Adelaide Piper (10 page)

“So are you ladies from South Carolina?” a brawny boy named Derek inquired. He had on the fraternity uniform: a well-worn polo shirt, khakis that were frayed at the bottom, and dark hunting boots.

“Williamstown,” Jif said. “And what about you?”

“Houston, pretty girl. The Lone Star State. This is the Southern fraternity. Why don't you let me get you a beer.”

“All right.” Jif winked to me as Peter ran down the stairs and out onto the lawn. He gave me a big squeeze and spun me around. He smelled like beer and smoke and sweat, but I was thrilled to have the warm welcome.

“It's so good to see you,” he said. His eyes were sincere, but a little glazed over. “Hey, come on inside and I'll introduce you around.”

Jif was already on her way inside with Derek. The other boys ran farther down the lawn to meet a new heap of freshman girls who were waddling by in tight jeans and halter tops.

Inside was a zoo. Wide-eyed freshman boys were nervously sipping from plastic cups of red punch served out of trash cans as they met the upperclassmen. A heavy heat was rising from the crowd, and every forehead across the room seemed aglow. The music, which seemed like nothing more than the pulse of a bass guitar and some deep whines, pelted the walls with its steady beat.

A short guy with a thatch of blond hair and a light case of acne whom I recognized from the freshman floor below us spotted me and said, “Hey, you're third-floor Tully, right? I'm Frankie Wells, second floor.”

“You're here to meet the fraternity brothers, Pizza Mug,” Peter reminded him. “Not girls. Just because you're from Georgia doesn't mean you're a shoo-in, so get to schmoozing.”

“Yikes,” I said as Wells scurried away. “He was just introducing himself.”

Peter chuckled and tugged on a strand of my permed hair, then whispered in my ear, “I just have to mess with these guys, you know?

It's part of the rush chairman's job.”

“Ah,” I said.

“Hey, what's with the big hair?” some tall guy with a beard shouted, and I think he was pointing at me.

Peter rolled his eyes, and I started to rub my jewel nervously.

He grabbed my hand, pushed through the crowd, pulled us through the kitchen door, and grabbed a beer with a picture of a moose on it from a cooler hidden in the pantry.

“Try this,” he said, thumbing through a kitchen drawer for a bottle opener. “And when you're finished, I'll show you how to inaugurate your first visit to the Kappa Nu house.”

I had been at the house for less than five minutes, and I was already a fitting character for some cheesy after-school special. I didn't really drink—except for champagne on special occasions—and I could barely stomach the taste of beer. Was this a worthy environment in which to step out of my cocoon?

Then I thought about Jif telling me to loosen up, and I let Peter pop off the cap and hand the green bottle to me.

“I guess I'll try a little,” I said.

He grinned and his lips glistened with saliva beneath the fluorescent kitchen lights. His eyes were bloodshot, and he had a thin outline of a beard growing around his jowls.

“So Mama told me you gave the valedictorian address,” he said before sipping from his own green bottle.

“Yeah. You heard about Georgianne?” (Peter's family home was just two doors down from the Mayfields'.)

“Knocked up, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And she was a promising one too,” he said. “But Peach had to have her.”

“Well, I hope they'll be happy.”

“Carpenter, where are you?” a voice hollered from the microphone in the main room.

“That's Yates, the frat president. He wants me to address the rush candidates. Come on out to the party, and I'll find you in a few minutes.”

“Okay.”

When I pushed through the kitchen door into the darkened haze, I looked for Jif or anyone remotely familiar from my dorm. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Peter taking the stage with the guy who made the comment about my hair. They were welcoming the freshman boys who were coming out for rush before naming the reasons why Kappa Nu was the house of choice for the true Southern gentleman of NBU.

Frankie grinned sheepishly at me as I made my way through the crowd. “I'm from Milledgeville, Georgia,” he said, holding out his hand. “What about you?”

“Williamstown, South Carolina,” I said, giving his hand a gentle shake. “So you wanna be in this fraternity?”

“I don't know,” he said. “It's my first day here. My uncle was in this fraternity, but I don't know what the heck I'm doing.”

“You and me both,” I said, smiling at him.

The heavyset upperclassman I'd seen on the porch suddenly appeared and pulled Frankie away from me by his earlobe, and he waved goodbye. I looked around for Jif. Not seeing her, I started to sway to the music like everyone else and watched Peter grab freshman boys and haul them up the stairwell. After what seemed like an hour of pretending to know people and nursing my unsavory beer, I finally made my way to the line for the bathroom in hopes of coming across someone I knew.

It took twenty minutes to get in there. A petite and fair-skinned black-haired girl in line before me was hardly able to stand up. She was a drunken Snow White, and when she finally made it into the bathroom, I could hear her getting sick behind the door.

“You think she's okay?” I said to an upperclass girl waiting behind me.

“She's road cheese,” the girl said, flapping her hand as if she were swatting away a fly. “Don't concern yourself.”

Road cheese,
I thought. What in the world did that mean?

Finally, the girl's friend, a made-up blonde with big breasts and the largest diamond-stud earrings I'd ever seen, pushed through the door to help her friend. They barely made their way across the threshold, Snow White as green as the wicked stepmother now.

“Let's hit the highway,” the blonde said. “Just hold on till we get to the car, Isabelle.”

I watched as they stumbled out onto the porch. No fraternity brother or NBU girl offered them any help as they made their way onto the dark lawn and toward a red, new-fangled Ford Explorer.

“Waiting for an invitation?” the upperclassman said to me as she pointed at the empty bathroom door.

“Oh, right,” I said as I hurried into the smelly room, locked the door, and turned on the light.

My stomach caught itself in my throat as I saw the pornography that lined the walls. Picture after picture of centerfolds bearing unnaturally large breasts and tight, round fannies were taped haphazardly to the walls. There was a stack of magazines on the back of the toilet, and the tile floor was covered in a layer of water and grime. The sour smell of vomit burned my nose, and though I really needed to urinate by this point, I didn't know if I could do it.

I stuffed my blouse over my nose, loosened my white Keds from the sticky floor, and thought of President Schaeffer's speech about honor and integrity. Had it fallen onto deaf ears at the Kappa Nu house? And though I really had to go, I couldn't bring myself to sit on the toilet where Snow White's puke and Lord knows what else had recently been expelled.

As I retied the knot on my blouse, I spotted a little floral bag on top of a roll of toilet paper by the sink. I opened it; inside was a fifty-dollar bill, a condom, a tube of fig-colored lipstick, and a Louisiana driver's license with a picture of Snow White.

“All right then,” I said as I tucked the bag in my back pocket and walked back out into the foyer, my bladder about to burst.

“That was fast,” the upperclassman girl said.

“Have you been in there?” I asked, trying to warn her.

“Yates is my beau,” she asked. “I practically live here.” Then she grabbed my shoulder and added, “This is college, Wide-Eyed. Time to grow up. Boys will be boys and all that.”

“Ouch,” I said, too afraid to come up with a thought-provoking rebuttal about the danger of exploiting women.

As the girl slammed the bathroom door, I finally spotted Jif in the living room. She was trying to peel the Texan's bulky arms off her.

“Help,” she mouthed to me, and I came over and made like I was sick.

“I'm not feeling so well. I need you to walk me home, Jif,” I said.

“Where's Carpenter?” the boy said, tightening his grip on my friend.

“I don't know. Fulfilling his rush duties, I suppose.”

“I've got to go, Derek,” Jif said, wriggling out of his arms. He pouted before taking another gulp from his green bottle. Then he bit his lip in frustration and narrowed his unibrow before adding, “Suit yourself, Fresh Meat.”

“Wow, you really know how to woo a girl,” Jif said sarcastically and turned from him so fast that I think she swatted his nose with her bouffy hair. I could hear him sneezing as I followed her speedy exit. We scurried down the porch steps and out onto the lawn, where Peter was conducting a belching contest with three rush candidates.

He looked up and ran over to me.

“You aren't leaving?”

“Well,” I said, “that guy, Derek, kind of had an unwelcome death grip on Jif, and you seem pretty busy. We can catch up later.”

“I apologize for all of the craziness, Adelaide. The brothers are blowing off a little steam before classes start, you know? I'll tell Derek to lay off. Why don't y'all hang around a little longer?”

I felt the pulsing of my full bladder and added, “Also, um, the decor in the guest bathroom kind of made me ill.”

He looked perplexed for a moment. Then it dawned on him, and he gave a grin that was somewhere between guilt and empathy.

“Adelaide,” he said, gently taking my hand and lacing his fingers through mine, “I've always been attracted to your spunk.”

I liked that he took my hand, but I couldn't stifle my opinion.

“And one more thing: it's not exactly appealing to be referred to as a slab of flank steak or something.” I looked to Jif, and she nodded in agreement. “Am I wrong?”

“I don't think y'all are flank steak,” he said, rubbing his thumb across my palm. He pinched my cheek with his other hand. “Filet mignon, I could accept. But definitely not flank steak.”

I pushed his chest, not knowing if I should be offended or flattered. He pulled me gently toward him. “Rush will be over at the end of this week,” he whispered into my ear. The stubble on his chin tickled my neck as he held me close. “Then I'd love to take you out for dinner. I've really been looking forward to having you here.”

“Get a room, Carpenter!” the heavyset guy called from the porch.

He threw his empty bottle into the shrubbery and demanded that a freshman boy get him another.

Through the window I could see Derek with his arms around another young girl. His big hand was under the back of her shirt, and he was pulling her closer.

“All right,” I said, pulling back to smile at Peter. He was my only male friend at this point, and I had to give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, he was my geometry tutor and one of the finest boys ever to come out of Williamstown. So I had good reason to hope that he wasn't the alcoholic-porn-gazing type that a portion of the KN brothers appeared to be.

“And, Jif,” he said before we stepped onto the sidewalk, “Derek's your typical egomaniac Texan. His daddy's some bigwig lawyer, and he thinks he can have whatever he wants. Forget about him. I'll set you up with a gentleman, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, flipping her hair and correcting her posture.

As we walked up Main Street, we saw several freshman boys downing drinks on the green lawns of frat houses and upperclassmen with young girls on their arms, hollering at the rush candidates to continue.

“Well,” I said, “I'm not sure what to make of all this.”

“Yeah,” Jif said. “Derek was a
creep
. He must have asked me to walk upstairs to his room five times.”

“This can't be the only social life at NBU. Surely there's a lot more going on than just fraternities, right? I mean, who are those activists who put up that Tiananmen Square display? We've just scratched the surface.”

“Let's hope so,” she said.

“And what is road cheese?” I asked, pulling the floral bag out of my pocket to show to her. “This girl was getting sick in this porn-laden bathroom, and no one was helping her. She left this behind. I didn't exactly think that the KNs had a lost and found, so I thought I'd turn it in to campus security tomorrow.”

“Road cheese means they're from one of the pricey women's colleges,” she said. “There are three or four of them on the outskirts of Troutville, and NBU is where they go to meet guys. The hall counselor told me they were here to get their MRS degrees.”

“Ah,” I said. “The NBU girls snub them for staking out their territory.”

“And the guys just have more and more fresh meat to choose from,”

Jif said.

“Aren't they fortunate?” I said.

When we returned to the dorm room, Ruthie was talking in loveydovey tones into the telephone receiver as she gazed longingly out the open third-floor window into the starry mountain sky.

Jif, a little freaked out by the Derek experience, pulled her mattress down the hall into ours, and we fell asleep to the distant sounds of music spilling out of the frat houses and shrieks of either laughter or horror. I couldn't tell which.

Orientation. Ugh. All of the freshmen were instructed to meet in the gym for a series of icebreakers with Dean Atwood and her entourage of assistants and coaches.

“Find everyone born the same month as you,” the dean would holler in her perfectly pressed pin-striped suit. Or “Find everyone with the same color eyes.”

I scurried through the crowd, trying to follow the rules that she called out from the microphone. I had never felt so short. What was in the water across the rest of the country that was creating this tall, earthy race of natural blonds? Seventy-five percent of the class was a head taller than me, and very few chose to duck down to ask the brunette with the poodle hair when she was born.