You call her and she doesn’t pick up, but you don’t worry too much because she’s with her friends.
The dance floor is packed with girls and your brothers, all in costumes designed to reveal and urge. The room is lit dark purple while pink
and blue and yellow lights spin around the ceiling and scuffed-up walls in
nice, warm circles. The house looks really nice tonight. You barely notice
the fist-sized holes in the drywall.
Everything is going so damn well, but don’t look too excited. Act
like you’ve been there before. Act like the DJ. The DJ knows what he is
doing with his playlist. Every tune is a hit from yours and everyone else’s
middle school days – always a good choice to play songs from those sticky
glossy paper years when girls stood on one side of the room and guys on
the other. This is good. You’re older now – you, the boys, the girls, and
the DJ – and are thus free to finally come together and rub denim on
denim. So to speak.
It is 11, your shift to run the front door. You step outside and
find that your costume did not account for the rural Ohio, late October
climate. Mark “Number 1” Naimer, a brother from your pledge class,
laughs at you as you shiver, but you laugh back because his laugh was one
of understanding and not scorn. Like anybody else in Greek life, Mark
knows the pain of being half-naked and cold. Mark – dressed tonight as
Batman – cares about you. He loves his brothers more than anything,
which is why the frat ranked him 1st in your class at the induction ceremony.
You were named 4th out of 7, which you have since decided is
pretty good. Be thankful you aren’t Scott “Little Pussy” Lovejoy – Number 7, dead last.
It has recently become evident to you that Scott’s the brother
they let in to be the Lighting Rod. The Easy Target, whose membership
in the brotherhood is more of a prolonged practical joke. He’s just such a
dipshit. Also, you are also beginning to realize that you spend a little too
much time thinking about Scott.
After a minute at the door, two costume-less strangers come up
your house steps without a word, not acknowledging you or Number
1. You step in the way and ask them what’s up. They say their house – a
middle tier house – has an agreement with you guys for open access to
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