“I need your help,” said Cass. Megan and Violet looked up from plates of post-party pasta. Voting started in a few minutes, and Delia had had dinner catered so the sisters wouldn’t have to ax people on empty stomachs.
Megan still looked pissed, and Cass couldn’t blame her after the screwup earlier with the tapping. That was the reason she’d come over.
“I want you to be Madeleine Christopher’s hostess tomorrow,” she told Megan.
“You don’t set up hostesses,” Megan said. “Only the president can do that.”
“I know, but I control the tapping. Delia will never find out.” Cass paused. Megan knew why she’d been kept from meeting Imogen; Cass could see it in her eyes. If they didn’t talk about it now, then they were in for another year of getting tormented by Courtney Mann clones with perfect GPAs and ruthless power obsessions.
“Don’t you ever notice how only certain types of girls get hostesses?” Cass said. “And how come it’s only the president and people like Sophia Kensington who get to decide who’s a must-have? It’s like they’ve already picked the new pledge class before any of us gets a say. Girls like Madeleine Christopher, who I know you like, Violet, get lost for no good reason except that they don’t have whatever magical something makes them ‘Sigma material.’” She made big air quotes. Violet and Megan smiled.
“We need more people like our pledge class,” Cass went on. “We were real sisters. We still are real sisters. At least I feel like that.”
“I do, too,” said Violet. “I miss how things used to be.”
“Me, too,” said Megan. “It’s like we’re the ones who really got what being in a sorority was all about. And then it got ruined.”
“But maybe we can get it back,” Cass said. “Bring in new people who would get it, too. That’s why we need our own hostess system. Violet, you want Madeleine Christopher, right? Then we need more people to meet her. More people means more double votes and that means better odds she’ll actually have a chance.”
Both Megan and Violet were nodding now, smiles starting to creep across their faces.
“We’ll do the same thing for anybody else we like who isn’t an official must-have,” Cass went on. “We have to bombard those girls with people—make sure that everybody who didn’t get picked by Delia to hostess somebody gets to meet the rushees we want.”
“I’ve met a couple of girls who are cool,” said Megan. “There’s at least one who we’d be idiots if we didn’t get.”
“And I heard Nora and Isla talking about someone they really like,” said Violet.
“Great,” said Cass. “Decide which rushees you want. Get them lined up with hostesses, and have the hostesses tap up to me when they hear that girl’s name. Then make sure you get everybody else in our class to go up and meet them, too—as many as possible. Okay? Spread the word, but be careful who hears.” She glanced over at Courtney and Allison, who were sitting two tables over, snickering over their phones.
As she returned to her own table, Cass could hear Megan and Violet buzzing, getting excited about the plan. Of course, she knew it might not work; a decent chunk of rushees were going to get cut in just a few minutes, and one of them might be Madeleine Christopher. Still, it was worth a try. Even if only a couple of girls could be saved, then that was a start. Cass looked around for Ruby, eager to get her list of favorites, but Ruby was nowhere to be found.
She came in, looking worried, as Marina was passing out the list of the day’s unanimous votes.
“I’m completely broke,” she whispered to Cass. “I can’t even buy books for class. I’m going to have to tell somebody what’s going on.”
“Don’t!” Cass murmured. “I’m serious. Don’t.” She took Ruby’s hand under the table and squeezed it. “I’ll help you buy books. I can’t lose you, Roo!”
“Are you okay, Ruby?” said Kimmie Conover from the next table over. She looked at Ruby with an expression of innocent concern.
“She’s fine!” said Cass, smiling big. Kimmie hung around with the Killer Bees but, unlike Courtney or Aimee or Allison, she never seemed mean; the problem with Kimmie was more that she could be such an airhead. You never knew when she was going to space out and spill a secret.
“Are you sure she’s okay?” Kimmie pressed. “Ruby looks sad!”
“I’m okay, Kimmie; thanks for asking,” Ruby said. Then she whispered to Cass, “You’re not going to lose me. The last thing I need is for you to get all worried, too.”
But Cass knew it was stupid not to worry. Failure to fulfill financial obligations would be the perfect excuse to get rid of Ruby. She had to keep her roommate from sabotaging herself.
For the moment, however, she couldn’t do anything because Delia had started to read the borderline list.
Cass held her breath as Delia ticked the names off, waiting to hear Madeleine Christopher’s among them. This was Aimee and Courtney’s chance to get rid of her, just like they’d said they would. But when Delia picked up her gavel to start deliberations, Maddy’s name had not been read. Cass couldn’t believe it—nobody had voted her down! She looked across the room at Courtney, who smiled and raised her bottle of Diet Coke in a toxic salute, and that’s how Cass knew: Madeleine Christopher might have made it through another round, but she wasn’t safe—not even close.
When Maddy got back to the dorm with the rest of the rushees, all she wanted to do was go to her room and lie down. A headache had started behind her right eye, and she knew that if she didn’t get aspirin and some rest soon, then it would turn into a monster migraine.
“Heya!” Rachel called out from the couch in the commons when Maddy got off the elevator with Imogen. Rachel had decided not to drop out of rush, even though staying meant going to only three parties that day. Maddy didn’t know what time those parties had ended, but from the looks of things—yoga pants, hair up, half-eaten bag of pretzels in her lap—Rachel had been done for a while.
Imogen pushed past Maddy to the couch. “Scoot over,” she said. Rachel pulled up her knees and Imogen sat down. Maddy hovered nearby, trying not to cry from pain and fatigue. She wasn’t in any shape for chitchat but she didn’t want to be rude.
“So,” Imogen asked Rachel. “How was your day?”
“Not bad, actually,” Rachel replied. “I thought I would hate all the houses I had left, but I’d forgotten how cool Kappa Alpha Beta was.”
“I love them,” said Imogen. “One of the sisters there, Tess, is super cool.”
“I met Tess today!” said Rachel. “She’s awesome.”
Maddy tried to keep her expression blank as they talked. Kappa Alpha Beta was one of the houses that had cut her on the first day.
“You didn’t miss much at the other places,” Imogen went on. “Sigma did this cheesy stars of the red carpet thing. Paparazzi and the whole bit.”
Rachel made a face. “They’re so fake.”
“I know.” Imogen grabbed Rachel’s bag of pretzels and started munching. “What are they, robots?”
“Try plain old bitches. I’m positive Courtney Mann got me blackballed.”
“A Sigma wouldn’t do that,” Maddy cut in. She’d kept quiet so far, but now she felt like she had to speak up. She was sick of hearing them bash Sigma. “They have a strict code of honor.”
“Bullshit,” said Rachel. “My friend told me the rest of the campus calls them the Sigma Starfuckers.”
Before Maddy could respond, Imogen laughed and said, “Don’t let my mom hear that. She thinks Sigma is the be-all and end-all. It’s like she’s still stuck at the sorority house. If she could move in and take my place in all of this she probably would.”
Maddy was so shocked she actually dropped her purse. “Your mom is a Sigma?”
Imogen looked up with a pretzel halfway to her mouth. “Yeah . . .”
“So you’re a legacy.”
Imogen shifted uncomfortably, shaking her hair so the brown waves partially covered her face. “Is that what you call it?”
“Um . . . yeah!” Maddy clenched her jaw, forcing the words between her teeth. “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of legacies.”
“I get my rush info from you and my mom,” Imogen shot back. “And I pretty much tune out when she starts with the Greek blah-blah. Whether I’m a legacy or not, it’s no big deal to me.”
“It’s a big deal to the Sigmas,” Maddy said. “That’s why you haven’t been cut, even though you skipped yesterday.”
She saw Imogen glance over at Rachel, who was suddenly very interested in the drawstring of her yoga pants. “I need to change,” Maddy said, picking up her purse and hurrying out of the commons. When she reached their room she closed the door and got out her laptop. She’d been too busy with rush so far to spend a lot of time online.
Obviously that had been a big mistake.
She logged on and Googled “Imogen Ash New York”
Opera Society Debutantes Glitter at Annual Ball
“. . . the cotillion was led by Miss Imogen Ash of Carnegie Hill, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Carroll and Didi Bansford-Ash . . .”
Ash Family Foundation Makes Generous Donation to Met
“. . . check presentation took place in a ceremony hosted by Imogen Ash, 17, who had just returned from a month-long internship at the Louvre . . .”
Maddy heard the door open and slammed her computer shut.
“You’re angry,” said Imogen, coming into the room.
“No I’m not,” said Maddy. She looked around for a distraction. Through the half-cracked closet door she spotted her ironing board. She set up the board and pulled out the dress she’d picked out for the next day.
“Yes you are,” said Imogen. “Why are you mad?”
Maddy dragged the not-yet-hot iron back and forth over the hem of her dress. “Why didn’t you tell me you were a legacy?”
“I didn’t think it mattered.”
Maddy flashed a come on look. Imogen countered with, “Okay, maybe I did leave a couple of things out. But only for self-preservation. You haven’t met my mother.”
She smiled like it was a joke, which made Maddy even more furious. Maddy whipped the dress off the ironing board and snatched a hanger from her closet. She hung the dress on the closet door with a loud chunk. Then she went to her dresser and started to pull out clean underwear.
“I’ve been getting cut every night from one house or another,” she said. “But you haven’t been cut by anybody at all. Why do you think that is?”
“Hold on now,” said Imogen. “I’m only a legacy at one place. The other houses asked me back because they liked me.”
“Oh, please. It took me two seconds to find you and your family on Google.” Maddy tossed a white cotton bra onto the bed. “I thought we were friends. I told you about my sister and my boyfriend! You know the most humiliating thing that’s ever happened to me, and I don’t know anything about you. Friends don’t keep secrets from each other.”
“It wasn’t a secret,” Imogen protested. “And it’s not like you’ve told me every little detail about your family.”
“That’s because my family is just your standard bunch of nobodies. My family doesn’t have anything to do with rush.”
“Neither does mine.”
“Your family has everything to do with it!”
“Well I don’t want them to.” Imogen kicked the duffel on the floor with the toe of her sandal. “Look. I don’t talk about them because I don’t want to be associated with them now that I’m in college. All my life I’ve had to live up to the stupid family name and I want to do something on my own for once.”
Even though Maddy was mad, she could still sort of understand this. It was what she’d wanted, too—leaving Chesterfield, getting away from Miranda, trying to achieve something that was hers and nobody else’s.
“You still should have told me,” she said.
“But why?” Imogen sat on the bed. “Why does it matter so much to you?”
“Because!” Maddy quit fussing with her clothes and, for what seemed like the very first time, looked her roommate in the eye. “I’ve wanted to be in Sigma for years. It’s like the toughest house to get into and I’ve worked hard—really hard!—so I could make it in. I don’t have people lining up to talk to me at parties or give me a second chance if I screw up. You do. Because you’re a legacy, and you’re rich.”
“Look,” said Imogen. “I really don’t care about all this. I promised my dad I’d do rush, but I couldn’t care less if I got in or not.”
“That makes it even worse.” Maddy gritted her teeth. This was hopeless. “If you pledge Sigma, you’re taking a spot you don’t even want.” She yanked the iron cord out of the wall, grabbed her purse, and made for the door. “I’m going for a walk. I’ll see you tonight for invites, where I’m sure you’ll get asked back to every single house—yet again.”
Maddy walked as fast as she could through the commons, where Rachel still sat in front of the TV. “Hey,” Rachel called as Maddy waited for the elevator. It took forever, which meant Maddy had to stand there, not answering and feeling crappier by the minute.
She gave up and ran down the stairs instead.
Once outside, she started up the hill toward campus, cutting across the music school lawn to get to the road that led to Fraternity Row. The best houses were all on this street, including Sigma, which sat big and quiet in the fading daylight.
Stupid. She’d been stupid to think getting in would be anything close to easy. She’d done everything right and played by the rules, but apparently playing by the rules mattered at Baldwin about as much as it had back in Chesterfield. Now here she was, feeling like one of the stray cats she’d spent so much time and energy trying to help. Part of the reason her volunteer program had been so successful was because she’d had such a connection with those abandoned, overlooked animals. She had a knack for finding them because she knew loneliness so well that she could sense it in others. She’d left for college telling herself she never had to feel that way again.
Her phone rang and she whipped it out, checking the caller ID.
Miranda.
“Hello,” said Maddy.
“Hey! How’s rush?
Normally Maddy would have scrambled to be nice no matter how she really felt. Even on that last day—even after catching Miranda with Logan—she’d still given her sister a hug good-bye. Their parents were watching and it was the right thing to do.
Tonight, she didn’t give a crap about doing the right thing.
“Terrible!” she said.
“Terrible?” Miranda sounded surprised. “Why terrible? What happened?”
Maddy stopped. Miranda didn’t need to know that she’d been cut from four houses while her legacy roommate swept through rush without any rejections at all.
“Nothing,” she backtracked. “I’m just swamped with callbacks. I can’t choose which houses to cut. It’s really stressful.”
“Oh. Well then, it’s a good kind of terrible, right?”
“Right. How’s rush for you?” Maddy tried to sound like she didn’t care but was asking just to be nice.
“Great! I pretty much already know the Mu Alpha Pis want me, but there are a few other houses I like, too. Talk about having hard decisions to make! Rush week’s almost over, we’d better figure this stuff out soon, right?”
“Right,” said Maddy, grateful that her sister was ninety miles away and couldn’t see her face.
Inside the Sigma house, a light went on in an upstairs window. Then another. A couple of sisters came onto the side porch, checking around before lighting up cigarettes. Voting must have just ended, or else they were taking a break. Maddy checked her watch.
“Was there something you wanted?” she asked. “Because I have to get back to the dorm. Invites are coming in soon.”
“Oh!” said Miranda.” Well, actually, I wanted to say I’m sorry about Saturday. Logan said he was going to talk to you about it. Did he call?”
Maddy’s headache started to throb. “He called last night but we didn’t get to talk long. He said he’d be freer next week and then we’d work things out.”
“Oh,” said Miranda. “Okay . . .”
The disappointment in her voice sparked an anger that Maddy had been trying to keep under control. “He’s my boyfriend,” she snapped. “Whether or not he called doesn’t really even concern you.”
“Oh, come on. It’s not like I wanted you to find out how you did, but I think it’s pretty clear we all have some things to figure out.”
Maddy stood up straighter and took a deep breath. “You said you were sorry. Maybe if you’re so sorry you could leave Logan and me alone. I don’t think it’s your business to be talking to him at all.”
“I’m the only one of us he can talk to. Look, I didn’t mean for this to happen, but you’ve been so obsessed with college and being this perfect, high-achieving whatever. I missed you. Logan missed you. Plus, he’s been worried about qualifying for baseball here at State, but he didn’t want to say anything and have you think he wasn’t some perfect boyfriend. We started talking and things just happened. I thought he was going to talk with you about it.”
“Logan loves me,” said Maddy. “He wants to work things out.”
“He’s intimidated by you. We all are.”
Those words were like a splash of gasoline on the spark inside Maddy.
“Good!” she said. “It’s better than ignoring me, which is what people have been doing my entire life.”
“This is a mess,” Miranda said. “We shouldn’t be talking about it on the phone. Why don’t I come up there when rush is over?”
“Why?” Maddy’s skin prickled at the thought of Miranda coming to Baldwin.
“We’re sisters. I thought we could talk.”
Maddy turned and started walking back toward the dorm. As she did, she let the spark inside her harden into a tough core of resolve. Talking with Miranda—letting her in again—would only send the message that her sister could continue to do whatever she wanted and never suffer any real consequences. Miranda had the friends, the looks—even the guy now; Maddy didn’t have to let her invade the last and only place that belonged just to her.
“Coming up here would be a waste of time,” she told her sister. “I’m pretty sure I’ll be pledging Sigma Theta Kappa, which I don’t know if you know, but it’s the best house on campus. They expect a lot out of their pledges. Even if I wanted to see you I don’t think I’d have time.”
“Well,” said Miranda. “It sounds like you’re moving on to bigger and better things.”
“That’s exactly what I’m doing.”
“Maddy . . .”
“’Bye, Miranda.”
Maddy clicked off, unable to believe how sure of herself she’d sounded. She’d never talked like that to her sister before.
Inside, however, she was terrified.
Because all that stuff she’d just said about pledging Sigma? Now she had to make it come true.
“Is everything okay?” Rachel asked when Imogen went back to the commons. “Maddy stomped out of here without even saying ’bye.”
Imogen shrugged. She sat down next to Rachel and took the TV remote. “Don’t ask me what her problem is. Maybe PMS?”
“I can kind of see why she’d be weirded out, though. Why didn’t you tell anybody you were a legacy?”
Imogen tossed the remote back into Rachel’s lap. “Are you going to freak out on me, too? Look, I’m really sorry I didn’t start the week by giving everybody a copy of my family tree and curriculum vitae. While we’re at it, would you also like my blood type?”
Rachel stared, unimpressed. Miserable, Imogen slumped back on the couch.
“I guess I didn’t think it would matter this much,” she admitted. “At least I hoped it wouldn’t. The way Maddy talks, it’s like I’ve had a red carpet rolled out in front of me at every single house.”
“Haven’t you?” Rachel turned off the TV. There wasn’t anything good on, but the background noise had helped keep Imogen from thinking too deeply about things. Now, she pulled up a mental image of the week so far and it did look fishy. Nobody else she knew had gotten through the past few days without getting cut from at least one house. And if she was really honest, she had noticed that she’d always seemed to have more people around her at parties.
It didn’t just happen at Sigma, it happened everywhere.
She rubbed her temples. Maddy and Ben had both found out about her after just a few minutes online.
Obviously they weren’t the only ones.
But what ripped her up the most was knowing all of that special treatment had been going on and she hadn’t noticed. She’d been bitching and moaning about getting away from her old world, but how far away had she really gotten if she couldn’t even recognize when people were kissing her ass?
“I guess I’m more used to red carpets than I thought,” she told Rachel. “Does that make me an asshole?”
“Only if you never realize it. What’s more asshole-ish is the way you look down on the whole sorority thing.”
“I don’t—”
“Oh my God you totally do!” Rachel laughed. “It’s like you think you’re too good for all of this. But going Greek means a lot to people.”
“See, that I don’t get. All those houses dumped you, but you’re still here. If it was me, I would have told all of them to eff off.”
Rachel shrugged. “Maybe it means something to me, too. Call me cheesy, but I still think there’s a house out there where I’ll fit in. And if not, then at least this whole thing was a hell of an experience. Can you honestly say you haven’t had any fun this week?”
Imogen thought about it. The truth was that she had had a good time. Even with the dumb themes and the fake cheerfulness, the rush parties had been fun in their own exhausting way. And there was one house she’d really liked—enough to actually picture herself joining. The Kappa Alpha Betas seemed genuinely cool and, if nothing else, being a sister there would help her make friends on such a big campus.
“Okay, fine,” she said to Rachel. “I admit it. Rush is fun. But don’t tell my mom!”
They both laughed and Rachel turned the TV back on. Imogen kept one eye on DIY home shows and the other eye on the elevators as she and Rachel waited for the rest of their dorm mates to come in for the nightly invite ritual.
Maddy showed up just as Alex was handing out the slips of paper. She sat by herself, checked off her acceptances, then went quickly back to her room.
Rachel leaned over to Imogen. “Well at least none of my last three cut me. How’d you do?”
Imogen looked at her own paper. None of the ten houses she’d visited that day had cut her, either.
Maddy was right.
Damn.
Tonight Imogen had to narrow her list to three. She moved her pencil to the box next to “Sigma Theta Kappa.” What could her mother really do, from all the way up in New York, if she decided to cut them?
She was in college now. Her mom couldn’t control her anymore. She would still go Greek, she just wouldn’t join Didi’s precious sorority. Imogen knew her dad would back her up; if she told him how strongly she felt about this, then he would stand by her.
Choose wisely, Tess had said. Pay attention and trust your gut.
Well, Imogen was paying attention—a little late, but better late than never.
She put her pencil to the paper and filled in “Decline.”
There. If Maddy wants Sigma so bad, then she can have it.