I moved back and turned my head to the side so the light wasn’t directly in my eyes. “Can we turn that thing off and have a normal conversation about this, please?”
There was silence for a few moments until the light shut off and a lamp turned on instead. “Fine,” Aamee said, “but the process is still the same.”
Some of the girls were looking at their nails in between eye rolls, seemingly siding with me on the ridiculousness of this. Others were nodding as Aamee spoke, though I wasn’t sure if it was because they agreed with her or were just too scared not to.
“Can we just get this over with?” I asked.
I knew Aamee was pissed about Carter, but after my conversation with Gina, I’d let myself get my hopes up that my punishment began and ended with her silence toward me over the past two days. It was a consequence I was happy to accept since it was more of a reward than a punishment.
Aamee flipped her blond hair behind her shoulder and pursed her red lips together. They were so plump, I’d once asked if she’d done “whatever Kylie Jenner had done.” I’d quickly identified that question as a mistake, but it was too late to take it back. And thus began her hatred of me.
That night she’d announced the addition of my name to her Shit List, and I’d only moved up in rank since then by doing little things like using her toothpaste or disconnecting her phone from a charger so I could charge my own.
“Then let us begin,” Aamee said. “On the fifteenth of September, you, Sophia Marie Mason—”
“My middle name isn’t Marie.”
“Sophia Elizabeth—”
“Nope.”
“Ann?”
I shook my head.
“Whatever. Like…ninety percent of the female population has one of those. I just guessed.”
“Well, you guessed wrong.”
“Do you plan to tell me what it is?”
I pretended to think for a second. “No, I think I’ll leave you in suspense.”
Aamee composed herself, though she looked like she was ready to explode. Which, after picturing it, I realized would’ve been amazing to watch. Long strands of yellow hair painted red from her blood, her spray-tanned orange skin splattered all over the walls like some sort of abstract painting.
Unfortunately, my Aamee fantasy was interrupted by her voice. “On the fifteenth of September, you, Sophia—”
“You should probably include the year,” Gina said, sounding like she was choking back a laugh. “I mean, if we’re being formal about all this.”
Aamee’s lips looked like they were ready to pop when she pressed them together. “Any other requests?” She looked around the room.
“You do you, sweetie,” Bethany shouted. “You’re doing great.”
“On the fifteenth of September, you, Sophia…Something Mason, were caught harboring a male student in your room during nighttime hours.”
My eyebrows raised. “Harboring? Really? You make him sound like a fugitive.”
“That’s enough of the interruptions. May I continue?”
I gestured with my hand, though I knew I didn’t exactly have a choice.
“According to the Zeta Eta Chi handbook, which our founding sisters created at the induction of this chapter, and I quote, ‘No male shall be permitted to spend more than four consecutive hours in the house, and those hours must not be between dusk and dawn for the sole purpose of preserving the organization’s reputation of integrity, honor, and respect. Any member found to have disobeyed this regulation shall, at the sole request of the chapter president, be evicted from the house immediately.’”
Aamee closed the book and waited for a reaction. I didn’t give her one.
“You’re citing a manual from almost a hundred years ago.”
“The age is irrelevant. What matters is the content. Do you dispute the fact that a male was in your room overnight?”
“No. Do you dispute that one was in yours a few weeks ago?”
Aamee appeared flustered for a moment but regained her composure quickly. “Good thing I’m the president.”
“Way to abuse your power. You’re really going to kick me out of the house for this?”
“Punishment fits the crime if you ask me. If you can’t abide by house rules, you can’t live in the house.”
“Oh, come on. Let’s call it like it is. You’re pointing a finger at me because the ‘male’ who stayed over is someone you have a major crush on. And while a big part of me wants to lie and say I slept with him so I could watch you raze this house like Carrie, the truth is all we did was fall asleep studying. So hop down off your moral high horse before you break your hypocritical neck.”
She was eerily quiet, staring absently for so long it made me wonder if I’d put her into some sort of catatonic trance. It also made me wonder if my points had been valid enough to make her second-guess my punishment, though I doubted it. More likely, it was simply the calm before the storm. A few more seconds passed before Hurricane Aamee spoke.
“My decision stands. Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.”
“Any more clichés you’d like to toss out? You’re not going to tell me if I don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all?”
Aamee laughed. “Actually, I don’t care what you have to say one way or the other. I just care that you leave.”
This time it was Emma who came to my defense. “Aamee? You know Sophia’s mom is Kate Macland, right? She was president. We can’t kick Sophia out of the house.”
“Of course I know who her mom is. How do you think she got in?” Aamee fixed her eyes on me. “Besides, it’s not like she’s out of the sorority completely…yet,” she added with more hostility in her tone than had been there previously. “You should probably start packing your bags. You have twenty-four hours to get out.”
“Thanks.” I gave her a sickeningly sweet smile. “But I’ll probably only need a few hours.”
She laughed like I was kidding, but when I got all my stuff into boxes and suitcases with the help of Gina, Emma, and a few other girls who weren’t attached to Aamee’s tit—and left without making a big deal of it—I was certain Aamee’s curiosity about where I’d gone might kill her. Too bad I wouldn’t be there to see it.
I arrived at my brother’s a half hour later with a hastily packed bag of clothes, shoes, toiletries, and various electronic gadgets. I hadn’t called Brody to give him a heads-up, but our dad was paying for the place, so he couldn’t exactly turn me away at the door.
We’d never been what I’d call close, but maybe we could be now that we were on the same campus and I’d be bunking with him—at least until I figured out how to get back into the sorority house.
Brody, a fifth-year senior, had been attending college halfway across the country—largely to get some space from our parents and me. But now, four and a half years and dozens of lost credits later, he was closer to home and trying to climb out of whatever hole he’d dug himself during his years of partying.
That our father had let him transfer again had been a shock to both of us. I’d thought for sure he’d make Brody throw in the towel and figure his shit out before he burned any more of his money at institutions of higher learning. But when Brody promised that a change of scenery and living by himself would help him focus, our dad agreed to give him one more shot before he pulled the plug on his education. I guess he had more faith in Brody than the rest of us did. Brody included.