Rush Read online

No. She pulled her attention back to the Sigma house and willed herself the ability to read Violet’s lips. She didn’t want to miss Miranda. Didn’t want to compete, but that’s where they were now. It was time to make her dream come true alone. Because nobody had prepared more for rush than she had. She couldn’t jeopardize that by obsessing about her sister.

  “Well, hello there!” A girl with auburn hair and wide eyes knelt down next to Violet. She read Maddy’s name tag. “Madeleine. I’m Courtney, vice president here at Sigma Theta Kappa. How’s it going today?”

  “Great!” Maddy sat up straighter, putting on a more serious face. “You can call me Maddy if you want.”

  “I’ll make a note of it!” Courtney’s eyes darted up and down, doing a quick but obvious once-over. Maddy refolded her hands, grateful she’d splurged on a new manicure.

  “We were talking about our hometown,” Violet told Courtney. “Chesterfield.”

  “Just two hours up the highway,” Maddy added.

  “Oh, I know where it is,” said Courtney. “But doesn’t everybody from Chesterfield go to State?”

  Ugh. That was precisely the reason Maddy had chosen Baldwin, plus the fact that it was as far away from home as she could get without paying out-of-state tuition. But she knew she shouldn’t talk about negative things.

  “I wanted to study at a good architecture school,” she said. “And Baldwin is the best in the region.”

  “Hey, Maddy,” Violet broke in. “It was wonderful meeting you. I’m going to move on and let Courtney get to know you a little better now.”

  “Great!” Maddy said, feeling sorry to see Violet go. “Thank you!”

  “So. Chesterfield,” said Courtney. “Our cheer squad used to go there all the time for football games. And one of the Future Leaders Intensive delegates was from Chesterfield. Did you know Gretchen Frost?”

  “Yes . . .” Maddy felt her stomach go sour. Gretchen was the only person at Chesterfield who was a higher achiever than Maddy. In fact, Maddy had competed against Gretchen for one of the coveted spots in Leaders Intensive. Getting beat had stung, especially since Gretchen always seemed a step ahead of her in everything, from her wealthy family to her super-popular social life.

  “Gretchen hosted a Leaders Intensive meeting at the Country Club,” Courtney went on. “It’s a really charming place! But you probably spend a lot of time there, so I suppose it’s not that special to you?”

  “I actually don’t go very often,” said Maddy. The truth was that her parents couldn’t afford the club, so Maddy had only been a couple of times. The last one was the night before she’d left for Baldwin. Their youth pastor had hosted a “Bon Voyage for College” party and that’s where Maddy had found Logan and Miranda, together in one of the empty banquet rooms.

  “I didn’t have time to hang out at the County Club much,” she told Courtney. “I was really busy with school and volunteering. I organized a spay-and-release program for stray cats in my town. It was a big problem because the college students would get them, then abandon them when the school year ended or it turned out their landlords didn’t allow pets. I would find them in the woods near my house, and since I couldn’t adopt them all, I started an effort to control the population in a humane way.”

  “You were busy!” Courtney sat forward and put up a hand. “Would you like something to drink?”

  “Did somebody say drink?” A Hispanic girl suddenly appeared with a tray of lemonades. “Hi! I’m Ruby.”

  “Well, Maddy,” said Courtney, giving Maddy a glass, then taking Ruby’s tray. “It was great meeting you. Have a good rest of the day.”

  Maddy watched Courtney walk away, hoping she hadn’t sounded like too much of a dork talking about her stray-cat program. Everything she’d read about rush had said to bring up her volunteer work as a conversation topic, but actually doing so had felt awkward—especially with Courtney, who seemed so cool and aloof.

  Thank goodness Ruby was easier to talk with—bubbly and warm, with a genuine interest in Maddy’s crusade to help Chesterfield’s abandoned pets. While she and Ruby talked, a group of sisters arranged themselves at the front of the room, making a colorful tableau in their flowered dresses. Someone clinked a glass and the conversations died down. As soon as it was quiet, the sisters started to sing.

  The stars at night are big and bright

  Here at Sigma Theta

  The Baldwin sky is wide and high

  Here at Sigma Theta

  The wild rose bloom is like perfume

  Here at Sigma Theta

  Reminds us of the ones we love

  Here at Sigma Theta Kappa

  Then all of the sisters, all around the room, broke into a round.

  Estrellita, ¿dónde estás?

  Me pregunto qué serás.

  “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” In Spanish. Maddy’s heart hurt, it was so beautiful. She could picture herself studying in that gorgeous sitting room, coming down the grand staircase every day to meet her pledge sisters in the foyer and walk to class. In the evenings, she would sit and people watch as she rocked on the swing under the Greek letters over the red front door—the same ones that hung on the lavaliere around Ruby’s neck right in front of her. They were like charms in a magic spell; Maddy could feel the transformation starting already.

  Good-bye, Chesterfield.

  Good-bye, mousy, unappreciated Maddy Christopher.

  This was where she belonged.

  SIX

  “Hello, Lydia Jackson! Welcome to Sigma Theta Kappa!”

  Delia’s voice rang out, way too loud and cheerful, as rushees filed onto the sorority house porch. Cass stood with her arm at a forty-five-degree angle from her side, watching while they made their way, one by one, up the front steps.

  “Madison Murray! Welcome to Sigma Theta Kappa!”

  Cass marveled at the dazed looks in the girls’ eyes. Didn’t any of them wonder why they were having their full names shouted into their faces? No, they were too dazzled by the singing and the smiles and the Day-Glo fiesta theme. Who could blame them, really? Cass remembered what recruitment had been like for her when she went through it: Smoke! Mirrors! Singing and skits! Pay no attention to that sister behind the curtain!

  Well today, the sister behind the curtain was her. If the rushees had known what to look for, they might notice the way her arm blocked a gap that ran between the rows of other sisters on the porch. They might see how a new sister traveled down that gap with each shouted name, causing Cass to either lower her arm and let that sister out or, if no sister filled the gap, then raise her arm to tap the sister directly to her right.

  The system worked like this: Sisters were divided into two groups—hostesses and floaters. Delia would read a rushee’s name tag out loud as the girl stepped onto the porch to shake her hand. If the rushee was a must-have, then her assigned hostess would hear the girl’s name and make her way through the formation to stand at Cass’s side, alerting Cass to her presence with a tap on the backside. As soon as Cass felt the smack on her butt, she would lower her arm and let the hostess through to get her rushee. To Sigma, the system meant that must-haves met only the friendliest, most accomplished sisters. But to the rushee, it just looked like a random girl had stepped out to greet her.

  Over and over, Cass repeated the process: Listen for name, wait for tap, lower arm. Listen for name, wait for tap, lower arm. If no tap came, then she would nudge a floater to take the rushee.

  “Watch it!” hissed Aimee Wu, giving Cass’s butt a harder-than-necessary smack. Cass had almost let one of the floaters go instead of her.

  “Sorry,” Cass whispered, lowering her arm for Aimee. She’d practiced this procedure dozens of times, to the point where she’d felt like she could probably do it in a coma. But with real rushees streaming forward and the noise level rising behind her, she found it hard to concentrate. Especially when she had to sing and smile on top of it all.

  Slowly the line grew shorter until finally, the last rus
hee was escorted inside. The leftover floaters hurried in, too, leaving just Cass and Delia on the porch. Cass fidgeted in her tent of a dress. Her butt was numb from getting bumped so much, and she yearned to say something like, “Guess this is where a little junk in the trunk comes in handy, eh?” Delia looked like she could use a laugh.

  But before Cass could speak, Delia clapped her hands together. “Well!” she said, crisply. “Shall we?”

  And then, without so much as a “thanks for your hard work,” she strode back through the front door, leaving Cass outside alone.

  “Okay then . . .” Cass took a moment to massage the front-of-the-formation grin out of her cheeks, then wandered inside to do some floating herself.

  Like all sororities at Baldwin, Sigma Theta Kappa had been decorated to resemble the home of someone with exquisite, if a bit old fashioned, taste. If you looked closely at the rugs or the cushions on the overstuffed couches, you could see a hint of wear from year upon year of use. During finals each semester, dirty dishes stacked up on the end tables, half-empty Diet Coke bottles littered the parquet floor, and comforters lay on the expensive carpet, abandoned by girls pulling all-nighters. Before anything got too shabby, however, an alumni committee would swoop in, and the parlor walls would sprout new cabbage rose wallpaper. New settees would appear in the sitting room, and the sunroom would get a fresh infusion of wicker.

  But now the décor could barely be appreciated, since every available surface had a rushee sitting on it. Cass moved among the girls, observing the secret communications that were going on right under their noses. During recruitment, every movement had a discrete code. During conversation, for example, if a sister put her hands behind her back, it meant she wanted another sister to come and take her place. Hands behind the back could be good for a rushee; it could mean a sister wanted more people to meet her, because if more people met and liked a girl, then that could translate to more positive votes at the end of the day. On the other hand, it could mean that a sister was bored silly and wanted to be put out of her misery. If a sister crossed her arms in front of her chest, it meant “Get someone new over here now!”

  As Cass walked from room to room she noticed that several rushees were getting the crossed-arms treatment. Everywhere she looked there were girls who had no idea that their fate at Sigma had been all but sealed within five minutes of walking through the red front door.

  Cass stepped over espadrilled feet, drifting into the parlor. There, by the grand piano, she spotted a familiar face. She’d been forced to look at this girl’s photograph so much that she couldn’t mistake her: it was Imogen Ash.

  Imogen’s assigned hostess, Allison Reed, had just stood up—to get drinks, it looked like—and filling in the gap was none other than Kimmie Conover, one of the spaciest people ever to wear the Sigma star.

  Curious, Cass slowed down. Besides the academic honors and the huge inheritance, she wondered, what was it about Imogen Ash that had everybody, from the Beta Phis to Delia Danforth, slobbering so much?

  She went over and knelt next to Kimmie.

  “Hi, Imogen,” she said. “Welcome to Sigma Theta Kappa.”

  Imogen smiled, a tired early-morning smile, instead of all bug eyes and big teeth like every other girl in the room. Cass made a quick assessment: Imogen was pretty in a natural way, like she wasn’t trying and didn’t have to. And she definitely had a refreshing sense of style. No rushee Cass had ever seen would dream of showing up to a recruitment party with bedhead. Imogen let the tangles fall into her eyes as she leaned over to peer at Cass’s name tag.

  “Hi, back . . . Cassandra.”

  “Imogen and I were just talking about horses,” Kimmie announced. “Imogen almost got into the Olympics for dressage. I didn’t know horses wore dresses. Did you?”

  Cass saw the corners of Imogen’s mouth pucker and drew a quick breath on a giggle of her own. Cracking up at inappropriate times was one of her worst habits, and the other sisters would not look kindly on it if she launched into one of her giggling fits in front of the mother of all must-haves.

  “I did not know that, Kimmie,” she said. “But if you’re into horses, I met another girl who loves them, too. See her over there in the white blouse?”

  Cass pointed over her shoulder, praying that a white-bloused rushee did indeed sit in the general vicinity. Kimmie’s face lit up.

  “I should go talk to her! It was really nice meeting you, Imogen. I hope you have a great day!”

  “You, too,” Imogen replied.

  “Bye now, Kimmie,” said Cass. As she watched Kimmie go she knew she’d never be able to hold in the laughter. She met eyes with Imogen, and it was like striking a match. Cass let her head fall back as giggles went through her body in delicious waves. Imogen leaned forward, holding her stomach, gasping for breath. Cass slumped from her knees to the floor, clenching her thighs to keep from peeing herself. The rushees and sisters nearby stared at them. The sisters looked annoyed and the rushees looked terrified, which made Cass laugh even more.

  “I’m sorry,” she gasped between giggles. “I’m totally going to get in trouble for this.”

  “In trouble for what?” said Imogen. “Being human?”

  “It’s just . . .” Cass pressed her palms to her cheeks. “Don’t tell anybody I said this, but Kimmie’s a little out there.”

  “Oh, thank God.” Imogen wiped her eyes. “I didn’t know how much longer I was going to be able to go on pretending like I knew what that girl was talking about.”

  This set them off again. Cass laughed harder, letting all of the tension out. As the giggling subsided, she looked around to see Courtney Mann giving her a dirty look. Meanwhile, the girls closest to them had maneuvered as far away as they could without actually getting up and going into the next room. Cass cleared her throat and pulled herself together. She was about to launch into a recruitment-approved conversation topic when Imogen blurted out, “So I heard this place is haunted.”

  Cass’s eyebrows shot up. She and the other sisters had been instructed never to show anything but delighted interest no matter what a rushee might say, but not many freshmen would have had the guts to ask about something like that. At Sigma, the topic was strictly off-limits. No one had ever said as much, but everybody knew—the tragedy had been dealt with, and any lingering memories were spoken about in nothing more than whispers.

  Cass chose her words carefully. “We did have one girl die. Three years ago. Her name was Marianne McCourt.”

  “I heard she jumped out a window,” Imogen pressed. “Did she jump?”

  “I don’t really know.”

  It was true; Cass didn’t know the details. There were all kinds of stories, of course, but she’d learned a long time ago that you never could tell which ones were true and which ones were bullshit. The girls who were going into their fourth year—Delia and her pledge sisters—had been in Marianne’s class, but they were the most silent of all. That left the grapevine. And Google. The news reports from back then all said it appeared that Marianne McCourt had fallen. She was known for liking to sit on the window sill of her third-story room, especially on warm nights. Whether her death was intentional or just a freak accident, Cass had resigned herself to never knowing for sure.

  “So how about it?” Imogen pressed. “Does this place really have a ghost?”

  Cass studied Imogen’s face. The warmth of laughter still ran in her veins, and she found herself thinking perhaps this was a girl who could see past the surface to what was underneath.

  “Weird things do happen around here,” she said. “If people say they’ve seen Marianne, then I guess I’d have to say I believe them.”

  Imogen lunged forward, smacking Cass on the arm. “Get out! You’re just trying to scare me.”

  Stunned, Cass clamped her hand over the spot. Imogen was laughing again—a careless laugh that made what Cass had just shared seem like a joke. But a girl who’d lost her life and had then somehow found herself trapped in the sorority house,
unable to move on? If that was true, then it wasn’t a joke at all.

  “Cassandra! Here you are!” Delia suddenly appeared, toting along Imogen’s original hostess, a pale-faced Allison Reed. “Hi, Imogen!” Delia extended her hand as she knelt almost on top of Cass. “I’m Delia Danforth, president of Sigma Theta Kappa. I hope you don’t mind if I take Cassandra’s place now. We’re going to need our music leader to help lead the farewells in a few minutes.”

  Delia turned her steely gray eyes on Cass, while Allison practically kicked her out of the way with her toe.

  “Right,” said Cass. It figured. A must-have would never be allowed to meet anyone who didn’t have Delia Danforth’s personal stamp of approval. Not that it mattered. The spark Cass had thought she’d seen in Imogen had just been swatted away – Cass couldn’t believe how flippant Imogen had been about Marianne McCourt. It told her all she needed to know: Imogen Ash wasn’t someone Cass felt she must have at all.

  Cass resumed her floating, moving among the rushees like a bee from flower to flower. In the sitting room, she spied Ruby talking to a girl with long blond hair pulled back in a headband. Cass drifted close enough to read the girl’s name tag: Madeleine Christopher. Ruby whispered something and the girl gave a dazzled smile, which put a pang in Cass’s chest. She’d felt like that girl just a year before: nervous, overwhelmed, and above all else, thrilled to think a sorority like Sigma Theta Kappa might want her. When her bid had come through at the end of recruitment week, it was as though she’d been given the keys to an amazing new life.

  That was before she’d found out Sigma had never really wanted her at all.

  SEVEN

  Oh my God. So hungry.

  Imogen dug her fingertips into her belly, trying to stop the rumbling. She brought her other hand to her nose. The bus was starting to smell rank. Waiting outside in ninety-degree heat, then cramming into a bunch of parlors and sitting rooms with dozens of other rushees made for some sweaty people. A lot of them tried to hide it by spritzing on perfume between parties, but it didn’t do much good. That sour, salty smell stuck to everything. Especially on the buses, where people had no choice but to basically sit on top of each other.