Brimstone (37 page)

“Is it easier on the other side? Except for the lame songs, I mean.”

“It can be stressful at some places. This is serious business. Most houses have to make a quota.”

“The SAXis don’t?”

“We keep a smaller membership. We’re very selective, so our pressure is on finding the right girls, not just the right number.”

I must have looked surprised at her frankness because Devon laughed again. “It’s not money or class or GPA. It’s not easy to define at all. Our members just know when a girl
is right, usually early on. And usually our pledges know when SAXi is right for them.”

Something about the way she said that: “just know.” How many times had I described my intuition that way? I
just knew
things.

“Did you ‘just know’ that SAXi was for you?”

I expected a flippant, canned answer. Instead she gazed at me for a moment, an odd sort of half smile on her lips. “Yeah.” Her tone was uninterpretable. “SAXi sort of chooses us, Maggie. You’ll know, too.”

I couldn’t tell if she meant that as a good thing.

“Hi, Devon.” A new girl joined us—a young woman, really, with maturity and an air of command. “Are you going to introduce me to your friend? You’ve been speaking together for almost ten minutes.”

Devon’s freckles disappeared into her flush, confirming that the reprimand hadn’t been my imagination. I wondered if it was really the ten-minute monopoly, or if the other girl could read the exchange of information from across the room.

“Of course,” she said. “Maggie, this is Kirby, our chapter president. Kirby, this is Maggie. She’s an English major, and lives at home.”

I glanced at her, expecting a smile or a wink, some hint at the shared joke. But with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes, Devon took her leave, moving on in the rotation.

“How are you enjoying Rush?” Kirby asked.

“Well enough, thank you.” I caught myself speaking to her like an authority figure, which was crazy and disturbing. She wasn’t
my
president. “I was enjoying talking to Devon,” I said pointedly.

As a member came by with a silver tray full of glasses of lemonade, she snagged one and offered it with a napkin. “Have a drink?”

I eyed the beverage as if the decorative twist of lemon might jump out and bite me. “This is my fourth party of the night. My back teeth are already singing ‘Anchors Aweigh.’ ”

She smiled. “It’s a little party trick. Gives you something to do with your hands.”

“In that case.” I took the glass, mostly to get her to leave me alone about it. No wonder Devon had scuttled obediently on her way.

“Now that we’ve been through the niceties …” Kirby gestured toward the wooden folding chairs set artfully around a cleared space. “Maybe you’d like to take a seat. We’re about to have a short presentation on our philanthropy.”

“How thrilling.” If President Kirby noticed my irony, she didn’t let it show. Hers was the gently imperturbable smile of a political hostess.

I slouched into a spot next to Holly. The space contained a piano and a Chinese screen, behind which I could just detect movement. “Please God, don’t let it be a skit.”

Holly glanced at me, saw the drink in my hand, and lifted her own. “I thought you said you were already sloshing on the way over here.”

Raising a toast, I clinked our glasses. “Why are we here, if not to drink the Kool-Aid.”

“Cheers, then,” she said.

“Sláinte,”
I answered, and we drank.

A cherub-faced girl came out from behind the screen,
and I groaned softly. Worse than a skit—a skit by precocious children. She went to the piano. A lanky boy emerged, and to my surprise and bemusement, slipped the strap of an electric guitar over his head. A couple of SAXis moved the screen aside to reveal, along with the amp for the guitar, a small drum set with a pigtailed preteen seated behind it, sticks in her hands and a smile on her face.

A woman—older than us, but not elderly by any measure—walked to a small podium. She wore a smart, charcoal gray pantsuit, a silk scarf at the collar. Her strawberry blond hair was neatly coiffed and her smile warmly practiced.

“Good evening,” she said. “I’m Victoria Abbott, one of the chapter advisers.”

“She says that like it’s supposed to mean something,” Holly whispered in my ear.

“She’s the wife of our congressman,” I hissed back. Holly wouldn’t know since she wasn’t from here. “Nice suit.”

“Well, yeah. It’s Armani.”

I processed this—the distinction of a three-thousand-dollar suit, and the fact that Holly recognized one. Casting my eye over her, I paid closer attention to the excellent cut of the black and white dress she was wearing.

“I’d like to briefly tell you about the Roll Over Beethoven Foundation—Sigma Alpha Xi’s chosen philanthropy, not least because it was started by SAXi alum Susie Braddock.”

An awed ripple moved through the group. Even a loser like me had heard that name. Ms. Abbott continued. “The Roll Over Beethoven Foundation promotes music education in schools, and funds free after-school music programs. But why don’t I let the program speak for itself.”

I tensed as the kids began to play. The opening bars were instantly identifiable. They were covering one of my favorite songs by—I kid you not—the Talking Heads. And they did not suck.

If I
was
looking for a sorority, for sisterhood or networking, or for mixers with the frat boys across the way, I would have totally taken it as a sign.

I
arrived at Froth and Java for the second time in the same day, which was actually not that unusual for me. What had me a little off balance was a message from Cole Bauer that had been waiting on my cell phone, asking me to call him. I did, but ended up leaving him a voicemail in return. So much had changed since that morning, and I felt slightly disconnected as I smoothed my windblown hair and checked my reflection in the front window of the coffee shop, wondering if I should put on lip gloss.

Justin was already inside, staking out a pair of deep chairs good for conversation. He stood when he saw me, and
we did another one of those unsure dances of greeting. Finally he took my shoulders, leaned down, and kissed my cheek. And I blushed. I could feel it spread over my skin, from the top of my dress to the roots of my hair.

“Hey,” I said, brilliantly.

He stepped back and grinned as he looked at me. I still wore my sundress, though I’d taken off the despised name tag. He’d showered and changed into jeans and a green and white rugby shirt. Close up, I could smell him, clean and sort of spicy, beneath the overwhelming scent of coffee. While there might be some uncertainty to our relationship, there was no ambiguity about the way I felt when I was near him.

“You look great, Maggie.”

A short lock of hair fell against the heat of my cheek, and I brushed it back. “Thanks. I’ve been working out.”

Justin laughed, because he knew how ridiculous that was. He gestured to the chair perpendicular to his and I sat, setting my cell phone and car keys beside his on the side table.

“So, what’s this about going undercover?”

“With the Future Stepfords of America, you mean?” The chair was too soft and deep. I had to balance on the edge to keep from sinking into it like quicksand. “Newspaper story.”

“So how is it?”

“Interesting.” I solved the quicksand problem by tucking my legs up under me and leaning on the poufy upholstered arm. “It’s more of a social commentary sort of thing than hard-hitting investigative journalism.”

“So nothing …” He gestured vaguely. “Weird?”

“Sorority girls from Hell, you mean?” I laughed. “That’s so seventies B movie.”

His smile turned rueful. “It does sound cliché when you put it that way. How’s your mom?”

“Aside from the morning pukeathon, she’s doing great.”

“And your gran?”

“Good.” I anticipated his next question. “And Dad, too.”

He smiled that crooked smile. “And Lisa?”

“Fine, I guess. She left for Georgetown last week.”

“Is she still …?” He faltered, maybe because of the busy coffee shop, maybe because of the baggage it brought up.

“Studying the dark arts?” I tried to hit a droll tone, but missed the mark and landed closer to sour and dejected. “It should make her fit in well in Washington, D.C., I guess. If I wasn’t worried about her moral compass before, living that close to the Capitol would do it.”

“I don’t know.” Justin had better aim, and he struck the perfect note of comforting humor. “Georgetown University is affiliated with the Jesuits. Maybe it will be good for her.”

That made me smile. Not because of any renewed hope for Lisa’s ethical education, but because Justin was such a font of eccentric information.

I left the uncomfortable subject of Lisa for a happier one. “Was the internship everything you’d hoped it would be?”

“It was great.” His face lit with warmth for his subject. “Hearing their folktales in Gaelic, looking into the weather-beaten faces of those living so close to the land and the legends, and seeing the belief that’s woven into the tales. And the pictures we took of the haunts of the fair folk and
the giants … I have enough for a whole book, let alone a thesis.”

“That’s fantastic.” I had to grin; his enthusiasm was contagious. Justin’s graduate studies were in anthropology, specifically the folklore of magic and the occult. Or as I called it when we met, an advanced degree in “Do You Want Fries with That.” Dad said Justin was hard to classify academically, but they let him hang out with the history folks anyway.

“After what happened this spring,” I ventured, curious, “how will you write about all this in a scholarly paper? Don’t you question everything now, wonder what’s myth and what’s real?”

He fiddled with his cell phone on the table. “I still have to record it empirically as folklore and fairy tales. We don’t know which is which, do we?”

I paused, a little surprised at that noncommittal answer from Justin, the true believer. And there was that ambiguous “we.” I knew he wasn’t talking about me. I had the theoretical advantage of my Spidey Sense to tell me when the boogeyman was real. “No. I guess not.”

He rose to his feet, dusted his hands on his jeans. “Can I get you something to drink? Vanilla latte, extra shot, right?”

“Yeah.” I smiled, feeling a melty warmth inside at the fact that he remembered.

Our friendship had been a brief, intense proving ground, but romance-wise, he’d left before we’d gone out more than twice. We’d kissed—which was a little like saying Mount St. Helens had exploded once. But I suppose I could understand the “just friends” uncertainty of our relationship when he boarded that plane, and why we were starting over now.

I even understood if he’d gotten too busy, too involved with his work to e-mail me the way he did at first. Three months was a long time. He was across the ocean, building his career, and …

His phone rang. I glanced toward the counter, where Justin waited for the drinks. Clearly he couldn’t hear his ringtone over the chatter and music. I swam out of the chair and picked up the phone, intending to flag him.

It was playing that Irish song, the one they use in every movie with a bar fight or a leprechaun. Everyone knows it’s the Irish song, and Justin’s phone was playing it and flashing the name
Deirdre
on the caller ID.

A vision popped in my brain—in the space of a held breath, a series of images flickered in front of my mind’s eye like those old film reels where you see the blink between frames: A black-haired, green-eyed, creamy-complexioned woman trekking through a boggy field, sitting with Justin over a couple of pints in a pub with a smoky peat fire. The two of them, heads together in intimate conversation, him inclining to say something, her leaning forward to meet him and …

The phone clattered to the floor, falling from my nerveless fingers. Maybe I broke it, but I couldn’t care. Head whirling, I tried to bring the room back into focus. My heart slammed against my ribs. What the hell had just happened?

“Maggie?” Justin had returned, drinks in hand.

“I dropped your phone.” My own voice sounded flat and cold. I stared stupidly at the phone on the floor, not about to touch it again. Something was
wrong
with me.

He set down the drinks. “Are you all right? You look sick.”

I
felt
sick. I was seeing things while I was awake. My freakitude had just reached a whole new level.

“Deirdre called.” The words blurted out, the way the images had blurted into my brain. “I wasn’t spying on you.”

“What?” He blinked in confusion, brow knit in concern. “Spying? Of course not.”

“I just picked it up and …”

“And what, Maggie?” Bending slightly, he searched my face, trying to trap my gaze. “What happened?”

But I couldn’t tell him. Too many emotions had seized my brain and nailed my tongue to the roof of my mouth. I couldn’t make my lips form the questions that would clear everything up. Who was Deirdre? Was she why you stopped writing? All valid questions, but I couldn’t get past the part where, oh my God, I was even more of a freak than I thought.

“I need to go.” I grabbed my keys from the table and he snatched them neatly from my shaking fingers.

“Maggie, what the hell is wrong with you?”

I pressed my hands to my pounding head. “I have a headache all of a sudden.”

“Then let me drive you. You look awful.”

“No.” My latte, all three shots of it, stood on the table. I grabbed it, took a scalding drink, gasped, but felt better. The burn, like a slap in the face, calmed my hysteria. One more deep breath and I squared my shoulders. “I’m fine.”

“You are
not
fine.” His voice had a taut edge, from trying to keep it below the general hum of conversation and the music playing in the background.

“All right. I’m not fine.” Another sip of espresso and I could lift my eyes to his and hold out a steady hand. “But I can drive. Give me my keys.”

His gaze searched mine, and I wondered what he saw
there. I had no clue to his thoughts, though his confusion and worry were clear. Finally he relented. “Will you call me when you get home so I know you made it okay?”