Chapter 8
The final day of fall recruitment reunited Nina and Dalil, the only two of their initial rush group who had been extended invitations by The House.
It was a dream of a Sunday morning—dewy beams of sun fell in weightless tendrils across the scenic stretch of campus, cocooning the creature that was the University off-duty, hung- over and still abed.
To Nina, clearer-eyed and more awake than it seemed she’d ever been before, it had all the ethereality of a wish.
All the girls were dressed in white, and it felt like a baptism, or at least how Nina imagined a baptism would feel.
There seemed to be both an agreement that this was silly—well, maybe not silly—possibly campy, which was like silly but with a sexier quirk of the lips—and also, in some way, profound.
On the final day, each of the potential new members was assigned a girl they’d spoken to before; someone who would conceivably vouch for them in the hours preceding bid night. It was a last shot, either to cement a bid or to lose, in effect, everything.
The girls processed from The House with their voices joined delicately in song, like living angels.
Nina spotted two of the girls she’d spoken with, then three, then four.
Each sister stepped forward to claim one of the potential new members.
The girl Nina had laughed with the day before about an old sitcom stepped up—and chose Dalil.
Nina held her breath, knowing someone was coming for her, but not knowing what it meant, or who it would be.
She was one of ten girls left on the sidewalk, then one of seven, one of four … three … two …
She was last on the sidewalk when she thought she saw Fawn Carter take a step from the center of the house’s rose-lined path. Toward Nina? Her breath caught in her throat. Surely it wasn’t allowed. Could that mean—?
Dreamily, she watched it happen in her mind.
Fawn’s lovely fingers; the gleam of a heady swallow along the notches of Fawn’s throat.
Rays of sun crowned both their heads from on high, a benediction and a blessing.
Birdsong and benevolence. No need to playact when the thing between them was love—when the end of the story was fate.
Motion blossomed, petals of The House unfurling in outward peals of heavenly reach. But of course it wasn’t Fawn progressing toward her from the roses. Be realistic!
The girl coming to collect her was Tessa. Reality coalesced again, and Nina exhaled sharply, relieved.
“I don’t get it,” Jas said later. “Why is it a good thing that it’s Tessa?”
“Because Tessa is friends with Fawn.” Nina didn’t want to have this discussion with Jas, who obviously didn’t care, but Simone was busy and Adelaide was still hoping Nina would choose her own house.
Adelaide had, in fact, been the representative of her house to spend the morning with Nina. So, obviously there were worse things.
“But aren’t they all friends with each other? Isn’t that the point?”
Jas was being purposefully unhelpful. “They’re still human, Jas. Some are closer friends than others.”
“How do you know?”
It didn’t seem productive for Nina to say I can just tell.
She could tell, for example, that they liked her, but what would that mean if they didn’t pick her?
She could justify it by saying they didn’t pick sophomores, but for the entirety of the week thus far she’d felt so glowingly the exception, like the heroine in a romance who couldn’t turn anyone’s head but his.
If The House didn’t choose her now, then the whole thing had been a lie—and could she really be that stupid?
She didn’t think so. She knew what it was like to hook up with someone who wasn’t actually into her (thanks a lot, Jonathan Zein).
That wasn’t remotely what had happened at The House.
Or at least she hoped it wasn’t.
Nina sighed, looking away from Jas’s grainy presence on her screen, incapable now of focusing on her reading.
The outcome of having to return to real life tomorrow—to anxiety about exam preparation and digestive regularity that had previously defined reality’s constraints—whether she was welcomed into or cast out from Eden was fundamentally unimaginable, like living through the ravages of war. “I guess I—”
Just then her phone buzzed with a text. She glanced lazily at the banner that unfurled on the screen, expecting to hear from Simone about their dinner plans. Instead, it was an unknown number.
nina—this is tessa. the house is gridlocked. i’m so sorry to put you in this position. can you call me?
“I gotta go,” Nina said to Jas instantly.
“Wait, what does—”
She hung up on Jas and hit call on Tessa’s unsaved number. “Hello?”
“Nina, this is so wildly against the rules, I’m sorry—”
“It’s okay.” Was it okay?
“You’re on speaker. I’m here with Fawn, Alina, and Leonie. You remember them, right?”
“Yes, of course.” Nina couldn’t breathe. “What’s up?”
“It’s about Dalil.”
Nina felt her lungs puncture, a tiny needle-thin prick of relief. “Dalil?”
“She was in your rush group, right?”
“Yeah, she was.”
“Okay, great. We just … Fawn’s not convinced.”
“Don’t tell her that, oh my god—Nina, it’s me.” And indeed it was Fawn, who had clearly grabbed the phone from Tessa. Nina became aware of the presence of something, tension, like gritted or chattering teeth. “Did you like Dalil? Like, did you get any weird vibes from her?”
“What? No, nothing like that. Wait, why?” Nina suddenly couldn’t understand anything that was happening to her.
Since the moment she’d seen Tessa’s text, she had been compiling things in her head, lists of reasons why she would be a good choice, the perfect candidate.
She’d go on to accomplish great things. She’d be a credit to The House.
She would never throw up at a party, in public, ever.
She would do more face masks if they were distracted by the occasional flare-up of hormonal acne on her chin.
She’d switch her birth control. No she wouldn’t!
Ugh, fuck. That kind of desperation would rule her out completely.
Something brain-rupturing had happened to her during rush.
Something about the absence of reality had heightened the stakes, obscured them.
If these three random girls didn’t think she was hot enough then fine, so be it.
She’d be a lawyer anyway. She’d be a fucking judge. Fuck them.
“We just … we found out something about Dalil that we’re not sure about. It’s not a big deal … it’s stupid, it could be a total misunderstanding as far as we know, I just wanted to get your take. You know. As someone who was around her casually all week.”
Nina’s heart thudded in her chest. Panic was beginning to transfer rhythms to confusion. “Oh. I, um. I like Dalil a lot.”
There was a triumphant sound in the background. A tinny voice said: “See?”
“I thought she was really cool,” Nina said. “But I wouldn’t say I know her.”
“Did she seem … invested, to you? Sometimes these girls are just in it for the clout.” That sounded like Alina Antwerp’s voice, maybe.
“Oh god, really? I mean, I would never—” Nina cleared her throat. “I’m not, you know, like that, so I’m not sure if—”
“Oh shit.” From somewhere on the other end, she heard Tessa burst out laughing. “Nina, babe! I’m so sorry! I just realized this must be torture for you. I’d forgotten you didn’t know what we know.”
“Oh my god, Tessa, did you not tell her? Nina.” It was Fawn again. “Nina, you’re in. You’ll get your bid in a couple of hours. I thought Tessa would have told you that before breaking literally every fucking rule in the Panhellenic guidebook—”
“Oh.” Nina felt so dizzy she could float.
“I honestly thought it was a given. Can you imagine if we’d illegally called you and then didn’t extend a bid?
Fucking Christ!” Tessa was still laughing.
Nina pictured them all laughing about it together someday, a time that wasn’t now but surely would be soon, like maybe tomorrow or next week or whenever she recovered from spiritually soiling herself.
“Please forgive my idiot friend Tessa,” said Fawn. “She’s your problem now.”
“Anyway, can we please get back to the point? Alex will be back any second for our bid list and she’ll kill us if she finds out we called you—”
“Alex of all people would want us to do this right. But yes, focus.” That was an exchange between Alina and Leonie, Nina was pretty sure. She was fairly confident she knew Fawn’s and Tessa’s voices. “We have about ten seconds. Dalil, in or out?”
“In,” said Nina instantly. She didn’t know why.
She didn’t know who would take Dalil’s place or what they’d found about Dalil.
It didn’t really matter. Nina was in and that was what mattered, so if something didn’t work out with Dalil, then yes, Nina was the one who’d made that call, but even if they held that against her, so what?
She wondered whose idea it had been to ask her.
Probably Fawn’s. Probably Fawn had called in Tessa, who wasn’t even one of the officers in charge of rush, and said Wasn’t she in Nina’s group?
Can you call Nina? And so now time was of the essence and Nina wasn’t going to hesitate.
She liked Dalil. More importantly, Dalil didn’t present a threat to her. Nothing did anymore.
“I like her,” Nina said emphatically. “She’s cool. She’s funny. She’s hot.”
“She is definitely hot,” Tessa agreed. “Well, Fawn? You’re the last holdout.”
“I mean, I trust Nina. I just think—”
There was a brief fumble and this time, the line went dead.
Nina pulled the phone away from her ear, catching her wide-eyed reflection on the black screen.
Would she look different tomorrow? She exhaled with a laugh at her own expense.
A picture of her with Jas, mirror images the day they both chose their respective University hoodies, flashed up at her to join the chorus.
Then a text materialized across Jas’s face from Tessa’s still-unsaved number. sorry, alex came in and fawn dropped the phone!! lmao what a mess pls accept our bid see you later xxxxxxxx
Nina carefully saved Tessa’s name in her contacts, minus the last name, because she didn’t know it yet.
She wondered when Tessa would be able to take her social media public again, or if she even would.
Nina vaguely recalled that every member of The House she’d ever searched for had a private account.
Only The House itself had a public page.
She went to The House’s VidStar account, searching through its followers for Tessa.
There. Tessa Alden.
Pleased, Nina went back to her contacts and changed Tessa Alden in her phone.
Unless that was creepy? What if Tessa looked at her phone later tonight?
Christ. Fuck.
Nina changed it back to just Tessa.
She got up and paced her room, realizing she still had two hours before everyone else could know.
Before she would hold something in her hand as undeniable proof, incontrovertible evidence that she was one of them.
True, she would still have to be initiated, but by the end of that semester, a year from the day things went astray—coincidence?
no, again, it was fate—Nina could finally rewrite the story, reorienting herself on the path.
In six weeks, she’d wear The House’s letters like a badge of honor.
Like a brand on her blessed, anointed chest.
Her mouth watered from the want of it, like chomping at the bit. Let me in. Let me in. Let me in.
“Bitch, did you seriously hang up on me?” were Jas’s first words when Nina called her back.
“Bitch, you’re not my only sister anymore,” Nina said, as if it didn’t matter. As if it never had.