Chapter 10 #2
Did Fawn use tampons? Nina wondered. Did she wear period underwear instead, because tampons were bad for the environment, or did she worry about period underwear having carcinogens, as Nina did?
Was Fawn’s flow anything like Nina’s, which was punishingly demented, diabolical like a plague of blood?
Did Fawn use those discs that went up to your cervix, which Nina had seen at the student health center gynecologist’s office and pondered the logistics of for so long she’d forgotten to get undressed and had to be reminded?
Was Fawn on the kind of birth control that meant she only had a period every few months?
Would Fawn want to sit on the couch watching crime procedurals for hours, a heat pack over her uterus while passing a pint of chocolate ice cream back and forth in solidarity, as Nina and her roommate Simone often did?
Nina couldn’t picture Fawn having a period at all.
She felt the phantom wave of a cramp just thinking about it.
“You don’t have to worry about hazing,” Tessa was saying, still playing the part of Nina’s official House mentor.
“I mean, International’s rules are so strict that you’re not even allowed to clear your own dishes at dinner.
We have to serve you.” She gave Nina an impish grin, letting her in on the joke.
“But you do have to attend a bunch of meetings and memorize a bunch of stuff that some dead women wrote in the 1800s. And sorry about the shirt,” she added, gesturing to the bid day shirt Nina was wearing, having been instructed the night before to wear it all day in class.
It bore The House’s letters and BID NIGHT in an old-school collegiate font.
“It’s tradition, but obviously the frat bros all use it as an excuse to be idiots and rank the new members like their male opinion even matters. ”
Nina knew about that. At the end of the day, there would be ample speculation on VidStar (and probably accompanying photo evidence) about which sorority had the hottest new members.
It was always The House, though the occasional “hot take” might invoke someone else, just to be controversial.
Adelaide had been very disgruntled about it last night, ranting for almost the entire time that she and Nina walked back from the row to their campus apartment.
Nina understood that in Adelaide’s case, intellectualizing the misogyny was a form of self-defense—that if everyone agreed it was chauvinistic and repulsive, then Adelaide didn’t have to feel dejected about not being voted the best. A debate tactic, undermining the authenticity of the opponent, which in this case was almost laughably easy to do.
Nina, meanwhile, didn’t care what a bunch of frat guys thought of her.
She also understood that many of these disgusting frat guys would be competing against her for the same law schools and that, eventually, whether she liked it or not, their acceptance would determine her success in the workplace and in life. Two things could be true.
Tessa began to slow her pace, indicating to Nina that their paths would soon diverge. “I’ve got a lecture in the humanities building,” she explained, before leaning in for a hug that smelled cosmopolitan and crisp. “When are you supposed to be back this week?”
“We’ve got another new member meeting Thursday night,” said Nina.
“Oh okay, great. Text me if you need anything.” Tessa’s eyes were wandering slightly, like in her head she had already departed the conversation. “I’m so excited you’re in The House!”
Again, it felt like the wrong word. It almost sounded like Tessa was saying she was relieved it was Nina and not someone worse, though it was possible Nina only felt that way because her period was imminent.
She returned Tessa’s hug and made a show of also needing to be somewhere, although she didn’t, which was why they had already passed the building where her class would take place in half an hour.
She decided to get a coffee and call Jas, who would probably make fun of her shirt, though Nina felt it was tasteful and classic and so what if its purpose was to claim something specific about her—something that now belonged to The House by virtue of it choosing her?
Basically the fact that she was fuckable, Jas would say.
And Nina would say, What’s wrong with that?
If people were going to deem her fuckable or unfuckable regardless of whether she consented, wasn’t it better to do it this way, without pretense?
Forget dressing for men or for women. The fashion industry didn’t care who you dressed for as long as you did so every season, changing color palettes and trends as a means of keeping classism alive.
Short of making her own clothes, there was no way for Nina not to participate in the exploitation of desirability.
So shouldn’t she game the system and win?
You’re so full of shit, Jas would say, in the same delighted voice she had used when Nina said she’d fucked Jonathan Zein despite Jas saying his forehead was too small for him to really be attractive.
Nina felt a surge of warmth, pleased now that she was awake so early, that she would have this time to decompress and be reminded that life did exist outside of The House.
Of course, at the time this thought occurred to her, she realized that in parting from her company, Tessa had gone over to greet someone else.
Tessa, who was currently locking up her bike in front of one of the humanities buildings, was chatting animatedly with a distinctly recognizable silhouette—specifically, the silhouette belonging to someone that Nina had to forcefully blink away, as if she’d conjured her up magically, from a dream.
In a way that couldn’t exist in any plausible reality, much less the one outside The House.
But she did exist. And in the breaths after Nina spotted her, Fawn Carter tilted her head back and laughed, and Nina felt a bone-crush of dread, wondering what Tessa had said about her, what Fawn thought was funny, all the things Tessa knew that Nina did not.