Kalliope 2015 | Page 156

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 156