Hell Week (10 page)

The actives moved into place along the spiral as Victoria lit a candle from the lamp. She handed it to Kirby, who stood beside her, a sober acolyte. "Like lightning, we branch out into the world, but no matter how far we get from the begin- ning, here is where the flame is begun."

The chapter president passed on the flame. Each girl in turn touched tapers with those next to her, and flickering lights spread inward along the spiral, toward the pledges in the center. Someone beside me sniffled, and I fought the urge to squirm at the seriousness of it all.

Then the flames reached us, and we passed them among our candles. The circle closed like a circuit, and I felt a rush of electricity along my skin. It flowed--a tangible energy potential--outward along the spiral, humming like a mag- netic field in the room.

Whoa.

Eight of the girls handed off their candles and moved toward the center, making eddies and currents in the energy field, like turbulence in water. Jenna stopped in front of me with a small smile of encouragement.

"Our pledge emblem is the North Star," said Victoria. "The guide of adventurers and explorers."

Jenna held up a small, lacquered gold pin, like a tiny brooch. "This is mine," she whispered, opening the clasp. "And my big sister's, and her big sister's. So I hope you keep better track of it than you did your name tag."

She held the point to the flame of my candle, only for a few seconds. Around the circle, others did the same. Jenna reached for my hand and, stupid me, I thought she was going to place the pin in my palm. Instead she pricked my finger, and I hissed in pain and some alarm. A tingle raced up my arm, settled at the base of my skull, then dissipated. A small drop of blood glimmered garnet on the sharp tip. After Jenna carefully fastened it on my shirt, I reached up and touched the warm gold. Images, quick and fast: Jenna, on the Panhellenic Council; a woman in her early twenties, rising star of real estate in Houston; an assistant DA in Chicago, on the board of governors of the school. All of them had worn this pin.

No fuzziness followed the vision this time. As quickly as the images came, I was able to mentally catch them, instead of feeling assaulted by each. The song the Sigmas had been singing--I hadn't heard them start--ended, hanging reso- nant in the room, like a chant in a cathedral.

Into the charged air, Victoria spoke. "The compass marks the path to our destination."

From directly opposite her, Kirby said, "The flame is knowledge and power shared."

A quarter of the way around the circle from the presi- dent, Jenna spoke. "Indigo for depth of feeling and depth of passion."

And across from her, Devon, the girl from the second night of Rush. "Crimson for blood, for inspiration, and crea- tion of things special and rare."

And one ring to rule them all.

It occurred to me that I might be in way over my head. 12

The SAXis' powder room, like everything else in the house, was decorated in dark red and blue. Excuse me--crimson and indigo. That hadn't seemed ominous during Rush, but now I was seeing patterns everywhere.

I had Justin's number dialed almost before I locked the door, and turned on the water to hide the sound of my voice. No answer. I hung up without leaving a message and paced in the tiny space, irrationally angry with him. Forget my petty, girly worries over the status of our relationship. How could he be in class when I needed him?

A pledge had to go through a learning period before being initiated as an active member of the chapter. I had never intended to go through with initiation. Even if they were only quasi-faux-sacred sorority vows, I wasn't com- fortable taking them under false pretenses. Since the pledge period was sort of probationary anyway, I'd been able to jus- tify a little finger crossing.

But I hadn't expected this. Ritual with a capital R. Jenna's little sensitivity bomb was nothing compared to this.

A knock on the door made me jump. "Just a minute!" I called, then splashed my flushed face and wiped the smudged mascara with my fingers before I opened the door.

Jenna stood in the hall. "Hey. There's food in the dining room. We had barbecue catered in."

"Great," I said.

She looked at me closely. "You okay? You're not freaking out because of what I said earlier?"

"No." What I needed here was not so much deflector shields as a cloaking device, because she didn't look con- vinced. "Okay," I admitted. "I've never met anyone else like me. I'm a little freaked."

Taking my arm, she said, "Don't think about it too much. It just connects us more closely."

We had to go through the front hall to get to the dining room. I didn't expect to see Cole Bauer standing there.

He didn't expect to see me, either, and his face went slack in surprise. Then he looked past me, and turned the expression into one of pleasure. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Devon, the art major with the flippy hair, whom I'd talked to the second night, coming down the stairs.

She looked from Cole to me to Jenna as she walked over to us. "Hi," she said, a slight strain in her voice.

"Going out?" asked Jenna. "Yes." She looked a little nervous and slightly defiant, which might have had something to do with her next state- ment. "Victoria knows I'm going, now that the official stuff is done."

Jenna held up her hands. "I didn't say anything."

Devon joined her date--because it was obvious he was-- and said, "Hey, Cole. This is one of our new pledges, Maggie Quinn."

"We've met, actually." I was thinking fast, covering his slip of recognition. "In the journalism lab, when Hardcastle crushed my dreams of being the first freshman staff photog- rapher."

"Oh yeah." He nodded. "That's too bad. Are you taking photography with Goldsmith?"

"Yeah."

Devon slipped her hand through his arm. "Well, we'll see you guys. Later, Jenna."

They left, and I became aware of someone standing on the stairs, looking down at the casual little scene. "Is she still with him?" It was Kirby, coming down the steps. She didn't look happy.

"She hasn't seen him all summer," Jenna said, clearly making an excuse. Then she grabbed my arm again. "Let's go eat."

F F F

They were talking about me when I reached the dining room. Well, not about Maggie Quinn, �berpledge, but the Phantom Rushee, undercover reporter.

One of the actives said, "Is it wrong that I thought she was kind of funny? She did have the chapters all pegged. The EZs and the Theta Moos." I choked on my Coke at that. "And what were we supposed to be? Some kind of fembots with shiny hair?"

"That would have to be the Kappa Phis," said another.

Nikki, one of the pledges, asked, "Is it true they make all their members get boob jobs if they're not a C-cup?"

Another pledge, Brittany, directed a loud question to President Kirby and Jenna, the ex-RG. "So nobody knows who she is? Not Panhellenic, or the Rho Gammas or anyone?"

"Not a clue." Jenna munched on a chip. "But I think the Delta Delta Gammas have a hit out on her."

"Couldn't Devon make Cole tell her?" asked Melissa (I think). I was already regretting the absence of name tags.

"She wouldn't." All the actives looked at the speaker, in a beat filled with surprise, and a tension I didn't understand. The girl lifted her hands in a shrug. "That's what her big sis told me."

The curious eyes turned to Kirby, but her attention was on her plate. I knew I was missing something significant, and wondered if it was as simple as disapproval of Devon's relationship--her choosing a boy over her sisters--or some- thing else.

F F F

By the time I pulled into my driveway it was late, and I felt as if someone had stirred my brain with a spoon. The stairs to my room seemed steeper than usual; I practically had to drag myself up by the banister.

The upstairs loft is arranged so that the stairway opens into the sitting/study area, and a pair of French doors close off my bedroom. Hanging on the left side was what, in the dark, looked like a Christmas wreath.

September had flown by fast, but this was ridiculous. I flipped on the light; the wreath was made of crimson and blue fabric, thickly braided. Stuck on, quite artistically, were several ornaments: a lamp, a star, a compass, and what looked like an octopus. Oh yes, and the letters .

On the right side was a whiteboard framed in SAXi colors, also with the letters, with a dry-erase marker hang- ing from a string. Someone had written a note: "Maggie-- Welcome to the Sigmas! This door decoration is to help you study for your pledge exam! You'll learn what all of these things mean soon. U!"

Underneath was another note, in handwriting I knew. "Congrats, Magpie! Your new friends seem so nice! Love, Mom." Thankfully, she wrote out love instead of drawing a little heart.

I wondered if I would feel less creeped out if this were hanging on a dorm-room door rather than actually inside my home. It seemed like something I maybe should be wor- ried about under the circumstances, but I was so tired. I parked the thought in a corner of my brain to examine in the morning.

Stripping off my clothes, I fell into bed, relieved that the next day was the weekend, and I didn't have to speak Greek again until Monday.

F F F

I woke late, even for a Saturday. My head felt furry on the inside, and the sunlight that streamed through the sheer curtains hammered against my eyes. All the signs of a psy- chic hangover.

With a groan, I sat on the edge of my bed and rubbed my hands through my hair. I hadn't dreamed, so it must have been the residual from yesterday's drama queen rally. A lot had happened, so much that my brain felt full, unable to process it all. I had pledged a sorority last night, yet there were no accompanying signs of imminent apocalypse.

I padded downstairs in an ancient Bedivere T-shirt, sweatpants, and socks. The living room was deserted, but Dad sat at the kitchen table with his laptop, papers spread around him.

"Good morning, sleepyhead."

With a grunt of reply, I headed to the coffee, which was tepid in the pot. Desperate, I filled a mug and put it in the microwave.

"How did it go last night?" he asked.

"Okay." I stood with my hand on the microwave and thought about that. The details were fuzzy, as if I was viewing them through a dirty window. Interesting. High emotion could make an unreliable witness. But I wondered if there was some kind of protection inherent in the pledging cere- mony.

Or maybe I just needed caffeine. The microwave beeped and I took out the mug, stirred in sugar and a lot of milk. "I found out my editor is dating one of the sisters. I wonder if he'll still want me to continue the articles."

Dad rose to get some orange juice out of the fridge. "I wouldn't be sorry if he didn't. You might get home before midnight once in a while."

"It'll be better now that Rush is over."

"Hardly. Now it will be meetings and parties. . . ."

"God, what a chore. How I suffer."

Glass in hand, he looked at me in that knowing way parents have. "So, how long are you going to keep up this Phantom Rushee business?"

"Cole and I agreed on an article a week up until initia- tion. Then I'm out."

"Not going to write your name in blood, huh?"

"Uh, no." Not when it might be literal. I rubbed my punc- tured finger and thought about symbolism. Blood brothers, candle-lighting, colors and ciphers. "Hey, Dad. Put on your historian hat for a sec. What's the evolution of fraternities and sororities? Despite all the Greek letters and stuff, they don't have roots that far back, do they?"

He considered the question, rubbing the Saturday stub- ble on his jaw. "Well, secret societies do. Think about the Templars, the Masons. But the first fraternity was Phi Beta Kappa in 1776, and it was more of a literary organization. Social fraternities didn't come along until the nineteenth century."

"The way they carry on about ritual and tradition, you'd think they'd been around since the dawn of time."

"They took Greek letters as their names to give that air of tradition and ritual. It's human nature. Being in on a secret makes a group feel superior to the ignorant masses."

That made sense; there was certainly no lack of superi- ority complexes on Greek Row. "But you don't think it really makes a difference in future success, do you?"

"Networking is a powerful tool." He shrugged. "All other things being equal, it could be an advantage later on."

"But does any one chapter strike you as more success- ful? At least on our campus?"

He shook his head. "I'm afraid I've never given much thought to the Greeks on campus, unless a student's grades slip. Even then, the individual house doesn't mean much to me."

"Okay. What do you know about Congressman Abbott?"

"Just what I read in the papers." He looked at me curi- ously. "What does he have to do with the Sigma Alpha Xis?"

"Well, his wife is one. She's the chapter adviser."

What could it have to do with the SAXis? Probably nothing. But it was a place to start, when I didn't have much to go on.

It was time for a little old-fashioned, completely mun- dane detective work. Mumbling an excuse to my father, I rose and headed for the stairs.

"You forgot your coffee," he called.

The stale smell of nuked coffee was too much, even for me. "I'll get some on the way to the paper."

"Maggie?" I turned at the concerned note in his voice. "What are you up to?"

"Just getting my Nancy Drew on, Dad."

He met my innocent look with one of narrow-eyed doubt. "There isn't any . . ." He glanced to check that Mom wasn't in the living room. ". . . you know. Any weird stuff going on, is there?"

"Don't tell Mom," I whispered. "But all Greek stuff is weird to me."

He let out a pent-up breath. "I can't tell you how relieved I am to hear that."

I hated to lie to my dad, even by omission. But really. There just wasn't a way to introduce the subject of sorcerous sororities without getting into a much more involved dis- cussion than I could handle before lunchtime. F F F

Upstairs I found a message from Justin on my voicemail. "Hi, Maggie. Saw that you called last night. The reception in the old library is awful. Since you didn't leave a message, I figured you were okay. Call me if you want."