Throb (Club Grit) (8 page)

“What are you talking about?” said Sam, coyly.

“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” I said. “There have been complaints from people about him getting too physical, pressuring girls into doing things they don’t want to do, and a few weeks ago, there was the attempted rape.”

“Rape? That’s a strong word,” warned Kim.

“Well, it’s the right word. What would you call it? He took a drunk pledge into the coat room, tried to undress her and have his way with her, and got caught. That’s somehow not rape now?” I asked rhetorically. “I thought the club president was going to talk to the pledge about pressing charges.”

Of course, Sam had to try and weasel DeAndre out of it. “I’m sure he had a lot to drink too, and people do stupid things as freshman. Is it really worth ruining someone’s life over it? He’s just a freshman, and freshman make mistakes. It’s not a big deal.”

“Well, unlike the pledges, DeAndre is seven foot two, weighs over two hundred and fifty pounds, and is mostly muscle. The damage he can cause them is more than what they can cause him, so try telling it to our pledge that it’s not a big deal, Sam,” I said sarcastically.

“That pledge is no longer a member of Omega Mu Gamma,” said Kim, pointing to a black line on her clipboard that rendered a name unreadable.

“So it’s come to this, Kim? You’re willing to protect a practical stranger over someone you know, even when the stranger is guilty, over the fact that “boys will be boys”?” I wanted to throw up, and not because of the alcohol.

“No, it’s because with the opening of two new sororities this year, our incoming pledge class was not as competitive, in terms of wealth, as previous classes. A lot of the girls we picked have been exceedingly...mediocre. Middle-class. The few that are wealthy aren’t exactly generous. Their families didn’t get wealthy by being frivolous, and that’s what a sorority is seen as now: frivolous. Look around you, and tell me that’s not what we are,” challenged Kim. “What you don’t get is that we needed money, and that we had to borrow it, from the only people who had more this year, with the closing of another frat on campus. We borrowed from Beta Rho Omega, and in return, they have certain perks.”

As it became all too clear what she was implying, I felt my stomach drop. “I wasn’t aware rape was a perk,” I said to Kim, and before she could retort, I headed down the stairs, too sick to think about the fact that the woman I’d thought was my best friend was willing to sell the flesh of unwilling others in exchange for saving face.

I found Jason at his usual spot, and before he could even say hello, I asked him, “Jason, if you knew something, about someone, would you tell someone else about that person?”

“Slow down, Becca. What?” asked Jason.

I bit my lower lip as I rephrased it. “Let’s say I knew a secret about someone, a bad secret. That they’d hurt someone. Would it be up to me to tell someone about that secret?”

“Do you think they’re a danger to that person?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Then yes, of course.”

I pulled out my phone and opened it up to Emma’s name, but before I pressed send on the message, I decided I had to tell her in person. Jason was making someone else a drink as I sat at the bar, peering over the crowd, looking for DeAndre, who would be tall even in this crowd. A tattooed bouncer came up to me. “Please. I don’t know where Emma is, can you help me?” he asked. Oh. It was Skylar, the guy that I’d encouraged Emma to go after a few nights ago.

“Uh, sorry stalker, but I’m busy here?” I said with a roll of the eyes. I knew he wasn’t a stalker but any enemy of my sorority mate was an enemy of mine. “I’m actually looking for Emma myself.”

“She left with DeAndre,” he said. I turned back to face him. He was stone cold serious and his face showed it: he knew about what DeAndre had done a few weeks ago, with the pledge, and now, Emma was with DeAndre somewhere, alone? This...this wasn’t okay.

He pulled out his phone and opened it to the conversation timeline between him and Emma. The first messages I saw were pathetic. Skylar was begging Emma to come back inside:

We need to talk. I get why you slapped me but please, come down.

Emma, you can’t go out to see DeAndre.

Emma, it’s Skylar, if you’re getting this, please answer, we need to talk, and talk-talk, not like the coffee shop.

Emma, don’t leave.

Emma, come back inside.

EMMA. WHERE R U?

EMMA.

EMMA. HE DID IT.

EMMA PLEASE.

But after those? There was one message, three letters long:

SOS

From Emma.

Shit.

Emma, queen of the extended text message, the least concise person I knew, was sending just three letters, SOS? This wasn’t a pocket dial. We had to find her.

“Let me text Kim,” I said, pulling out my iPhone, its brushed champagne metal cool against my hands which were starting to get clammy out of nervousness.

“No, she’s not going to tell us where they are,” said Skylar desperately.

“If we play it cool and I pretend I just want to meet up with DeAndre, she’ll tell me where they are.” I was right: in seconds, Kim had texted me. “They’re in the limo.”

“Thank you, thank you so much,” said Skylar, rushing through the dance floor while picking up a walkie talkie from his belt. Soon, three or four other bouncers were following after him, as was the mysterious man sitting in the VIP who started to descend to meet them. I turned back to my drink.

“What was that about?” asked Jason, coming back from serving other people, his eyebrow raised.

“It’s a long story. Let’s get out of here later,” I said. I needed Jason. I needed Jason’s touch, I needed him to make this problem disappear, and I needed to leave Club Grit and get away from the girls of Omega House. Omega had become a place that I wasn’t proud to call home and I didn’t want to think about what was happening outside, but it was impossible not to. I heard yelling and screaming as the DJ stopped and people rushed to the exit.

Jason had been following behind me, but as soon as he saw me trip, he pulled a whistle out from under his bartending vest and blew it, hard. The crowd cleared as he helped me up to my feet, and I wrapped an arm around him as I restabilized myself and we walked slowly out and towards where I knew the limo would be and where I could only hope to God had remained.

Skylar was arguing with Kim, who was blocking the limo door and playing off the fact that she knew Skylar wouldn’t manhandle a woman. What she didn’t bet on is the fact that I’d womanhandle her. Jason let go of me as soon as I could walk on my own and once I could, I got a running start and grabbed Kim from the side, taking her down to the ground with me like she was one of the cousins I’d played tackle football with back at home.

Before Kim could even muster out a single, “What the fuck?”, Skylar had the door open and was dragging out DeAndre, who, as I’d suspected, had his pants down to his ankles.

“Are you fucking happy, Kim?” I screamed. “This isn’t a fucking game, Kim, these are real people’s lives that you’re messing with and I’m not going to let it happen anymore.” As Skylar helped a crying Emma out of the limo, an Emma more shaken than I’d ever seen her before, Jason had to pick me up and get me off of Kim. Even though I hadn’t done anything to her more than what was physically necessary to get her away from the door, I felt like taking her head in my two hands and forcing her to see the damage she’d caused, forcing her to take responsibility for the pain she’d inflicted on a person, but I knew that the sight wouldn’t change her, and that it wouldn’t help Emma.

Jason took me back inside to the bar, the patrons inside Club Grit already dancing to the music again, as if what had happened outside didn’t matter to them at all, their minds and movements unshaken. After he poured me a glass of cold water, Skylar came up to the bar with Emma. I knew she didn’t see me, but I wanted to reach out, to let her know that I’d tried to help, but I didn’t. She had enough on her mind and she didn’t need to know about the small part I’d played, because what mattered was the part I hadn’t played: I hadn’t stopped her from socializing with DeAndre, who had a history, who had a past, and who I could have saved her from.

Jason passed them two vouchers, and then, silently, just looked at me, let out a sigh, and gave me a sad smile, as if to let me know that as fucked up as it was, he was glad it wasn’t me in the limo, he was glad that I was okay, and that he knew I must have done whatever I could to have stopped what happened.

I couldn’t keep looking at him though, because I knew in my heart that I hadn’t.

T
HE NEXT MORNING, I took the cab back to the sorority house and passed the girls eating in the dining room, heading straight up to my single room and locking the door behind me. It was still early, but I’d spent the night tossing and turning in bed with Jason. We hadn’t had sex and he didn’t have to ask to know why the thought was revolting that night. As soon as we’d gone back to his place, we’d just gone to bed, but he hadn’t let go of me at all through the night. He’d been my rock through the turbulent tides of my discontent.

We’d also gone to bed early for another reason. Today was moving day, and he and I were the only ones that knew it so far. He was just a text message away, and would come with a rented car whenever I needed him, to pick up my stuff so I could stay at his place for a while, while I figured out what to do.

I looked at the walls, at my sheets, at the desk, and everywhere around me, I saw lime green and hot pink, the sorority’s symbol of a flower looking fake and artificial instead of vibrant to my eyes, instead of popping out of the posters and prints I’d had gifted to me over the years and had put on my blotter, my calendar, my desk organizers.

Packing my clothes was easy, seeing as I kept most of my shoes in their original boxes and I had kept my winter clothes packed, so all I really had to pack was my spring and summer clothing. My school supplies were easy to pack up too.

Anything with the sorority’s logo, print, or symbol on it was put in another box. I didn’t want to see anything that reminded me of a system I’d been part of. Even though I’d always stayed to myself, pretending to be a gracious hostess on the outside, I was seeing Omega Mu for what it was, and even though I knew that there were other chapters out there that didn’t have these problems, that what I was experiencing and seeing others experience at OMG was not necessarily the rule but the exception, it didn’t matter. I didn’t want to have any part of my old life at Omega Mu following me.

Unlike some of the girls in the sorority, I couldn’t afford to throw the stuff away. I knew I’d probably have to send out an email to see who wanted to buy the stuff if I wanted to get rid of it without losing

I heard a knock at my door. “Don’t come in,” I called. “I’m busy.”

The door was opened anyway. Standing in the doorway was Kim.

“You can’t leave,” said Kim nervously, fidgeting with the lavaliere around her neck. I remembered how we’d purchased the plain silver foil coated plastic charms from the sorority catalog, how we’d added the stick on rhinestones that we got from a cell phone decoration kit that we’d split, and how we’d sealed them carefully on the base with transparent nail polish. Those were different times, simpler times, back when we were freshman and back before we were women. I still had my first lavaliere in a keepsake box in my desk drawer, one of the few things I wanted to keep but knew I had to let go of. I don’t think Kim still had hers. She’d upgraded as soon as she could and I’d never seen her pull it out again.

“I can, and I will,” I said curtly, not wanting Kim to misunderstand me, because I knew I understood her all too well. My voice sounded so weird, so foreign. Was it because I was stronger today? Because after a sleepless night, even wrapped in Jason’s arms, I knew that I had to actually stand up to Kim, even if it was too late? Or was it because the room, emptied of so much of its stuff already, made my voice sound different? Maybe it was both, maybe it was neither, but even though I felt stronger than ever, my heart kept throbbing in my chest as I worried about what Kim would do. I’d seen what she’d done before, at the club, and I knew although over the last four years, I’d gone from becoming a sheltered girl from Compton to becoming a young lady who actually have half a shit about people’s feelings, she hadn’t done the same. Kim was still immature and she was more fucked up than ever.

“No, what I mean is...I don’t know what I’m going to do if you leave,” said Kim quietly, but I still heard her. She was fidgeting with her wristlet, her keys jingling.

I knew if I looked at her nails, they would have been bitten to nubs, the polish chipped, because Kim’s appearance was her tell, and today, she wasn’t the beautiful preppy goddess she usually tried to be.

Neither was I, in the tank top and pajama bottoms I’d worn from Jason’s place back to the sorority, with no makeup on, with my hair a mess. I didn’t need to be beautiful to be powerful, and Kim couldn’t use her appearance as a shield forever. Being pretty didn’t mean that she got a license to use and abuse others, and I didn’t need to look fierce to have the guts to say what I had to say. I had something more important, and it wasn’t love, it was conviction, and it was regret, regret that I hadn’t said something before, when it mattered, and the belief that if I said something now, it wouldn’t be too late.

“Whether or not I’m here stopped mattering to you a long time ago, Kim. You’re not the girl I grew up with. I knew it was a fun game for us, as freshman, to pretend that we weren’t from Compton, to pretend that the life we had was better than the life we’d had, but unlike you, I’m open and honest about that part of myself now. You know I opened up about it. You, on the other hand, just kept lying. How long are you going to be able to get away with it? Do you seriously think that the girls are always going to believe your lies? You and I both know your dad isn’t a rich businessman and your mom is not a model. We both know your dad died, and that your mom had to raise you on her own. I don’t see why you think that’s shameful. If you were open and honest about who you were, where you were from, and the life you had, I’d respect you. I don’t care how many Chanel purses you have, or how many you pretend are real. I cared about you, Kim, but you’ve made it apparent you don’t care about anyone but yourself. I can’t help you anymore, not as your social chair, and not as your friend.”