Chapter 16
On one of the Thursday new member meetings, the weeks to initiation draining faster the closer they got, Nina and her pledge sisters were allowed to drink alcohol in the house.
“Allowed” being a loose term, as nobody else could know about it, but in this singular instance, the use of wine as a conversational lubricant was encouraged among the rest of the girls.
It was an expensive bottle, too—one of Nina’s pledge sisters, Ryoko, who had grown up on a vineyard that her parents owned and operated, said it was a vintage.
All Nina knew was that it went down smooth and warm, giving her an uncurling sensation akin to stretching out her legs.
“Look, we get it, shedding trauma is a big deal,” said Nicole, one of their pledge class’s two new member educators, as she addressed them in the large, formal living room that most of The House’s occupants didn’t use.
(Dalil liked to mock Nicole’s title, which was also very formal.
The concept that they were participating in an education, rather than a set of hoops performed with slight variations by every house along the row, was among the things Dalil deemed “silly,” though just because something was objectively ridiculous didn’t mean it didn’t get done).
“Part of what makes The House so special is that here, with your sisters, you’re allowed to be vulnerable.
Obviously, though, we respect your boundaries,” Nicole added, exchanging a glance with Mallory, her counterpart.
“Right. Don’t feel like you’re being forced. Undress to your comfort level,” Mallory emphasized. “The point isn’t to make you do anything. Just to give you the space to feel like you can share parts of your life that you haven’t been able to with anyone before.”
“This feels kind of cult-y,” Dalil whispered to Nina in a voice warmed by alcohol, and Nicole, who was close enough to hear, gave an easy laugh.
“I mean, everything about this is cult-y, let’s be real,” Nicole said to a replying chorus of chuckles. “Right, Mal?”
“Monumentally, yes,” Mallory agreed. “But don’t worry, you won’t be asked to commit any ritual murders. Yet.” More laughter.
“If all you want to do is drink good wine and shoot the shit, go for it,” Nicole said when the laughter subsided. “This is your time. You might also want to consider the lyrics to your pledge class’s dirty song. It’s pretty atrocious so far.”
They had been trying to rewrite an old pop song so that it was filthier.
The problem was that the song they had chosen was already about sex, and none of them were very good at lyric writing.
(“This is what comes of defunding the arts,” bemoaned Maud, the lone English major of the group, who, despite frequent interjected disapproval, still could not think of anything but slant rhymes.)
“In any case, we’re going to do something very unusual and shut up now,” Mallory announced, and turned to the door, gesturing for Nicole to follow.
“You guys have two hours to yourselves. When your time’s up, Nic and I’ll come get you.
And if you all prefer to pass out here, don’t worry, you can stay the night. ”
“You’re still pledges, so even though we’re bending the rules for tonight, upstairs is still off-limits and so is the kitchen,” Nicole warned, as if their eyes had collectively lit up. “If you get the munchies, that’s what all these snacks are for.”
Indeed, the coffee table was laden with a variety of sweets and savories—exported dark-chocolate almond-butter cups, chocolate-covered cherries, champagne-flavored gummy bears, an array of salty and nutty cheeses paired with tiny sourdough toasts, a rubied spectrum of fine charcuterie, an oozing wedge of honeycomb, tiny quiches laced with onions so caramelized they shone.
And, of course, three more bottles of vintage wine, two a pale gold and the last a rich, glittering garnet.
Nina felt dazed just beholding the wealth of it.
“Well,” said Maud when Nicole and Mallory were gone, the French doors to the living room shutting cleanly behind them. “Should we make a game of it? Never Have I Ever? Truth or Dare?”
“Let’s expedite the bonding,” said Dalil. “Let’s go around in a circle and each say the worst thing we’ve ever done.”
It was in these controversial moments that Nina was fondest of Dalil, who had a technique for mastering every scenario.
She settled in beside Dalil on the floor, realizing as she did so that all twelve of them had had the same instincts; that this sort of intimacy was best suited for the ground.
Closer to hell, Nina playfully figured, pulling a pillow down from the nearest couch as the other girls gathered a collection of sinfully soft sherpa throw blankets from the various other sofas and hunkered down in a sort of modified slumber party fort.
“Who wants to go first?” called Dalil, pouring more wine into Nina’s emptying cup.
“I once cheated on a math test,” said Francisca, whom they mostly called Fran.
“Basic,” called Maud through an improvised foghorn.
“Terrible,” Dalil agreed. “Do better. Next?”
Nina ran through her mental sins. She had masturbated many times and had also frequently gotten drunk, occasionally high.
She’d snuck Jonathan Zein into her bedroom once when her parents weren’t home.
She wasn’t always a very good friend and could occasionally be known to leave people on read, basically at constant risk of doing so with everyone who wasn’t Jas.
She knew Jas had a desperate, pseudo-incestual crush on their not-cousin Arya, which Nina didn’t technically share, but it felt weird just to know about it.
She didn’t always do all the reading for class and sometimes she scrolled her phone instead of paying attention in lecture.
Was any of that really the juiciest thing she could choose to say aloud?
“I want to fuck my philosophy professor,” she decided when the circle came around to her.
“Boooooo,” said Dalil. “I always want to fuck my teachers.”
“It’s true,” Maud agreed. “It’s an ongoing fetish.”
“Fine. I think I’m probably bi,” said Nina, who had the sense that all her blood had rushed to her cheeks.
“So? I said worst thing, not just ‘a’ thing. Who in this day and age isn’t bi?” scoffed Dalil.
“Um, me?” said Maud. “I’m a lesbian.”
“Good for you, Maud, no need to show off—”
“I’m pretty sure most of us are straight,” said Ryoko tentatively.
“Why? Do better,” said Dalil into her glass.
“I guess I kind of want to fuck Fawn,” Nina admitted, as if the thought had only recently crossed her mind.
She was prepared to regret it instantly, to walk it back, but nobody seemed even remotely fazed to hear it.
Maybe because the truth was that wanting to fuck Fawn was too innocently unspecific.
What Nina actually wanted to do was sit in The House’s big leather armchair with her legs hiked up on either side while Fawn looked up at Nina with those big Twiggy eyes, dragging her bubblegum tongue along Nina’s clit and telling her how fucking femme her waist was.
(Nina had a similar set of fantasies for Professor Villanueva—but in those, it was a leather office chair.)
“Dude,” said Maud, reaching to spread honey and Brie over a cracker. “Fawn loves you. She basically only talks to you, have you noticed that?”
“I get the feeling she pissed off half the House somehow,” remarked Quinn, whose cheeks and forehead were a wine-flushed crimson. Though, because she had said it with very little conviction, nobody responded or acknowledged that it had been said.
Nina, for example, was far more fixated on what Maud said next, which was, “The point is Fawn probably wants to fuck you, too.”
“Yeah, I’d buy that theory,” Dalil agreed, which Nina tried not to dwell on or feel smug over, choosing instead another swallow of fancy wine. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Tessa does, too.”
“I’d fuck you, Nina,” Maud offered charitably through a mouthful of crackers.
“Me too,” said Fran. “If I had to pick a girl, I mean.”
“Oh sure, had to—”
Dalil forged ahead, undeterred. “I heard The House never takes sophomores, and yet here you are, so—”
“Wait, I’ve been wondering about that. Why did you wait to rush?
” asked soft-spoken Melanie, who was French-Canadian, which was the only thing Nina knew about her.
Well, that, and that apparently Melanie had once been caught tripping “absolute balls” at school, as Nina had discovered over the course of the past hour.
The wine warmed its way into Nina’s stomach. “Oh, um. I just wasn’t sure I wanted to,” Nina said. “Immigrant parents, you know.”
“I hear that,” said Maud, who was half Thai.
Dalil nodded vigorously midsip, spilling her wine down the front of her shirt. “None of you sluts look,” she warned as she dabbed at her cleavage, then paused. “I take that back,” she corrected on second thought, pushing out her chest. “Please look, I need the validation.”
“That doesn’t sound like the whole story,” said Fran, who was apparently still waiting for Nina’s answer. (Ryoko glanced at Dalil’s boobs and Nina made a mental note to bring it up to Dalil later.)
“Oh. Well. I mean, honestly, my sister asked me the same thing. I’m glad I didn’t rush last year,” Nina added, “because I don’t think I would be here if I had. I’m kind of a late bloomer.” She paused. “And last year was … tough.”
“Not answering the question,” Dalil said loudly, having given up on the spilled wine. There was a bloodstain of liquid on her T-shirt, a rosebud splash left unattended on her skin.
“Well, I mean—” Nina pondered how to put it into words; how to gently brush up against the truth without crashing headlong into it.
It wasn’t like she was confessing to flirting with her priest, as Fran had done, or to serialized petty theft, per Dalil’s extended brush with shoplifting.
“I guess I just … I mean, this place is such a boy’s club,” she exhaled, referring to the University.
Not wanting to get into the stupid little nothings, obviously.
The accountability to which none of her male peers were ever held.
The things that had happened to her last year that wouldn’t have happened if she’d been smarter, or had more value, or been part of an established, self-protecting group.
“I just … I realized how hard it was going to be, just being here,” Nina admitted quietly, “and I wanted, I don’t know—to be part of something bigger.
Something that already had a reputation that was scarier than mine.
I wanted the right kind of attention—I wanted to be noticed, I wanted to be valued. And I wanted it to happen on my terms.”
Nina felt her cheeks flame, realizing this was now, officially, the worst thing she had ever confessed.
The nakedest secret she had in her arsenal, which not even Jas could understand, because to Jas this was victimhood or worse, it was clout-chasing, it was peddling desperately for some fundamental falsehood.
Greek letters around her neck to help her mythologize the better future that she singularly deserved.
“I wanted to be beautiful,” Nina croaked, unable to stop herself, the truth wrenching out of her like an uncontrollable sick.
“No, I wanted to be untouchable. I wanted to be hot. I wanted to be smart. I wanted to be tough.” Now the truth was a marching rhythm, a slapping pulse.
“I wanted to count for more, I wanted to be unbreakable, and I just wanted more—”
“Power,” Dalil cut in, breathless. Her voice was almost a whisper.
Nina felt it again, the teeth-chatter of want. The House hummed in her veins, the exact frequency of longing. A hunt for something. Maybe blood.
“Yeah,” said Nina. It left her like a sigh. “Yes. That’s exactly it.”