I think purgatory must be like an IHOP at two in the morning. The fluorescent lights ward off the dark, but give no warmth. The people who come and go look tired, like they’d rather be somewhere else but aren’t. You can get food and coffee, but it’s not very good.
Justin took his coffee black. He poured us both a cup from the blue plastic carafe before he even let me speak. His brown eyes were bloodshot, his hair sticking straight up. He had sleep creases on his cheek. But he was there.
“Now. Tell me about the Sigma Alpha Xis.”
I did. Everything I remembered, and the things I didn’t, I told him about that, too. I told him about Victoria and the paper, and how tempted I was. I told him how I kept writing notes to myself to check things out, and then forgetting them.
He listened to all of it, then said, “That’s everything?”
No, it wasn’t. I was certain I was leaving something out, but I couldn’t think what. The wool-headed feeling had lifted while I waited for Justin outside in the brisk air, and the headache with it. But I still had the sense I was forgetting something.
“It’s everything I can recall,” I said.
“So you think … what, exactly?”
“That’s just it.” Why wasn’t I able to find the right thing to say to make this make some kind of twisted sense? “There’s something wrong, something off. It’s all feelings, no evidence.” I sank my head into my hands. “I don’t know.”
The coffee cup scraped on the Formica as he pushed it aside, making room for his elbows. “Hey. Let’s be organized. Tell me what you do know.”
I looked up. He had his arms resting on the table, his head at my level, his gaze searching mine. “You’ll figure it out, Maggie. What do you know?”
“Okay.” I ordered my thoughts. They’d all poured out randomly before. “One. Victoria told me the Sigmas always succeed. Everyone else acts that way, too. Things just go right for them. Even my pictures for the paper—I always seem to have my camera pointed at the right place at the right moment.”
“But you’ve been doing sports photography for a while, right? You might just have a knack.”
He conceded the point. “Okay, that’s a start. What’s next?”
“Two. They’re freaked out about Devon dating an independent.” That made Justin laugh. “I know. Not that strange, either. All sororities want status, success, and guys, not necessarily in that order. See why I doubt myself?”
“Don’t start that.” He poured another cup of coffee. “Your feelings are evidence enough for me. The fact that you’re not remembering things … maybe that’s because you’re on the inside. It’s affecting your radar somehow.”
This was the first hopeful, useful thing I’d heard in weeks. “You think so?”
He shrugged slightly. “Have they given you anything? The BU bookstore is full of Greek stuff. Anything like that?”
“No.” Then I frowned, trying to remember. “Maybe. A T-shirt, the pledge pin …”
“It would be something you might keep on you all the time, or maybe by your bed.”
I shook my head, not quite in denial, but in frustration. “You see? This is what happens.”
Justin leaned in again, lowering his voice and catching my gaze. “Have you considered that there may be some greater power at work here? You joke about Faustian bargains, but maybe that’s not a coincidental analogy.”
“Sorority girls from Hell? Isn’t that like saying French people from France?”
“I’m serious, Maggie.”
“I know you are, Justin.” He was talking capital E stuff, much more than just Mean Girls meets The Craft. “But if it is—and I’m not saying I think that—and I’m in a position to do something about it, I can’t just run away.”
He sighed. “No, you can’t. I’m just worried that because you’ve made friends there—”
“What?” I demanded. “You think I’m enjoying myself too much? That the attention and success are going to my head?”
“No.” He said it simply, taking the indignant wind out of my sails. “Because you’ve been wrong before.”
I stared into my coffee cup. “This isn’t like Lisa.”
“Yes, it is.” His tone was firm, but tempered with regret. “Your friendship, once you give it, is hard to lose. It’s one of my favorite things about you.”
I didn’t want to look at him. Didn’t want to hope. But, jeez, talk about mixed signals lately.
A shadow fell on the table and I looked up, thinking it was the waitress. I was surprised to see Cole standing there, hands shoved in the pockets of his jacket.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Can’t sleep.” He indicated the laptop case slung on his shoulder. “Trying to work. Thought maybe a change of location …”
“You’re not having writer’s block, are you?”
“No,” he growled, in a way that meant yes. “Don’t you have an eight o’clock class in the morning?”
Justin, who had been watching this curiously, finally spoke. “You have an eight o’clock class?”
“What is this? Maggie has two dads? I’m a big girl.” Cole was scowling at Justin, as if he were to blame for my being out so late. I made introductions. “Justin, this is the editor of the Ranger Report. Cole, this is my friend, who was helping me with a project.”
“Great. I’m glad someone’s getting some work done.” He started to grump off, then turned back. “While you’re working on that Homecoming float with the SAXis, see if you can take some pictures we can use.”
“Sure.” I wasn’t about to disagree with him in this mood.
“And Hardcastle says you’re putting in too many hours at the Report. So don’t come in until the afternoon.”
He left, taking a spot in a corner booth and dragging out his laptop. I watched him go, then turned back to Justin, who looked questioningly back at me. “He’s not usually like that,” I said.
“I hope not.”
“Yeah.” But if Cole was miserable, then I’ll bet Devon was miserable, too. And miserable people like to talk about what’s at the root of their problems.
Justin climbed out of the booth. “Come on. Let’s see if I can get you home without your father shooting me.”
“That would be a shame. To get the punishment with none of the sin.”
I hadn’t meant to flirt, but he looked down at me with raised eyebrows anyway. “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”
“Punishment or sin?” I asked as we waited to pay the cashier.
He shook his head, holding out. “I don’t think I can answer that without incriminating myself.”
I had out my wallet, but Justin glared until I put it back in my bag. “I’ll bet you were the model student when you were in college,” I said. “All studious, and home by ten when you had an early class.”
“I’m still in college.”
“I mean, when you were a normal freshman, before you decided to become a weird academic.”
“Actually.” His mouth turned up in rueful memory. “My friend Henry and I almost got kicked out of school.”
“For what?”
He paid for our coffees with a five and waved off the change. “Nothing that I’m going to admit to you.”
“Come on,” I cajoled. “I know almost nothing about you before we met.”
“It’s safer that way.”
“For who?”
“For me,” he said with a grin, and held open the door.
I used my extra time between morning classes to go over to the Sigma house. The first floor was the foyer, chapter room, dining hall, and kitchen. The floors above that were bedrooms, with two wings running out from the central hub of the staircase. The banister and balustrades were dark polished wood, the stairs creaky underfoot. The hallways were carpeted and wainscoted, like a stately home.
Devon was on the second floor. I didn’t know her schedule, but her door was ajar. I tapped on it and poked my head in. She was alone, lying on her bed, a thick art history book on her chest. “Got a minute?”
She laid the book aside and sat up. “Sure.”
I noticed that her eyes were puffy and her hair was less flippy than usual. “I’m working on my pledge book, and I was wondering if you had time to answer a few questions.”
“Sure,” she said again, and patted the end of the bed. “Have a seat.”
I couldn’t help staring at the walls of her tiny room. They’d been painted with a mural of the seaside, complete with sunbathing women checking out a buff lifeguard. “Nice,” I said.
“Thanks. Gotta do something with all the extra energy.”
Not sure what she meant by that—not sure I wanted to know—I let it go and pulled out a pen and my book. “Our pledge president has been riding us about these.”
“We all thought you were going to be pledge prez.” She folded her legs, Indian-style. “When Tara told us in board meeting you weren’t … Well, I thought smoke was going to come out of Victoria’s nostrils.”
“That wouldn’t have surprised me at all.” I poised my pen. “So you’re on the board?”
“Yeah. I’m the house committee liaison. I coordinate with the alumnae house board, tell them that the exterminator didn’t show up or the toilets are blocked again. Real glamorous, huh?”
I grinned. “Very sexy.”
“It’s a thankless job. And a pain, because I have a master key to all the locks, so somehow I’m always the one that gets called whenever someone needs to get in the initiation closet.”
“The initiation closet?” I chewed my pen and didn’t have to work very hard at looking nervous. “They don’t, um, lock pledges in there or anything, do they? I’ve heard stories about putting girls in coffins and stuff like that.”
“Lord, no.” She made a face. “The closet is just where we store all the ceremonial stuff. And the Christmas decorations. But there’s never enough storage in the rooms, so people are always wanting to stick their crap in there.”
And Justin wondered why I doubt there’s big bad magic here. They kept their cauldron in the broom closet.
She shifted on the bed; with her freckles and wan face, she looked young and vulnerable. “Don’t tell Kirby that I blabbed anything about initiation, okay?”
“No problem.” Whatever was up with her, Devon’s distress had appealed to my do-gooder nature, and I was firmly on her side. I looked down at the blank page of my book, and tried to think of a decent question. “So, where are you from?”
“Alabama.”
“If you were a flavor of ice cream, what would you be?”
She laughed. “Pistachio.”
I made up some more questions, something to fill up the page. What I really wanted to know, though, I saved until I closed the binder and capped my pen. “Can I ask you one more thing? Off the record?”
Her gaze turned wary, but she didn’t decline. “Okay.”
“Why are the other sisters—Kirby and Jenna, at least—so set against Cole?”
She hung her head in her hands, elbows on her knees. “Oh, Maggie. You’re just a pledge. You’ll understand soon.”
“Is it because he’s not a Greek?”
“No.”
“Because he’s not a Gamma Phi Epsilon?”
“No. Not exactly.” She folded her arms tightly. “I can’t talk about it with you, Maggie. Please believe me.”
“Then at least tell me why it was a secret that he’s writing a book?”
Her face crumpled, tears welling and slipping down her cheeks. “Because I’m his muse.” At least, that’s what I thought she said. It was a little hard to tell through the sniffling.
“Why is that bad? Is the book about you? The Sigmas?”
“No.” She dashed at her tears and struggled for calm.
“Okay.” I let it go, waited until she got herself together, then asked, as gently as I could, “Did you break up?”
She nodded, biting her lip. Then shook her head. “We’re on a break. I’m giving him some space.”
“He doesn’t look like he wants it.”
Devon nodded and stared at her interlaced fingers. “We need it.”
I didn’t bother to ask her to explain. “Can I do anything to help?”
Raising her head, she gave me a miserable smile. “No. Thank you. Cole told me you were helping him at the paper. You’re a good person, Maggie.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Not really. I’m just a sucker for star-crossed love.”