Brimstone (46 page)

“Bauer needs some help with layout, and I thought about you, since you seemed so fired up to work.”

“Sure.” I contained my glee, which of course had
nothing
to do with Hardcastle having to eat his “No freshmen” words. “When should I come in?”

“Bauer asked me to send you to the journalism lab now, unless you’ve got another class.”

“Not for a couple hours. I’ll go on down.”

I assumed that this was a ruse because Cole wanted to discuss something. I’d written the week’s Phantom Pledge column over the weekend, covering the trauma of Bid Day, and I’d justified leaving out all details of the Sigmas’ ritual in several ways. One: the most interesting thing, i.e., the hoodoo I’d felt, was so unbelievable that I was beginning to doubt it myself. Two: most of the stuff—candles, recitation, circles—was common to at least one other house. I knew this because I called Tricia, who, per usual, was happy to tell me anything that went through her head.

And three: I kind of liked being the Phantom Pledge. And I really liked having a weekly column in the pissant school paper.

I followed my nose—ink and toner and film developer—to the journalism lab, a large room where rows of computers lined one wall and filled the middle desks. Several of them were occupied, but I didn’t see Cole, so I wandered to a big whiteboard showing the progress of the current issue. There was a Linotype machine, too, one of the old ones that used heated lead to print type on long rolls, which were then cut and pasted onto the layout. How medieval.

“Maggie?” I turned to see Cole Bauer in a second doorway. He looked like five miles of bad road—worn and rough.

“Hi, Cole.” I peered closer. I didn’t think it was just the fluorescent lights. “Are you feeling all right?”

“Great. I’m feeling great.” I had to admit that, despite his haggard appearance, he seemed very … bright, somehow, like a headlamp set on high beam. My eyes and my Sight were getting two different messages.

“You wanted to see me?” I asked.

He waved me over. “Come in here.”

The office might have once been a closet, but it was on par with most grad student digs. He closed the door and gestured for me to take the desk chair. “I read through the clippings you gave Hardcastle with your application. Your pictures are good, too. And you’ve had editing experience, right?”

“Yeah. I edited the AHS paper for a semester.” I had a weird feeling about this conversation; my skin prickled with unease. “But it was just a weekly, not a daily.” Or almost daily, in this case. The
Ranger Report
came out Tuesday through Friday.

“Great.” He laid his hand on a stack of articles beside the computer. “These all need fact-checking and copyediting. We’ll start there.”

“All of these?” It was a pretty big pile. “For which edition?”

“I put them in order. There are only three or so for tomorrow.”

“Um. Okay.” Good thing I had a long break until my afternoon classes. “Should I give them to you when I’m done?”

“The first couple. I’ll be around, but I’m working on a project of my own. I appreciate your help.”

“Sure.” There was definitely something off about Cole today. “Are you really okay?”

Cole smiled. “I’m fine. Just …” He weighed his words, then shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe you’d understand. I’m writing a book.”

“Oh, really.” I tried to sound impressed, but honestly. I’m a communication major. Nearly everyone I’d met was writing a book.

“I’ve got this idea. A fully formed, like Athena from the forehead of Zeus, kind of idea.” He ran his hand through his hair, which fell lankly around his thin face. “It’s wonderful and terrifying both, and I just feel that if I don’t write it now, quickly, the inspiration will desert me.”

“Ohh-kay.” His intensity was certainly terrifying—I agreed with that much. “Is that why you look like you haven’t slept in days?”

“I don’t want to waste writing time.”

“You’re not doing drugs or anything?”

He laughed in surprise. The ambush question also gave me his uncensored reaction. He was clean. In fact, he seemed to find the idea absurd. “No. I don’t need drugs.”

“I get it. Writing is your antidrug.”

“Exactly.”

I gazed at the pile of copy and sighed. “Fine. But only because you’re my sorority brother-in-law.”

He kissed my cheek. “I knew I liked you. I’ll put you in the acknowledgments.”

“Great.” He left me to work on his computer. I touched my skin where his lips had brushed. No vision this time, just heat, as if he were truly burning with inspiration.

I
don’t consider myself a Faust so much as a cat—consumed by curiosity. But both meet a bad end, metaphorically, so maybe it doesn’t matter, except to explain why I showed up at the Sigma Alpha Xi house for the pledge class that afternoon. I wasn’t buying what Victoria Abbott had to offer; I just couldn’t let the mystery lie.

The other seven pledges and I met with the active designated to teach us what we needed to know, congregating in the TV room of the SAXi house. Besides Holly and myself, there were Brittany, Ashley, Nikki, Kaylee, Alyssa, and Erica.

Tara, the pledge trainer, had a pleasantly curvy figure
and long, honey-colored hair that she wore parted in the middle, hippie-style. She handed us each a thick booklet. “These are your Sigma Alpha Xi handbooks. You will have to learn everything in here for the test, but don’t worry. We’ll help you.”

I flipped through the pages. There were sections on the meaning of the colors, the symbols, the mascot. No chapter, however, on “How to Win Friends and Influence Fate.”

“First we’ll go over the rules,” said Tara, settling into an armchair with a big, worn binder in her lap. The rest of us were on the sofa or the other chairs, forming a loose circle.

For an hour, Tara read out of the handbook about what Sigmas could and couldn’t do. To summarize:

Sigmas keep their grades up. (Self-explanatory.)

Sigmas don’t dress inappropriately. (Some ambiguity here, but the gist was that “provocative” wasn’t nearly as big an issue as “tacky.”)

Sigmas don’t drink alcohol. (Completely ignored in practice, until someone got caught by the authorities.)

Sigmas don’t have sex. (See above re: get caught, comma, don’t.)

Sigmas don’t talk about chapter business outside the chapter. (The first rule of Greek Club is don’t talk about Greek Club.)

There was a Standards Board to enforce these rules, made up of the chapter officers, an alumnae adviser, and, if serious enough, a representative from the national office.

Next there were rules specific to pledges:

Stand up when an active enters the room.

Do everything an active tells you, unless it’s hazing, but of course, hazing is against SAXi national policy.

Pledges do not have serious boyfriends.

At the general murmurs from the eight pledges, our trainer looked up from the binder. “We’re serious about this one,” Tara said. “Pledgeship is only ten weeks. You can hold out that long.”

Brittany raised her hand, clearly appointing herself spokeswoman. “When you say hold out, you mean …”

Tara leveled an unequivocal stare. “No sex.” The pledges giggled, maybe figuring the rule was as meaningful as the one for the actives, but she nixed that idea. “I’m totally serious this time. All your focus should be on learning about your sisters and your sorority. Sex will only get in the way of that. If you get caught, you’ll be brought before Standards.”

Nikki raised her hand, her face bright red. “So when you say ‘no sex,’ you mean, like,
nothing
?”

Tara rolled her eyes. “Do I have to draw you a diagram?”

Brittany had a prim know-it-all tone at odds with the subject. “There’s a
lot
of room between the neck and the knees.”

“And it doesn’t seem fair,” Ashley followed, “that the pledges from the other chapters will have a head start getting to know all the guys.”

Tara’s earth-mother patience was slipping. “You can get to know them, you just can’t screw them.”

“So making out is okay?” Brittany again. “I’m just trying to make sure we
all
understand the rules.”

“Above the waist only? Or everything but … you know.” In case we didn’t, Nikki made a circle with two fingers and demonstrated with another one.

“Eww!” Ashley screwed up her face. “Gross, Nikki!”

“Oh, like you haven’t.”

“Look, people,” Holly snapped. “Tab A, slot B. Don’t do it. How hard is that?”

I started to laugh. What else could I do?

Tara tried to get control of the group again, and steer them back on track. “You guys are
way
overthinking this.”

Brittany got huffy; with her high, clipped voice, she sounded like Minnie Mouse in a snit. “I’m just saying, we all went through Rush because we wanted to meet guys.”

“You should have done fraternity Rush then,” Holly said.

Tara jumped in to prevent a catfight. “I know what you mean, Brittany. But trust me. Sigmas have their pick of the guys.”

“Sigmas are hard to get but worth the trouble.” I didn’t realize I’d spoken aloud until they all looked at me. “That’s our reputation,” I explained, paraphrasing what I’d read on a chat board while working on my next Phantom article. “It does seem better than ‘Their pledges put out.’ ”

Tara gave me a studying look, and I wished I’d remained under the radar. I’d spent Sunday reading Gran’s book and working on my deflector shields, but I ought to practice keeping my mouth shut.

“What’s a sorority girl’s mating call?” Holly asked, earning Tara’s glare. “ ‘I’m so wasted!’ ”

“That’s not funny!” Brittany said, outraged. If she’d been standing, I think she’d have stamped her foot. Possibly the girls laughed at her as much as Holly’s awful joke. I know I did.

Tara took the opportunity to move things along, and
turned the page in her book. “We’ve spent so much time on this that we didn’t discuss officers. Any nominations for pledge class president?”

“I nominate Brittany,” said Nikki, and Ashley seconded. That seemed to be Ashley’s major function, seconding things.

“Anyone else?” Tara looked around the small circle, and her gaze rested on me. “Maggie? Victoria told me you might be interested in being pledge president.”

After a shocked silence, of which a lot of the shock came from me, Brittany protested. “But Maggie never contributes anything to the discussion.”

“That’s got my vote,” Holly drawled. “I nominate Maggie.”

I shook off my frozen surprise. “I can’t be pledge president.”

“She’s right. She doesn’t know anything about Greek tradition,” said Brittany. I suddenly realized who she reminded me of: Tracy Flick in
Election
. She even had the Reese Witherspoon haircut.

“I second Maggie!” said Kaylee, clearly in favor of anything that didn’t involve Brittany ordering us around.

“I decline.” But no one was listening to me except Brittany, who echoed, “She declines!”

Tara looked at her watch. “Great. Next week we’ll vote for either Maggie or Brittany as president.”

“But I don’t want to run.”

“Line up outside the chapter room in ten minutes, girls.” She dismissed us, and the group scattered. I marched toward Tara, but Holly strong-armed me out of the room.

“You can
not
stick us with Brittany for ten weeks, Maggie.”

“Why don’t
you
run?”

She headed downstairs. “Because my mother wants me to.”

“Of course.” We joined the steady trickle of girls on the central stairway that connected the three floors. “I don’t know why Victoria told Tara that I wanted to do it.”

Holly glanced back, the steps putting us eye to eye. “Because
she
wants you to run. You’re obviously on the short track to the inner circle. Lucky you.”

I would have felt a lot better about that if Holly had seemed at all jealous of my special treatment. Because the inner circle that came to my mind was the one in Dante’s
Inferno
, and that wasn’t anywhere I wanted to be.

T
uesday morning I woke up with an uneasy knot in my stomach. I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and gazed around the room. All was normal in the bedroom—morning light diffused through blue and green pastel curtains, and the disorder was minimal, at least in the bedroom half of the room. The French doors were open to the study, which looked like a tornado had hit and dropped the contents of a library. Situation normal.

I hadn’t dreamed, so that couldn’t be what was bugging me. Climbing out of bed, I shuffled to the bathroom, pulled the shower curtain closed, and turned on the water. Eight
o’clock class today, but a hot shower always helped me think. Standing under the spray, I did an inventory. Calculus homework, check. Biology lab report, check.

I
had
dreamed. The realization hit while my hair was full of shampoo. It wasn’t simply that I couldn’t remember. There was an absence in my mind, a hole where the dream had been, as if it had been excised like my wisdom teeth. It didn’t hurt, but I couldn’t help mentally poking at it.

Weird. I rinsed off and thought about calling Gran, but as soon as I went into the bedroom and saw the clock, that impulse disappeared. I had just enough time to find some jeans that didn’t make my butt look too big, and get on my way.

Downstairs, Mom was dressed for work, wolfing down a bowl of bran flakes. “It must be a good stomach day,” I said, making a beeline for the coffee pot.

“So far.” She swallowed the last bite and rinsed out the bowl, putting it in the dishwasher. “Lisa called last night.”

I stopped, midpour. “The home phone?”

“She said she tried your cell.”

“I must have turned it off for the meeting.”

“Anyway,” said Mom. “She wanted to make sure you were okay. Something about the last time you talked.” Mom was busily gathering her purse and briefcase, making sure she had her saltines, just in case. “You didn’t have a fight, did you?”

Spooning sugar into my travel mug, I tried to remember. When was the last time we’d talked? Was it the fight?

“Time to go,” Mom said. “You’d better scoot, too.”