The Alpha Bet (6 page)

“Come on, pledge Cook. It’s time to join the party,” she says, taking me by the arm.

“Thanks, Lindsay,” I say, trying to keep up with Marjorie without tripping again. She drags me into a room holding a piano and nothing else. I can hear laughter coming from the front of the house.

“Listen, Grace Kelly. I know this was an accident, but if anything else happens, I’m going to have to pull you from rush. I can’t have you being an embarrassment,” she says, and then storms off. I stay in the room for a few minutes catching my breath. My stomach is still tingling from being alone and actually having a conversation with the Alpha president. She is so nice and made me realize that the Alphas aren’t going to pass me up just because of one little accident.

I follow the laughter into an elaborately decorated great room. I’ve never been on a cruise before but I can’t imagine anything more closely resembling a lido deck. My mom would completely love the creativity that the Alphas put into decorating. She is constantly filling our house with new decorations that she copies off of Martha Stewart. A pang of guilt hits me in the gut but dissolves just as quickly when a sorority sister shoves a tray of fruity drinks garnished with pineapple wedges toward me.

“Would you like a non-alcoholic pina colada?” She asks sweetly.

“Thanks,” I reply, delicately taking a glass from her tray. She flitters off as I take a long sip. I try to look non-chalant as I sip while trying to figure out how I’m going to infiltrate the little cliques of girl chatting that formed while I was getting patched up.

“Are you okay?” Jentry appears, looking worried, by my side.

“Never better,” I lie.

“Nobody thinks anything about it, GK,” Jentry tells me, resting a reassuring hand on my shoulder. She directs me over to a group of girls and introduces me.

“You’re so brave. I would have been crying like a baby if I cut myself that bad,” an Alpha named Constance says.

“Head wounds always bleed more so it looked way worse than it really was,” I reply. I can’t tell if the girls are dazzled by my knowledge or completely grossed out, but I feel better anyway.

Our conversation easily floats from classes, to instructors, to dorm food, to boys. Pledges and sisters interchange until I’m positive I’ve talked to everyone here. I can’t believe how nervous I was to meet the sisters, everyone is so nice.

“Grace Kelly, that is too funny,” Leah, an Alpha, says after I finish telling them about Jentry sling-shoting Sean her thong on move-in day.

“Your little brother sounds like a bigger pervert than mine,” someone adds.

“What did I miss?” Sloane giggles, joining our group. She’s been putting on quite the act tonight but I know the Alphas must see through it. I hope anyway. I still can’t help but be paranoid that she is going to try and ruin this for me because I threw that sauce on her.

“Grace Kelly was just telling the funniest story,” a sister says.

“Grace Kelly is quite the comedian. She had everyone cracking up over dinner the other night,” Sloane agrees.

I did?

“You two know each other?” Leah asks.

“We’re practically neighbors at the dorm, aren’t we?” Sloane says sweetly, draping her arm around me. She seems so genuine that I can’t help but wonder if this is her way of saying she wants to start over. I know I do.

The sisters offer to take us on a tour. Sloane smiles easily at me as we follow them up the stairs. I catch Jentry’s eye and she doesn’t look as eager to want to befriend Sloane quite yet. We follow the sisters up the stairs to the bedrooms. I can’t help but fantasize how great it would be to call this amazing house my home. It would be a bit tricky keeping it secret from mom though. I didn’t exactly mention rush to Mom during any of the ten phone conversations we had in the last two days. I knew she would just assume that I was too young and would think that the Alphas would be a bad influence on me. It would have been cool if she could have seen how sophisticated I’ve been tonight, minus the eye patch bandage of course. I think she might have even been proud of me if the circumstances were different. Jentry is so lucky. She never has to report to anybody. Her family doesn’t even call.

Our tour is over and the other girls file back to the great room. I duck into the bathroom to check on my newest scar.

At least I didn’t need stitches, I think, making my way out into the hall. The hallways are covered with giant picture frames of past Alphas. I stop and look at a few of them, daydreaming about my photo being in a frame hanging on these walls someday.

“Jesus, you look like something out of a horror movie,” I hear Sloane’s voice say from behind me. I spin around to face her and stumble a bit. I don’t know if the spin knocked me off balance or it is was the look on Sloane’s face. The girl who was chatting so amiable alongside me just a few minutes ago is long gone. The girl in the hallway is the same one I threw the pasta sauce on.

“I’m really sorry I threw the sauce on you, Sloane,” I say, hoping she’ll accept my apology. After all, we could be in the same pledge class soon.

“Oh, you’re going to be sorry,” she says, reaching out and shoving me. I fall back against one of the picture frames. It dislodges from the wall and crashes to the floor in a million pieces. I jump away just in time to avoid being cut by the shattering glass.

Active sisters and rushees quickly flood the hallway. My face starts to burn until I realize that this wasn’t really my fault, and the Alphas will understand that when they see Sloane. I look to my side but Sloane is gone. The only thing the Alphas see in the hallway is me, standing around shards of broken glass and their prized picture frame in a thousand pieces.

“It was an accident,” I say. With Sloane not around, no one is going to believe a story about me getting shoved, so I don’t even bother.

Marjorie shoves through the crowd and takes my arm. “That’s it. I’m removing you from rush as a safety hazard to the other pledges.” She drags me back down the hall to the front door.

“GK, wait!” Jentry yells, rushing up behind me. “I’ll come with you,” she offers, half-heartedly.

As much as I wish that things could have turned out differently, I’m not about to deny Jentry her happiness, even if, selfishly, I would love for her to leave with me.

“No, you stay. I want you to,” I say, smiling at her. Several of the sisters wave forlornly at me.

“Are you sure?” she says, as Marjorie pulls me out the door. I flash Jentry one last fake smile to make her think I’m okay.

“You left me no choice,” Marjorie says, letting go of my arm for the first time since we left the Alpha house.

“It wasn’t my fault. There’s this girl and she’s got it out for me. She shoved me into the picture frame,” I say, praying that Marjorie will change her mind and take me back to the Alpha house. She looks at me and shakes her head.

“It’s over, Grace Kelly. Go home.” She turns and heads back to the Alpha house without even giving me another glance. How could she be so cold-hearted?

“Can’t you just give me another chance?” I yell to her retreating figure. She doesn’t even bother to look back. Once Marjorie is completely out of sight, it hits me that my future as an Alpha really is over. I start to cry, loudly, knowing that the darkened quad is abandoned.

“It’s all because of these stupid shoes,” I scream, kicking the heels off. “I hate these shoes,” I continue screaming, scooping them up off the ground. I throw one of the shoes as hard as I can and hear it bounce off a neighboring tree. I throw the other shoe then collapse to the ground, crying.

“Jesus,” I hear a voice say, about a millisecond after I hear the second shoe hit something. “Are you trying to kill me?” The voice comes closer and I look up, through my tears, to see a guy rubbing his forehead with one hand, and holding my shoe with the other. I think about jumping to my feet, trying to save some face, but then I figure this is probably the worst day of my life, and I really don’t care what some random stranger thinks of me.

“Does this belong to you?” He asks, holding my shoe out.

“If I say yes, are you going to press charges?” I ask, sniffling.

He laughs and holds a hand out to help me up. I stand up and face him.

“I don’t think you are supposed to cry for at least two days after having Lasik surgery,” he says, serious all of the sudden.

“Huh?” I ask, confused, until it dawns on me. The eye patch/bandage from hell. There is definitely no face to save here. This is definitely the worst day of my life.

He laughs, still holding my shoe out to me. I grab it, drop it, and against my foot’s protest, shove it back on.

“I’m kidding, by the way. Hey, are you okay?” He asks, when I don’t respond to his joke, which was funny, but I just can’t bring myself to laugh after tonight’s catastrophic events.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks,” I say, standing all cock-eyed with one shoe on and one off.

“Where’s your other shoe?” He asks looking down at my feet.

“I don’t know. I think maybe I wounded an elm over there,” I say, pointing in the direction that I heard the shoe hit.

“I’m gonna go out on a limb and say you’re not a tree hugger, are you?” He laughs. “Go out on a limb, get it?” He starts cracking up and I can’t help but let out a few giggles against my will.

He trots off in the direction that I pointed, and after a few seconds, he comes back looking happy, holding my other shoe. He bends down in front of me and slips it on my foot.

“Do you think maybe Cinderella tagged Prince Charming in the head with her shoe before he slipped it on her foot?” He laughs, getting to his feet.

“I highly doubt it and I don’t remember Cinderella ever wearing an eye patch either,” I grumble. He runs a hand through his curly brown hair, which is damp with sweat on the ends. The neck of his T-shirt is also ringed with sweat and I notice an Ipod velcro’d to a sizable bicep with ear buds trailing down his chest. His T-shirt has a large horseshoe looking emblem on it. I recognize it as the Greek symbol for Omega. Memorizing the Greek alphabet is the only learning I’ve done on campus so far. That must mean that he belongs to a fraternity, which almost brings on another flood of tears. I suck them back, focusing instead on his face. It’s too dark to see what color eyes he has but I can make out the deep pit of a dimple in his left cheek every time he laughs. He’s adorable in a never-gonna-get-him-so-don’t-even-bother-drooling kind of way. So what’s he doing standing here being nice to me?

“I’m Charlie Miller. Do we know each other? You look familiar,” he says, crinkling his brow while studying my face.

“I don’t think so,” I reply curtly, turning away. He is making me flush by staring at me so hard. Only it’s not in a creepy way, it’s like he really thinks he knows me. I almost giggle when I realize how absurd it is that an adorable frat boy thinks he knows a big science geek like me.

“Wait a minute. You won the McMillan science fair last year, didn’t you?” He says, beaming with joy that he placed me.

I don’t even bother to hide my shock. I’m completely mortified that my super-duper makeover obviously isn’t so super-duper after all if Charlie can recognize me, in the dark no less.

“It is you,” he exclaims. I nod my head in agreement. “You were the talk of the science department last year. There were some XY science majors who had a hard time losing out to an XX high-schooler. Present company excluded, of course.”

I am dangerously close to passing out thinking that Charlie is going to remember that not only was I a high-schooler, but technically, I was only a sophomore. Thankfully, he doesn’t show any sign of remembering my exact age.

“I’m kind of a science geek,” I admit, laughing uneasily.

“Hey, there’s nothing geeky about science. I should know, I’m a chemistry major.” He laughs. “So, do you know what your entry in the science fair is going to be this year?”

So that’s what this is all about. He’s trying to hijack my science fair idea, which I haven’t even had a spare minute to think about yet.

“You’re good,” I smart off. “Who sent you? Was it Rashee? You can tell him that I’m going to cream him just like I did last year. Tell him my entry is going to be even more amazing than it was last year,” I bluff.

Charlie’s eyes get huge and he backs a few steps away from me. “Wow, even better than the French-fry oil powered lawn mower, huh? Well, good luck.”

How in the world did he know what my entry was last year? There was a tiny write-up in the local paper and my dad does still tool around the yard on it. Then he started craving McDonald’s every time he rode it so my mom made me convert it back to regular gas.

“Wait, you aren’t a spy?” I’m such a dork. I hit the guy in the head with my shoe. How in the world could he be a spy sent by my science fair competition?

“Actually, I was flirting with you, but obviously I need to work on my game a bit,” he says, looking mortified. He slips in his ear buds, flashes me a smile, and takes off running before I’ve fully grasped what he just said.

A cute frat boy hitting on me? Clearly, I have not become acclimated to the new and improved Grace Kelly yet. Holy crap, a cute frat boy was hitting on me!

“Wait,” I yell to his retreating figure. “Sorry about your head. I’m Grace Kelly, or GK for short, by the way,” I shout, hoping his music isn’t up to loud.

“See ya later, GK for short,” he shouts back from the dark shadows of the quad.

****

I’ve got to figure out a way back in to the Alphas, I think to myself on the walk back to my dorm. But how? I practically begged Marjorie and she wouldn’t budge. I know that the Alphas hold rush in the spring semester also but that is too far away. I just can’t wait that long.

“It’s all because of these stupid shoes,” I say, pounding them into the ground. It’s actually Sloane’s fault, but as much as I’d like to pound her into the ground, I can’t, so the shoes will have to do. The campus is deserted with mostly everyone at rush, and once again, I feel like the geeky girl not invited to the cool party. Angrily, I dig through my purse to find my ID so that I can get into the dorm. I jerk it out, pulling out some tampons at the same time. I bend down to grab them up before anyone can see when a hand intercepts mine.