Rushing to Die (23 page)

 

Chapter Thirty-­nine

A
L
L
I
WANTED
to do was take Casey back to my apartment, tuck a blanket around us, and watch
Friends
on Netflix for three or four days. But duty called. And by duty, I mean the Panhellenic advisor.

When I showed up at the Commons ballroom, I had no idea what to expect. Maya Rodman met me at the door and filled me in, with a new, no-­nonsense attitude. “I'm exerting my authority under Article G, section two of the Panhellenic manual,” she said in a voice that dared me to argue. After the most draining twenty-­four hours of my life, I wasn't up to nitpicking.

“Okay,” I said simply.

“This is how it's going to be, and if you don't like it, you can quit.”

Little did she know that was exactly what I was going to do. I shuffled off into a corner and joined the other chapter advisors in submitting to Maya's usurpation of the entire Sutton Panhellenic system. In a few minutes, she took the stage and addressed the assembled crowd, a mixed group of sorority women and rushees. She apologized for the way the week had gone. Then she explained how rush was going to finish up tonight.

For the next two hours, rushees and sorority women circulated among the room, tentatively at first, then more enthusiastically as time went on. Natural conversations flowed, ­people relaxed, and here and there I even spied a Deb and a Moo chatting, or an Epsilon Chi and a Lambda laughing together. The young women acted like young women do: shy and bold, funny and serious. Finally, Maya took over the microphone again and invited anyone who wanted to join a sorority to the adjoining room, where they would rank their preferences on sheets of paper and go home, safe and secure and, hopefully, future sisters.

It was casual and informal, and when Maya handed me an envelope of those who had chosen us, I felt a strange mix of gratitude and regret.

The preference ceremony that the Debs had practiced over these past few weeks was both life-­affirming and awe-­inspiring. Imagine all the Disney princesses in glittery dresses singing in a forest, lit by three hundred white candles, about what friendship means to them; now take that image and multiply it by ten. We would have knocked the socks off of any rushee who entered our sacred meeting space.

But there was something amazing about Maya's alternative plan. No pressure, no stress, no frantic whistles or megaphone shouting. The peaceful, chill vibe of two hundred young women getting to know each other might be just what we all needed to begin to heal this crazy collection of sisterhoods.

Back at the house, I gave the envelope to the rush team, we carefully drafted our bid list, and e-­mailed it back to Maya. I instructed Zoe to dismantle the security system and asked Aubrey to make sure the whole chapter knew they could sleep in the next morning. I wasn't sure what our bid day would entail, but I knew everyone deserved a good night of sleep.

By the time I finished delegating tasks, I found Casey sprawled out asleep on my bed. I wondered if that was advisable with the bloody head wound but couldn't interrupt his sleep. And then, for the first time in months, I found myself with absolutely nothing to do.

I lasted all of two minutes.

The temperatures had dropped severely that evening, and I zipped up my fleece and held my arms tightly to my chest as I left the Delta Beta front yard and turned to the south. I could see my frosty breath in the dim light of the crescent moon overhead and wondered if Sheila's drone would be able to see it, too.

Walking just to walk, I passed the other sorority houses, curious if they were all up preparing for the next day or if their advisors had said “screw it” too. Judging by all the lights blazing in the Moo and Lambda houses, it seemed I was the only one who had used up her allotment of energy on this rush.

Yet another reason I was no longer fit to be a chapter advisor. The next morning, I planned to call Mabel and offer my formal resignation. No matter what happened with the incoming pledge class, the entire chapter deserved someone who could have navigated the past few days with a little more integrity and a lot more circumspection.

I was about to turn the corner and head west when a car's lights flashed at me. A Sutton police cruiser pulled to the curb, and the one and only Lieutenant Ty Hatfield emerged from the driver's side.

“What are you doing out tonight?” I asked him.

“I could ask the same of you.”

I took a deep breath and plunged my hands as far as they could go into my jacket pockets. “Just needed some air.”

“No curfew?”

I shook my head. Maybe there technically still was one, but Maya had turned all of the rush rules upside down today. I doubted anyone cared.

Ty stepped closer to me, and it made me feel warmer, just having him in arm's reach. “Thought you should know that the rest of the Panhellenic Rush Council has been arrested.”

I gasped in surprise. “Why?”

“Conspiracy.” Ty made a face. “Who knows if the DA can make it stick, but once Von Douton and Jackson's statements reached her desk, she couldn't wait to get her hands on the whole crew.”

“Wow.” I couldn't believe it. The whole Panhellenic was really going topsy-­turvy.

“Between you and me, sounds like the DA might have gone through rush at Sutton some years back.”

And it sounded like she hadn't had quite the same positive experience that I had. Rush karma.

“You doing okay?” Ty's question startled me.

“Me?”

“You've eaten today, right?”

I opened my mouth to say, “of course,” but realized the last thing I'd eaten was a few bites of ice cream.

Ty scowled. “You realize I have a job to do, right? I'm a police officer. I can't be your personal fried-­chicken-­delivery ser­vice.”

I got huffy at his out-­of-­nowhere flash of anger but then checked myself.

The pizza, the fried chicken. The breakfast sandwich. In his weird, offhand way, Ty Hatfield had been making sure I was surviving on more than lattes and hair-­spray fumes this week.

I dropped my chin a little to hide a smile that was sure to annoy him but couldn't resist patting him on the long, strong upper arm of his. “Thanks. I'll make sure to get a healthy breakfast.”

We stared awkwardly at each other for a long moment. What did we have to say to each other when we weren't a seriously impressive crime-­fighting duo?

“So maybe—­”

“I was thinking—­”

We talked over each other, then we both stopped, with a little nervous laugh.

“Maybe we can get coffee sometime,” Ty suggested, the warm light in his eyes taking off the edge of his usual gruffness.

“Or donuts,” I replied.

That made him bite back a smile. “Don't get fresh, Blythe,” he said as he backed away toward the squad car, keeping his gaze on me the whole time.

The twinkle in his eyes is what made me say, “You wish, Hatfield.” And with that, a true grin cracked on Lieutenant Hatfield's legendary stern exterior.

I turned and felt a thousand times lighter as I headed back to the Deb house. Maybe I was failing at being a chapter advisor, but it looked like I still excelled at a few essential life skills.

 

Chapter Forty

B
ID DAY WA
S
the best day of rush week. All of the hard work and toil and tribulation we went through, it all came down to that life-­changing moment—­when twenty new pledges were dropped off in front of your sorority house and ran, screaming and crying, into the arms of the virtual strangers who would instantly become their best friends. It's not as weird as it sounds.

I woke up in a strange position on my couch, with drool pooled on the Delta Beta T-­shirt quilt that someone—­hopefully Casey—­had tucked around me. Casey was nowhere to be seen, and after I brushed my teeth and retied my hair back into a more orderly ponytail, I opened the door of the chapter advisor's apartment into a new world.

The sun was shining. Women were laughing and giggling and running with baskets of sorority gifts and mason jars of flowers and Starbucks cup carriers.

God bless them so hard. Aubrey pulled to a stop outside my door and handed me a Venti cup. “Special delivery!”

I would have kissed her if my mouth hadn't instantly planted itself on the coffee lid.

After the first shot had gone down, I was able to ask her. “What's going on?” She lifted her hands to the grand stairwell, where a giant, hand-­painted, bid-­day banner was hung, bright with jungle animals. “We're just waiting for the pledge list to finish their cards and name tags. Everything's done!”

Wow. “Really?” I asked in a mix of admiration and guilt. They'd all been working so hard while I had slept until almost noon, not caring about anything sorority-­related for a good eight hours.

Aubrey seemed to always know what I was thinking. “Well, we had a lot of help from your assistant. The chapter couldn't have gotten this all together without him.”

Casey. I smiled and looked for him in the crowd of women. There he was, giving posing tips for the innumerable pictures that were going to be snapped today. How lucky was I to have a best friend who was not only excellent at organizing events but generous enough to share his techniques for photogenic perfection?

The next two hours flew by in the bustle of giddy activity, and I couldn't help but be lifted and encouraged by the women around me, who couldn't wait to welcome new sisters.

The buses came, the pledges flew out into the Delta Beta open arms, and it was like everything was all right again. Like no one had ever died or been arrested. I knew that this was the true strength of our sisterhood, our resiliency; but somehow I found myself standing back from it all, an observer for once instead of jumping into the bouncing, squealing mass.

I felt a person come up beside me—­Sheila DeGrasse. The expression on her face told me that I wasn't the only one in a slightly more somber mood today.

“Happy bid day,” I greeted her.

Sheila pressed her lips together in a half smile. I knew she had to be thinking of Shannon Bender, so I put my arms out and dragged her into a tight hug.

When I let go, we both took a step back and stared. Did we just . . . Did that . . .

Sheila took a deep breath, then said, “Thank you.”

So I had hugged a Moo. It was weird, maybe, but in the moment it had felt like the right thing to do. “Of course,” I sniffed. “That's what Debs do.”

The smile that appeared on her face now was tentative, but true, and even the most hard-­core Delta Beta could appreciate when the first tenuous bonds of friendship had been extended.

“How's your pledge class?” Sheila asked.

“Amazing,” I assured her. “We took the best baby bees on the block.”

“Panhellenic frowns on calling new members, ‘babies,' ”

God, she couldn't help herself. “Are we really listening to anything Panhellenic says anymore?”

Sheila snorted. “Good point.”

“Where are you off to next?” What did a rush consultant do between rush seasons?

“I'll be in Florida,” she said, and while the words were casual, there was something in her tone that made me look at her more closely.

“What's in Florida?” I asked.

Sheila lifted her shoulders vaguely, and I decided not to push. After the past week, I should probably let some secrets of rush consultants remain that way.

“What about you? What do you have planned for this semester?”

I paused but decided that I could be honest with Sheila. We'd gone through a lot together this week. “I am resigning my position here at Sutton.” The statement sounded completely reasonable to my ear though my gut tightened at the thought. Still, what else could I do? Any advisor who gets her chapter thrown out of rush was honor-­bound to fall on her sword.

Sheila stared at me for a moment, then said, “I doubt that. But if you do ever leave, give me a call. I might have something for you.” Then she turned and started walking off.

“In Florida?” I shouted at her back.

She turned and gave me a mysterious smile, then returned to the Tri Moo bid-­day celebration, where I'm sure they were very happy about their perfectly adequate new pledges. I gave myself fifteen more minutes to enjoy the party; then I had a very difficult phone call to make to the Delta Beta president.

 

Chapter Forty-­one

“R
OBERT
P
LANT?”
C
ASEY
asked in a wondrous tone as we slid into a booth at Joey's Diner, right under a vintage eighties poster of the legendary singer himself. He picked up a sticky laminated menu from behind the ketchup bottles, and I stopped him with my hand.

“Trust me,” I said after I waved the waitress over and ordered two double cheeseburgers, extracrispy fries, and vanilla-­espresso milk shakes.

Casey sighed. “I don't know if I can afford the calories,” and rubbed a self-­conscious hand over his flat-­as-­ever abs. Please.

As for me, all my clothes were loose, and skeletal wasn't a good look on me. I could probably make a bajillion dollars marketing the Delta Beta Rush Diet of extra-­shot lattes and twenty-­four/seven manic activity, but it wasn't sustainable or healthy. Which is what I was telling Casey when he got a strange look on his face.

“Don't start,” I told him. “I have enough stress in my life, trying to figure out what I can possibly do to get the Sutton chapter back where it needs to be.”

“Mabel didn't accept your resignation?” Casey guessed.

“Not only that, she gave me a raise,” I said mournfully. Mabel had kept me on the phone for over an hour, begging me to stay on as chapter advisor. She praised my leadership, ethics, and personalized sentiments in the birthday cards I sent to everyone at headquarters, but I couldn't understand where she was coming from. I had let everything get out of control over the last week, barely pulling quota out of the mess that was Sutton rush. But Mabel was insistent. Quota was quota. We had our next generation of Delta Betas, everything else was gravy.

For her.

For me? Well, I wasn't so sure I was cut out to be a permanent chapter advisor. The stress, the drama, the constant threat of police intervention. When I expressed my feelings to Mabel, she said she understood; we agreed that I would finish out the spring semester, then talk over the summer about my future in the Delta Beta organization.

Casey looked relieved when I related that last part. Or maybe it was the waitress sliding a small side salad onto the table that made him relax a little. We started chowing down on our dinner, and Casey agreed that vanilla milk shakes with two shots of espresso might be a sign that Jesus loved us. After he finished most of his cheeseburger and sucked up the last of his shake, he wiped his hands with a ­couple of paper napkins and folded them together. It was a very official gesture.

“Remember that talk we had? Before I went deep undercover? About how worried I was about the chapter's reputation?”

I nodded, since my mouth was full of extracrispy French fries.

“And you said you believed in me and my mad PR skills to bring everyone back around?”

“Yes?”

Casey paused for a second. “You were wrong.”

What? He pushed on, past my pretty obvious shocked expression, I'm sure. “I can't do it, Margot. It's been two semesters, back-­to-­back, of nonstop illegal activity.”

“But the girls didn't even do any of it!”

“The phone-­sex line, the murders last semester, more murders this semester . . .”

“Mostly committed by alumnae,” I protested.

Casey lifted his hands a little. “Delta Betas just the same.”

Ugh. How I wished that wasn't true. I'd never wanted to uninitiate a sister until I'd returned to Sutton College.

“So that's it?” I asked him. “You're just giving up? Throwing in the towel? Writing us off as a lost cause?”

“Well . . . no . . .”

I slammed my hand on the Formica tabletop. “What about the women we just pledged? How do you think they'd feel, knowing you didn't have any confidence in them?”

“They don't really know me, but that's not—­”

“Leticia and Mary Gerald would not accept this. When they were told they couldn't live together, they didn't accept ‘no' as an answer.”

“You're right.”

“And I'm not going to accept it either!” I glared at him. No one told me “no.” It was a personality trait of mine.

Casey bit his lip, pausing as if he was afraid I was going to interrupt him.

“I think—­” he started to say, but I finished his sentence for him.

“We need to shift the paradigm.”

“The what?”

“If we can't redeem the Sutton Debs' reputation, we flip the script.”

A look of dawning comprehension fell over Casey's movie-­star-­handsome face. “We change the parameters.”

“Like Leticia and Mary Gerald in 1879,” I affirmed. “The world had never seen a sisterhood like theirs until they invented it.”

“Maybe there is something . . .” Casey reached into his man bag, unfolded a paper, and spread it out on the Formica tabletop. I read it once, then twice, then looked back into Casey's gorgeous baby blues. “What are you suggesting?” I asked, wanting to make sure I understood before I got too excited.

“We can't rescue the reputation of the Sutton Delta Betas. But we can build a new one.”

I put my finger on the paper and read it aloud. “Win an all-­expenses-­paid spring break in Myrtle Beach. Bad girls only. Good girls need not apply.”

“It's a contest,” Casey gushed unnecessarily. “For the naughtiest sorority chapter. It's sponsored by this record company, and I think the Sutton Debs are a shoo-­in. It's not even fair for the other contestants.”

“Because their chapter advisor and S&M director have both been arrested for murder?” I asked dryly, the bitter truth stinging the back of my throat. This was nothing that I'd ever imagined for my chapter. When I'd arrived at my alma mater four months ago, I was proud of the ladies' high standards, our spotless reputation, and our dedication to ladylike decorum.

But not two minutes ago, I had made an impassioned plea to shift the paradigm. Change the rules of the game. Was this what would save us?

An all-­expenses-­paid spring break on the coast with . . . I referred back to the flyer and the list of superstar music acts that would be performing that week. If we won, the girls would be granted all-­access backstage passes and be guests of honor at the resort. Other prizes included makeovers, vacation wardrobes, and the use of convertibles during spring break.

It sounded like . . . good PR.

When I raised my head and saw Casey's eyes gleaming, I knew we were on the right track.

“If you can't beat them, have a damn good time anyway.”

“Living well is the best revenge?” I mused.

“Exactly.” Casey grinned.

The more I thought about it, the better it sounded, as Casey's ideas always did. Sure, it would sting a little to put together a video highlighting our bad rep and not trying to ignore it didn't exist, but if we won . . . The list of prizes, the fun of hanging out with A-­list possibly illuminati pop stars, and glamour would bring us if not respect, then envy. And that was almost the same thing.

“I'll have to put it up for a vote,” I said slowly.

“They'll do whatever you tell them to do.”

“Should they?” I made a face. Like I had told Mabel, maybe my leadership capabilities weren't what they once were.

Casey reached across the table and enclosed both my hands in his. “Mabel believes in you. I believe in you. Even if you leave at the end of the summer, this will be your legacy.”

Wow. My legacy.

I had never thought of that before.

Was this the legacy I would leave to Delta Beta? To the world?

As we drove back to the Delta Beta house, Casey and I were silent, probably both wondering whether we were bikini ready for a bad-­girl spring break, and I kept coming back to the legacy of Mary Gerald and Leticia. One of the things that I had always admired them for was that they were leaders in a time when women weren't expected to take charge of their college careers, let alone their lives. They created something new, something they believed in, and made other ­people's lives better, even when everyone around them was telling them they shouldn't. Or they couldn't.

By the time we had returned to the Delta Beta house, I was as determined as I had ever been.

Following the example that our founders had shown us, I would recommend to the chapter that they embrace their bad-­girl reputations and start a new era of Delta Beta sisterhood.

Maybe it meant we would all be wearing bikini bottoms with
BAD GIRL
Z
emblazoned across the rear and leading a twerking competition in front of twenty thousand spring-­break attendees. It probably meant I'd be drinking heavily from my Delta Beta flask.

But we'd be taking charge of our lives, doing it together, stronger than we'd ever been. Which was sort of the point of everything that Delta Beta stood for.