Shatter (Club Grit Trilogy) (12 page)

“Is that a threat?” asked DeAndre. He was trying to play tough but we all knew he was a coward now.

Skylar laughed sarcastically. “Ha! No. Threats are empty. What it is is a warning. There’s information I have about you, about your past, that could incriminate you and ensure you live the rest of your life behind bars. Am I going to have to put you in prison, permanently? Or, are you going to be a man about this?”

“That doesn’t change things. She still has to stay here. She has to stay in Omega House!” I insisted, gripping the clipboard closer.

“If she stays here? It’ll be by her choice only, not on your terms. If she stays here? Get fucking prepared to have me over, every goddamn night, beating the shit out of you if you ever come near her again, DeAndre. It’s Emma’s choice, but I’m not going to let her be blackmailed into this bullshit. I see why my boss fucking banned your sorority from Club Grit, Kim,” he snarled, and suddenly? I felt very, very small. “That’s right, I know exactly who you are, and no, not because of Emma,” he added, as he saw her eyes dart towards me and narrow into a glare. “I know you think I’m stupid or low class, but as observant as you are and as slick as you seem, you’re not, Kim. The fact I knew your name before I even met Emma, ever since last year when you started to become a regular, means that you were doing something wrong. You weren’t playing the game you should have been playing. You weren’t discreet. You can walk around with your stupid little clipboard, but that doesn’t mean that you’re worth shit. It’ll never make up for the fact that Daddy never loved you.”

The room let out a collective gasp. Nobody had ever talked that way to me, at least in front of anyone else. None of them knew why Skylar’s mark was especially cutting: because it was true, but not for the reasons he believed.

My eyes narrowed. “What did you just say to me?” Skylar had no idea what he was saying. I got that he was mad at me because of what had happened to Emma, but there were certain things he didn’t know about me, certain lines he shouldn’t cross, and boy, had he crossed a line. I didn’t have someone like him here to defend me, but I did have myself and my own two fists, which I kept firmly on my clipboard to stop from doing something stupid.

“Nothing will ever make up for the fact that Daddy. Never. Loved you.” Skylar gave me the biggest shit eating grin possible and I snapped. I’d told myself that it wouldn’t happen, that I would be able to control myself. I hadn’t hit anyone since my schoolyard days, except for a single fight in high school. Nobody had ever seen me get violent during my time in the sorority. I’d broken up a few fights but always emerged unscathed and unscathing. However, even I had a breaking point, and whether or not Skylar knew about it became irrelevant as I became irrational and let my temper get the best of me, a temper that had been building up over the past few months, never granted release, until today.

I lifted up the red and black clipboard to slap Skylar across the face. He didn’t move out of the way, even though he had time, and as I felt it hit his face, I instantly regretting hitting him. It wobbled and almost bent on impact and left a mark as red as its trimming as Skylar’s eyes became as black as its surface.

The room was quiet...even as Skylar plucked the clipboard right out of my hands. I cringed, ready for Skylar to hit me.

But that’s not what he did.

He put a knee up on the expensive French sofas.

He took my black and red clipboard in two hands, one on the top, one on the bottom. He unclipped the papers attached but leaving them on the surface.

And he lifted the clipboard up.

He brought it back down.

It shattered.

Into a million tiny fucking plastic shards, and it ripped his jeans as it slashed them like the vase had slashed the garbage bag before, but the paper shot into the air and fluttered like a million dying doves.

He threw the clipboard into the air and when it landed on the ground, he used his black Converse and fucking ground the pieces into the carpet, the shards shredding the tufting like the mouths of an undying army of termites, each footstep ruining it more and more, leaving a stain of black plastic with the red disappearing and consuming it.

And that’s the moment I knew that my own life had shattered too.

E
VERYBODY ELSE LEFT THE ROOM: I could understand why. What had just gone down was fucked up and weird and awkward and frankly, not their problem. At all. What had happened was shameful and the last part of my dignity was gone. I’d been Pearl’s agent in person, the one who delivered her terrible messengers, and messengers with bad news always get killed, or, at least, treated as if they’re long dead in Omega Mu.

What I didn’t understand was why, as I picked the pieces of sharp plastic out of the carpet, Rina, of all people, came to sit with me and help me pick up the shards, and why Laura did as well. I didn’t know why they’d go get a dustpan and come sit with me and just silently help me pick out the pieces of my broken life out of the shag carpet.

“You know, I know what it’s like here, Kim,” said Rina, finally. “And I know it must be hard for you.”

“What do you mean? Did you and I just see the same thing?” I said sarcastically.

“No, not that, I mean...dealing with Pearl. Omega Mu would be great if it wasn’t for her, because people like you and Becca are great, but Pearl...she just turns everything she touches into something terrible. I know that a lot of the things you do that suck are due to Pearl’s meddling, but I also know that the nice things you do? That’s all you, Kim,” said Rina gently, rubbing my shoulder. I looked over at Laura, who gave me a sad smile as if to say she too knew what I was going through, that she understood how shitty it could be to live at Omega Mu.

“All I’d ever wanted...was a place to call home here,” I admitted. “It sucks at UCBH if you don’t have a group. It does. I tried to do the whole “GDI” thing on my own, but everyone knows that there’s a reason they call it being a God Damn Independent. The arbitrary reasons we accept sisters into the house seem less so when you consider the requirements to join other groups, like GPA, major, ethnicity, religion. What if I don’t want to associate based on that? What if I don’t want to be known as another Korean girl part of the Asian Students Association? What if I just am not into that? But everyone expected me to come here and be a doctor, and you know my sociology degree hasn’t prepared me for medical school, I thought I could make it work but I didn’t.”

“We’ve all had that here. We’ve all had dreams and expectations sold to us by pledge week, sold to us by the glossy brochures, dreams dashed, expectations exhausted, but you just have to keep going,” said Laura, reaching her hand out to mine and rubbing it.

“What if that’s not enough, though?”

“So what if it’s not? You’re so close to graduating, Kim. You’re so close to the end, and you just have to make it through the next few hard parts and you’ll be fine. You can do stuff with a sociology degree, really. You can go to grad school. You can get a job and do a career thing if you want. You can do a lot and you have no idea how smart you are. You’ve got a lot of great skills that you take for granted,” insisted Rina. I felt stupid but tears were welling in my eyes. I’m a senior, supposed to be a role model to people like Rina and Laura, not someone that cries to them. They’re supposed to come to me, as Rina had, and not the other way around.

“You’re right, you’re right. I’m going to make it through,” I said, hoping that just saying it out loud would help me believe in it, hoping that pretending would make things better. All I wanted was for things to be okay but apparently that was a tall order.

Because what walked in the parlor? Trouble herself: Pearl.

“Aww, look, it’s a little threesome on the floor,” she said with a giggle and I rolled my eyes. People sat on the floor together all the time and she didn’t say that to them. She must have figured out that Rina and Laura were lesbians, but did she know they were together?

“Whatever, Pearl. I’ve done what you asked, just let me graduate in peace,” I said as I kept picking up the pieces of my broken symbol.

“Well, I’m not here to see you, Kim. Not everything’s about you, honey. No, I’m here to see Rina and Laura,” she said sweetly, sweet enough to make my stomach churn because I knew there was only one reason she was using the voice, the voice she used when we kicked out Emma.

“Whatever you want to say to them, you should be able to say in front of me,” I said back, equally as sweetly. Laura and Rina were watching us, and I knew the fact I had gone from open and sentimental to being like frozen yogurt on a winter’s day, unseasonably icy and sickly sweet, must have given them whiplash.

“Well, according to the bylines of the rules of the household, there is a strict policy that doesn’t allow partners of sorority sisters to live inside the Omega Mu House. It has come to my attention that Laura and Rina are dating, and this violates that rule, because, as partners, they cannot both live at the Omega Mu house. I have no choice but to kick these two rule breakers out,” she said, matter-of-factly, as if this didn’t have some other motivation.

“Bullshit. You let other girls have their boyfriends over all the time, and it’s not like it’s an additional burden on the house resources! They’re both sisters at Omega Mu and they shouldn’t have to leave just because you have a problem with homosexuality, a problem that isn’t anyone’s but your owns, a problem you should just deal with and not project about!” I said, letting my anger get the best of me.

“Well, there is an exception that can be made. If Laura and Rina decide which sister should leave Omega Mu, one of them can stay, as long as the other leaves, by sundown.”

Laura and Rina, who had wide eyes as they heard Pearl’s decree, Pearl’s demand that they leave, either together or separately, looked at one another and before Laura could open her mouth, Laura held up a finger to her lips. “It’s okay, Rina. I’ll leave. I know how much you like living here and I don’t want to take that away from you. I promise, we’ll make it work.”

“But Laura! If you’re gone, what are you going to do about housing?”

“Rina, it’s okay, it’s okay. It’s going to be okay, I’ll stay with friends, I can get an apartment, I can take out a loan for that, it’s going to be okay,” she said, looking at Laura the way Lawrence had looked at me, with eyes filled with the desire to placate, the desire to calm, but unlike Lawrence, I knew Laura wasn’t made of money, and that the things she was promising weren’t things she could necessarily deliver on, nor were they things she should have to.

I got up from the ground and looked Pearl dead in the eyes. “I think you’re going to want to do things. First of all, take back what you said. Secondly, shut your fucking mouth.”

“Excuse me? Do you know whom you’re talking to?” she said, narrowing her eyes.

“I know exactly who I’m talking to, and that’s why I know that you’re going to do this favor for me, Pearl. If you don’t ensure that Laura and Rina’s place within the household will not be affected by their sexuality, then I’m going to do something you’re not going to like.”

“Is that a threat?”

“It’s not an empty threat.”

‘What could you possibly do to me, Kim? What is there left?”

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to fuck with people that don’t have anything left to lose? You’ve taken everything from me, Pearl. You’ve taken my dignity. You took a chance I had at true love. You’ve pushed my buttons and my limits. You have two options: you graduate in peace and quiet, or the inevitable shit storm starts now. It’s inevitable because you have it coming and oh, honey, it’s coming, it is coming! The files, the emails, everything you’ve done regarding the club that violated both the rules of the PanHellenic Council as well as the sorority’s overall rules? Get prepared for that to be put into a well-thought out report, because it already has been. That’s right, every mean IM about a pledge, every crazy rule, every edict put into place without a vote, that’s all able to get forwarded to the people that matter, to alums, to everyone. I’m sure Laura and Rina’s parents would love to know about the fact you treated them so callously this year, and I wouldn’t even need to mention your homophobia, because if I did, I could accidentally out them. This isn’t blackmail, but this is me giving you a chance to delay the inevitable.” In reality, the reason I’d waited wasn’t out of courtesy to Pearl, but because I wanted to spare the pledges the drama of having reporters and investigators in the dorm around finals weeks. I knew Pearl could make life Hell for everyone if she was pushed over the edge, and I didn’t want anyone to be around for that. An investigation, over the summer, would be more appropriate, and I already had the information and contacts available.

“So if you’re so miserable here, Kim, why don’t you just fucking quit? Why do you have to take me down with you?” said Pearl, unable to keep up the façade any longer. She knew that she’d pushed me too far, that she was seeing a side of me that she should have been scared of, a side of me that she should have known about, a side that wasn’t about to be put away, left in the dark any longer.

“I stayed because I had Becca, and I’m staying because I’m going to keep you in check. I know shits hard for you, Pearl, I really do, but it’s no excuse for you to take it out on other people. I know that it can be hard for you to deal with change. I know that you like things to fit in order and look like they do in the movies, but this is real life, and get a fucking grip. I’m trying to.”

Pearl laughed, the maniacal laugh of somebody pushed a bit too far by the only person that really matters: themselves. “You think that it’s that simple? You think that you can just ‘get a grip’? That you can just ‘deal with things’? That’s not how things work, in the real world, or here. I can’t just let things happen. I can’t just let rules be broken.”

“Then I quit,” I said with a very satisfied smirk.

“What?”

“I quit, Pearl. I’m stepping down from my position as well as quitting the sorority.”

“You can’t do that!” shouted Pearl before clasping a hand over her mouth.