Hell Week (13 page)

Victoria might yet turn me into a frog.

I thought they might laugh, but the clump of fraternity guys was quiet, contemplative. It was Ashley who spoke first. "Well, that's a little harsh."

"Not really," said a shaggy-haired boy in a purple shirt. He sat beside the reader, Will, on the row above us. "You girls are scary when you get your Rush game on." The guys laughed, breaking the pensive tension. "I can totally see you going all Francis Ford Coppola."

"Come on," she protested, twisting in her seat to glare at him.

I took the paper from Will and had a surreal moment, talking about myself in the third person. "Do you think she'll go native, like Martin Sheen?"

"Whatever makes a better story," said Purple Shirt. "It's all a gimmick anyway."

"You think so?" Will looked right at me, making me ner- vous. "I think she got it at least a little right. I mean, I admit that part of the reason I pledged was to feel like a big deal on campus."

A snort from Purple Shirt. "Dude. You're Gamma Phi Epsilon. You guys are the big swinging dick on campus."

Since Will didn't hit him, I figured this was a term of re- spect. Guys are gross.

"Eww," said Ashley, and faced forward. Will exchanged a grin with me before I did the same. Just in time--in walked my dad.

"Hey," whispered Ashley while Dad settled in at the front of the hall. "I think Will is totally into you."

"How can you tell?" I hissed back. "We talked for five seconds."

"That personal admission to encourage intimacy . . . he was looking straight at you." She nodded decisively. "Totally into you. You should go for him."

"Um . . ."

"And he's a Gamma Phi Ep! Perfect."

"Why's that?" The name was familiar. SAXi's brother fraternity--a redundant term.

"Because all Sigmas date G Phi Eps. It's tradition."

At least as far back as Victoria and Peter Abbott. I jotted a note in the margin of my paper: "Things to check out."

"Literally all, or figuratively all?" I asked, keeping an eye on Dad's progress plugging in his laptop and getting the projector going.

"Well," Ashley hedged, "everyone I've interviewed for my pledge book."

Now she had my attention. "Your what?"

She showed me the front of a binder, which was deco- rated with stickers and had "" written on it in paint pen. "Brittany said we'd better start doing our interviews of the actives now, so we're not stuck doing all fifty right before Hell Week."

"Hell Week?"

"The week before initiation. That's when we have our pledge test, and have to turn in our pledge book with all the interviews complete. Weren't you listening in class?" If Brittany had been talking, then chances were not.

"We're supposed to say Sisterhood Week," Ashley con- tinued. "There's usually some fun quests and assignments and stuff to bond us all together."

"Sounds like a blast."

"I can't wait," she said, missing my irony entirely.

F F F

The rest of the week progressed the same way: class, paper, class, sisterhood, homework, fall into bed exhausted. I stopped worrying about my lack of dreams; my neurons had nothing left at the end of the day. Not only were the normal brain cells getting a workout, but the freakazoid ones, too. I didn't get sick with them anymore--my deflector shields were becoming second nature to me now--but I still got flashes sometimes, still saw things in people's expressions that I wasn't sure any- one else could see. Maybe it was a trade-off--more waking weirdness for less nightmares. I couldn't say I didn't like it.

Saturday I slept and caught up on my reading for history. Dad tended to call on me whenever he asked the class a question and got nothing but cricket-filled silence, so there was no slacking off with his assignments.

Tara, the pledge trainer, had moved our class to Sunday evening so that we wouldn't have the time constraint of the chapter meeting immediately following. I picked up Holly at her dorm; on the way to the Sigma house, she grumbled that this meant Brittany could talk as much as she wanted, and then realized that "when" I was president, I could shut her up. Which I had to admit was more tempting than anything Victoria Abbott had mentioned.

We settled in the TV room, and Tara--looking more hip- pie than usual in a long bohemian skirt--started the meeting. "From now on, the president will call the class to order. So we need to decide who that's going to be. Nominated, we have Brittany and Maggie. All those in favor of Maggie?"

Holly raised her hand. So did Kaylee and Alyssa. I did not, even when my pledge sister kicked me in the ankle. "Ow! I'm abstaining."

"You can't abstain," said Tara.

"I have a conflict of interest." My tone was as unshakable as I could make it. "So I courteously decline to vote."

Her mouth turned down. "Fine. Those for Brittany." Ashley, Erica, Nikki, and of course, the girl herself raised their hands.

"Brittany should abstain, too," Holly protested.

"She doesn't have to." Tara's voice was deep with disap- proval, not of my opponent, but of me. "Brittany wins."

To halfhearted applause, Brittany beamed, put her hand on her heart, and made a face of embarrassed gratitude. "Thank you all for your support. I really appreciate the trust you've placed in me."

"Okay," said Tara, opening her binder. "Let's--"

But Brittany wasn't done. "I actually have some ideas for our class. Is it okay to do this now, Tara?"

She blinked, her earth-mother calm taking a hit. "Actually . . ."

"Thanks. It'll only take a sec." She whipped out a long, long checklist from the front of her own notebook. "First of all, everyone"--she glared at me--"should make a real effort to try and hang around the house more. Second, I think we should have mandatory checks of our pledge books at every meeting. We don't want some people"--why didn't she just say Maggie?--"waiting until the last minute." Holly shot me the death eye, and I had to admit, I was really regretting my abstention just then.

"Are you two listening to me? This is important stuff. Now. On to Homecoming. I expect everyone to really pitch in and show the actives what we can do. . . ."

F F F

On Tuesday after history, someone called my name just as I was about to duck into Dad's office. "Hey, Maggie! Wait up!"

Will, the Gamma Phi Epsilon from class, loped down the hall toward me. I'd only seen him slumped in his desk, and he was taller than I'd realized. I had to tilt my head back to look at him as the rest of the class went on by. Including Ashley, who gave me a wink of great significance.

"Maggie, right?" he asked.

"That's a good guess, since I'm the only one that stopped when you bellowed it down the hall."

He laughed. "I was just starting conversation. But I've been sitting behind you for weeks, and we haven't been properly introduced. I'm Will." He stuck out his hand. I had gotten into the habit of steeling my defenses before shaking hands. Sometimes I felt like that guy in The Dead Zone, and look how crappy things had turned out for him.

A slight tingle, as if I'd hit my funny bone, but no voyeur vision. I breathed in relief and surreptitiously brushed my palm on my jeans as he released it.

"Are you going to be there Friday?"

I drew a blank. "Friday?"

"You know. At the Underground. Sigmas and Gamma Phi Eps are getting together for a mixer."

"Oh yeah. They talked about that in the chapter meeting on Monday. I thought it was a type of drink." He laughed. "You're cute."

"Uh. Thanks?" I assumed this was a compliment, but since I'd slipped into a parallel dimension where fraternity guys even talked to me, I couldn't be sure.

"Are you going to be there?"

"I don't know." The Phantom Pledge would need mater- ial, I guess. "Maybe."

"You should go." Will grinned, and it was cheeky and charming, darn it. "If you make up your mind, I'll see you there."

"Great." I smiled, a little too brightly.

"See ya then."

"Yeah. See ya."

He jogged off. I watched him go, mentally composing the opening line for next week's column: Would this guy even no- tice me if I was wearing my Darth Vader T-shirt instead of Greek letters?

I swung into Dad's office, then stopped, because Justin occupied a small desk in the corner, diligently typing notes into a laptop. He looked very industrious; maybe a little too much so. Justin couldn't lie with silence, either. Had he heard my conversation with Will? Did I care? Of course I did. No point in lying to anyone about that, least of all myself.

"Hey." He looked good; he'd gotten a haircut, neatly trimmed, short enough on the top to stand up when he ran his hand through it, something he'd apparently done re- cently. It suited the clean-cut lines of his face. I hadn't seen him since . . . when? My weeks were running together.

He glanced up as if I'd surprised him. "Oh. Hi, Maggie."

Terrible liar. "What are you doing here?" I asked. His attention returned to the screen and his fingers to the keys. "I'm your dad's teaching assistant. Didn't you won- der why I'm always hanging around?"

"Just figured I was lucky." I wondered if Dad had men- tioned this fact. "I knew he was your academic adviser."

"Well, now he's my boss, too." He went back to typing.

"Ah." I watched, taking in the taut set of his shoulders, the clipped ends of his words. "You might as well say it."

"Say what?"

"Whatever has got you wound tighter than a Swiss watch."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Fine." I turned to go, but his question stopped me.

"Don't you think you're enjoying this a little too much?" He'd finally looked up, turned in his chair to give me his full attention.

"Enjoying what?"

He made a vague, encompassing gesture. "The whole Greek thing."

Casting a glance out the door to the crowded hallway, I lowered my voice. "You know why I'm doing this."

He rose, closed the distance, kept his voice at the same soft intensity. "I know why you think you're doing this."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Come on, Maggie. You were flirting. With a frater- nity guy."

My mouth worked in silent indignation. So he had heard me. Spied on me, even. "I was not!"

"You thought a mixer was a kind of drink? Come on. The real Maggie wouldn't give a guy like him the time of day." "What do you know about the real Maggie? You seem to think I'm so high-maintenance that a relationship with me would suck up all your study time."

His jaw clenched. "That's not what I said."

"That's what you meant."

"I think I know better than you what I meant."

"You think so?"

A cough from the doorway jolted me back to our sur- roundings, and I whirled toward the sound. Dad stood there, looking stern. "Should I come back later?"

"No, sir." Justin's face had turned scarlet.

"I have to get to my next class," I muttered, certain my burning cheeks matched his. Ducking past him, I escaped into the hall. 17

I'd been assigned a desk in the journalism lab. I shared it with two sophomores, but still. As I entered the last of the edits to an article about the downtown Harvest Days festival, Mike, the senior who served as the sports editor, called across the room in a harried voice.

"Hey, Quinn!"

"Yeah?"

"Bauer says you take decent sports pictures."

What was I supposed to say to that? "Well, I think so."

"I've got an article about how critical defense is going to be to Saturday's football game, and no current pictures of the defense. Can you run down and snap something usable?"

"Sure thing." Somehow I managed not to jump up and down and shout "Photo credit! Score!" I still had to get something he considered "usable."

I uploaded the current article to the server, grabbed my stuff, and headed to the practice field.

F F F

For a girl allergic to exercise, I do know my way around a football field. Two years of photographing our high school games had at least taught me defense from offense.

"Twenty-three, thirty-two, hike!"

I pressed the shutter button and caught the snap. My digital camera--a graduation gift from Gran--made a vin- tage film sound. Click, whir, snap! Click, whir, slam! Click whir, oof!

A padded player walked into my shot; at my glare, he mumbled an unimpressed "Sorry" and continued to the bench, cup of Gatorade in hand.

Getting creative, I took some pictures of the guys lined up on the bench, shoulder to tank-sized shoulder, knees sprawled wide, forest green helmets between their feet. And then someone walked into my shot again.

This guy wore a T-shirt and track pants, which he filled out nicely without any padding. "Sorry about that."

"I'll live," I said with an exaggerated sigh.

He looked at the badge I'd clipped to my shirt. The Bedi- vere Rangers weren't exactly big conference football, but they didn't let just anyone wander onto the sidelines and take pictures of drills. "Are you taking over for John?" John was the usual sports guy. I thumbed backward through the shots I'd taken so far. "Nah. Just filling in."

"Too bad."

I looked up, squinting in the afternoon light. The sun was behind him, and I couldn't see his face. Please tell me a coach hadn't just hit on a freshman. "Uh. Okay."

He took a step to the side, and I could see that he wasn't so creepy after all. "I'm one of the trainers for the offensive unit. If you need anything for an article. Or anything."

Okay, that explained it. I'd had people suck up to me when I was on the Avalon High staff, mostly to get their pic- tures in the yearbook or a quote in the paper.

"Just here to snap a few pics to go with John's article," I said, lifting my camera in what I hoped was a hint.

"Sure. You're a Sigma Alpha Xi pledge?"

I looked down at my shirt and feigned surprise. "Wow. I guess I am."

The guy laughed in a want-to-make-points way. "I'm AD Phi. I think we have a mixer with you guys coming up soon."

So he was sucking up because I was a SAXi? Interesting.

"So, maybe I'll see you around."

"Sure," I said, and started to turn away, my attention al- ready back to my camera's view screen. Then I thought of something he could help me with, and glanced back over my shoulder. "Actually . . ."