.
There was also, to Nina, an uncanny sense of the eternal.
An undertow of syncopation, some soundless rhythm she struggled to put a finger on, being on the outside looking in.
There was a visible unanimity, nothing robotic or Stepfordian, not even rehearsed—something closer to reflexive.
The sleek orchestration of hunters in a pack. The feline prowl of an adroit pride.
There was a ripple of something, awareness, once The House had been assembled in full.
A long period of silent looking, watchfulness that shifted the ground beneath Nina’s feet to redefine the roles of predator and prey.
Unmistakable tension, a crowded stillness, such that Nina could hear her blood crashing loudly in her ears.
Arrhythmia to betray her vulnerability, an obvious and fatal flaw.
Nina felt inexplicably certain that if a bird took flight at that moment, it would be caught one-handed; if she shifted a hair’s breadth out of position, one of The House’s members would effortlessly shoot her down.
She could almost feel them taking breaths in unison, spurred on by a single, measured pulse.
Aligned and carefully slowed, in tune with a steady beat that only they could feel. A thrum of constant frequency.
What would it be like, Nina wondered, to count among them? To live in the current of that stillness—that certainty of power.
What would it be like to sleep so well at night?
Three girls holding hands stepped down from the porch and into a stream of sun, glowing in perfect unison.
Nina knew them. Everyone knew them. Leonie Monaghan, rush chair, biology major so arrestingly charismatic she had a VidStar following of over one hundred thousand due to her advocacy work, mostly in gifted designer swimwear.
Alina Antwerp, VP Recruitment, public policy major, pre-law, dean’s list. She’d wanted to be a senator since she was six years old and so far, it seemed a lock.
And then there was Fawn Carter, president.
Half of the Greek system’s golden couple (although rumor had it they’d broken up over the summer and Fawn had since hooked up with a literal prince).
Blindingly beautiful, untouchably so. If Audrey Hepburn and Jackie Kennedy had some sort of sci-fi clone baby, she’d feel awkward standing next to Fawn.
There was something otherworldly about her, an aura, or maybe an air of déjà vu, spiritually from a dream but actually from her stint as a prolific teen model.
She could have walked the runway in Milan.
She could have been an art-house muse, a baby Coppola.
She could have run a boardroom or filled a stadium, she could have been anywhere else, worlds or lifetimes away, existing like a phantom, a face to grace the pages of a For You page, for you.
Instead, she was here. In front of Nina.
“Welcome,” said Fawn. “We’re so excited you’re here.”
Her eyes drifted to Nina, who felt the tug of their shared glance like a ray of fucking sun; like fate itself was in on the joke. Like the universe had willed it.
Fawn smiled.
She smiled at Nina.
“Jesus Christ, you sound like you have a crush on the entire house,” Jas muttered later, when Nina called to report back on the first day of rush. (While Jas disapproved of the whole thing, she still felt the experience of going through recruitment secondhand was “of anthropological significance.”)
But of course Nina didn’t have a crush. It wasn’t a crush.
She was in danger.
She was in love.