Part 26 (1/2)

Craig felt awful for her.

And it was so kind of her to feel awful for him, which made him even sadder that he couldn't even pretend to be surprised at what she had to tell him. She seemed to think these were pretty big secrets. She told him that she felt pretty sure the Omega Theta Tau sisters had all kinds of plans to scare him, and torment him, and drive him out of here. Did he have any idea how vengeful girls could be? Sorority girls especially?

Briefly he considered telling her that, yes, he did know all about how much Nicole's sorority sisters hated him, but that, no, it wasn't Omega Theta Tau today. It was something else. Someone. It was Alice Meyers. She'd visited him, too. She was somewhere, and she knew Nicole. She and Nicole, it seemed, were together somewhere-sending postcards, making house calls, making phone calls. But he said nothing.

And then Deb Richards was tearing up, taking his hand, telling him everything would be all right, but he really should go to school somewhere else, that it was the only thing that had helped her, that it had saved her life to get away (although, to Craig, she looked as if she had that place with her, right there in the room and all around her, in her posture, in her face) and he had to at least consider it, because- And then she said, ”I know Lucas, too.”

”Lucas?” Craig asked.

”I met Lucas last year. He used to sell me weed once in a while. They've got it out for him, too, you know. I don't know why. They think he sold you bad dope or something. Or, just that he let you borrow his car, and you were stoned, so-”

”I wasn't,” Craig said, but he said it without force, having said it so many times he no longer thought anyone cared or believed him.

”They've got some bad thing going with Lucas, like you. My ex-roommate, she had this story she thought was hilarious about how he'd called the suicide hotline, and one of the Omega sisters who happened to be a volunteer on the hotline that night took the call and recognized the caller ID, and was really trying to talk him into killing himself. He was going on and on about how he'd been seeing ghosts and s.h.i.+t, and some girl who died like twenty years ago was haunting him, and this sorority b.i.t.c.h was just like, 'Oh that's so scary. I would just want to be dead if I were being haunted by a ghost. I mean, ghosts just choose people at random, but after that it's like your whole life they follow you around. Do you have, like, access to a gun or anything, because that would help a lot . . .'

”And they were all just cracking up, waiting to read in the Police Beat in the newspaper that some college senior had shot himself.”

”Lucas?” Craig asked again.

He hadn't thought about Lucas for a little while, and it suddenly dawned on him what all of this must have done to Lucas, too-and then he put the mug down on the table next to the couch and started to feel really bad, looking around (for help? For an excuse?) like Jesus, Craig, how many people's lives do you think you can ruin in the course of your own? All he'd done for Lucas was one stupid phone call in the summer, from New Hamps.h.i.+re, when some of the pieces had fallen into place again. On the phone, Lucas had said nothing, really. He'd muttered, ”Oh, man. Craig, Jesus,” a few times, and then, ”I have no hard feelings toward you. But I gotta go. I really can't talk about this, man. I hope everything works out, and I have to say, if I were you, I'd stay back there, you know. Go to school in Connecticut or something. Here, you know, it's not cool right now. But maybe someday we'll meet again. Peace, man,” and he'd hung up.

Lucas, s.h.i.+t. He'd ruined Lucas's life, too.

Deb seemed moved to tears again, looking at the expression on Craig's face, and she got out of her seat and put her arms around his neck, pulled the pink blanket more tightly around his neck, and hugged him, and Craig felt himself sag into the hug just the way he remembered sagging against his mother as a little kid, even when he knew she was p.i.s.sed at him, because at least she was pretending she wasn't.

And then he was back there, eyes closed, sobbing into his mother's shoulder, soaking it, and saying things in a language he wasn't even sure he spoke, and she was patting and patting him-Deb, not his mother, and crying, too. ”Look,” Deb said, ”just get in my bed and go to sleep. The sheets are clean. If the slumlord ever shows up to unlock your door, I'll wake you up. In the meantime, just rest.”

When Craig woke again, the Martian green hands of the clock beside the Deb's bed read 4:10 (a.m.?). The room was dark except for the glow of her iPod in its charging dock, and there wasn't a sound through the whole apartment. He wanted to pee, but not badly enough, he decided, to wake up an apartment full of girls and scare the h.e.l.l out of them. He lay on his side between the Deb's crisp sheets, which smelled of Nicole and the starch his mother used to spray on his khaki pants, and watched the hands of the alarm clock move in little twitches around the dial until Deb came in and sat down beside him in a T-s.h.i.+rt and gym shorts and laid a cool hand on his forehead.

And then he fell asleep again.

57.

Josie seemed to soften after it became clear that, although Sh.e.l.ly had uncovered a truth, she wasn't going to make threats, or a scene.

Maybe Josie even seemed excited.

She was sitting at the edge of her seat now, leaning toward Sh.e.l.ly, moving her hands lightly through the air between them, explaining the finer points of hazing in sorority life. She was bouncing her knee a little, and although she didn't look directly into Sh.e.l.ly's eyes, she grazed Sh.e.l.ly's face as she talked, letting her eyes linger on Sh.e.l.ly's shoulder or earring for a split second before scouting the room around them again.

”We never do anything physically dangerous,” Josie said. ”But you really can't feel like a group, you know, without some rituals and traditions. And secrets. If it's not at least a little dangerous, there's no point in keeping it a secret, so-”

Could Josie simply be relieved that the truth had come out, and that Sh.e.l.ly seemed to have accepted it?

Josie was thrilled, Sh.e.l.ly realized, to be able to spill the secrets, to have a captive audience in Sh.e.l.ly. Because what could Sh.e.l.ly possibly do with any information she received from Josie now?

”I mean, it's not hazing like they used to haze. We've heard all about that. The sisters used to cut their palms-I mean really slice them open until they were gus.h.i.+ng blood-and stand naked in a circle around a candle and have these, like, mystical things happen or something that made them sisters. In the attic there are these black-and-white photos from the sixties or something, and there's blood all over the place, and some naked guy with long hair playing the flute. Freaky.”

It seemed like the kind of thing that would have gone on in the sixties, Sh.e.l.ly thought. Josie was laughing.

”I wonder what happened if someone bled too much?” Sh.e.l.ly said, more to herself than to Josie. She was thinking of a story her ex-husband had told her about a girl he'd had to treat after something like that: some blood ritual between volleyball teammates. They'd sliced their inner arms, and the girl had managed to hit an artery. Sh.e.l.ly's ex-husband had described it in such a way that she could still, twenty years later, see the imagined girl (red, white, and blue, wearing nothing but her Wildcats Varsity jacket), who died in the ER waiting room.

”I suppose they'd get help,” Josie said, seeming disinterested. What did she care? What were the sixties to her? ”We've always got someone standing by, in case something goes wrong.”

Josie checked behind her shoulder, but there was nothing there except the wall. Still, it was clear she knew she was now headed toward forbidden territory, about to tell Sh.e.l.ly something she wasn't supposed to tell.

”We've got this EMT. This paramedic guy. He belongs to us. He's like everybody's boyfriend or a mascot or something. We love him. We make him wear his uniform because it's so cute! He sleeps in a room at the back of the house, and the sorority pays him to be there for the events, and to be on call so . . .” Josie drifted off, eyes seeming to go unfocused, moving down to some place between her own knees and the floor.

”What 'events'?” Sh.e.l.ly asked.

”Well, there's this thing. There's a Spring Event and a Winter Event. You do it your second year-so, for me it's coming up.” She giggled a little. ”I'm scared s.h.i.+tless. Promise not to tell anyone?”

The absurdity of this seemed to occur to Josie even as she said it, and she continued before Sh.e.l.ly could have answered.

”We're reborn. As sisters. You won't believe this.”

Sh.e.l.ly raised her eyebrows, as if to say, Try me, but the thing she was having a hard time, at the moment, believing was that she'd ruined her career, tossed off her entire life, to go to bed with this chatty, ba.n.a.l, empty person, who was sitting across from her at Starbucks talking about her sorority as if she were the only person who'd ever been in one, as if the things that took place in it were of some kind of import in the wider world. Only a week ago, Sh.e.l.ly marveled as she looked at Josie Reilly's pale, excited face, she had felt she would be willing to chop off a few digits if it meant another lazy afternoon in bed with this girl. She'd actually believed herself to be in love.

”It's called the Raising. We keep a coffin in the bas.e.m.e.nt,” Josie said, leaning forward, whispering so energetically that if anyone in Starbucks had the slightest interest, they could have heard her from four tables away. ”And every second-year pledge gets put into it. They do this thing where-well, first everybody's drunk off their a.s.s, and then the girl who's being raised sits on the floor, and you breathe in and out really fast for two minutes exactly, and another girl presses on your neck, your artery, and you're out.

”They put you in the coffin, and when you come to-there you are, reborn. And your sisters are all holding candles.

”The pledges all wait upstairs because they won't let you see the ceremony until you're either being reborn or have already been reborn.

”It's my turn in three weeks.”

”Jesus Christ,” Sh.e.l.ly said, but she was reacting not to the upcoming ordeal but to the wideness of Josie's pupils. Her eyeb.a.l.l.s-had Sh.e.l.ly ever noticed before how large they were? Certain cartoon characters came to mind: Minnie Mouse. Betty Boop.

”Can you believe it?” Josie asked.

”Yes,” Sh.e.l.ly said. ”I mean, no.”

But of course she could believe it. It seemed almost laughably believable. Par for the course. Sh.e.l.ly would have thought that by now sororities might have come up with some truly new, shocking, and innovative ritual. This one hardly merited the term hazing. She had herself, in fact, partic.i.p.ated in such pa.s.sing-out rituals in junior high, in Valerie Kolorik's rec room while her parents were at their country club. There'd been no coffin, of course, but only because they could never have located or afforded one. They'd have loved a coffin. Sh.e.l.ly could still remember the feeling of Valerie's clammy hands on her neck after the two minutes of hyperventilation. Those small clammy hands were the last physical sensation she'd had before slipping into oblivion. When she awoke, the other girls were all sitting around her, laughing.

”Yeah,” Josie said, nodding at Sh.e.l.ly with such anxious energy that it occurred to her that the girl might actually be scared. ”I mean,” she said, ”it's really just a game, but there have been times when sisters got hurt. So the EMT's there, in case.”