Sometimes the F-word can have more than one meaning...

For Cassandra Davis, the F-word is fraternity—specifically Delta Tau Chi, a house on probation and on the verge of being banned from campus. Accused of offensive, sexist behavior, they have one year to clean up their act. For them, the F-word is feminist—the type of girl who hates them to the core and is determined to make them lose their home.

With one shot at a scholarship to attend the university of her dreams, Cassie pitches a research project—to pledge Delta Tau Chi and provide proof of the misogynistic behavior for which they are on probation. After all, they’re frat boys. She knows exactly what to expect once she gets there. Exposing them should be a piece of cake.

But the boys of Delta Tau Chi have their own agenda, and fellow pledge Jordan Louis is certainly more than the tank-top-wearing “bro” she expected to find. With her heart and her future tangled in a web of her own making, Cassie is forced to realize that the F-word might not be as simple as she thought after all.

KILEY ROACHE is a college student who spends her time reading, writing and justifying the purchase of cold-brew coffee. On campus, she can be found either studying justice and international relations in the library or asking strangers in Main Quad if she can pet their dog. She has worked as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune’s teen publication and the San Francisco Chronicle, and blogged for Huffington Post Teen. Originally from Chicago, she currently lives in Stanford, California, in a house with sixty of her closest friends.

Frat Girl is her first novel, and she’s hard at work on her second for Harlequin TEEN. Visit Kiley online at www.kileyroache.com and follow her on Instagram, @kileyroache, and on Twitter, @kileyroache.

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © Kiley Roache 2018

Kiley Roache asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © March 2018 ISBN: 9781474056694

Praise for Frat Girl

“A sweet, subversive deconstruction of frats and feminism, Kiley Roache’s debut will have readers sighing and snorting at Cassie’s adventure into fraternity life and finding her own truth.”

—Christa Desir, award-winning author of Bleed Like Me and Other Broken Things

“Refreshingly honest and intelligently written, Frat Girl is filled with relevant topics and written by an author to watch!”

—Julie Cross, NYT and USA TODAY bestselling author

To the friends I’ve made in college:

You’re feminists.

You’re frat boys.

But most important, you’re family.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Chapter Fifty-Two

Chapter Fifty-Three

Chapter Fifty-Four

Chapter Fifty-Five

Acknowledgments

About the Publisher

Chapter One

The Stevenson Scholarship was magic. It had the power to make a $60,000 annual bill disappear. It was the difference between a community college and the school of my dreams. Between spending the next four years in giant lecture halls with the same kids who partied their way through high school ignoring me while I studied alone and they skipped class for beer bongs and wet T-shirt contests, and joining the most elite group of young men and women in the world. Between spending the next chapter of my life still in the Midwest—land of marrying at twenty-two and popping out 2.5 kids—where half the people would assume I was going to college only to get my “MRS degree,” and flying away to California to study feminist and gender studies at one of the most progressive places on earth.

But I needed a project. The scholarship was funded by tech billionaire Greg Stevenson. You know, the one who created an empire by night and studied by day when he was in college just ten years ago.

My online application was picked from among thousands, and the interview rounds went better than I could have dreamed. I was one of two finalists left and would be pitching my project to the board, including Stevenson himself, in a few days.

I wasn’t terrible at public speaking, so I wasn’t too stressed about presenting my idea.

The problem would be not having one.

“I’m so fucked,” I say, sitting at my desk and scrolling through Facebook, like I might find inspiration there.

I turn to my best friend, who is sitting, her ass halfway out my open second-story window, chain-smoking Marlboros.

“What’s the other person doing, again?” she asks.

The official emails didn’t tell me who my competition was, let alone what they were doing, but I searched Twitter for the name of the scholarship, and, lo and behold, my competition is the type to Tweet his every movement, from trying out a gluten-free diet for fun to humble bragging about how #blessed he was to be a Stevenson Award finalist.

Two hours of stalking instead of working on my project later, and I knew he was a CS major from San Francisco who’d already created two moderately successful social media apps. I also knew waaaay too much about his cat, Ashby.

“It’s got to be another app, right?” I say.

“Well, I’m assuming it’s not poetry,” Alex says, swinging her combat-booted foot, casting a shadow on my baby-pink walls.

I pull out my phone and turn my whole body toward her, sitting cross-legged on my desk chair.

“He Tweeted yesterday at 11:06 a.m. ‘working on a new project’ and then two hours later ‘coding by the pool. Could I be more #SiliconValley #California!?!’”

Since the fund is run by Stevenson’s charity, not his company, they supposedly invested in all sorts of projects, but there was a clear favor toward the technical, money-generating kind.

“So he’s the same idiot that school is made up of.” Alex takes a long drag and blows smoke out the window, toward the quiet suburban street below. “You’re something different. Sell that.”

“Yeah, I’ll just tell them I want to do something different. I don’t know what, but different.”

“Welcome to being a humanities major.” She shrugs.

Alex and I have been best friends since the Model UN conference I attended freshman year, when I was waiting for another young Republican in a suit to give the opening remarks and instead she bounded onstage: pink-haired, tattooed and brilliant.

She’s a year older than me and the only person from our town to go to an elite school before me. In fact, she’s at the school I’m so desperately trying to find a way to attend: Warren University.

Before college she went to the giant public school with metal detectors at the entrances—the same school my parents paid the archdiocese an obscene tuition to keep me safe from—where she got straight As in all APs and tried every drug ever invented. “God, imagine how smart she’d be if her brain was fully functioning,” our friend Jay once said.

Dirt-poor and knowing equally about ’shrooms and Sophocles, she didn’t exactly scream typical Warren University student. But she was everything they want to be. They dress like her at Coachella, but she’s been going to the thrift store since fifth grade, when her dad was laid off, not since vintage came back.

We’ve been at this all week, spitballing stupid ideas fueled by coffee (me), cigarettes (Alex) and rosé (her all day, me once I give up).

“What’s up, nerds?” Jay leans against the door.

“I’m watching my future slip away from me,” I say, putting my head in my hands.

“Ugh, drama much?” He flops down on my bed. “Just be like me. Go to IU and have blonde girls with Delta Delta Gamma tank tops stretched over their double Ds try to claim you as their very own gay best friend while you fuck their closeted football-player boyfriends behind their backs.”

I wish I could. Well, at least the attending-IU part. I had messed up pretty royally when it came to applying for schools. My mom hadn’t gone to college, and my dad “didn’t have the time to waste” on helping me, so it was just me and a guidance counselor with three hundred other students to help.

So when I went to college night and the Warren representative stood up in his gold-and-blue suit and said they meet 100 percent of financial need, I believed him. I applied early, and when I got my acceptance, I saw no reason to try anywhere else.

But then the financial aid letter came. And the people who sat in a boardroom in California saw meeting my need in a different way than me and my mother did, bent over bills in our cramped kitchen. They included the restaurant franchise in their assessment of what my parents “owned,” but it wasn’t like they were about to sell it to meet my tuition.

By that point, it was too late to apply anywhere else.

But I don’t want to talk about all that right now. I turn to Jay and roll my eyes. “My gender and orientation prevent this plan, but thanks for your input.”

“Yeah, I think that’s just you, Jaybird,” Alex chimes in from the window.

He rolls his eyes. “It’s overrated anyway.” He props himself up on his elbows, swinging his feet up and down alternately. “Is angst-y time over? Because I’d like to enjoy one of our last nights together before we all grow up and our souls die, Wendy Darling.”

“He’s right—not thinking is when I think my best. C’mon, bring the wine.” Alex steps up on the windowsill and pulls herself onto the roof. We grab the bottle and follow.

Lying on the roof of my parents’ compact house, we stare at the stars and city lights. We listen to trains go by and point out planes coming into the airport a neighborhood over. We pass around Two Buck Chuck Rosé and sip from the bottle. And I try to think about anything except for getting out of here on one of those planes. About the pitch in three days that will decide my fate.

I take a sip. “Seriously, though, the school’s in goddamn Tech Town, USA. What gender and sexuality studies project will make them happier than a million-dollar app idea?”

“A million-dollar app that just allows people another way to socialize?” Alex takes the bottle from me, takes a long pull and continues. “I mean, I like socializing, but, please, like the best and brightest people in the world don’t have better things to do?”

Jay snaps his fingers in agreement.

Alex pauses just long enough to nod at him. “I mean, I’d prefer world-class minds to be endeavoring to understand who we are and why we are here and what this place—” she waves her hands, sweeping into her sentence the suburb around us and stars above us, and almost spilling the pink wine “—means, not creating apps that make it easier for eighth graders to send each other tittie pics.”

I take the wine back and think about this as I sip the hypersweet concoction.

“You could start some sort of nonprofit for girls in tech,” Jay says.

“I looked it up—there are already like five student groups there that do that. Plus I know almost nothing about coding.”

“You could learn.”

“Yeah, but if they’re gonna give someone this much grant money, they kind of want you to be able to produce something for them pretty quickly. Not like, I’ll get back to you when I learn how to code.”

“Truuuuue.” Jay nods solemnly.

We lie silently for a while.

“Maybe Warren is too much of an old boys’ club to want a major gender project,” Alex says.

“Maybe that’s why they need it,” Jay retorts.

“They’re trying to get better,” I say. “They suspended that frat.” While I’d procrastinated, I’d read article after article about the controversy surrounding Delta Tau Chi.

“Put them on probation,” Alex corrects. “And it’s just a PR move. There’s so much money in that frat, they’re not really changing anything.”

“What’d they get in trouble for?” Jay asks.

“They’re sexist, homophobic pigs.” Alex lights up a cigarette.

“No, I mean—”

“Creating a hostile environment for women.” She takes a drag before continuing. “There’s some rule with housing and Title IX. They had signs all over the house with sexist jokes on them.”

“Signs?” he asks.

“Yeah, they threw a party for International Women’s Day. Had signs over the kitchen about it being a woman’s true place, signs in the bathroom about period pain being punishment for being so bitchy, and don’t even get me started on the ones near the bedrooms.”

“That’s repulsive.” I’d never heard the details; the articles I’d read said only that they’d been misogynistic. But Alex had been there. Well, there as in Warren. I doubt she’d attend some godforsaken frat party.

Jay runs his hands through his jet-black hair, considering this. “I mean, not to defend the douche bags, but it’s not technically supposed to be an environment for women, right?”

“That’s not an excuse.” Alex sits up.

“I’m not saying I would make the joke. I think they’re assholes for saying it. But how can you get in trouble for creating an environment that’s unwelcoming to women when your charter is to be a boys’ club? I mean, no one would really know if a frat was a toxic living and learning community for a woman unless one tried living there.”

“Maybe I will,” I say.

I was just trying to make a joke before this conversation devolved into one of their ridiculous arguments, which always get way too heated, considering they always represent the far left and the farther left.

For half a second they laugh politely, but then the banter goes on, fading to buzzing in my ears.

I stare down at the street below, the street I danced down when I got my acceptance letter. I’d met the mailman at the curb for five days straight until finally, finally, that letter I’d been dreaming about arrived.

I was ecstatic to tell my parents that their daughter was going to attend the most exclusive school in the country. I hadn’t even told them where I’d applied, not wanting to get their hopes up.

I’d pictured hugs and tears. I’d pictured champagne.

But I should’ve known.

Should’ve known the response would be that there was no way they were about to spend that much money so I could get a piece of paper that would hang uselessly in my husband’s house.

I told them not to worry, about the 100 percent need thing. But when the second letter came and it was time to go to the bank for unsubsidized loans and second mortgages, I should have known they’d say it wasn’t worth the trouble.

I should’ve known my dad would say, between beers, “Hell, your mom didn’t even go to college, and she seems perfectly content.”

And that my mother would nod and extol the virtues of 1950s-style housewifedom in the twenty-first century. The satisfaction of a life filled with aprons and diapers and Xanax.

What my father doesn’t know is enough of the latter or a bottle of white wine will get her talking about how she always wanted to be a veterinarian growing up. “Coulda done it, was top of my high school class, you know,” she’d tell me between hiccups. “What am I now? Is this it?”

I thought I’d study hard and do well and avoid her mistakes. I wasn’t about to get pregnant and married at eighteen. I hadn’t even stopped working long enough to have a boyfriend.

But I should’ve known what was coming. I should have known years ago when my father went to alumni meetings to protest women being accepted into his alma mater.

Hell, I should have known when I was seven, eating ice cream earned with straight As, and my father said, “You are so smart. It’s too bad you’re not a boy.”

Or all those times he said he wished he had a son to carry on the family business (because apparently you can’t run a Chili’s franchise without a Y chromosome).

Or to be a legacy in his stupid frat...

“Oh my God! Ohmygodohmygodohmygod.” I scramble off the roof, back through the window and practically run to the computer, where I start searching, typing, printing.

I work for fifteen minutes before I even sit down.

I hear Jay and Alex climb back through the window but don’t look up.

“What—”

I hold up a finger, cutting Jay off. “Hold on—I don’t wanna lose my train of thought.”

When I turn around, Alex has pulled the pages from my printer.

“What is this? Delta Tau Chi?” Her eyes widen, and her excitement radiates from her as if her pink hair is made of fire. “Oh my God, you are not!”

Jay just looks confused.

“Can you really?” she asks.

“As far as I can tell, there’s no rule anywhere. I think it’s just usually assumed or implied. But they’re on probation for telling sexist jokes, so what are they gonna do, kick me out of Rush when there’s no rule against it?”

“Can someone please tell me what’s going on?” Jay says.

“I’m joining a frat,” I say.

“Not just any frat, but the douchiest frat on campus,” Alex interjects.

I nod. “I’ll go undercover and write a personal account of real culture inside a frat house. Show how terrible and sexist they actually are, so no one can deny it anymore. End them.”

“That’s crazy,” Jay says, but he’s smiling.

“I think it’s simultaneously the best and the stupidest, riskiest idea I’ve ever had.”

“That’s why I love it.” Alex’s purple-shadowed eyes absolutely sparkle. “How can I help?”

“Hand me those papers. And get some coffee. We have thirty-six hours.”

Chapter Two

Dear Cassandra:

Congratulations, I am pleased to inform you that you have been selected by the Stevenson Fund to receive the Stevenson Scholarship for Study and Research for this year. This scholarship was established to promote a lifelong practice of simultaneous scholarship and creative endeavors, because we at the Fund reject the premise that your career begins only after graduation or that academic pursuit should ever cease. The award value and other information about your scholarship are provided below.

We were very impressed by all you have done in your academic career, but even more by your potential for growth and future success. This is not simply a prize for what you have done; rather it is an investment in your future. The Fund provides you with a full-tuition scholarship in exchange for equity in any and all entities you create during your time at Warren University. Tuition will be granted each year upon the submission of a renewal application, and on the condition that you maintain a GPA of 3.0 or higher and keep on schedule with all projects.

Our goal is to help you make a difference in the world. We believe in your vision and leadership, and aim to grant you as much creative independence as possible, but there are certain criteria you are expected to meet.

With the help of a project coordinator at the Fund, Madison Macey, you will create a plan for the completion of your projects. But you must meet the deadlines you set for yourself or risk losing funding. The exception would be extensions you request with the help of your PC and that are approved by the Fund board.

Please fill out the attached forms as soon as possible, at which point the amount of your scholarship for one year will be sent directly to Warren University. It will be placed in your student account on hold status awaiting the completion of the first round of tutorials with your project coordinator and the creation of a preliminary four-year plan. Please send this to your project coordinator (address listed below) in two weeks’ time.

Congratulations, and best wishes for a productive and successful academic year.

Sincerely,

Rupert Jones

Vice President

Stevenson Scholarship Fund Board

I stare for the thousandth time at the letter that had changed my life. The result of an all-nighter, followed by the scariest twenty-minute presentation of my life. Then the waiting and checking the mail, and the waiting and the pacing, and the waiting. And then, one morning I opened the mailbox and the waiting had ended, and it was time for screaming and crying and calling my grandmother and getting absolutely obliterated on cheap champagne with Alex and Jay.

After reading over the letter for the umpteenth time, I fold it neatly and place it in my empty desk in my new dorm room. I want to hang it on the wall for inspiration like I’d done in my room at home, but I have to be low-key about the scholarship or people will ask what my project is. It’s the same reason there wasn’t a press release from the university, and why I didn’t get to attend the Fund’s banquet in New York City. I have a fake backup project about the experience of female athletes, but I’m not about to bring it up in conversation. Which honestly doesn’t make me much different from the other kids on scholarship in a land where most kids arrive at school in Audis and Teslas, if not by helicopter. (Okay, I’ve heard of only one person doing that, but really...)

I shut the drawer and turn to inspect my new home, a rectangular room with twin desks, wardrobes and beds. Everything I own is in duffel bags and boxes around me.

After all the movies I’ve seen about moving into college, heading off on your own, getting into your first apartment, taking on the big world with wide eyes, I expect...something.

But all I really feel is that it’s kinda stuffy. It’s like I’m waiting for all the deep, life-changing emotions to finally arrive. In the meantime, I’m just in a much too hot, nondescript room without air-conditioning on a late-summer afternoon.

The building is the oldest on campus, like two hundred years old, and it takes me a while to pry open the window. Doesn’t do much to affect the heat anyway.

“Pretty bullshit they don’t give us air-conditioning,” my roommate says, returning from the bathroom down the hall and slamming our door, disregarding the open door, open friendship rule they kept telling us about during orientation events.

Warren has a really strict roommate policy, forcing everyone to enter randomly so all the kids from elite schools don’t pair up and leave kids like me—who know zero of the two thousand other students in our year—stranded.

Which is how Leighton Spencer got stuck rooming with me instead of one of her ten close friends who also got in.

She’s a pretty, wiry track runner—“not here, in high school, but I could if I wanted to”—with a platinum-blond ponytail and a ten-minute answer about where she’s from that includes three European cities and the most selective boarding school on each side of the United States. And she scares me absolutely shitless.

“I started hanging some stuff up while you were gone. I hope you don’t mind.” I glance at my Christmas lights, Warren pennant and vintage Beatles poster. “If there’s anything you don’t like, I can take it down.”

She flops on the plasticky blue mattress she’d claimed by the time I’d arrived, her Louis Vuitton luggage stacked around her, untouched. “It’s your half of the room—why would I care?”

“Thanks.” I clear my throat.

All my decorations are up, and all my shirts, pajamas, underwear and socks are placed in their respective drawers, by the time she eventually gets up to hang a rainbow of cocktail dresses in her wardrobe and starts taping Polaroids above her desk.

“Do you mind if I play music?” I take my speaker out of a box my mom labeled “Cassie’s dorm stuff” (so specific and helpful) and set it on the desk.

“If it’s not pop.”

Okaaay, then. I scroll past the boy bands and choose an indie alternative band I heard at Fountain Square.

She looks up as the first song starts. “I actually like this band. Where did you say you were from again?”

“Indianapolis.”

She turns back to her things.

I look at her pictures. Leighton vacationing in the Maldives, at home in Hyde Park, leaning on a balcony with the Eiffel Tower in the background, Leighton with three different boys in a series of repeating shots. There are also a bunch with a dark-haired girl, laughing candids, posed with her hand on her hip, meeting James Franco.

I think of Alex.

“Is she your best friend?” I point to one with the girl.

“No.” She scoffs. “I’m not friends with girls—too much drama. That’s my sister.” She rolls her eyes. “I mean, half sister. That’s why we don’t look alike. She’s at Dartmouth. Pi Phi.”

She stares at me for a second too long and then turns back to her wall, trying to figure out how to hang up her map from Urban Outfitters that still has the USSR on it. Edgy.

“First hall meeting!” someone shouts, knocking on our door. “Come on out, frosh!”

I open the door to see a tiny redhead ringing a cowbell and wearing a very bright T-shirt with a button that says, “I Frosh.”

A group of people are huddled awkwardly and silently in the hall. Leighton stands in the doorway, as if debating whether she should go outside for this at all.

“Welcome to Warren!” the overenthusiastic redhead says. “I’m your RA, Becky Scott. I hope you are all just loving meeting your roomies! I think we might just have the best hall ever this year, and I’m really excited to go on this journey with all of you! But first I have some presents!”

The presents turn out to be all the free shit Housing gave her, and soon I find myself with the weirdest assortment of objects I have ever held at once.

There’s a rubber duck with a mental health hotline number stamped on its butt to represent “Duck Syndrome,” the idea that the high-stress environment of an elite school combined with the Californian desire to seem chill creates a group of students who act calm on the surface but are paddling for their lives underneath.

Welcome to college, I think. That’s comforting.

Next come the rainbow stickers with the words This is an inclusive community! across them. And your choice of glittery or black ones that say, “Of Course I’m a Feminist.”

A muscular guy about the size of Hagrid from down the hall opts not to take one of these. “Those are who’s messing with my frat.”

“Aren’t you a freshman? How are you even in a frat?” My hand flies to my mouth—that was not in character.

“Yeah, but I’m a football player.” He looks at me like I’m stupid. Maybe I should’ve noticed his T-shirt, which also broadcasts this affiliation.

“All football players rush DTC,” he says.

“Oh.”

Next there were the condoms. I blush despite myself, used to my Midwestern Catholic school and the oxymoron that is Abstinence-Only Sexual Education, which is a little bit different from liberal California. I mean, this stuff shouldn’t be taboo; it’s a health issue. Still, I can’t bring myself to grab one in front of these people I just met. I feel like a bad feminist.

The football player has no problem taking multiple boxes. Classic. He’s my favorite type of antifeminist, the sexually prolific guys who don’t support gay rights and think the very women they fuck are “slutty” for being available. The hypocrites who are all right with the sexual revolution when it means they get laid but not when it means oppressed groups expressing their sexuality.

The meeting disperses, and Leighton is still in the doorway, apparently not wanting anything rubber, duck or otherwise.

“Hey, I’m gonna put this on the door, okay?” I say as I struggle to peal the backing off one of the feminism stickers.

She seems about to give another grunt of indifference, but then the words register.

“Yeah, no, I’d rather you not.” She wrinkles her perfect little nose.

“What?”

“It’s not a good look.”

“Yeah, I wasn’t sure about the sparkles, either. I could grab a black one?”

She just stares at me blankly, turning her head to the side so her blond ponytail swings.

And something clicks. “Leighton...are you not a feminist?”

She shrugs. “Are you?”

“Yeah...” I resist the urge to add “of course.”

“Whatever, just don’t put it on the door, okay? I don’t want any guys to see it and think I’m like that.”

Like what? Sure of your own inherent worth no matter what kind of reproductive anatomy you have? The type of person who’s for equal pay and against the human trafficking, abuse and inequality that so many women are victims of? Are you worried a sweaty frat guy might not like you because you think women in Pakistan should be able to go to school, or women in Saudi Arabia should be allowed to drive or there should finally be more Fortune 500 CEOs who are female than who are named David? Do you think you’ll seem bitchy and shrill if you support women voting or getting to go to college?

I think all this but just say, “I have to use the bathroom.”

Splashing water on my face, I think, I am so fucked.

If I can’t change the mind of a bright, athletic girl who has every reason to demand her accomplishments not be diminished because of her sex, how am I going to change the minds of a group that basically benefits from a patriarchal system?

I dry my face with shitty industrial-style paper towels and look in the mirror.

And I remember: I don’t have to convince them of anything; I just have to listen, record, write and publish, then watch their whole system go down in flames.

I throw the sticker in the bathroom trash and walk outside.

“Hey there!” a peppy voice says when I’m barely out the door.

That’s the thing about the first week of freshman year—people are dying to make friends. Especially at a school like this, where it’s incredibly rare to enroll alongside another person from your high school. Unlike Leighton, most people get dropped here, cut off from everyone else who used to define their lives, the single goal that guided them through high school—get into a good college—achieved, and have absolutely no idea what to do with themselves or who they even are.

It’s like they ooze desperation: I really want to know about where you’re from and your potential major that you will definitely not stick with. Love me. Please!

I’m not saying I’m not victim to the loneliness and anxiety, too, but when you’re about to embark on a complicated social experiment, you can’t really make legitimate friends.

For a lot of the students on this campus, the ones who introduce themselves with a suffix of Greek letters after their names, what I am about to do would be social suicide. The ones who will want to cheer me on are probably good people, too good for me to want to lie to them as much as I’d have to.

Which is why I’ve planned to make friends only within my frat (such a weird sentence still) and those who are directly connected to it (the sister sorority or whatever) and steer clear of lying to more people than necessary.

Still, I don’t want to be rude...

I step the rest of the way out of the bathroom and take in the pretty Asian girl with winged eyeliner and hipster glasses smiling at me. “Hey, what’s up?”

“Not to be weird but I heard what your roommate was saying. About the stickers. What bullshit!”

I smile. “Thanks. I’m just glad someone else thinks it’s crazy.”

“Where are you from?” she asks.

“Indiana.”

Her eyes light up. “No way! That’s so cute.”

“Thanks?” I say.

“Do you live on a farm?”

“No I, uh, live in Indianapolis. It’s the fourteenth-biggest city in America.”

“Oh, of course,” she says, waving her hand as if to dismiss the picture of me with pigtails going out to milk the cows she had started to conjure.

“That’s cool, coming to such a different place, though. I’m from SoCal, so it’s only a few hours away for me.”

I nod knowingly, even though I just recently learned that “SoCal” means Southern California and not, like, Very California.

We look at each other for a beat.

“I’m Cassie, by the way.” I reach out my hand.

“Jacqueline Wang. Jackie.”

And it’s silent again. “What are you majoring in?” I ask, hating myself for becoming one of the Eager Freshmen.

“Physics or CS. How about you?”

“Gender and sexuality studies.”

I brace myself for the They have that here? or What will you do with that? I’ve come to expect.

But she just raises her eyebrows. “Maybe you can bring back some books to educate Leighton, then.”

I decide one real friend can’t hurt.

But now the pressure of small talk is on. I look down at my shoes. I look back up. “Do you play any sports?”

“Yeah, climbing.”

“Like rocks?”

She turns her head to the side.

God, I am such an idiot.

“Uh, yeah,” she says.

“That’s so cool.”

“Yeah!” She smiles. “We should go sometime.”

“Yeah, that’d be cool.” I kick myself and hope she doesn’t think “cool” is the only word I know.

“...”

“...”

“Wellll... I gotta go,” she says, breaking the silence. “I wanna finish unpacking tonight, because I plan to fill an entire wall with postcards. But come by my room later!”

I smile and wave and wonder if I should take her up on that offer, if I can take her up on that offer. I debate if I should call my project coordinator to get approval first. And then I hate that I even thought that.

Approval for a friend, what am I doing?

Chapter Three

Like a typical freshman girl, I’m spending my first night of college trying on outfit after outfit, making countless trips to the hallway to look in the full-length mirror.

But unlike a typical freshman girl, I am not obsessing over my outfit for the first day of class. I picked that—a white boho blouse and olive shorts—in about 2.5 seconds.

I am probably the first girl in history to spend her first night of college obsessing over what to wear to fraternity Rush. Not exactly the trails I thought I’d be blazing when I was seven with a poster of Sally Ride on my wall or when I was fifteen and carrying one of Gloria Steinem’s books everywhere I went.

But I keep the endgame in mind: one year of investigative journalism in a frat, and I renew my funding. I get to go to college at the best school in the country, and I get three more years of gender-related research funding toward what I really want to do, whether that’s the wage gap in American tech or women’s education in the Middle East.

Setting the winning outfit on my desk, I recheck the pile of syllabi I printed out earlier for my classes tomorrow.

I glance at the clock: nine thirty. Leighton left to meet a friend a few hours ago with no indication of when she’d be back and a clear indication that I was not invited.

Which is fine, it’s not like I particularly want to be friends with her, either. But it would be nice to at least be civil with my roommate.

I walk down the hall to find Jacqueline’s door open but her room empty. She wasn’t joking about the postcards. Half of her back wall is covered in photos of far-off cities. The photos end in a jigsaw shape, with the rest of the wall blank. On the floor I see painter’s tape and a pile of even more glossy postcards.

There’s also a poster of a girl stepping off the curb onto a New York street, empty after the rain. It’s dark save for the city lights, reflected on the wet pavement, blurry like they’re running together. Her back is turned, and all you can see is her wavy hair and her arms raised like she’s dancing or celebrating.

For a second, I can see my life if I were a normal student. I would want to befriend people like Jacqueline, to sit around in her art gallery of a dorm room, talking all night about books and movies we love and places we want to visit. I could introduce her to Alex—they would love each other. We could go for late-night burgers in Alex’s beat-up Saturn and see concerts in the city.

Music erupts from a room down the hall. A gem that combines “bitches,” “money,” “ass” and “pussy” with the sound of...maybe Transformers having sex?

I can’t see the listener, who apparently also doesn’t believe in “open door, open friendship,” but a large sign on the door reveals that he’s number 82, Duncan Morris.

My Hagrid-size frat “brother.” Fabulous.

I return to my room, slamming the door. I turn the lock and grab my phone, dialing Alex’s number furiously.

“Hello!” her voice rings with joy.

“I miss you.”

She laughs. “I miss you, too. How are you? How’s your dorm? How are you liking college? Tell me everything!”

“Eh, it’s okay. I’ve spent most of the day unpacking my room.”

She laughs. “Fair.”

I stare at the window, at the dark outline of a tree.

“How’s your roommate?” she asks.

“Um, she’s okay, too.”

“Just okay?”

“Yeah, I mean she hasn’t been mean to me...but she ‘doesn’t like to be friends with girls.’” I do my best Leighton voice.

“Ew.”

“I know.”

“Fuck that shit.” There is a clattering sound on the other end of the call, followed by laughter. Alex giggles before seeming to remember our conversation. “Um, how’s your room, minus the slightly unhinged person living in it?”

“Fine. Pretty small. The beds are uncomfortable, so I think I’m gonna get one of those topper things.”

“I did that last year,” Alex says. “What’s nice about the house is we can get whatever furniture we want because it’s owned by the alumni and not the school. Also we can paint the walls!” Her voice gets higher and louder. “I think I’ll do one black and then write quotes in silver Sharpie.”

“That’s gonna look awesome.”

“I hope so. Or at least that it turns out better than any of the paintings I did this summer. What a bunch of train wrecks.”

“Oh shut up. That one of Jay’s dog was MoMA material, and you know it.”

We both laugh. I lie back on my uncomfortable bed and close my eyes, and it almost feels like home.

“Can we hang out tonight?” My voice is weak.

“I wish, but there’s a mandatory event at the house. Bonding activities or whatever. I’d invite you to come along, but it’s all rituals and secrecy and stuff.”

“Yeah. I understand.”

Although the members of DTC might not realize it, Warren housing and social life do not live and die by the frats.

While there are fourteen houses with ancient letters on them, there are far more without.

Some are ethnic themed: French House, Black House, Native House, Casa. Others are “learning-living communities” organized by major.

The remaining houses are the lit clubs. Alex lives in one of those.

And let me tell you, they could not have created more Alex-y housing if they tried.

The five lit clubs range in hipster level from Urban Outfitters to basically a commune.

The house members are connected by a “literary fraternity” so they can have official events together. All of them practice free love, “mind-opening” drug use and vegetarianism to different degrees.

Alex lives in what I’m already sure will be my favorite. Most people at Dionysus spend meals and homework time fully clothed, but there’s definitely lots of house-cest to go with the communal stall-less showers and sleeping rooms. Like, there are no bedrooms, just rooms to hang out in and a giant screened-in porch with forty bunks and hammocks.

Not totally my speed, but better than dorm life with Leighton. “Can I just come live with you instead?”

Alex sighs. “I wish. But hey, at least you don’t have to live in the land of freshmen for too long.”

“Yeah, but then what? I move into the land of assholes and creeps?”

“Aw, c’mon, Cass—they’re just people. Not all Greeks are evil, you know.”

“We’ll see about that.”

I hang up the phone and sigh, searching my room like something to do or a new friend might appear.

On my first night of college, I go to bed at ten o’clock.

* * *

All throughout my first day of classes I can barely focus. As soon as the last one ends I run back to my dorm to start getting ready.

I shower and put on a lot of makeup, but nothing too bright or dramatic. I want the boys thinking I’m not wearing any, that I’m supercool and not at all vain. Idiots.

I put on a short, tight but simple dress made of T-shirt material, the type of dress a guy would pick out for a girl. I don’t want to wear anything that looks girlie or frilly, but I need to look hot. The fun, sexy party girl who you forget is a girl except for when you think about fucking her.

After slipping on red-and-white high-tops, I plug in my straightener. A ponytail would be too tomboyish. And curling my hair would look like I tried too hard. (Boys don’t understand that all heat tools take the same level of effort.)

While I can’t seem too much like a girlie-girl, I also don’t want to seem like one of the boys, because then I’ll lose out during Rush to real boys. To these misogynist dickwits, I will never be a better man than a man. So I need to use my assets. I need to be like one of the guys, but with boobs.

It’s disgusting.

I check the campus map three times before I leave. I can’t show up with it—looking like a stupid freshman will be an automatic loss of Rush points or whatever it is.

“Hey, Cassie, where are you headed?” My RA, Becky, pounces as soon as I make it to the lobby.

“Out.” I push through the old, heavy doors.

Well, I’ve been on campus about a day now so it seems about time to cement my social group for four years. I make my way toward The Row, winding between palm trees and sandstone buildings. There are a few other people out and about, but mostly campus is pretty empty.

A large fountain that looks like a demented tree sits empty, turned off because of the drought. Am I supposed to pass that?

I try to remember the tour I took when I arrived on campus.

Okay, yes, I definitely passed the math building before, although all the academic buildings do kind of look the same.

I glance around.

Shit, I definitely did not pass this weird modern art statue before. I would have thought it looked like a giant bug and laughed for sure. I would never have forgotten that.

There’s no way I’m not going to be late now. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Why’d I have to go to the biggest freaking campus in North America?

I pull out my phone. Please, please, pleeeeeasse. Oh, cool, it’s at 20 perc—

And it died. Awesome. I live in Silicon Valley, but that won’t stop my iPhone from jumping from twenty to zero whenever it feels like it. I fight the urge to throw the $600 piece of hardware at the weird ant statue.

“Are you all right?”

I turn around.

The beautiful boy in pastel shorts and a white polo button-down looks at me with concern in his eyes. Wow, those eyes. Deep brown in a way that held mysteries, but lined with the most beautiful, long eyelashes. I’ve often heard people say that since girls wear mascara, good eyelashes are wasted on a boy. I respectfully disagree.

They were eyes that made me want to trust him, even though we’d never met. I was transfixed by him.

I cleared my throat. “Yeah. I’m just late, lost and my phone died.”

“Where are you going?”

“Rush.”

“Oh, me, too! I didn’t know sorority Rush was happening now, too.”

It’s not. Actually, it happened before school even began. “Um...”

“Well, I’m not sure where The Row is, either, but my phone’s at fifty percent, so you can come with me.”

He smiles, and I melt.

I know I should stay focused, but I really do need help...

“That’d be great. Thank you.”

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone. Ooohhh, he has nice arms, too.

Shit, he’s looking at me. Act normal, Cassie.

I make myself smile and probably look like a serial killer.

He looks from his phone to the path in front of us and then back again. “Okay, I think that it’s...this way.”

“That’s not very encouraging.” I laugh. “But I guess it’s better than what I have.”

He smiles. “That’s fair.”

“Lead the way.”

We walk in silence for a minute, just the sound of our footsteps. I try to think of something interesting to say.

“So what classes are you taking?” he asks.

“Rhetoric, Intro to Gender Studies and Sociology 101.”

“Oh, I’m in that one, too!” His eyes light up.

“Really?”

“Yeah. I was really excited about the description, but today was kind of boring.”

“Oh my God, I know. But hopefully it will get better.”

“I have faith.” He checks his phone again, and we take a right.

My red-and-white high-tops kick up dust from the dry California ground. By the main buildings, the lawns are still well watered and manicured. But back where the students live it’s all cracked ground and sparse dry grass.

“I feel like I’m gonna look so sweaty and gross,” I say. “And I hate that I have to care, because of how superficial these things are.”

He turns his attention from his phone to me. “I think you look really great.”

I laugh. “I wasn’t going for that. I’m just trying to have an objective conversation.”

He tilts his head to the side. “What do you mean?”

“Like, I’m a confident person. I’m not fishing for compliments or needing you to say that. I have eyes and a mirror. I understand the difference between good hair days and bad ones. Me being made-up and my makeup melting off.”

“I didn’t think you weren’t confident. I think you objectively look good.”

“Well...” I glance away briefly. “Thank you.”

“Even if your makeup is melting off a little bit.” He reaches out and brushes a stray eyelash off my cheek. “But now you get to make a wish.”

My whole body feels like a live wire. Our eyes lock and I’m scared to look away, for the moment to end, but also I’m scared if I don’t I will make it weird and—

“Continue on Galvez Street.” Siri, the third wheel I’d forgotten about, ruins the moment.

We both look away, and I try not to giggle as we proceed forward. The silence turns from sexually tense to awkward.

He clears his throat.

I look at him.

There’s a pause.

He doesn’t look up from the path when he says, “Um...do you wanna exchange numbers? So we can talk about sociology and stuff?”

My heart picks up. “Yeah, sociology and stuff.”

He hands me his phone, and I type in my number, checking it three times. I go to text myself his name and...

“I just realized, I don’t know your name.”

A movie-star smile spreads across his face. “Jordan Louis.”

“Cassandra Davis,” I say.

He reaches out to shake my hand. “Very nice to meet you, Ms. Davis.”

We hold hands and eye contact for a second longer than we probably should.

I can feel myself blushing and look down quickly to hide it. “Um, here you go,” I say, handing back his phone.

“Thanks.” He examines his screen for a second. “Hey, it seems like we’re pretty close...well, I mean to where I need to be. Hopefully I’m leading you in the right direction.”

“Where are you rushing?” I ask.

“DTC.”

“Yep, that’s right near where I need to go.”

But my heart sinks as I say it. Because even though I have no right to be emotionally invested in this person I just met, he’s tall and has pretty eyes and a heart-melting smile, and he was my knight in shining armor, and now odds are I’ll have to spend the next year lying to him. Which sucks. I should tell him—no, not about the project, just that I’m rushing DTC, too, that we’re now competitors, and even if we both got in, anything between us would be incredibly complicated. But part of me just wants a little bit longer where he’s just a cute boy and I’m just a girl he’s flirting with. So I fake a smile.

We arrive at the house, the letters looming over us.

So this is DTC. It’s a lot bigger than the other frats I’ve seen on campus. There are huge white columns, like this may house some sort of system of government and not sixty boys who probably, as a collective, couldn’t do a load of laundry. There’s also a big balcony across the third floor from which a brilliant Warren student is trying to lower a cooler on a rope to his brothers below.

Guys in matching bro tanks and a rainbow of pastel shorts are scattered around the yard. Some are seated at a folding table that, if I had to guess, is usually used for beer pong, with a poster sloppily duct-taped to it with the words Sign in here! written in black Sharpie. Others are just standing around out front drinking canned beer from Warren koozies and yelling weird inside jokes and chants at one another. A bunch are staring at me.

I turn away from the house.

He looks at me. “Do you know where your sorority is from here? Or I can look it up?”

“I got it, thanks again.” I step backward and almost trip over my own feet.

“I can walk you there.”

“No...you go ahead in. I know how to get where I’m going from here.”

“Are you sure?” He seems genuinely worried about leaving me.

“Yeah, definitely.”

He looks at the house and then back at me. “Okay. It was good to meet you. I really hope to see you again. Good luck.”

“You, too.”

He turns and walks toward the sign-in table. He’s almost there when he turns back and yells, “Text me, Cassie.” He winks at me before he turns away.

I smile despite myself. It takes quite a guy to pull off winking like that.

I raise my hand to wave and smile. Don’t worry, Jordan, I think. You’ll definitely be seeing more of me.

Chapter Four

I watch him as he signs in, laughing and smiling and chitchatting with the actives. Man-flirting, as I like to call it. Even from a distance, I can tell they like him. Of course they do; he’s the type of person who’s magnetic, who kills the first impression, makes it seem like he cares about you, even when all you’ve done is say hello.

He disappears into the house, and I shake my head, like I can physically scatter the thoughts of him.

Focus, Cassie, focus.

I walk down the block and decide to loiter for a bit so I don’t walk in right after him. Taking out my dead phone, I pretend to type.

Okay, if I wait any longer people will start to notice.

With a deep breath, I walk forward, beer-goggled eyes tracking me.

“Hi,” I say as I approach the sign-in table.

An athletic-looking boy with blond hair and a cutoff shirt highlighting amazing arms looks up, unfazed. “Tri Delts don’t have to sign in. Go ahead.”

“I’m actually here to rush.”

He looks at the other guy, a lanky white dude with a backward baseball cap, and back to me.

“DTC,” I clarify.

“Uh...okay.” The blond guy looks back to his friend, who shrugs. “Sign in here, I guess.”

They whisper as I quickly jot down my name and cell and check the legacy box. My handwriting is neat, but not too girlie. I don’t dot my i’s with a heart or anything like that.

I smile sweetly as I set down the pen and make a break for the front door before they can figure out how to stop me.

Inside is pretty similar to outside. Guys trying to impress one another while drinking beer that undoubtedly tastes like water at best and piss at worst.

I am the only female.

This could easily be extremely awkward, but I can’t afford to let that happen. I smile and walk forward, giving off an air of confidence I don’t really feel.

The first two rooms are furniture-less, and one has a giant fireplace with a composite photo above it of all these fuckbois in suits and ties.

Lipstick on a pig.

The next room is almost as empty, except for a large wooden bar piled high with thirty racks of the usual suspects: Pabst Blue Ribbon and a bunch of Lights—Coors, Keystone and Natural.

I grab a Natty and head back to the other room.

“Hello, everyone.” An older guy steps onto a makeshift stage at the far end of the room. There’s a slight ruffling sound as everyone turns to look. The boy smiles, and his blue eyes sparkle. “My name is Peter, and I’m honored to welcome you to the Delta Tau Chi house. I know some of you are still filtering in, and that’s all right, but I just wanted to take a second to say hello and hopefully put you at ease.” His eyes scan the room as he speaks, like he’s talking to each of us and none of us. “Some of you may understand the Rush process, but for others this may be new...” His eyes reach me, and he falls silent for a second. He looks at the floor, and shakes his head before looking up with a picture-perfect smile and beginning again. “Basically we’ll spend this week hanging out and getting to know you guys, and then we’ll vote and some of you will be asked to join us on a Rush Retreat this weekend. After that we’ll vote again, and those young men will be invited to pledge. If you have any questions at all, feel free to ask an active—that’s what we call current members. Thank you. Have a great night.”

He steps off the stage to light applause, and people return to their small clusters of conversation.

Do I walk up and introduce myself to someone? Or hang back and let them come to me, like I’m too laid-back to do the whole ass-kissing thing?

“Hey there.” I turn around to see a short but muscular guy. His hair is spiked, like he’s trying to pick up a few inches any way he can.

“Hi,” I say.

“I’m Jackson,” he says.

“Cassie.”

I switch my beer to my left hand so I can shake his with my right. “You a freshman?”

“Yeah.” He smiles, like he doesn’t know that answer should be given timidly. I nod and look past him, trying not to be rude, but knowing I should be talking to upperclassmen. I’m working right now; I don’t have time to chitchat.

“What’s that, a Natty Light? Interesting choice.”

“Thanks.” I give him a smile. “I’ve always thought that, of the shitty beer, Natty is the best. It knows what it is and owns it. It tastes like water, but who cares, you barely paid anything, and we all know taste’s not why you’re buying it.” I take a sip before continuing. “Now, other cheap beers, they put this fake ‘beer flavoring’ in, because it’s too cheap to naturally taste like beer. But that fake stuff is what tastes so bad. They should just admit what they are, an inexpensive, tasteless beer, you know?”

He looks at his own Keystone, his eyebrows drawing together. “I guess so.”

He starts to say something else, but from across the room I catch Jordan’s eye, and everything else fades to a blurry buzz. He sees me, too, and looks confused, if not kind of...heartbroken.

Do I go say something?

No, we just met. There’s no way that sad look in his eyes is about me, right?

Someone taps my shoulder. “Excuse me.” I turn around to see the boy from the stage. My blond friend from sign-in loiters behind him.

“So sorry to interrupt. I’m Peter Ford, chapter president. I was wondering if we could have a quick word.”

Whoops, already in trouble.

I nod and turn back to Jackson, raising my hand in a small wave before following Peter up the stairs.

He looks like he’d be president of a frat. Much better dressed and carrying himself with more confidence than the rest. Charismatic and handsome, the type of guy adults would say was going places but with a little bit of player still mixed in. Like the college equivalent of JFK.

“That was quite the analysis of beer,” he says as we climb the stairs.

I shrug. “I like to party, but I’m also a huge nerd, what can I say?”

He laughs. “Well, welcome to Warren Greek Life,” he says, spreading his arms.

And for the first time, I feel a small bit of hope that I might actually like it here.

We reach the top of the stairs and pass a calendar that features a photo of a different topless model every month. August’s is licking a popsicle in a way that...well, let’s just say it wouldn’t be the typical way someone might enjoy an ice-cream treat.

Aaaaaand my brief feeling of hope is gone.

Peter gestures for me to enter one of the bedrooms. The blond and baseball-cap guys follow, and finally Mr. President himself. He closes the door behind him and crosses his arms.

I glance around this room. Luckily there are no sexy calendars, just an American flag and a Warren ROTC poster. The rest of the room is pretty minimalist: navy bedding and a desk stacked with books and a large protein powder container. It’s a very boy room.

The two henchmen flop onto the bed. I take the desk chair.

“Is this some sort of stunt?” Peter studies me.

“No.” I stand up and straighten my dress, pulling on the short hem. “Um... I know this seems weird, but my dad was a DTC, and he always talks about it being the best time of his life. He didn’t have any sons to carry on his legacy, and he kind of raised me as a boy because of it, buying me video games instead of Barbies, and playing catch instead of going to the daddy-daughter dance.” From the DTC alumni websites, I know that the whole legacy thing is a huge deal. Like, if I was Chase Davis instead of Cassie, they’d be in big trouble for denying me a bid.

I clear my throat, and they don’t jump in, so I continue. “I know that if I want to party in college I’ve got to go Greek...” Everything I know about Alex and life in general is counter to this, but one of the DTC frat members tweeted it once. “But I’ve always been friends with dudes more than girls, and, honestly, shotgunning beers and throwing amazing parties sounds a lot better than wearing pearls and baking cookies.”

These aren’t all lies. It’s true that my dad was a DTC, but he would definitely not be a fan of me doing this. And I do happen to like a lot of things gendered toward men—beer, baseball, Call of Duty—although I also like boy bands, Nora Ephron movies and cheesy prom-posals.

“Are there rules against it?” Peter asks the two boys on the bed.

“No,” I interject, holding my head high. “I checked.” I smile to soften it. I figure the name of the game is to have enough alpha confidence to demand their respect but enough softness so as not to rub against their perception of how a woman should behave.

The mission is to find out how living inside the environment of a frat house is for women, so when I’m inside I will be a woman, a real human person. I will be, as much as possible, “myself” as I would be if I wasn’t conducting this experiment, so I can get the most accurate result.

But first I need to get inside.

So, not unlike a lot of people here, I will lie my way through Rush. Hi, my name is Cassie, and I will be reading for the role of frat boy’s wet dream.

It feels kind of gross, like I’m betraying my sex. Or like I’m playing a character out of some porno.

But I remind myself of the higher cause, buckle down and silently repeat, like a mantra: pizza, beer, video games, boobs.

After extensive research on Reddit and Urban Dictionary, these are the things I decided.

I will be a size four but eat burgers and pizza.

I will not be a bimbo, like the rest of those dyed-blonde, fake-tanned sorority girls. But I won’t be smart enough to threaten the boys’ ego or intelligence.

I will be feminine looking but not stereotypically feminine.

I will drink cheap beer like water.

I will get fucked up, and seem to be queen of all drinking games, but somehow never be an emotional or sloppy drunk.

I will like nerdy things like sci-fi movies but look more like gold-bikini Leia than the female equivalent of Peter Parker.

I will be sexual but not. Always down to talk about masturbating or threesomes but never do either. I will be flirty and hot, but never have sex myself. Otherwise I risk being demoted from “guys’ girl” to “group-ho.”

I will love sports and action movies. And I will know more about all these things than the boys do, even if I don’t always show it, so I don’t become a “fake guys’-girl,” which is the worst offense, because then they’ll know I’m just doing this so they’ll like me.

And then there’s the most important part: to give no fucks.

To be the kind of girl guys would let into their frat, you need to “not care what anyone thinks” and “do what you want,” while making sure what you “want” is to do everything in a stereotypically masculine way.

The whole idea of this cool girl is to hollow a woman out to just her body—the part they see the most value in—and then fill her with the things they think are worth something.

The title “one of the guys” is an honor. And it’s sexist as hell.

I flutter my fake eyelashes and look up at Peter with a sweet, mischievous smile, like I’m considering sharing a secret with him and him only.

On the inside, I’m trying not to vomit.

“Well, in that case, I don’t see why not,” he says.

The blond guy looks shocked. Baseball-cap guy is laughing his ass off.

“You’ll have to earn your bid like the rest of them, but I don’t see why you can’t try,” Peter adds.

The blond stands up. “She’ll mess with the rest of Rush, distract the other pledges.”

Peter turns to me. “Don’t do that.”

I laugh. “No problem.”

“There’ll be sorority girls here, so just don’t draw too much attention to yourself, and the other rushees shouldn’t even notice.”

I nod.

“Good luck, pledge. Now get your ass back downstairs. It’s members-only on the second floor.”

Chapter Five

“One of the greatest hurdles for sociology is the Hawthorne effect, when subjects alter their behavior because they know they’re being studied. The effect referenced in the name comes from a study about productivity, when, as you might guess, workers picked up their pace when they knew they were being watched.”

My Sociology 101 professor, an eighty-year-old woman in a navy pantsuit, slips off her reading glasses, and looks out to the class, an auditorium of freshmen (mainly) and seniors (more than there should be) who almost forgot they had to fulfill this requirement.

“This is a bit like how cell phone usage might go down in this class if there was a team of scientists filming you instead of just a half-blind old bat at the front of the room. But then again, I still see, say, you there in the third row with the blue phone case.”

Everyone shifts in their seats. The boy in question turns red, and a few people laugh.

“Tell your mother I say hello. I do hope the only person you felt the need to contact during my class is the woman who brought you into this world. Otherwise, do put it away.”

He sheepishly slides the phone into his backpack.

“Now, where was I?” She puts her glasses back on. “Oh, yes. The Hawthorne effect. So now, knowing this, it makes sense to conduct some studies covertly, although, that of course carries its own array of risks...”

The door in the back of the room swings open, but luckily, Professor Abbott is too engrossed in her notes to notice.

I see someone walking down the aisle out of the corner of my eye, but I am too terrified of my tiny, fierce professor to look.

“Excuse me,” a familiar voice whispers.

My heart skips a beat as Jordan shimmies past the rest of the people in my row and settles into the seat next to me.

I steal a glance. He’s fishing through his backpack for a notebook, so luckily he doesn’t see me staring. He’s wearing a checkered button-down and light blue shorts, impeccably dressed for a nine o’clock class. And he looks good, like so good I have a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach. I was hoping he wouldn’t live up to the memory I had replayed in my mind as I lay in bed the night before. But instead he’s even more beautiful than I remembered. I’m painfully aware of how close he’s sitting to me, scared I’ll give myself away, like he’ll hear my breath catch or my heart race.

He looks over, and my eyes dart to the front of the room, where Professor Abbott is rambling on about things that honestly would probably be very helpful for me to know. But I can’t focus, can’t hear anything but my own heart beating wildly.

I keep my eyes forward as he leans over and whispers, “You could’ve just told me you were going to DTC.”

I glance over. “I didn’t know what to say.”

He stares at me like he’s trying to figure something out. Then he shakes his head and turns to his notebook.

He doesn’t say anything for the rest of class, taking notes in tiny, neat handwriting and meticulously organized columns.

My own notes are an appalling scrawled mix of cursive and printing, sometimes veering off the lines.

When the lecture ends, he leaves without saying anything to me.

Okay, then, bye.

I head out into the fresh air and feel a bit better in the California sun. I cut through the sandstone quad, past the dry fountain and toward the coffee shop.

I am here, I keep telling myself, but it doesn’t seem real as I walk through scenery I’m used to seeing on postcards.

I grab a cappuccino so I won’t be too dead for my first meeting with the professor who will be helping me with my independent study.

My project coordinator, an uptight blonde from the Upper East Side who’s constantly checking one of her countless social media accounts on one of her two smartphones, is not my favorite person. We’ve had several Skype meetings, and she is always wearing designer business wear and telling me that this topic “is so hot right now” and “will generate so much buzz” once we go public. That’s her favorite word, I think, buzz. She truly sounds like a bee during most of our calls. It just worries me that she doesn’t seem to care what people will say about the project as long as they’re saying something.

But I do have to give it to her; she hooked me up with about the best faculty adviser in the history of ever. I’ve been a fan of her for years, reading her entire body of work the summer I first heard about her, and impatiently anticipating the release of everything she’s done since. One of the top women’s studies professors in the world, and she’s going to sit for an hour a week and listen to me rant about frats. I almost feel bad for her.

The imposing door in front of me opens. A beautiful, tall black woman smiles at me. She’s wearing a patterned dress that complements her headscarf. She looks polished and smart, but also like she exudes sunshine. A bit different from the salt-and-pepper-haired old men in heavy black and navy suits who teach so many of the classes here.

“Hello, I’m Dr. Eva Price.”

I know. I’ve read all your books. “Cassie Davis.”

“Would you like something to drink? Coffee, water, juice?” she asks as she leads me into her office.

There is a grand dark-wood desk, and ornate bookshelves overflowing with easily hundreds of books, as well as vases and boxes covering every available surface.

Most notable are the pictures on the wall behind her desk, so that when she sits she’s flanked by photographs of her at the Fruitvale Station protests, holding a sign outside the Supreme Court during Roe v. Wade, meeting Malala on the floor of the UN, deep in conversation with Nelson Mandela, shaking hands with the president of the United States. Jesus.

She sits, and so do I, feeling about an inch tall. There is no way she should be taking on my project. She’s light-years too big for this.

“Well, I’m going to make myself some tea, if you don’t mind.” She grabs a mug off her shelf.

Speechless, I nod. It’s always odd to see larger-than-life people do such mundane things.

She settles into her chair. “So, I know this is the last thing you want to hear right now, but as feminists—You do consider yourself a feminist, yes?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Good. I always like to avoid the whole ‘feminism means equality’ conversation when I can. You do not understand, Ms. Davis, how exhausting it is to have to urge young women to align themselves with a movement that simply fights for their dignity.”

She takes a sip of her tea. “So, as I was saying. As feminists, I don’t know if this is exactly what we want to or need to be getting behind right now, and I know that’s scary to hear. But I think as a researcher, an activist, or a writer, that sort of self-reflection, continuously asking yourself, Why am I doing this? Is this the best way to go about it? Is this what the cause needs right now? is endlessly important.

“When it comes to creating a just world, you have two main fights, in my opinion. There’s the legal and the social. Do you know the slogan ‘the personal is political’?” She gets up and scans her shelves, finally grabbing a book and handing it to me before she sits back down.

“It comes from second-wave feminism,” she says. “The idea that we aren’t just fighting for the vote, which we had by that time. It meant that the issues women continually face in personal relationships, like gender roles in the traditional family, are a huge social problem and not isolated incidences. It’s similar to the philosophy that microaggressions—those little acts of prejudice, like asking a biracial person ‘what they are’ or touching a black woman’s head in public because you want to feel her natural hair, or assuming all Hispanic people are Mexican—can add up to become a major contribution to the continuation of systematic oppression.”

She pauses, probably to see if I’m still following, so I nod.

“And while I don’t think people are wrong when they say that these little things are unjust, I sometimes worry that people will think the fight is over if we talk about them too much. Like they think all that’s left of racism is a rude comment about my hair being frizzy when there are people of color being shot by police and imprisoned at alarming rates. Because as much as it bothers me that working women still spend more time doing housework than their husbands who work the same or fewer hours outside the house, there are still places in the world where women can’t vote or safely seek an education. So, which battles do we choose?”

“Why can’t we...uh, do both?”

She nods like I’ve made a comment as articulate as hers, when in reality I’m struggling to even say anything. “That’s the problem with the social side, right? Because the legal one is clear, you just get the votes. But the social aspect is so controlled by humans and the ways they react. You can’t force people to act a certain way, so we have to play the game a little bit or else people won’t listen. For example, in 1955 a pregnant teenager gets kicked off a bus. That could’ve been the beginning of the bus boycott. But that’s not very good PR, to have a pregnant teen as the face of the movement. So they wait. As a feminist, that enrages me. But they were right. In 1950s America, that movement had enough challenges without adding to it. So they wait for Rosa Parks, a grandmother, and the world is changed. But no grade-schooler will ever be in a skit about Claudette Colvin.

“You think only the bad guys have to spin, but when you are trying to change the world, you have to remember that social systems are made of people, and you have to sneak in change like giving vegetables to a child, make it easy to swallow at first. Because if you’re too blunt with the privileged, they will shut you down before you begin. So we have to worry about what our movement looks like, unfortunately. We have to care what people think of feminism, so it’s not written off.”

She pauses to pour herself a second cup of tea. “If it was up to me, fraternities wouldn’t exist. It’s that simple. I think they’re bad for almost every marginalized community—women, black people, LGBTQA people. But...do I want the next piece of academia with my name on it to say that? Or to say something about education for young women under the Taliban? Am I shying away from it, even though it’s important, because it may be controversial? That would be bad. Or am I shying away from it because there are more important things to focus on and I would needlessly push away those who might otherwise be allies? I just don’t know.”

She’s quiet for a while, sipping her tea.

“So, um, with all due respect...” I catch myself nervously playing with the hem of my skirt. I fold my hands in my lap. “Why’d you take on my project?”

“I’m a researcher, Ms. Davis, so I don’t say no when I’m unsure. I investigate. In this case, you seem better suited to investigate than I would be, but I would like to help you. I guess what I’m saying is, I’m not asking you to go in there and find out if this system is messed up. I need you to go in there and find out if the system is messed up enough that we need to make it our next priority. Is that all right with you?”

I nod furiously. “Yes, absolutely.”

“Excellent. Let’s get started.” She stands, leans down and picks up a large crate, setting it down on the desk with a thud.

“I had one of my assistants compile the research on fraternities, women and minorities, and women and minorities on college campuses more generally. I suggest you get started as soon as possible.”

I pick up an article off the top; it’s from CNN.com and entitled “Are Frats an ‘American Apartheid’?”

“I also have arranged for a series of interviews with average Warren students. They won’t find out what the study is about until they have decided to participate and signed a nondisclosure agreement, of course, to maintain the objectivity of the study. And while you’ll be involved, you obviously can’t be in the room without giving your cover away, so we’ll figure out something with that. But I thought it’d be best to have the greatest breadth of information possible for background.”

I nod.

“Let’s do our due diligence, pay attention to nuance and see exactly what this problem is and what the best course of action may be.”

Her words still ring in my ears as I practically skip across campus, pulling out my phone to text Jay and Alex.

Chapter Six

I’m leaning against the back porch of Delta Tau Chi, sipping a Natty and looking out at the lake, when a familiar-looking guy walks up to me.

“Hi, I’m Marco,” he says. He’s tall and athletic looking, with tan skin, beautiful in an all-American way, with broad shoulders and a strong jawline.

“Cassie,” I say. I don’t think I know any Marcos, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve seen him before.

He has a clipboard full of questions, like all the other actives, but slips it under his arm.

The Rush party has just begun, and people are mostly still milling about, some aggressively kissing ass, while others seem to be working up the courage to talk to an active. I went for the “this is all beneath me” vibe and have been just hanging out.

“Are you having a good time?” Marco asks.

“Moderately,” I say. “How about you?”

He smiles. “Yeah, this time of year, everything feels very forced, you know?”

I nod.

“Things should be fun and simple.” He reaches out and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear.

“Torres!” someone across the way yells. “Where’s the vodka?”

“My room—fridge!” he yells back.

And I realize how I know him. I’ve seen that name on the back of a jersey. I’m talking to the quarterback of the Warren football team.

“Shots?” he says, turning back to me.

I shrug. “I’m more of a tequila girl, but I’ll settle.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Tequila it is.”

My phone buzzes, and I’m looking down to check it when he says, “So, Cassie, have you ever done body shots?”

I look up, and for a second, although my mouth is open, no words come out. “I—”

“Hey, Marco.” Peter is walking over to us, smiling.

He pulls Marco aside and whispers to him.

“Really?” Marco says.

Peter nods.

“Well...” Marco says, walking over to me, “I’ve just been informed you’re not a Delta but a possible pledge, so I guess I should be vetting you instead.”

I want to say, Instead of what? But I know the answer and have no interest in making the moment more awkward than it is.

“Okay, then. Let’s do this.” He pulls out his clipboard and flips the pages. “Um, okay.” He scratches his head. “Well, the question I’m supposed to ask all the pledges tonight is, ‘Where did it happen?’ Meaning, uh, like where did you fu—make love for the first time. It’s, uh, meant to be ambiguous to mess with the pledges, so they aren’t sure how to answer. But, uh, we can skip over that.”

“No, it’s fine.” I wave my hand. “I don’t want to be treated any differently than anyone else.”

“Uh, okay.”

“It hasn’t happened yet for me, but the first time I did...like, other stuff, it was in a car.”

He raises his eyebrows and nods, giving off an aura of professional interest. “All right, then. Sooo...what teams do you root for?”

After I tell him my preferences—football: Colts; hockey: Blackhawks; baseball: White Sox—we cover my favorite cheap beer: Natty; nice beer: Corona, with lime; and drinking game: “Does shotgunning count? Okay, then Rage Cage.”

“Kate Upton or Scarlett Johansson?” becomes “Channing Tatum or Chris Hemsworth?” and I ask why not both.

“Ass or boobs? Um, let’s say abs or arms?”

“Hmm, I feel like that’s not quite equivalent.”

“I know, right?”

I try not to laugh as I watch the genuine struggle of this athletic god as he flips through the pages of his questionnaire, trying to figure out the heterosexual female equivalent of ass versus boobs.

He calls in backup, and before you know it, we’ve got a running back, two wide receivers and half the d-line gathered around. The other freshmen are throwing daggers.

“Some girls like nice hair, like the boy-band types,” one guy says.

They all nod in agreement.

“You’d be surprised how insane girls can go about calves,” another suggests. “That’s why I never skip leg day.”

“Calves or hair? Is that for real what we’re going with?” Marco asks.

“No, no, no,” star wide receiver Donald Stewart says. “Y’all are being ridiculous. You know as well as I do that it’s all about the D. We might not like to admit it, but you know it’s true.”

I almost spit out my beer.

“Hold on.” Stewart holds up his hands. “I’m texting my girlfriend.” Everyone leans in. “She says, ‘What is wrong with you?’” He stares at the screen indignantly. “Nothin’, baby, just trying to value your opinion, my God.”

“I think women focus in less on one feature,” I say. “So it’s hard to compare. I think as a girl you kind of find someone attractive more as their entire appearance, and also, like, their personality, the way they carry themselves.”

“Yeah, why do we focus on one thing so much?” Donald says. And for a second I think they might be about to have a breakthrough, to realize the difference between appreciating the sexuality and beauty of people and objectifying them and reducing them to one body part.

“Why do we even have to pick between ass or boobs?”

“Yeah, why not both?”

Aaaand they missed the point.

“We should start a revolution.”

“Hashtag assandboobs?” I say drily.

They all laugh.

“What’s going on out here?” Peter steps out onto the porch.

“We’re changing the world,” Marco says.

“Ass and boobs, Mr. President,” Donald says with dreamy eyes. “Just picture it, ass and boobs.”

“Get back to your freshmen.” He shakes his head in dismay but is still smiling.

* * *

I’m barely back in my dorm when my phone buzzes. It’s a text from an unrecognized number.

J: Freshman! It’s been great to get to know you. A few of us are going to get sushi/go sake bombing tomorrow at 8. Meet @ the house but don’t tell anyone. We don’t need a dirty Rush violation and neither do you. Keep it real—Jake (I’m the Rush chair always wearing a hat)

Yes! One step closer to a bid and, in turn, securing my scholarship.

I lock the door, then grab my laptop on my way to bed. From my desk, someone—and by someone I mean Leighton—could read over my shoulder if they opened the door. But when I sit on my bed I can position myself against the wall and gain some privacy.

I open a private browsing session so nothing shows up in my history and go to the Stevenson website. I log in using my password and a verification code sent to my phone, and open the folder for my field journal entries.

The journal was Madison Macey’s idea. The Stevenson people loved the personal experience part of my proposal, and they want a lot of my voice. What it’s like to piss in a bathroom that has urinals, how the guys eat, and so on. The color of the story, as they say. “The fluff” is what Price calls it.

No Files Uploaded. Well, at least for now.

Entry 1, I type.

Entry 1: The fraternity Rush process seems wholly superficial. Perspective members compete for the attention of actives by “bonding” over objectifying women, whether it be ranking the school’s women’s sports teams on attractiveness or debating the virtues of Kim Kardashian’s rear end vs. Nicki Minaj’s.

Potential New Members (PNMs) also recount their sexual exploits to impress the actives, who seem to value the number of women a PNM has slept with as a good indication of whether he will fit. The phenomenon of “Eskimo brothers”—a term used to describe two men who have had intercourse with the same woman based on quasi-historical misunderstandings of Inuit practices of polyamory by young men throughout the country—seems to be the pinnacle of this ranking system.

Drinking to extreme levels is also valued, second only to sexual prowess.

Sororities are often invited to these events and encouraged to speak to PNMs in a move that seems to associate interactions with these women as a possible benefit of membership. Rush posters often advertise sorority guests alongside food—e.g., the lovely ladies of KAD and sushi, or Pi Beta, steaks and cigars.

An hour later, I submit my entry and close my computer.

Chapter Seven

“I don’t think I can do it.” I stare up at the rock wall, arching toward the ceiling.

The sun is just beginning to set beyond the windows that make up the opposite wall, and it’s casting a pink-orange glow on the stone surface.

People scramble up and down, hopping between footholds that seem way too far apart.

“Nonsense,” Jackie says. She looks different without her glasses and hipster clothes, wearing athletic shorts and a tank instead. “You’re gonna be a natural. I can tell by looking at you.”

I look at her and the biceps that seem almost comical on her petite frame. I turn back to the other climbers. Some are her teammates, using the same blue-and-gold gear she’s strapping herself into. Others, like me, have rented gear from the gym, but they’re all lean men with beards and women with remarkable arms—your classic granola-eating climber types.

People who are actually naturals at this.

“Have you seen me?” I turn and flex my nonexistent muscles.

She laughs. “I’m serious, you think it’d be all about upper-body strength, like the big bodybuilder types would be the best. But petite girls are actually the most suited, because of their low center of gravity. You’ve got to have the right balance of flexibility and core strength, and traditional athletes don’t always have that.”

“Hmm, a sport I actually have the possibility of being good at.”

She smiles. “Exactly.”

She explains the basics as she straps me into my harness. “Okay.” She pats me on the shoulder. “You are good to go.”

By the time I’ve managed to get both feet off the ground, albeit only about a foot up, she’s strapped herself in and started scrambling up the wall like some sort of small forest creature.

“C’mon, you can do it,” she yells down to me.

I stumble my way toward the top. Jackie scales the entire thing and rappels back down before I make it halfway.

She starts up for a second time and catches up to me at about the three-quarter point.

“I’m stuck.” I readjust my feet by a few centimeters; they feel like they might go numb. My fingertips scream, sick of supporting so much of my body weight.

“See that red one, at about your knee?” she says.

I nod but don’t turn toward her, my eyes on the rocks.

“That’s your next step. It’s kind of small, so you’re only going to be able to fit one foot, and you’re going to want to move on quickly.”

My eyes dart from the red rock to my feet, then to the ground far below. “Shit. Maybe I should just rappel down.”

“Nah, you’ve made it this far—no way this one will be hard for you.”

Grunting, I lift my right foot to the tiny red rock. All my weight on my right toes, I push myself up and then grab higher rocks with my left hand, then my right. I scramble to get my feet onto two bigger rocks a bit above the rest.

“Nice!” Jackie climbs up to my level.

“You sound so excited. I thought you said that part was nothing.”

“Are you kidding? That’s the hardest part of this course! Took me three tries to get past it.”

I roll my eyes and keep moving.

We both tap the ceiling before rappelling back down.

“This is actually pretty fun, once you get past the part where you think you’re gonna die,” I say once my feet are back on the ground.

“I know, right? It’s a pretty cool workout. A great place to think, you know? I like how metaphorical it is. Making progress, reaching higher.”

“Yeah. I guess so.” I hadn’t really thought about it as something so...deep. It was just a sport, after all. “But you don’t actually go anywhere.”

“That’s true. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter.” She reaches down to adjust her harness. “Like, there are these Tibetan monks who make these amazing sand paintings, spend weeks with their backs bent over them, working in excruciating detail. And when they’re done, they wash them all away. That’s climbing—you have all this progress, you reach higher just long enough to take a breath, and then you come back down.”

I took up at the wall, at the almost-gone sun, then back to her.

“But that’s also life.” She places one foot on the wall, ready to go again. “You try so hard to live as much as you can, to grow and change and develop, and maybe inspire the same thing in the people around you, but you know that either way, you and everything you do and everyone you meet will be dust in the end.”

She starts climbing again. I stand there for a minute, dumbfounded, before I follow her.

I hate how snobby it makes me feel to say it, but I would never have had a conversation like that with the kids at my old school. They were plenty smart, but not in a daring way, in a get-good-grades-to-get-a-good-job way.

Sure, they knew more when they left school than when they started, about the mitochondria being the powerhouse of the cell, and the green light representing Gatsby’s desire, but they had the same opinions on politics and religion and life as they did freshman year and, for God’s sake, as their parents had before them.

It’s not a lack of intelligence; it’s a lack of curiosity. There was none of the thirst for knowledge like you can see radiating from people like Alex, like Jackie.

I wanted to be like that. That’s why I left. I needed to look for more than what the kids talked about at home—who was dating who and where the next my-parents-are-out-of-town party would be—I just knew if I stayed much longer, I’d suffocate. But I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be smart enough to have anything real to say.

We make it to the top again, and I take a deep breath.

“You’re right—this is pretty amazing.”

“Again?” she asks when we reach the ground. She smiles, and it lights up her whole face.

“I have to go soon,” I say. “I have dinner with a family friend at eight,” I lie.

She nods and picks up her water bottle, the official one all the athletes are given, a status symbol. She raises it to her lips for a second, then scrunches her nose. “Empty.”

We leave the climbing area and head to the general gym.

“Ugh,” she says as the glass door closes behind us.

“What?”

“I forgot the athletic gyms are closed today because of training limits. Which means all the meatheads are at the Muggle gym.”

I look around the room, and sure enough, the whole place is littered with giant men lifting weights. Not exactly your typical Warren student.

We push past all the scrawny freshmen loitering at the edge of the room and wait in line at the watercooler.

Jackie is reaching for the faucet when a brick wall of a guy steps in front of her.

“Hey, dude, there is a line!”

He doesn’t turn around.

She reaches up to tap him on his shoulder. He swats behind him, like Jackie’s hand is a fly, before looking over his shoulder. I recognize Duncan, the football player from down the hall. “What?” He takes out one earbud.

“There’s a line.”

He laughs and continues to fill his bottle. “I’m in the middle of varsity conditioning. I think I need it a little more than you and whatever elliptical crap you’re doing.”

My jaw drops. I turn back to Jackie.

“For your information, I’m an athlete, too,” she says, then stands taller and shows him her water bottle.

“Okay.” He laughs. He screws the cap back on his bottle and then pulls out his phone, taking his time to select a new song while he continues to block our way to the water, his chest in a sweat-stained shirt like a wall.

Finally he steps away, shoving his phone back toward his pocket but missing and slipping it into a fold in the fabric instead. It clatters to the floor, ripped from his headphones, and slides across the linoleum to my feet.

Duncan turns around, panicking.

“Don’t worry—the screen didn’t crack.” I step forward to hand it to him. I glance at the screen for only a second, but long enough to see that the song he had chosen was by One Direction.

“Nice taste in music.” I press the phone into his hand.

He turns white as a ghost. “You can’t—Oh my God.” He grabs my arm and pulls me farther away from the watercooler. “You can’t tell anyone.” His voice is earnest.

“What? That you were super-rude to us? You didn’t seem bothered by that a minute ago.”

“About, you know, that playlist. My sister bought the songs, and, I don’t know, I just kind of like them, but my teammates can’t know, okay? So don’t say anything.”

He seems genuinely freaked, so I resist the urge to laugh.

“Yes, sure, calm down. I’m not gonna tell anyone. I really don’t care.”

“Okay, thank you.” His shoulders drop half an inch as he relaxes.

“Whatever.” I walk back to Jackie.

God, masculinity is fragile.

Chapter Eight

Rush continues to pass without a hitch. When the first weekend and the first round of cuts comes out, I’m one of the few who receives an invitation to the Delta Tau Chi Rush Retreat. Luckily, the email invitation also mentions that the members of Pi Beta will be joining us, so hopefully I will be able to continue inconspicuously, or, at least, less conspicuously than if I was the only girl.

When I was at Catholic school, “retreat” meant three days at a sleepaway camp, holding hands, praying, lighting candles and sharing secrets.

I have a feeling that’s not what we’ll be doing.

It’s six thirty in the morning and cool, because the sun hasn’t burned off the haze when we line up to get on the buses. They’re big yellow ones, rented from the local elementary school.

Four actives are loading countless cases of beer through the handicap entrance in the back.

I spot Jordan as I’m climbing on board, and I instinctively smile and raise my hand to wave.

He looks away.

Jordan hasn’t spoken to me since that day in Sociology. He always comes in late and sits as far away from me as possible. I’m not quite sure what I did. I mean, I get we’re competitors now, but that doesn’t seem like a reason to treat me like a pariah. We could both end up here, and then what?

So maybe he isn’t mad. Maybe he isn’t anything.

That’s not only more likely; it almost seems worse, that he isn’t mad but just doesn’t care at all.

Which is fine, I guess. It gives me the chance to stay focused, to play my role perfectly.

I lose him as we pile on the bus, me sitting near the Pi Betas but still with the DTC guys.

“This is so much better than our house retreats,” a bottle blonde with a blue Pi Beta tank stretched across her white-bikini-clad, fake-tanned breasts tells her friend.

“I think we just went to get our nails done my year,” her brunette friend answers.

“Ugh, you are so lucky.” She flips her hair. “We sat in the house basement, where we had to recite some weird poem, and then we passed around a candle and told first-kiss stories.”

“Oh my God, I remember that!” a girl behind me yells. I turn instinctively. She has bright red hair and porcelain doll features.

A sorority with a white girl with brown hair, a white girl with red hair and a white girl with blond hair? Now that’s what I call diversity.

“Good thing we do ours after Rush,” the blonde says. “Otherwise I would have been, like, fuck this shit.”

The brunette nods in agreement.

The blonde turns toward me, leaning across her friend. “I’m sure yours will be a lot better.”

“I’ll make sure of that,” the redhead says. She pops up from her seat behind me and leans on the back of mine. “I’m Pledge Mom!”

Suddenly I’m surrounded by Greek letters and hair bows. The smell of tanning lotion and cheap beer is making me nauseous.

I open my mouth to explain, but the words elude me.

“Hey, I’m so sorry, cuz this is so rude of me, but what’s your name?” Blondie asks.

“Cassandra Davis. Cassie.” The words stumble out. I should explain I’m not pledging, but how do I?

“Cool! I’m Kelley, I’m the new president.” She splays a French-manicured hand over her heart. “My apologies, I’m still getting to know all our little babies.”

“Oh, I’m not a—”

“Oh! Are you the girl who transferred from the Cal Alpha chapter?” The redhead practically bounces up and down with every word. “I didn’t mean to call you a frosh.”

“My brother goes to Berkeley, too!” the brunette adds.

“No, I go here.”

Kelley nudges her friend. “Katie, don’t be rude.” She leans over her to me again. “Welcome! She just meant, like, you used to go there.”

“No, I’m a freshman, I’m just—”

Something changes in her eyes. The pageant sparkle drops out of them. “Wait, you are a Pi Beta pledge, right?”

“Uh, no.”

They look at each other, their heads turning exactly in sync, like they share one brain.

The blonde purses her lips and turns her head to the side. “Not to, you know—but, um, who invited you?”

“The guys,” I say. Not a lie. I was actually invited quite formally, with a letter slipped under my door.

The one behind me sits so quickly the cheap bus seat makes a weird swooshing sound.

The others shrink away from me, back into their own side of the aisle.

“Classic DTC—Warren girls aren’t hot enough for them,” the brunette tells Kelley.

Like I can’t hear them.

“Always on to the new blood.” Kelley cuts her eyes at me. “It happens every year with Rush. The upperclassmen always warn you, but the sophomores never listen. The events become all about the hot new girls, and the actives end up standing there like, hello, we’re still here. At least it used to be our littles, though. Now they’re just shipping in girls to fuck.”

Ew, ew, ew.

I want to defend myself but don’t even know where to begin. That I’m not trying to sleep with them. That I’m not even trying to be friends with them. That I’m just trying to exposed the fucked-up-ness of a system that has these girls saying stuff like that.

We used to be the whores of this frat, and now what are we? Just the madams?

So much for sisterhood.

They’re part of an organization that’s supposed to lift up women, not pit them against each other, and for what? To get the attention of some spoiled undergrad drunk off his ass and threatening to fight everything that moves, knowing Daddy can cover the legal fees?

I turn silently to face the front of the bus.

The doors finally close, and people start to pass the beer around. Some DTCs fiddle with the radio for a bit, struggling to get anything but static.

Music erupts from the speaker just as the overloaded bus lurches forward.

I chug beers and take shots of Fireball like a pro at eight in the morning as we head down the 101.

Someone yells something about shotgunning, and I stand up.

Someone else hands me a can of Natty.

“Does anyone have a key?” the guy in front of me asks. He has coifed hair and is wearing expensive brand names, even though we’re all dressed for the beach.

“Here, like this,” I say. I hold up my can and use my canine tooth to make a hole, just like Alex showed me once.

His eyes go wide like quarters. “Did anyone else see that?” he asks, turning around to address the crowd.

“Do it again!” he says, handing me his beer. I laugh, a feminine, sly laugh, not at all like my naturally loud, brash one.

I do it again, this time with an audience. After I bite it, I make the whole bigger with my thumb carefully so not to cut it, and then lick the beer off.

“Yes, that’s my Cassie! Killin’ it!” Marco yells from the front of the bus.

I blow him a kiss.

“All right, let’s do this,” I say, handing the boy his beer back.

I don’t need to look at the girls to know they’re seething. I catch myself smiling. God, their game is messed up, but it’s pretty damn thrilling to beat them at it.

The alcohol starts to go down easier, and soon we’re all standing and dancing, and the world is a swirling, beautiful, bright place. God, day drunk is the best.

The music cuts off in the middle of a song. Some people sit down; others just stand there, drunk and confused.

A skinny black guy in a Warren baseball cap stands at the front of the bus, a radio-style microphone in his hand.

“Aaaaattennnnntion, passengers. So, we’re currently experiencing some technical difficulties, by which I mean Carter tripped over the aux cord when he went to throw up in the trash can that he—” our unofficial cruise director looks down “—seems to have missed anyway. All right, cool. We’re working on getting the radio back, but in the meantime, this is DJ Chase coming at you. Here’s ‘Trap Queen.’”

And then he not only sings every single word, but also mimics all the little electronic sounds.

Everyone kind of looks at one another, and then there’s a silent agreement to roll with it.

We stand and dance again, and I can’t stop laughing at Chase imitating Fetty Wap’s voice, and how ridiculous and fun this shit show of a bus is.

They get the music back on after Chase’s fifteen minutes, and everyone claps as he stands on his seat and bows. The bus driver starts to yell at him in Spanish, and he sits down sheepishly.

The shotgunning guy turns around. “What’s your name again?”

“Cassie,” I say, over the music.

“Sebastian.” He shakes my hand.

“So how are you liking Pi Beta?”

I open my mouth to answer, but before I can, a shrieking sound rips through the bus. I turn around to see a member of Delta Tau Chi standing on his seat and urinating outside the window.

What he doesn’t seem to realize in his apparent bliss is that the pee is coming back in the window a few rows back and spraying on a couple of traumatized Pi Betas in a rainbow of ruined designer bikinis. They scramble out of their seats, squealing.

“OMG, Vivian, that’s your boyfriend! Do something!”

A petite blonde pushes through the aisle.

“The motherfucker’s interned for NASA. I can’t believe he doesn’t understand that his pee will catch the wind.”

The music cuts out, and Chase is back on the loudspeaker. “Attention, Mr. Harris, please sit down and refrain from urinating further until the bus has come to a complete stop.”

We finally arrive at the beach, and there actually is a lot of peeing in the bushes by the guys and, God bless, a few girls who squat in the parking lot.

The guys unload the kegs, and when someone says we forgot cups, I get a fabulous idea.

That’s how I end up doing a kegstand in a bikini as thirty people cheer me on and count (fifteen seconds, not bad for my first try) until I shake my head and am helped back to the ground, half laughing, half coughing.

I’m playing this role better than I ever thought I could.

And then something weird happens.

I realize I’m having real, genuine fun.

Chapter Nine

Rush Retreat leaves me hungover as shit for my first interview session.

I sit with my head in my hands in a room with cold metal walls and industrial lighting, and try to focus on not dying.

The room—“your home for the next year,” as Professor Price referred to it in her email—is empty save for a stark metal desk and a big window on the opposite wall, a one-way look into the room on the other side, where study participants will see only a mirror.

I drag a small recycling bin from the corner of the room to the desk, just in case. I’m really hoping I don’t throw up in this Nobel Prize winner’s trash can, though. Even if my hangover was acquired in the name of our project.

There is no part of the project proposal that specified Fireball shots, you idiot.

I can’t believe I actually thought that was fun yesterday. We laughed and laughed, but nothing was clever; nothing was actually funny. We weren’t friends. We were just people getting fucked up near each other.

The digital clock on the wall reads 10:02 a.m. We’re already almost an hour behind, and there’s probably still twenty minutes until we begin.

Outside, volunteers from Price’s class are having the subjects sign forms, taking down their information and lining them up in the order they’ll enter.

They’re being paid twenty dollars an hour, plus a free catered lunch.

Price stops by briefly to ask if I need anything before leaving to catch a plane and save the world.

I alternate sipping coffee, to try to bring myself out of the fog, and water, to try to hydrate and flush some of the toxins out of my body.

Exhaling, I open my MacBook.

So far, when I log in to my project portal there are only my journal entries and my notes on the books and studies about frats Professor Price has been having me read. Technically, that’s all the Stevenson people wanted, but Price demanded funding for the interviews, because sneaking into one frat and having only their stories is not science, she said—it’s reality TV.

I like it because we can see what they actually do versus what they say in the interviews. It’s only a piece, but an important piece to develop a real picture of what these communities are like.

The idea is when the findings go public, people can read through my journal entries, with Price’s scientific findings and commentary interspersed or in a sidebar. Keep the human element up front, Madison says. But then use the facts to show this isn’t just me ranting, Price always qualifies.

I glance at the clock blinking on the edge of my screen. I may as well work on the Kardashian element while I wait for the science.

In her most recent email, Madison told me my updates so far were “totally fab!” but asked if I could write an introductory entry.

Introduction:

I, Cassandra Davis, an eighteen-year-old girl, a freshman at Warren University and self-declared ardent feminist, am about to join a frat.

I’m doing so with funding from the Stevenson Foundation in order to study the culture of fraternities, which have long been a bastion of the university system, but have also become a center of controversy in regard to diversity in sex, race, sexuality and socioeconomic status. My study will focus on sexism and the treatment of women by these groups.

The fraternity I have chosen is Delta Tau Chi, the oldest frat in existence at Warren. The chapter is currently under probation for creating a “hostile environment for women.” This is based on complaints last year about a party with a misogynistic theme.

But DTC has long been the center of the social scene on campus, and the incident has not altered that.

My intent is to get proof that this wasn’t an isolated incident but rather evidence of a toxic culture. To find and expose the truth.

In order to ensure that the members of the fraternity do not discover my intent, no one knows about my experiment. Not my parents, no one in the frat, no one in any vicinity of Greek Life and no one in the administration. The only people besides myself who are aware of my project are my Stevenson project coordinator, Madison Macey, who lives on the other side of the country, and the renowned woman’s studies expert Eva Price, who is organizing interviews with students in and out of Greek Life.

That is, until you read this, and then the world will know, every friendship I’ve made here will end, and I’ll become the most hated woman on campus.

I highlight and delete the last sentence. I don’t get to care about the social life or reputation of “Cassie Davis, party girl who joined a frat and is aggressively fun.” She’s just a character, and the real me is just an observer, a scientist, an actor, a spy. My college experience gets to be nothing more than one giant social experiment. But considering the boys who thought an important get-to-know-you question was “Ass or tits?” and the girls clawing at each other for those idiots’ attention, it seems like a small price to pay to end the madness.

A message pops up on my computer.

StephanieB@warren.edu: Ready when you are.

It’s from the research assistant who’ll be inside the room, asking the questions. She knows only about the interview portion of the experiment and thinks that’s it.

She’ll read from a script Professor Price and I developed, but depending on how the conversation turns, I can message her follow-up questions or deviations.

To her, my name is just “Observer 2.” (Price gets to be Observer 1, of course. When she’s here.)

I slip on the large black studio-style headphones and type back.

Observer2@warren.edu: Good to go.

The first interviewee is a quiet Hispanic girl. She sits directly across from Stephanie but keeps looking nervously at the mirror.

I smile instinctively, wanting to make her feel more at home. But, of course, she can’t see me.

It turns out she’s a freshman and, having skipped sorority Rush, has had no personal experience with Greek Life.

“My mom warned me against going to the frats, though. She read an article.”

Her interview takes all of ten minutes.

Not the most valuable interview, but general opinion is important to get, too.

Great job! I message Stephanie. One down!

Hundreds to go, but at least not all of them today.

Person after person sits in the chair across from Stephanie. There was a lit club guy with sleeve tattoos who didn’t understand why this study was occurring in the first place. “Do you realize how many more important issues there are? You guys should be talking about fracking, not this bullshit!”

With that, he got up and left. I wonder if he’ll still help himself to the free lunch.

Then there was a junior, a member of a frat—not DTC—who wanted to talk at length about brotherhood and philanthropy, but was unable to remember if there were any racial minorities in his frat during his three years at school.

There was a young woman who, without hesitation, said that she loved to go to the frats on weekends for parties, but never alone. At which point I had to stop myself from yelling through the glass how royally messed up it is that she has to be on guard at a place where she’s supposedly relaxing and having fun.

After a while everyone starts to blur together. I watch people rotate in and out of the chair until I’m dizzy. Watching the window starts to feel more like I’m watching TV, but really boring TV, like C-Span or something.

I watch for hours and hours, and my headset starts to hurt. The same barrage of questions starts to echo in my head.

Do you understand that this study is being done on a voluntary basis?

Are you or have you ever been part of a Greek letter organization?

Have you ever been to an event hosted by such an organization?

What are your perceptions of Greek organizations?

Do you believe them to be communities that are hostile toward women? Can you tell me about an experience where you found this perception to be true?

Can you think of one where the opposite happened?

How often do you feel the generalization holds true?

Have you ever been sexually assaulted? If so, by a member of a Greek organization? By a nonmember?

I’m drawn out of my trance when someone I recognize settles into the chair. She’s one of Alex’s lit club friends. A child of some of the original San Francisco flower children (a flower grandchild, if you will); her name is Lavender.

I wouldn’t say that we’re close friends, but we definitely know each other.

A chill goes down my spine. It’s different when you’re watching someone you know without them knowing you’re there. With strangers, there’s a sort of mutual anonymity, but the next time I see her at Dionysus, she’ll have no idea that I know whatever thoughts, whatever secrets, she’s about to reveal. The mirror is starting to feel like a weird idea.

When Stephanie reads the opening statement, about how this study is regarding the culture surrounding Greek Life, a huge smile spreads across Lavender’s face.

She folds her arms across her chest. “Well, I can tell you now you won’t need to conduct these interviews for long.”

Why’s that? I type.

Stephanie repeats my words.

“It’s clear isn’t it? I mean, it’s been clear for years. Probably since these goddamn things started. They’re terrible. Sexist, racist, literally anything that ends in -ist, they’re probably that. Honestly, I think they should get rid of the whole thing.”

Stephanie looks to the mirror. Then back at Lavender. “So, um, I’m assuming you’ve never been a part of a Greek organization?”

She’s trying to go back to the script.

Lavender just looks at her like she’s insane.

“I—I mean, have you ever experienced any of those things that you just mentioned, at a Greek organization?” Stephanie asks.

“Are you kidding me? I’d never set foot in one of those places.”

“So you don’t know anyone involved with Greek Life?”

“God no, and I’m better for it.”

I place my head between my hands. Can’t do much with that level of proof, but thanks, Lav.

“Are we done here?”

Yes, please.

When the interviews are finally over, I drag myself back to the dorm and do homework until Leighton bursts through the door at 8:00 p.m. and declares she’s going to sleep.

That’s her pattern: stay awake for days at a time partying, or stay in bed for a week, going to sleep at seven or eight and then spending most of the day watching Netflix.

Her sleep schedule flips back and forth between rock star and retiree. I have no idea how she plans to pass her classes.

I start gathering my stuff to go work in the lounge downstairs.

“How was your weekend?” Leighton asks.

I look up, trying to mask my surprise. “Um, it was pretty fun,” I say. “I had a good time Saturday, but maybe too good of a time, considering how I felt today.”

She nods knowingly and wraps herself in her white Ralph Lauren duvet, so only her thin face peeks out.

I sometimes feel like she’s a small child, but with expensive things. Like something broke when she was shipped off to boarding school at the age of nine. The work has transitioned from multiplication to linear algebra, and the fun has transitioned from toys to drugs and boys, but I’m not sure if she’s much different.

While so many of us are homesick and getting used to living on our own, calling our parents crying when we have a cold or get a bad grade, Leighton has a Post-it taped to her desk that says, “Call parents! At least every two weeks!”

“I’m jealous,” she says to the ceiling. “I can’t wait for the frats to be done with their dumb recruitment so we can have real parties. Now it’s all about flirting with the little boys instead of us.” She scoffs.

“Did you rush a sorority?”

“Yeah.” It’s like I can hear the duh in her voice. “Kappa Alpha Delta.” She adds this like it should mean something to me.

“But you moved in at the same time as me?”

“I stayed at my house in the city during Rush.”

“Oh.” But I thought you didn’t like girls?

I expect the conversation to end here, this being the longest Leighton and I have ever talked.

“Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know...that doesn’t really seem like your thing.”

“The baking cookies and shit?”

“Yeah.”

“Doesn’t matter. Not going Greek? That’s like social suicide. I had to be Delta, like, it’s top house, hello, and if I didn’t get in, oh my God, I’d be transferring.” She rolls over on her side, facing me. “Luckily it all worked out.”

She smiles and cuddles up to her pillow. The happy look falls from her face like she’s flipped a switch. “That is, it will all have worked out once the fun can actually start.”

I nod.

She closes her eyes, and I think she might be asleep. And then her eyes flicker back open.

“I mean... I’m sure you’ll be fine, though.” It’s like she just processed that she insulted me. “Maybe you can do deferred Rush? Actually, I can ask my recruitment chair about you, if you want,” she says.

“Thanks, Leighton, that’s very sweet.” I don’t quite know what to say. But I can tell this is a very big favor in her messed-up view of the world.

She’s supporting an exclusive social system and the ranking of cliques...but at least she’s offering to help me into her own toxic clique.

I shake my head.

I throw the notebook in my hand back on my desk and decide to go to bed now and work more tomorrow.

Because there is no way I could write a coherent thought about Greek Life right now even if there was a gun to my head.

Chapter Ten

The coffee tastes thin and watery, like the kind you get on an airplane, and the headphones press into my ears.

It’s just another typical day in the lab, and with my computer on the desk and the one-way glass in front of me, I’m flipping through old notes and only half paying attention to the current interviewee, a girl named Lily with a pixie cut and light blue dress.

“Do you understand this study is being done on a voluntary basis?”

“Yes.”

“That it will be recorded, and that portions of your interview may be published, although your name will be changed?”

“Yes.”

I chew on the end of my pen and look through the window, thinking her headband is cute. It’s really more of a scarf she’s tied around her head.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-one.”

“Are you currently part of a Greek organization?”

“No.”

“Have you ever been a part of a Greek organization?”

“Yes.”

I shuffle through my papers, trying to find the transcript of an interview we did a week ago with a football player and Sig Nu where he kept referring to women as “biddies.”

“How long ago did you leave?”

“About two years ago.”

“Have you ever been sexually assaulted?”

There is a pause. “Yes.”

I drop my pen and look up.

“By a current or former member of a Greek organization?”

She turns her head and looks at the mirror, at me. After a second, she turns back to Stephanie. “Yes,” she says, her voice barely making it across the room to the mic.

I grab the computer and pull it onto my lap.

STOP, I type.

Stephanie clears her throat, stalling.

I’m so sorry that happened to you, I type, and Stephanie parrots it. If it’s not too much to ask, could you tell me as much as you feel comfortable with about what happened?

Lily shifts in her seat. “Um...sure. So, I was at a party at—at one of the bigger houses three years ago, my freshman year. I’d been there a few times for events. I’d made it into a pretty good sorority, one of the top houses, you know? My mom was a member, and she’s superbig with all the alumni stuff. I didn’t really fit in with those girls, but...but that doesn’t matter. I’m getting off topic. So anyway, I didn’t have that many friends among the girls, like real friends, you know, that would have your back, but it felt like I was safe, right? Because I was with my sisters. So I guess that made me feel like I could get really drunk, you know? But it’s not like I was really drinking that much more than anyone else. I mean it was a frat party, so...”

She exhales. “So we’d had the pregame with them and I’d started drinking pretty damn early. But I didn’t black out.” She holds up her hand. “That’s really important to know, that I remember everything. Not that it would excuse anything if I didn’t. But I’m just saying I remember everything he did, and there’re no parts I’m missing, so this should be good evidence, right?”

Stephanie nods.

“So right. I’m pretty drunk by the time other people start to get to the party. I see this guy I’d met a couple times at other events. He’s older, and seemed pretty nice the other times I’d seen him...

“I’m that level of drunk when you’re feelin’ good but not like superdrunk anymore, and you’ve convinced yourself that you’re gonna sober up any moment so you need to drink more.

“So he starts talking to me, and pretty quickly I ask if he knows if they have any more alcohol, since the kegs were running out. It’s pretty common at these things to have the bad alcohol in the main room, and then people, like upper-tier Greek Life people, they can go into the back rooms and drink better stuff.

“So he nods and leads me off, and I’m thinking we’re gonna go to a room with like ten or twenty people in it, my sisters and his brothers, that kind of thing.

“And then, well, yeah...” She looks at her shoes. “The room was empty. He, uh, he locked the door and pushed me onto the bed and started kissing me, and, ugh, at this point I just, like, think he’s gotten the wrong idea. That maybe I’ve been sending signals that I wanted this, that maybe this is my fault.”

She laughs, and it’s a hollow sound.

“So I kind of start to push against his chest, lightly at that point, and saying things like, ‘Hey, let’s go back to the party’ and ‘I’m not really in the mood’ and ‘I don’t really want to right now.’ Trying to be nice.” The last word sounds like she’s spitting.

“But he keeps advancing and shushing me. So I start pushing harder and saying no, like a forceful no, and I start to realize he doesn’t really care what I’m saying.

“And that’s when I panicked, when I knew what was happening.

“And I yelled, but it’s so loud at those things, people probably couldn’t hear me. Or, I mean, that’s what I’d like to think.”

She wrings her hands. “He, um, he raped me, and then he left. He went back to the party.”

Her face is pale, her lips almost white.

“And I just left, walked across campus alone. I kind of, uh, shut down. I should’ve called the police right then, I guess, or told someone, but I just went home. The pain was gone, but only because I felt, like, nothing. Not like I was okay, but the opposite. Like my mind could not handle what happened and just stopped.

“And I showered, which apparently was a bad move.”

She’s quiet for a long time.

“Did you tell anyone?” Stephanie finally asks.

“Not for a while. I didn’t know how to tell my ‘sisters’ or whatever, you know, because I was this quiet freshman they only put up with because of my mom, and he was in one of the best frats on campus. I mean, maybe they would’ve believed me. In retrospect, of course they would have—they weren’t monsters. But then...” She shakes her head, and tears bead in her eyes. “I was just so confused and so mad I didn’t know what to do.”

The room is quiet.

“And it got pretty bad, and I—I ended up in the hospital, and they made me talk to someone. But she kinda sucked. But they wouldn’t let me quit counseling if I wanted to go back to school, so they switched me to Sasha instead.”

She smiles, weakly. “She kind of rocks. So I ended up telling her, and getting better, you know, and quitting the sorority and finding new friends, good friends, and some of them are in sororities even.”

She touches the scarf. “That really helped, talking about it. Telling someone. I can live now.” Her voice is tight.

She slides off the scarf. “It’s kind of warm in here, huh?”

“Yeah.” Stephanie stands. “We can turn on a fan, if you want. Or take a break? Get some water?”

“No, I’m fine.” Lily straightens her back. “What’s your next question?”

“We really don’t have to—”

“What is your next question?”

“Would you like to see them gone?”

“What? The frats?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t care.”

“Why?”

“Because fuck that. Because I was raped and they want to change his fucking housing to deal with it? Are you kidding me? He wasn’t playing music too loud after hours—he attacked me. I want him in jail. I want him hung, for God’s sake. Not his club disbanded, boo fucking hoo.”

“Some people think frats create misogynistic environments.”

“The world is a misogynistic environment. He was in math club, too. Do you think if they get rid of that, it’ll make up for what happened to me? Getting rid of the frats is a fucking cop-out. Something big needs to be done. It’s not a frat problem—it’s a human problem. It happens everywhere, in the army, at work. Hell, you wanna talk about misogynistic environments, I worked at a tech start-up last summer and let me tell you—”

She stops abruptly and exhales. “Sorry, I’m getting worked up. The point is talking about how abolishing frats like that will get rid of assault or misogyny, it’s...reductive. And kind of insulting.”

Stephanie glances toward the mirror, which she isn’t supposed to do. I frantically type a question—But if there’s a victim that thinks it will help...?—and Stephanie dutifully asks it.

“Then burn them fucking down.”

Chapter Eleven

Stephanie looks to the window for help, but my brain is short-circuiting.

Lily clears her throat. “You know what? Sorry, but are we done here?”

“Um...” Stephanie turns back to the mirror and so does Lily, and she looks like she’s screaming behind her glassy eyes.

“I just really...” Lily looks around for help, but the room is empty except for the unhelpful Stephanie. “I can’t keep talking about this.”

I stand too quickly, and my chair clatters to the floor behind me. I remember the computer and pull it toward me, typing frantically. I need to know if she’s okay, if he was caught. I need to help her.

But the girl is getting up from her chair and wiping tears from her eyes.

This stupid system is too slow. I drop the MacBook on the steel table, cross the room and push open the heavy door without thinking.

There’s the flutter of a blue dress at the end of the hall before it disappears behind a door marked “Women.”

I practically sprint down the hall, my patent leather flats slapping the floor. A door to my right flies open. It’s Stephanie, headed to get the next interviewee, like nothing happened.

Her eyes grow wide as she looks at me, the door swinging shut behind her. “You aren’t supposed to be out here.”

But I don’t stop.

“Come back!” she yells after me. But I’m already at the bathroom door.

Lily is braced over the sink, looking like she might be sick.

“Hi.”

“Hi?” She turns to take me in, her eyes scanning me, trying to figure out if she knows me.

“My name is Cassie Davis. I was, uh, behind the mirror.”

“Oh.” She stands up. “That’s a little...”

I swallow. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s fine, I, uh, I knew someone was back there. I just didn’t think it was someone so...” She gestures vaguely, a tissue in her hand.

I nod, although I have no idea what she means. Her eyebrows furrow. “Are you supposed to follow me into the bathroom?”

I step back. “Uh...probably not. I’m not here, like, officially.” I gesture behind me. “I can go if you want.” My fingers brush the doorknob.

“No.” She bites her lip. “Please, I just...need someone. If that’s okay. Not that—It’s just... I’m just—”

My hand drops from the knob. “No need to explain.”

The door swings open behind me. “Observer 2!” Stephanie says.

I step in front of her. “Will you just give us a—”

“No, you can’t.”

I look from her to Lily.

“It’s fine,” she says. “I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

“Just give me a second, okay?” I exhale. “Stephanie, can I speak to you in the hall?”

“I guess...”

I step forward, closing the door behind me to give Lily privacy. “Really?” I say through gritted teeth.

Stephanie is even more frazzled than I would have expected. “You’re not supposed to be out here. And you’re definitely not supposed to be talking to subjects outside the interviews.” She emphasizes every other word by waving her clipboard.

“She needs me.”

“It’s against all the rules. If you break the rules, you can’t keep being part of the study.”

“Then I quit,” I say without a pause.

“What? I’m—”

I head back into the room, swinging the door closed before I hear what Stephanie plans to do. I lean against the door so she can’t follow and turn back to Lily.

“I’m sorry,” I say. She just looks through me, so I keep talking. “And I’m sorry about earlier, about this whole thing—that was probably not easy to talk about.”

“You think?” Her voice is sharp.

I look down. I’m never good in situations like this. Alex is always better, with her bits of gritty wisdom, quotes from old songs and beat poetry.

“Are you okay?” I ask, not sure what else to do.

“No.” She licks her lips, wet with tears. “I mean, I am. I mean, I just don’t know.” She laughs manically and sits on the floor.

I reach for the paper towel dispenser and quickly hand her a piece. “So you don’t ruin your dress.”

She nods and takes it, slides it under her butt. I hand her another one, to wipe her face, then sit down beside her.

“He’s in jail now.” She dabs her eyes, looking up to the ceiling, a smudge of watery charcoal liner below her lashes. “My case was still being processed, whatever that means, when a girl walked in on him attacking her roommate. Since there was a witness, the case went pretty quickly.”

For a second there’s just the sound of a leaky faucet and two heartbeats.

She twists the paper towel in her hands. “Doesn’t really make it better, though.” She exhales and looks at me. But there’s nothing to say. “I mean it’s not—I try to not let it ruin my life, because then he’s hurt me twice, you know, and I won’t give him that. But sometimes when I talk about it, I still, you know, I get—” A tear slides down her bright red face. She swipes at it aggressively. “Shit, I’m crying again.”

I take her hands. She exhales, and it sounds jagged. “It’s okay,” I tell her. “You’re okay. Breathe.”

* * *

I can hear Madison Macey screaming through the receiver. I can’t make out everything, but I’ve heard enough snippets—“our investment,” “Cassandra,” “risk everything,” “basic academic procedure”—to get the idea.

Professor Price’s assistant sent me in midway through the call, at which point I was immediately keen to leave, but she gestured for me to wait. So here I sit in the chair in the corner and stare at my hands, trying to make myself as small as possible.

Professor Price gives one-word responses, and no indication of her opinion on the matter: “Yes.” “Sure.” “That’s reasonable.” “I see where you’re coming from.”

She doesn’t look over at me, instead just making brief notes or spinning in her chair and glancing out the big window. I turn back to my hands, studying my bracelet and chipped nail polish.

“All right, I’ll let her know. Thank you.” The phone snaps back into its cradle.

I look up. Professor Price is leaning back in her chair, still looking at the phone.

“Well, you’re in quite a bit of trouble.” She looks at me for the first time since I entered.

“I can expl—”

She waves her hand to silence me. “They’re right. The fact of the matter is you violated the rules of the study and risked the exposure of the entire project.”

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