Chapter 36
Nina felt numb, chilled to the bone from her time on the roof with Tessa, the subsequent minutes spent locked in indecipherable warfare now with Fawn. “I can still say no, Fawn. Obviously I can still say no. I don’t have to run just because they nominated me.”
But Fawn wasn’t listening. “You should have let them slate Dalil. Nobody actually trusts her. She barely made the cut during rush.”
“Why not?” asked Nina, realizing belatedly that while she’d brought it up, she’d never actually asked.
“Why?” Fawn nearly spat it back at Nina.
“She’s a fucking mess, that’s why.” She rose to her feet and started pacing.
“Bad enough I had to take her as a Little because Nicole wasn’t sure she’d buy in,” she was muttering, half to herself.
“I shouldn’t have listened to you, or to Tessa.
Alex was right. The House gets way too much scrutiny, we can’t have someone with a record of a past—”
“Past? What does that—”
“There are sisters in this House who want to run for political office, Nina.” Fawn had spun on her heel and speared it at her, like this was Nina’s fault.
“One bad association can take down a whole career—you’re a woman, you fucking know that.
We can’t have members who aren’t careful with their internet history.
Revenge porn just floating around out there is leverage for someone to use. ”
“What?”
Nina felt a deep, profound sadness, a tenderness that made her wish she’d given Dalil an extra beat of kindness the last time they’d hugged.
The last time she’d laughed with Dalil over a name as dumb as Yarden, Nina wished she’d taken the time to squeeze her hand, like a little doggie bag of softness for the road.
“But Dalil’s only eighteen, something like that couldn’t have been legal—”
Fawn waved an impatient hand. “I’m not saying it’s her fault, but you know how the world works. It’s just stupid fucking optics, Nina, come on. Everyone always blames the woman.”
“But you know that’s horrific. Right?” Nina was staring at Fawn like she was watching her undress.
Like Fawn was slowly but surely shedding her dignity, her humanity, everything Nina had so desperately wanted for herself.
“You’re, like, a vigilante. You’re fucking …
you’re punk.” She felt like she was doing calculus or landing a satellite on Mars.
“You don’t care about respectability or ‘optics,’ right?
You hate the institution, you don’t care about clout—”
All those followers, Nina suddenly heard Fawn say. That’s not nothing.
Fawn wasn’t looking at her. “Nina, please. I’m as liberal as anyone in this fucking generation but the fact is that right now, on about a dozen levels, Dalil is more of a liability than an asset.
Unless she decides to—fucking, I don’t know, use her story for a book deal or negotiate world peace.
” Fawn was obviously being sarcastic, but suddenly Nina couldn’t breathe.
The usual internal voice was starting to sound like this: FAWN FAWN FAWN?
“But if that’s what matters to you—” Nina’s exhale was hard and swift. “If all you can think about is not getting canceled—” She couldn’t finish the sentence, it was too ridiculous. “I just—I mean come on, Fawn,” Nina blurted suddenly, “how are you any different from Alex?”
“Oh, grow up.” Fawn looked hard at Nina then, and Nina’s eyes stung as if Fawn had slapped her. “You already know the world’s shit, Nina. Seriously. You understand how this works. You’re watching it now, in real time.”
“What?” Nina blinked at her. “You mean the Slate thing? Because first of all, I only said yes because Tessa was the one who—”
“Jesus.” Fawn’s mouth tightened. “Don’t get me started on Tessa.”
“What did you do to Tessa?”
“What did I do—” Fawn stared hard at Nina. “Is she still not over that? It was a closed vote, Nina, and I was doing my job. Tessa was never supposed to know what was said in that meeting, and if Summer didn’t have such a big fucking mouth—”
“What meeting? What vote?”
Fawn shook her head. “I’m sick of talking about this. Can you just leave, please? I can’t deal with you right now.”
“Can’t deal with me?” Nina couldn’t understand why she was having these sorts of feelings in The House—in the place that was so sacred, so safe. The place she’d sworn she’d die to protect out of the belief she could never get hurt here, never bleed like she had before.
“I get that you’re upset, Fawn, and believe me, I understand why, but can you find a little perspective, please?
I can still turn Slate’s nomination down—that’s what I came in here to ask you about, to see if you wanted me to just say no.
This stuff isn’t important to me,” Nina added, “it’s really just sorority politics—”
“Just—” Fawn gaped at her in disbelief. “You realize this is just one more betrayal, right? Just one in a long line of many. We can eat all the goddamn hearts we want and there’s still men lining up outside our doors like fucking wolves.
But you know who’ll always betray us the worst?
Not them, Nina!” Fawn sounded hysterical.
“It won’t be them. Their reasoning is selfish but at least it’s logical.
They can’t stand us because we’re a threat. So you know who the real problem is?”
Fawn’s white canines were glittering in the dark.
“It’s our friends, Nina. Our fucking sisters.
” She looked like she would spit at Nina’s feet, though she turned away instead, throwing herself onto her bed.
“Because even people who say they love you are just lying through their teeth,” Fawn muttered, turning her back to where Nina stood silently watching beside the door.
She was there again. Fawn Carter, the golden girl.
Maybe she was right, her job involved hard choices—maybe Nina couldn’t understand.
Maybe it was easy for Nina to play the revolutionary because she didn’t have to answer for the well-being of anyone else.
Maybe the truth wasn’t that Fawn was duplicitous, maybe she wasn’t a hypocrite, maybe she was just lonely.
Here in her single room with its single bed, the only member of The House without a group, without a partner.
Did they really have to throw away so many weeks of gold on the revelations of a single night?
Ultimately: Nina was a believer, and she wanted to believe.
“Fawn.” Nina softened then. “I’m not trying to betray you.
I do love you, I—” She broke off. “I don’t know if I …
I don’t want to spook you.” She stepped forward, perching tentatively on the edge of Fawn’s bed.
“I love you, Fawn, I do. And if you want me to tell people that—if you want me to tell The House it should be you instead of me, I will absolutely—”
“Oh god.” Fawn sat up to look at Nina with open disgust. “You thought I meant you? Jesus Christ, Nina. You really are a fucking idiot.”
Fawn threw herself back down on the bed, turning away.
Nina stayed there for a moment, numbness creeping up her spine.
Then she got up without a word and returned to the Icebox, falling into her desk chair with a sense that something horrible had just happened to her, and unlike all the other times she’d suffered some psychosexual atrocity, there was no chance she’d ever be able to put the specifics of this particular wound into words.
“Hey, there you are!” Dalil’s voice was bright over Nina’s shoulder. “Just grabbing a textbook, but then I’m heading back to the library if you want to come?”
“Oh, thanks,” said Nina numbly, slumping down in her chair and texting Jas. hey gurrl u up
“You okay?” Dalil bent over Nina worriedly, one hand on her shoulder. “You look sad.”
Nina’s eyes filled again with unspilled tears. “Do I?”
“Oh, Nina.” Dalil dropped her books on the floor and bent to give Nina a hug, crouching on her knees beside Nina’s chair. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay.”
Nina felt a sharp flood of embarrassment. She wanted to choose to sit up straighter, to claim her power, to achieve indifference, to dry her eyes.
But it was nice, this.
Being loved. Being comforted. Being cherished.
How many times had she asked for love like this and not received it?
Had it ever been this easy before? Fawn aside.
Fawn, who was not The House. Fawn who was of The House, and who owed it better than she had given it.
Who owed it more than lip service, the aesthetic of belief.
Who could not make a mockery of Nina’s vows—of Nina’s entire hard-fought reinvention—not like this, in a single night.
Nina hadn’t promised fidelity until cancelation. Until indignity or disagreement or betrayal.
She had promised until death.
“You believe in it, right?” Nina asked quietly, and Dalil pulled away, looking up at her from her knees with patient bemusement.
“What?”
“Sisterhood,” whispered Nina. “I know … I know we both said it was stupid before.” She exhaled sharply, casting off a weight. “But you believe in it now, though, right?”
“God, yeah.” Dalil reached up to scratch idly at her brow—taking the question seriously, knowing it mattered, without Nina having to ask. “I mean, what else do we have, right? Everything else out there is totally heartbreaking.”
Nina remembered the sense that she’d had before. That every woman in the chapter room had something painful in her past. A heartbreak from out there, outside of here.
It wasn’t The House that had failed her. It wasn’t broken. It wasn’t false.
It just had a flaw. A thorn in the paw.
Nina felt the presence of a cool breeze, the refreshing promise of pursuit.
Just then, her phone rang. It was Alina Antwerp calling.
Nina raised the phone to her ear. “Hello?”
“Sister Kaur, this is the Slate committee. Will you accept our nomination for president?”
Alina’s voice was loud enough over the receiver that Dalil could hear it. Nina looked down, swaying on the precipice of indecision just as Dalil’s eyes widened excitedly, with unadulterated joy. Just like Nina’s prior fantasies of Fawn, Dalil’s lips mouthed an adoring yes, Nina, yes!
In a stroke of sudden certainty, Nina knew what she was going to do. She knew exactly who she was going to offer up for dinner, and she knew precisely how.
“Yes,” Nina said after a moment. “Thanks, Sister Antwerp. I accept.”