Sorority Sister (16 page)

Candie, the white cap still covering her auburn waves, leaned against the hot water heater. “My, you’ve got a mind like a steel trap. Not that it’s going to do you any good, being so smart.” She folded her white-shirted arms over her chest and smiled down at Maxie. “Still, you
are
going to go out in a blaze of glory. You interrupted me just now, but when I’ve finished what I started, you and this horrible old house are going to go up in flames like Fourth of July fireworks.”

“This horrible old house?” Maxie stared up at her. “I thought you loved this place. You said you did.”

Candie shrugged. “So I lied. Sue me.” Then rage filled her face and she bared her teeth. “I
hate
this place! I always have. I only came here to do what I promised myself I’d do when I was ten years old and
she
drove my father’ away. A year later, my brother couldn’t take it anymore, and he left, too. They left me there alone. With
her.”

Maxie’s ankle throbbed and in an unconscious effort to relieve the pain, she changed its position. As she did so, it bumped gently up against the paint sprayer she had accidentally kicked earlier. “Her? Your mother?”

Candie sneered. “Some
mother
she was. Allison Barre, the toast of Omega Phi Delta, secretary, then vice president, and then, at long last, president. She never got over it. Never stopped talking about it, never stopped wanting it back, never loved
anything
as much as she did those four years. Not my father, not my brother, not me. Especially not me.”

The plastic paint sprayer had a fat, clear hose attached to its nozzle. Maxie followed the hose with her eyes as she listened to Candie. The hose trailed across the floor of the utility room and stretched its way to one of the squat, fat white plastic containers of paint.

Candie turned and began marching back and forth beside the hot water heater, swinging her arms as she walked. “We could have had such a great family. My father adored her. He couldn’t believe he’d won the prize of Salem University. They were married right after her graduation. She wanted to stay here, settle down in Twin Falls, didn’t want to leave the university. But my father had a job in Philadelphia, so they had to go. He told me when he left us that she’d never forgiven him for taking her away from here. He was right. She never had.”

Maxie lifted her left leg, hooked her foot over the spray bottle and slid it back toward her, hoping Candie wouldn’t notice, praying it wouldn’t scrape against the floor tiles. It didn’t. When it was close enough and Candie’s back was turned momentarily, she reached out, grabbed the bottle and hid it behind her.

How did the spray bottle work?

“She was still in the sorority, of course,” Candie raved on, stomping back and forth, back and forth, swinging her arms. “It’s for
life ,
remember? She told you all that the day of the tea. She’d been telling me that every single day of my life. Once a sister, always a sister,’ and nobody believed that more than she did. I don’t think she ever thought of anything else.”

Maxie kept one hand behind her, her fingers exploring the sprayer, searching for the right knob or lever that would suck the paint up into the hose and send it on its way, out through the round nozzle. But she kept her eyes on Candie every second.

“She was never home. And when she was, she was on the phone — with one of her ‘sisters.’ She never even came to any of my plays in high school, she was so busy with her stupid sorority activities. And the whole time, the whole time I was growing up, she made it so clear,” there were tears in Candie’s angry voice now, “that she would have done anything,
anything,
including trading in her family, to be back here at Omega house, reliving those four glorious years.”

There, a small round knob … Maxie turned it slowly, carefully, and watched with a pounding pulse as the clear hose began to fill with thick white paint. The spray bottle would fill quickly.

Candie whirled to face Maxie, her cheeks red with rage. For one terrible second, Maxie was certain Candie would notice the clear plastic hose turning white with goo.

But Candie was too caught up in her rage to notice anything. “She didn’t
want
to be with us!” she cried. “She wanted to be back
here
! In this house … this horrible, terrible house that I hate more than anything!”

“It isn’t Omega Phi’s fault, or the fault of anyone in the house now,” Maxie said. After a moment, she added, “You stole your own ring, didn’t you? And sent it back by messenger. After you’d taken Erica’s jewelry box. Why did you send them back?”

“Oh, that was just the beginning,” Candie said smugly. “Just a message. To let everyone in the house know that something was going on. That’s all that was.”

“You wanted us to think it was Graham,” Maxie realized. “I almost did. But when I asked him tonight at the party where you were, he said ‘How should I know?’ That’s not what you’d say if you were fixated on someone, is it? I didn’t get it then, but he
wasn’t
calling you and sending you flowers and writing you notes, was he, Candie? You made all of that up. He just sees you as a friend, that’s all. And you deliberately started that argument with him on campus that day because you knew I’d be along any minute, to meet you for lunch. You knew I’d think he was bothering you.”

Candie just smiled smugly and nodded. Maxie went on, “You sprayed insecticide on the plates, didn’t you? That’s how you knew what happened and let it slip when you were pretending to be Tia Maria. Did you tell me on purpose, or was it an accident?”

“Careless of me,” Candie said, beginning to stride back and forth again. “I forgot that I’d already told you guys my mother didn’t know anything about what was going on.”

“But … but you got sick, too, that night.” Maxie wrapped her fingers tightly around the jar, still hidden behind her. If she didn’t have her thumb on the right knob …

“Oh, I most certainly did not! I told you, my mother missed some great performances when she skipped my plays. I’m quite an accomplished actress, Maxie. I wasn’t sick at all. I’m not stupid enough to spray my own plate with insecticide. Anyway,” Candie added casually, “it was Mildred’s fault. I was planning on spraying the pot of spaghetti, in which case the police would have found the insecticide. I hadn’t thought of that. But when I saw all the plates, so neatly set around the table, and knew they’d be washed after dinner, well, it just made sense to use them instead. Mildred shouldn’t have set the table so early.”

“We could have been killed.” Maxie gripped the jar more tightly, slid it just a fraction of an inch to the right, toward the outside edge of her skirt.

“Oh, I only sprayed a tiny bit on each plate. I didn’t want you all dead. Not then. I was saving that for tonight.”

“What are you going to do, Candie? Why were you fiddling with the hot water heater? And why all the paint cans in the living room?” As if she didn’t know the answer. But keeping Candie talking seemed like the best idea right now.

But her question had exactly the opposite effect. “Enough talk,” Candie said curtly, and dropped to her knees beside the hot water tank again, her back to Candie. “I told you, this house I’ve hated all of my life is going to go up in a blaze of glory, and you’re going with it.”

“That won’t change anything, Candie. It won’t make your mom change.”

Candie’s head swiveled in fury. “Yes, it
will
!” No house, no sorority. No sorority, no fixation, period. She’ll get over it. And she’ll come to
me
for comfort when it’s all gone.”

“Omega Phi is more than a house, Candie. You know that’s true. What your mom wants back is in her
head,
in her memory, not in this house. She’ll just hate you for what you’ve done, that’s all.”

“She’ll never know. No one will. Because you’re not going to be around to tell them. And no one else knows. I
was
planning on blowing
all
of you to kingdom come tonight after everyone was asleep. But that didn’t work out. I guess it’ll just have to be you and Erica.”

“Where
is
Erica?”

Candie pointed. “Over there. In that closet. Folded up like dirty laundry.” She laughed. “She never even knew the earring fell off …I scooped it up and wrapped it in a napkin and stuck it in her blazer pocket. I knew she’d freak when she noticed it was missing. She’d want to retrace her steps. It was the perfect way to get her back here. I’m going straight back to the dance when I finish with the house.”

“Chloe knows you left with Erica.”

“Chloe’s an idiot. I’ll just say Erica went home alone and I returned to the dance. Everyone will think what you thought. That she was angry about her mother’s accident and wanted revenge. You
did
think that, right, Maxie?”

Maxie flushed with pain. I’m sorry, Erica, she thought again.

Suddenly, Candie smiled at Maxie, a brilliant, happy smile. “I saw this on television,” she said cheerfully, bending again to the hot water heater. “You just unhook this little whatchamacallit back here, set the paint cans around, open the lids, and the paint fumes mixed with the leaking gas ignite. Fireworks! And Omega house, the only place my mother was ever really happy, will be history. And so will nosy Maximilia McKeon. But first, I have to tie you up …”

As Candie stood up and sent her eyes on a search around the room, Maxie slid the spray canister out from behind her and checked quickly to make sure it was loaded.

It was.

She jumped to her feet, her thumb on what she prayed was the correct knob, and yelled Candie’s name to make her turn around.

“What?” Candie said impatiently, and turned.

Maxie aimed the jar at Candie’s face and jabbed the knob with her thumb.

It was the correct knob.

A spray of white paint flowed forth instantly, right in Candie’s face. Candie screamed out in horror, and her hands flew to her eyes.

Maxie took advantage of her surprise attack. Running to the door leading into the kitchen, she pulled it open and ducked inside.

And at that moment, Maxie heard, the sound of a car door slamming outside.

Her sisters were home.

T
WO HOURS LATER, SURROUNDED
by friends gathered in her room, Maxie commanded, “Will you all please stop looking at me like I was Joan of Arc? It makes me nervous.”

“Well, you
did
save the house… and everyone who lives here,” Tinker said. “You said yourself, Candie had planned to do her dirty work when we were all in bed. If you hadn’t showed up when you did and stopped her, she wouldn’t have had to change her plans. Nothing would have happened until we were all in bed and asleep.” She shuddered. “Everything …everything would be gone, and us with it.”

Brendan and Jenna, summoned to the house by a grateful Erica, nodded agreement. “It was crazy of you to tackle Candie alone,” Brendan scolded gently. But he took her hand in his as he said it.

“I guess,” Jenna admitted reluctantly, “life in a sorority house isn’t as dull as I thought it was, is it?”

That brought a sad, rueful laugh from everyone in the room. They all knew it would be a long time before everything seemed the same as it had once been. Maybe that would never happen.

“Look,” Maxie felt compelled to point out, “I should have figured all of this out sooner. The thing was, I knew I’d noticed something important when Tia Maria was doing my so-called makeover. I just couldn’t remember what it was. Now, I do.”

Erica, nursing a headache from the blow to her skull delivered by Candie, spoke up from her place on Tinker’s bed. “What was it, Maxie?”

“She was wearing Candie’s ring. I mean, she had all these rings on her fingers, over her plastic gloves, like she couldn’t bear not to have them on. One of them looked so familiar …” Maxie grimaced. “Could have saved us all a lot of heartache, if I’d realized that earlier.”

Brendan laughed. “Will you just relax and let yourself be patted on the back a little? We,” waving his hand to include the entire group, “believe in giving credit where credit “is due. Enjoy. It won’t last that long.”

Maxie squeezed Brendan’s hand. Then she looked around at Jenna and all her sisters and smiled.

At last, they were all safe.

Diane Hoh (b. 1937) is a bestselling author of young-adult fiction. Born in Warren, Pennsylvania, Hoh grew up with eight siblings and parents who encouraged her love of reading from an early age. After high school, she spent a year at St. Bonaventure University before marrying and raising three children. She and her family moved often, finally settling in Austin, Texas.

Hoh sold two stories to
Young Miss
magazine, but did not attempt anything longer until her children were fully grown. She began her first novel,
Loving That O’Connor Boy
(1985), after seeing an ad in a publishing trade magazine requesting submissions for a line of young-adult fiction. Although the manuscript was initially rejected, Hoh kept writing, and she soon completed her second full-length novel,
Brian’s Girl
(1985). One year later, her publisher reversed course, buying both novels and launching Hoh’s career as a young-adult author.

After contributing novels to two popular series, Cheerleaders and the Girls of Canby Hall, Hoh found great success writing thrillers, beginning with
Funhouse
(1990), a Point Horror novel that became a national bestseller. Following its success, Hoh created the Nightmare Hall series, whose twenty-nine novels chronicle a university plagued by dark secrets. After concluding Nightmare Hall with 1995’s
The Voice in the Mirror
, Hoh wrote
Virus
(1996), which introduced the seven-volume Med Center series, which charts the challenges and mysteries of a hospital in Massachusetts.

In 1998, Hoh had a runaway hit with
Titanic: The Long Night
, a story of two couples—one rich, one poor—and their escape from the doomed ocean liner. That same year, Hoh released
Remembering the Titanic
, which picked up the story one year later. Together, the two were among Hoh’s most popular titles. She continues to live and write in Austin.