I’m kissing that Delta Sigma, the one I’ve been meeting at night in a carrel at the back of the library. Tonight, we’re in my room at Rho Pi, alone except for Dolores O’Riordan’s voice singing “zombie.” I really, really want my brain to stop moving. 

I have crazy chemistry with this boy. Like, crazy. Like, the five other guys I’ve kissed were, in fact, fishes, and this guy turns out to be Brad Pitt crossed with melty chocolate chip cookies, and wherever our lips meet, we’re transported to Patrick Swayze’s bedroom in that room in Dirty Dancing. What I’m trying to say is, I’m into it, which is why it’s so unbelievable that I’m not into it. 

What I am is mad. What I’m trying to say is, this thing has me so mad, I can’t pay attention to this Delt working his hand down my pants.

He pulls back. “Something wrong?”

Zombie.

“All good,” I say, leaning in for more kissing, but I can’t block the buzz of indignation, and when Callie crashes through my door without knocking, two things happen, both completely split from reality. First, Callie lunges in without clocking my Delt. Second, I leap up, also without reference to my Delt and without trying to button my jeans. That’s when I should have known we’d jumped planes. We’d already crossed into another world, where girls wield gnashing teeth and whisper poison promises.

Callie commandeers my futon, and Johnna and Shannon storm in. I’m pretty sure they walk right through my boy as he flees. Even through my anger, I ache at my friends’ beauty. Next to them, I’m invisible. Johnna’s marble complexion is flushed with ugly tears. Shannon’s dad’s Norwegian, her mom’s Korean, and people mistake her size and beauty for weakness, but she’s strong as all get out. Though Callie is already mid-diatribe, she glows, ever and always, so bright I can’t look away. Her words fill my tiny room with a shadowy fog.

“It’s not like this wasn’t bound to happen. We knew it bid day freshman year, and we should have taken care of it then.”

“How?” says Shannon. Shannon tends to the literal. 

“It’s more complicated than that,” says Johnna; I feel her alarm. Where Johnna used to be one of them, back when Amy was one of us, now, they’re a bonded pair, even if that bond is in danger.

Callie backtracks to placate Johnna. “Of course, we couldn’t have seen this coming. Imagine if someone told us it would be Amy.”

#

Callie’s right. It’s been true since we were freshmen. If you like, you can call us the good girls and the bad. We pledged Rho, drawn to our gleaming white house and her gleaming reputation. Rho Pis: the smart girls, nice girls, girls you want to marry. In white tennis shoes and pink hair ribbons, you could spot them, magnificent, beckoning, all over campus. During rush, I smiled at all the houses, but it was always Rho or die. 

Rho, sweet home. Oh, the white brick house on the hill, with the green shutters and perfect porch swings. Oh, those Rho Pi roses, pink climbers in escalier. Tucked behind pretty gables are pretty rooms where pretty sisters whisper. Every week, Rho produces fresh bouquets to grace the foyer. Rho is where a girl can swirl down the spiral staircase to meet a date, her beauty magnified by the glittered light from the chandelier. No other sorority boasts a spiral staircase; no other can bathe a girl in such a light. 

Something malignant got into the rush gods our year, and half of our pledge class had no respect for ribbons and sisterhood. It was like they were embarrassed by Rho, which is insulting but also ridiculous. Maybe what they’d wanted was to pledge GZB—that bunch of preternaturally thin, chain-smoking skanks. We could see our upperclassmen were flummoxed, alarmed by what they’d let in the door.

We were still just learning the college lore, getting the hang of sounding natural when saying “hooking up” instead of “going out with” and calling the cafeteria “the base.” We were sizing each other up and soliciting the best rumors. 

“Did you hear about hazing at GZB? They make their pledges line up in bras and panties and use sharpies to circle their fat.”

“They say the Alphas brand their pledges.”

We’d been warned to watch out for our sisters, but we didn’t really believe anything bad could happen, thrilling at new freedom and sucking dark pleasure from shady stories. That is, we were practically still high school girls, when we got into our freshman year battle about whether it would be hilarious to build a 12-foot penis from paper mâché and ride it on the house’s lawn.

It would not be hilarious, the good girls agreed, and our upperclassmen forbade it. “You’re got to think about how it would look. The whole campus would see.” The penis materialized anyway. A penis. On the lawn. Of Rho Pi. Right there, in plain sight. Now, I see that the penis was a sign.

Girls yelled and cried, even announced they might leave Rho. But our pledge master, a girl with the trick of being liked on all sides, smoothed things over. “What’s done is done,” she said. We called a bleary truce and dealt by ignoring each another.

We traded silver pledge pins for gold letters, tied ribbons round our ponytails, and lived Rho. We went to parties, done up to the nines. We wore matching tees and did our homework like the very good girls we are, and we piled into Shannon’s room to watch A Wedding Story on drowsy afternoons. We cheered for our sisters on the soccer team, debated who to ask to Rose Ball, and talked about sex and whether to have it and what whose boyfriend had said or done. We were proud we weren’t GZBs and relieved we weren’t Alphas. We spiraled down the staircase for dinners in our polished dining room, where we sat at tables populated only by the sisters on our side.

Zombie.

They did whatever you do when you came to college to sleep with half the basketball team. It involved slinking out of the house in tight pants, trailing black eyeliner, then stumbling back after noon the next day, no shame, liner smudged across the whole of campus.

We were two separate teams, until junior year, when most everyone was studying abroad. There weren’t that many of us left, not enough for two tables. Amy invited me into a conversation in Carrie’s room. Shannon loaned a necklace to Stacy, and they both started studying with Jenn D. for their chem tests. Johnna started hanging out with us, and she and Amy discovered shared artistic passion, Johnna a voice major; Amy paints and sculpts. We watched as they circled each other before diving in and spending every second together, making plans to room together senior year.

The air was new and strange. We peeked into a world where we weren’t good girls and bad girls, where we couldn’t be reduced to who saw us with what penis on which lawn. Something fragile and sweet and sisterly shimmered in Rho’s halls.

Then, the rest of the girls came home. Callie returned from her semester in Paris wearing a French glow and taking up the sorority presidency we always knew would be hers. Even before she’d pinned on the heirloom presidential badge, she’d already sized up our mixed tables, noted how often Jenn D. walked to class with Shannon, and absorbed the way Johnna and Amy couldn’t get enough of each other. Callie assessed the wild effects of Rho in diaspora and betrayed sans surprise. 

But the other girls are confused. They don’t know what to do with our transgression. We go protective of our miracle and keep ignoring old boundaries. We don’t see the new fences.

Zombie.

Until she. Until Amy, who was one of us but became one of them but still one of us and us and them and them and us and now she is being courted and disciplined and poisoned and petted by the returning, disbelieving them. Until Amy went and did what she did.

#

“It cuts so hard,” says Callie, “because it’s our thing. A Rho signature. She treated it like nothing, like we might as well be GZBs.”

The four of us are enough of us to take my room from cozy to claustrophobic, with Callie and Shannon on the futon, Johnna—bereft without Amy by her side—sitting at my desk with the chair spun round, and me, unsettled, shifting. There’s no space for Amy, though she is the other member of Callie’s executive council. 

Callie gives us each a significant look, both blessing and command, but she looks longest at Johnna, even gets up to rest a hand on her shoulder. My shoulder burns where Callie’s hand is not.

Johnna gives herself the tiniest shake and looks at Callie as she speaks. “Without even thinking about the rest of us. Without talking to you.”

Then, from Johnna, an admission confession concession; “you two have always been so close.” 

Johnna’s not wrong. Amy was Callie’s wingman, Goose to her Tom Cruise, Dionne to Callie’s Cher. If any girl suggested doubt about Callie, Amy was there to get her back in line. But something changed, and Johnna’s words demean that. They’re untrue to what Johnna and Amy have forged, while Callie was in Paris. Together with the anger, something like regret slips into the cocktail of pressures swirling inside me.

Callie surprises: “You’d think she’d at least have talked to you, Johnna. You guys are so close now.”

I can’t fathom Amy’s betrayal, and my heart gives at the pressure coming at it from every side. It springs a leak, and blood seeps out, soaking through my thick Rho Pi sweatshirt. Drops fall, marring the clean white of my shoes. Nobody blinks. 

Calm, Callie moves to me, presses a hand to my chest and uses my blood to ink a dark Rho on my forehead. I feel a surge of power. Shannon and Johnna bow their heads to Callie to receive the same sign. Callie nods to me, and I’m the one who marks her brow for war.

“Now,” says Callie, “change your shirt, sweetie. We’ll see you downstairs for dinner.” 

#

The house is closing in on us, lights dimmed and spaces narrowed, as Shannon and I walk down the hall, feeling the presence of the other girls. Some ignore us, a polite move, respectful. A pair of too pretty sophomores stare. As we go by the room where Amy lives with Carrie and they all hang out, I see eyes glowing.

In the dining room, I slide into the seat next to Johnna, and tell myself the sense of menace is easing. Our waiters bring dishes to the tables and fill our water glasses, as always. Dinner is chicken, as it almost always is. Callie comes in late and takes the seat we’ve left for her at the table’s head. I pass her a bowl. The volume in the room edges up as girls talk through the clinking sounds of silverware. From a table of sophomores, laughter. From Matt, who’s waiting our table tonight, a joke for Johnna, a mischievous wink.

Then, they appear. They have Amy in the middle of their group, protecting her like a baby elephant being stalked by lions. Except she’s the tallest of them, and her white-blond curls are escaping her braids. Except for the fact that she’s turned out to be a lioness. Amy’s unshrinking. She looks at Johnna, sad, at Callie, defiant, and her eyes flash. The Rho on my brow prickles. They move as one, taking the table nearest the kitchen, never leaving Amy with an unprotected flank. Dinner continues, pretending normality, but the noise is dissonant now, and the miasma I felt gathering upstairs comes visibly rolling in.

Callie clinks a spoon on her glass. The room hushes. “Sisters,” she doesn’t have to wait for complete silence. “Circumstances force me to call a disciplinary council.” Girls start to whisper, risk glances at Amy and at them, but Callie stops it. “Due to the urgent nature of these violations, we’ll convene immediately.”

“Callie,” calls a senior, “we’ve got practice…” but she drops it when she’s sees Callie’s face. 

Zombie.

Girls push through the haze, which churns thickest at the floor, and line themselves up. Ritual enables quick obedience to Callie’s call, and Shannon and I hurry downstairs, descending past the house’s public face to her hidden guts. It’s our job to unlock the formal chapter room. We light candles set in alcoves and the candelabra on the ornate table up front. We stand guardians as the head of each pledge class speaks the password and leads her group inside.

Callie starts the meeting. “Greetings, sisters.”

“Greetings, Mother President.”

Callie sits at the center of the leadership’s table, Shannon and I on one side, Johnna on her other. Amy’s seat is empty. She must stand before this court. 

Johnna leads us in the oath, “I swear allegiance to Rho Pi,”

We all join: “bound together, sisterhood unyielding. We vow radical loyalty, as keepers of our bond. With Rho Pi, we are entwined, now and always.”

Before Callie’s gavel, we drop to our seats. “Sisters, I must emphasize the gravity of our task. I never thought this would fall on me, but here we are, and I will not shrink from carrying this burden. As officer of standards, Sister Shannon will read the charges.”

Shannon stands. “Sister Amy,” says Callie, “you’re to stand.” There’s a tense pause, and the darkness around us starts to boil in the candlelight, but Amy gets to her feet. Shannon reads, and Callie comes from behind the table to face Amy straight on. “Sister, you may offer your defense.”

“Callie, c’mon,” says Amy. 

Callie is ice. “Defend yourself.” 

Amy’s eyes go steady flame. “No.”

My deflated heart spasms.

“You refuse?”

“Callie, I don’t have anything to defend. You may not like it, but I haven’t broken any rules, I’ve been faithful to my office, and I haven’t turned my back on Rho. Or on you.”

Amy sounds just like she would if we were piled on her rug, laughing and eating cheese fries from Waldo’s. She sounds normal. It’s one thing, to refuse a formal defense, but this complete lack of defensiveness is another, as though we weren’t in full ritual, wading through an eerie murk. As though Callie weren’t standing there, my blood on her forehead, demanding Amy’s too. 

We don’t expect Johnna to speak out of turn, right to Amy. “You left me all alone.” 

Callie narrows her eyes as Amy say, “Johnna, it wasn’t easy for them either. Look, we were having fun, shaking things up. Imagine how you’d feel if you got back, and everything had changed. When you thought you were coming home?” The shadows between Amy and Johnna stretch and wobble. “Imagine you suddenly found the whole leadership was made up of them.”

“You’re them,” says Shannon, her voice frost.

“Ok,” says Amy, “have it your way. I’m them.” She shrugs. “They’re Rhos too.”

“But they never really were, were they?” says Callie. “Radical loyalty. I haven’t seen much loyalty from them. Sisters, it’s time. Amy does not contest the charges.” My empty heart tries to contract. The vote will go against Amy. Mine will. Callie is right.

The seniors go first. Each takes either a white or black ball and drops it into one of two clear vases, where it will settle neatly so we can all see where the tally stands. Every senior drops a black ball, though some aren’t present. 

Zombie.

The juniors are next, and we’re two neatly defined teams once more. Half for, half against. The sophomores are Callie’s creatures. She was their pledge master before she was president. But a group of them rebel, choosing white balls. The atmosphere quickens and spins. I’m surprised by their guts and unmoored by their disloyalty, but Amy’s fate is decided. At least two black balls have been dropped for every white.

As the freshmen come forward, the shadows lean in to caress and cloak them. They are selecting white balls. They seem pleased, breezy, even in a room where an invisible presence is blowing out the candles. Jenn G. drops a white ball, as candled shadows dance on her form. So do Marcy and Tracy and Darcy and both Kims. Some freshmen take black, but they’re coming fast, and I can’t keep track. The white column is rising to meet the black. When the last freshman has returned to her seat, the vote is 42 to 45: Against stripping Amy of her badge.

But leadership is yet to vote, and that will tip things back. Callie doesn’t even ruffle as she drops her black ball and turns to the assembly. She’s raising her gavel to expel Amy from our sisterhood, when the room explodes in gasps, a startled laugh, quickly silenced. 

Johnna has dropped a white ball. The final vote stands 45-46, and Amy is safe. As the noise level rises, Callie speaks to Johnna, low. “It’s not your fault sweetie. It’s mine. I don’t let you see how much you can hurt me, so of course your heart goes out to Amy. You assume I’ll be ok. But Johnna, honey, we’re not done with this.”

#

We smile. We go to class. I stop calling the boy “my Delt” and start calling him Michael; we keep kissing, and he asks me to his formal. Johnna and Amy spend more time at the arts center than the house. We’ve all been walking around with bloody letters on our heads, but no one seems to see.

Zombie.

Johnna’s loaning me a dress for the Delt formal. She puts a pile on my bed. I’m staring at the happy photos on my bulletin board. There’s our pledge class, smiling on bid day: all of us in front of the house, uniform white teeth. Another is of Shannon and me as the base of a three-girl pyramid’ Amy’s on top, laughing as she tries not to tumble off. My 21^st birthday, drinking lemon drops. All five of us on exec, at a leadership conference, right after we were elected. Right before Amy blew us up. 

“C’mon kiddo,” says Johnna. “Let’s look at these dresses.” Johnna considers a classy LBD and shakes her head. “Nope. You look better in color.” She chooses a skintight lavender piece, with spaghetti straps. “This was made for you; you should keep it, if Michael doesn’t ruin it when he rips it off you.”

I make a silly kissy face and hold the dress to my body. I do love it. “Thanks,” I say. “So…you coming out with us tonight?” Beta Beta Chi is having their biggest party of the year, Shannon’s boyfriend is a senior there, and she’s been exacting promises for us to go over together.

“I wanted to talk about that,” says Johnna. She’s flipping through more pics. “Callie made a big point to say she wants me to come.” I raise my eyebrows. “And she wants me to bring Amy.” Johnna hands me a photo of me with Amy, wearing overalls and plastic leis, having gone from a hoedown to a Luau in a single night.

“Huh,” I say. I ignore the way the photo tries to poke at what’s left of my heart. I kind of can’t remember why I was so mad. I mean, I remember, but it feels outsized, unreal.

“I know,” says Johnna. “Callie has some plan to give Amy a hard time. But then she can be forgiven? If I get her to come, we can fix things.”

“What do you mean, ‘give her a hard time’?”

Johnna shrugs. “Something about scaring her. I don’t like it, but it could be worth it. I can warn Amy about Callie having some kind of atonement in mind. We can play along and go back to the way things should be.”

“Maybe. The ‘scare her’ part sounds like Callie, anyway.” 

“The thing is,” Johnna frowns, gives herself a shake; “even if it weren’t for everything else, Callie really, really doesn’t like me and Amy being friends.”

I look down. Johnna’s words are an indiscretion. “She loves Amy.”

“Does she? Sometimes,” says Johnna, “I think the line between love and hate has gotten real blurry around here.”

What I say: “Well, let’s go tonight. Callie’s not going start anything at Beta.” What I think: But Callie knows Amy will never come without you.

#

If Rho is a bower, then the Beta house pretends to be a castle. Its stone façade, mortared with testosterone, draws girls right in, the floors sticky like fly paper. Arriving, we’re greeted by deep voiced cheers, and a Beta pledge makes sure we have drinks in our hands.

We mix cheap rum with diet Coke, and we dance, sweating and laughing. Rage Against the Machine is playing, and boys who were always only going to do what they were told to, yell, “fuck no,” with the music. We dance, and a new song starts. We scream delight, pretending with the lyrics to fall and get back up again and again and again. We’re webbed in dance and drink, and the party is past fading, when Callie draws my attention to the door. Johnna hovers there, Amy by her side.

Shannon’s boyfriend drapes himself around her. “Ready for bed, baby?”

Callie shoots him her sweetest smile. “Steady down Andy, we girls still need to talk.” When Andy doesn’t leave, Callie says, “don’t worry; I’ll send her your way in just a little.” She gives him a playful push and steers us out of the room, grabbing beers from a plastic tub from which the ice has long since melted. Callie nods at Amy and turns to Johnna, “Thanks for making sure she came. It’s about time we had this out, just us.”

“I think so too,” says Amy. She looks at Johnna, “that’s why we’re here.”

Things start to haze to gray. Callie herding us up to the top floor, Shannon giggling and using Andy’s code to unlock the balcony door. The five of us, pressing out into the night, where the chill encourages us to mass close together. Is it foggy? That can’t be right, for the stars shine.

Callie pops the tab on her beer and says, “a toast.”

“To what?” from Johnna.

“To reunion. All of us back together.” 

Shannon and I knock cans, but Johnna watches, wary, and Amy takes a long drink without toasting and without taking her eyes off Callie. Callie’s never been so Callie so lithe so shiny so damn beautiful and powerful a magnet unattainable, stark, fixed, a black hole. Callie is saying so much to me you girls mean so much and Callie is saying so much history. Then Callie is saying a higher law and Callie is saying unyielding and what we owe our sisters and saying loyalty Callie is saying radical loyalty Callie says devotion faithful and true, Callie is right, and Callie says consequences, and Callie says do you regret. “I know we’ve been icing you out,” Callie says.

And Amy is laughing, and Callie flinches an angry flinch, and Amy says, “That’s a lot of ice, Cal. Trying to get me black balled.”

Hard, Callie laughs back. “Whatever. It’s time for this to end,” and Callie is pushing Amy and pushing us to push together and push toward Amy and pushing me and Shannon and even pushing Johnna because Callie says betrayal and Callie says untrue. Faithful, says Callie, radically faithful, entwined always, is what Callie says. Unyielding, says Callie, and loyal forever. Betrayal says Callie, and Callie is right. And we’re pressing, all of us pressing, with the cold and the beer and Callie’s voice a chant, Callie’s voice a siren a lullaby a ballad of true love, to Callie’s voice we’re pressing, pressing, pressing at Amy, we’re pressing, pressing against her pressing her against the balcony railing. And so sudden the pressing has Amy all backwards, splayed halfway over the rail.

Zombie.

“Like I told Johnna, you needed a good scare,” says Callie. “If she’d get you here, you’d see it. It had to be something we’ll never forget, then it can be over. We’ll be united, again.” It’s time for Callie to pull Amy back, to absolve and to land her feet on the floor, and Callie is saying, “thanks Jo. For making so sure Amy came.” And Callie moves, and Callie pushes.

Like dummies, we peer over the railing, into the shadowy below. Johnna springs away; she’s down the stairs before we’ve arrived in the moment.

#

When we do get down there, Johnna is kneeling at Amy’s side. She leans to whisper in Amy’s ear and looks at us, her eyes a blank, her forehead a blank. No fog now. Just cold and clear: cold flesh and cold stone, bright pool, blood reflecting the insensible starlight, a blooming crown for a broken head. Amy’s eyes are open, glass, blank, just like Johnna’s. We’re immobilized, every one of us, by those eyes.

No, not Callie. She pulls Johnna up. She pulls her into a hug. “Unbelievable,” says Callie, “that balcony being unlocked during a party. It’s tragic.”

“It’s no good for Beta,” says Shannon. We all look at her in disbelief.

“We need to go,” says Callie. “Shannon, you go on up to Andy. Johnna, you’ll stop on the way home and use the emergency phone. Say you saw someone fall. You don’t give your name, obviously.” When Johnna doesn’t respond, Callie shakes her. “Johnna?” Johnna nods; her face is whiter than it ever will be, freckles blood on snow.

Callie seizes Johnna’s hand, and mine, nods at me to grab Shannon’s too, and begins to sing.

Rho’s the only one for me.

Rosy for eternity, sisters in serenity. 

Rho Pi till we die.

It’s from our initiation ritual. The marks of Rho dissolve from Callie’s and Shannon’s foreheads. I feel mine, too, melting back into my skin, too late to stir my stagnant blood.

#

Awake, we are daydreams, and we see only darkness when we sleep: those nice girls, those soulless girls, the girls you want to marry. We costume ourselves in pink for spring’s Rose Ball, taming hair and fastening pearls. We smile, and we cheer. We take exams and find summer jobs. Michael gives me his fraternity pin. Andy gives Shannon a ring. We shriek and gauge the princess cut stone, big glitter on a little hand. We party, and we take honors. Callie is named to the Rho society and wins the Dean’s Cup. It’s the first time a girl has ever won. 

We continue to giggle and continue to lie, and we haven’t spoken since the day we accepted our diplomas, grinning for the photographer. See us embrace in our white dresses, arms intertwined. Feel the sun warm our faces as we press them together—cheek to cheek—and roll back our lips for the camera, perfect orthodontia our dowries and our résumés. The scent is an accord of turned earth and roses, with hints of crisp linen and lies, the subtle base notes linger: verdigris, and rot. Breathe it in and listen to the sweet birds chirping. Watch as we drop each other’s hands, pack our stuff, and leave Rho behind.

Zombie.

#

Karma is Callie’s servant. She rushes to a big life, a big job, becoming an unhaunted and well-hedged power, the kind an old college friend couldn’t contact. If she tried, she’d get a form email, or nothing, in return. Shannon and Andy buy a cottage in the same pretty suburb where Michael and I live, with our three littles. She hustles her twins out of the park if she spots me coming with the stroller, and I don’t watch the back of her dark head as walks away. Johnna is a songbird in the gilded city, a soprano lauded for her heartbreaking tones. 

When I book tickets for the opera, the diva is taken ill; an understudy stepping in. We’re about to leave the theater, when I turn and catch a pale face at the edge of stage. “Just a sec, hon,” I say to Michael, “I forgot my…” I run back to her. She stares down at me. 

“What did you say to her? That night?”

Johnna doesn’t blink, gives herself a little shake. “That’s what you want to know?” I don’t think she’ll answer, but then, she says, “I told her that I’ve never loved life more.”

Michael and I have too much to drink and take an Uber home. We make love and sleep too late, letting the kids go to Pop Tarts and screens. My oldest crawls into our bed, lugging a box I’d tucked in the back of a closet with our Halloween decorations and Michael’s old lacrosse gear. 

“Look what I found, mommy.” I smooth her golden hair, and she shows me a photo. Gathered in front of a graceful white brick façade: Fifteen young women in cap and gown, draped in satin Rho Pi stoles, pink roses fastened in their hair. “It’s so pretty. Is that you, mommy?” A sixteenth figure floats through the scene, teeth bright razors, collar of mossy pearls: a shadow hung in desiccate petals, roses tipped in blood.

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