Brimstone Read online

  “Oh? Are you a writer?”

  The woman was like a terrier on a rat. My hole was getting deeper and she was digging in behind me. “I love literature. I’ve thought about being a professor, like my father.”

  “Ah, yes. Dr. Quinn. He was a TA when my husband was in college here.”

  I jumped on the opportunity to turn the subject away from me. “Did you meet at Bedivere?”

  “Yes. We’re both active alumni. Your sorority will be a vital part of your lives during college, and for the Sigmas, it remains so well after graduation. We’re a special group.”

  Her hand touched my sleeve, and I felt a tingle, not on my arm, but in my brain. I stiffened, and I thought about my psychic exercises for dummies, about putting up a shield between us. Whether it worked or not, I wasn’t sure, but there was no repeat of last night’s voyeur-vision.

  “Sigmas form a close bond, Maggie,” Victoria continued seamlessly, as if she’d noticed nothing odd in my reaction. “You’ll see what I mean, if you decide to join us.”

  Fortunately, she excused herself to introduce the skit, saving me from the most obvious response to that.

  “ ‘Resistance is futile.’ ” A fraternity guy, slumped in his desk in the back of the classroom, read aloud from the latest Phantom Rushee report while we waited for Dr. Hardcastle to arrive. “ ‘All will be assimilated. Come into the light, where all have shiny, shiny hair and many, many boyfriends.’ ” His buddies, all wearing some part of the Greek alphabet, laughed heartily. I wondered if they’d be so amused if the Phantom had been a guy rushing a fraternity.

  He continued his recitation: “ ‘Unfortunately for the Sigma Alpha Xis, my mother always told me that if it looks too good to be true, it probably is.’ ”

  The guy one seat down snatched the paper away. “She ragged on the SAXis? Man. This girl has balls.”

  Frat Man grabbed his newspaper back. “She’s got to rag on them all, dipwad. It’s like, equal time in the media or something.”

  “That’s political campaigns, asshole.”

  Our class, by the way? Media and Communication. This is your brain on testosterone.

  “I wonder if she’s hot.”

  “She’s probably some militant feminist lesbian.”

  “Lesbians are hot, dude.”

  Behold, the future broadcast executives of America.

  My days had begun to bleed together. The last night of Rush was Preference Night, when the sororities invited only the girls they were prepared to give a bid. There were only two parties, so we—the rushees, I mean—had to narrow the choices, too.

  Leaving Hardcastle’s class, I’d glimpsed Cole as I passed the journalism lab, but as per our secret agent code, we did not make eye contact or acknowledge each other. I headed to the library to do some work and check my e-mail, and found a message waiting.

  From: cbaue​r@bed​ivere​u.edu

  To: might​yquin​n@mai​lbox.​net

  Re: Secret Squirrel Retirement

  I know we only made plans through Rush Week, but are you sure you don’t want to keep going and pledge? Think of the book you could write. Look at this: www.​newsnet.​com/​articles/​greeksgowild

  The link was to a news article about the seedy underbelly of Greek life—drinking, drugs, hazing, promiscuity—and the media blackout on the whole Greek system. How, unless an event got onto the police blotter, no one really knew about day-to-day life on Greek Row. This was what Ethan Douglas at the Avalon Sentinel had been talking about when he said my article lacked anything newsworthy.

  The thing was, the longer the Phantom’s opinions appeared in the Report, the greater the chance that I would be discovered. If I actually pledged a sorority—

  My phone started vibrating across the table. I picked it up and leaned forward into the study carrel to whisper, “Hello?”

  “It’s Holly. Can you come to my room? We need to do an intervention.”

  “What?”

  “The Deltas cut Tricia.”

  “I’ll be right there.” I’d jotted down her dorm and room number and closed my laptop before I realized that I was treating this like a real emergency—which was the other danger of continuing my undercover work. Perspective could be a slippery thing. How easy would it be to lose it?

  “I don’t understand!” Tricia sobbed as she sat between us on Holly’s bed in Sutter Hall. Her hands were full of soggy Kleenex, and her eyes puffy and red. “I did everything right. I studied the house and I got my hair done and I bought new clothes and the right kind of purse.”

  “You did great,” said Holly, rubbing her back in a soothing rhythm. I looked at Tricia’s handbag, wondering what was so special. She’d dumped it onto the floor, along with her books, by the room’s built-in double desk. “They’re idiots. You’re beautiful and sweet.”

  “Much too sweet for the Delta Delta Gammas,” I told her.

  “I should have dyed my hair.” Miserably, she fingered one of her glossy brown curls. “That’s what the consultant said, if I wanted to go DDG.”

  I had to speak up, because even undercover, there was only so long I could keep repressing my opinion. “If you ask me, you should be thanking your lucky stars that you aren’t stuck for the next four years with a bunch of skinny clones, making yourself sick and miserable to be someone you’re not.”

  “But what am I going to do?” She lifted her tissue-filled hands helplessly. “How will I get to know people? How will I get anywhere in life? When I called my mom, she said now I’ll never find a husband!”

  “Oh, for God’s sake.” My sympathy went a lot farther than my patience. Holly swiftly intervened before I could say something really unfortunate.

  “Here.” She went to her bureau drawer and brought back an airline-sized bottle of vodka, handing it to Tricia. “Drink this. Then you can lie down for a few minutes, and pull yourself together in time for the parties tonight. Those aren’t the only Greeks in the sea.”

  Tricia made a brave face and unscrewed the cap. “You’re right,” she said, throwing back her shoulders and then throwing back the liquor, downing all three ounces in two deep swallows.

  “Wow,” I said.

  She gave a coughing wheeze, a relaxed smile on her face. “I feel much better now.”

  Luckily, we were standing there to catch her when she slid off the bed and into careless oblivion.

  Holly and I managed to get Tricia back to her own dorm room; the major obstacle, once we got her upright, was to keep her from calling out “Screw the Delta Delta Gammas” to everyone we passed, especially after that one frat boy called back, “Been there, done that.”

  We put her to bed, made sure she was still breathing—snoring, actually—then grabbed a couple of hamburgers from the cafeteria before heading back to Holly’s room in Sutter Hall.

  I sat cross-legged on the extra bed, the Styrofoam to-go box in my lap. I’d assumed Holly had a roommate, but it turned out she was just schizophrenic. The decorating scheme was half Posh Spice, half David Beckham—designer sheets on the bed, soccer trophies on the shelf, all wrapped in a subtle scent of Prada perfume mixed with eau de athletic shoe.

  “I don’t get it,” I said around a french fry. “My mom was in a sorority, but she never made me feel like I had to join one to be a success.”

  “Was her mom Greek?”

  “No, they were German.” Holly rolled her eyes at the feeble joke. “But really. Come on. It’s such a cliché, the carboncopy girls and the MRS degree.”

  “Where do you think clichés come from?” She flipped her hair over her shoulder and took a bite of burger. For a lanky girl, she could pack away the cals. “You’re going to pledge with me, right?”

  “What?”

  “SAXi.” She swallowed her mouthful and looked at me levelly. “You’re not going to make me go in alone, are you?”

  There was nothing helpless about Holly—competent, confident, down to earth. But something about the way she said that … She munched on her
burger as if we were discussing a trip to the mall, but something underneath that thrummed with the tension of checked emotion.

  “What makes you think they’re going to invite me?” I asked, resisting the pull of my crusader instincts.

  “Only Sigmas know Sigma criteria.” She turned her careful attention to tucking a tomato slice back into her burger. “But I’ve got a feeling.”

  I understood about feelings. My thoughts turned to Tricia, who was a little silly but not at all atypical of the girls going through Rush, hanging not just four years of hopes on the outcome of this week, but certain that their foreseeable futures hinged on what letters they pinned on their lapels. Bad enough that the Greeks considered themselves better than the rest of us. Normal, likable people seemed to think so, too. It seemed to me there was a pertinent, immediate need to puncture these pretensions.

  “Okay,” I said, decisively. “If they give me a bid, I’ll pledge.”

  “I knew it.” She grinned and wiped the mustard off her fingers. “We’re going to be pledge sisters!”

  She stuck out her hand and I clasped it, my guard completely down. Sight and taste and touch exploded like paparazzi flashbulbs in my brain: Holly in a private-school blazer and scratchy plaid skirt; on the soccer field, with no one in the stands to watch her; arguing with an elegant auburn-haired woman; then sneaking drinks in her room, amber in the glass, smooth and smoky on her tongue, the one oasis of color and warmth in her cold marble house.

  It lasted the space of one caught breath. This time, my stomach stayed down; only my heart leapt, beat against my breastbone as I tried to get my bearings. Back in the dorm room, dizzy and befuddled.

  Holly stared at me strangely. My hand still rested in hers. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah.” I had to try again, with more confidence. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

  Only I wasn’t. I was slipping a psychic gear, and no book could help this dummy now.

  8

  Gran took the teapot out of its cozy, poured a cup, and pushed the sugar bowl across the table to me. “Now, drink that and tell me again. Slowly this time.”

  The tea was almost the color of coffee. I like it strong and sweet when I’m in a panic. The first sip burned the roof of my mouth, but the pain was psychologically grounding.

  “I don’t know what else to say.” The china cup barely rattled as I set it in the saucer. “I’ve never had vision things like that before. Not all flashy and … visiony.” There were cookies, too, but even the rich chocolate smell wasn’t enough to tempt my stomach out of its knot. “Maybe I’ve got a tumor.”

  Gran gave a dismissive snort and stirred her tea, the spoon clinking against china. “You don’t have a tumor.”

  “All I know is that when this started happening to Cordelia on that show Angel, she went into a coma and died.”

  “Honestly, Maggie. Do you get all your psychic instruction from TV and movies?”

  “No. I have a book, too.”

  She set her cup on the table. We were in the breakfast nook of her kitchen, as bright and cheery a place as I knew. Gran’s house was all about tea and cookies and comfort. Though not always comfort in the way I envisioned. She had a limited tolerance for self-pity.

  Folding her hands in her lap, she asked in a pointedly prim tone, “You consider a Dummies book the exhaustive source?”

  I picked up my cup, but it was still too hot to drink. “It isn’t like they have classes at the Y, Gran. You said I have to work it out my own way, and I’m trying.”

  “That’s true.” She softened, reached to cover my hand with hers. I tensed, waiting for the psychic shock treatment.

  I did feel something. Love, which smelled just like Gran’s face cream, the one she’d used when I was a kid; security, which tasted like Earl Grey tea.

  My eyes sought hers. “Did you do that on purpose?”

  “What do you think I did?” she asked, withdrawing her hand, her expression that of a patient teacher.

  “Kept your baggage, I guess, from hitting me in the head.”

  She rose from her chair. “Come to the study.”

  I followed her through the living room into the second bedroom, which had been in use as a study for as long as I could remember. When I stayed with Gran as a kid, she would put a soft pallet on the floor, and I would sleep among the books. When I got older, I stuffed my blanket into the crack beneath the door so that the light wouldn’t show, and I could read all night.

  Today, the blinds were drawn and the lamp that Gran switched on was golden and warm. She went to a corner and ran her fingers over the spines of a hodgepodge of new and old volumes.

  “Does your book talk about using imagery to build up defenses?”

  “I guess.” There was a section about protecting yourself from negative energy. Naturally, I’d been pretty interested in that. “The guy talks about surrounding yourself with a halo of love and pixie dust and unicorns. Like that would last a second against some Hell-spawned demigod.”

  Gran paused to look over her shoulder, amused. “Well, pixie dust is sufficient for most people. What do you imagine?”

  I fiddled with an incense burner, collapsing a spent cone of ash and releasing the scent of rosemary into the air. What was Gran trying to remember, I wondered. Maybe my granddad. I hadn’t even known him, but I got a sense of him in this room, a big, ruddy-cheeked man who loved to sit in the armchair with a glass of scotch and a mystery novel.

  Maybe this vision thing didn’t have to be horrible scary.

  Pulling a book from the shelf, Gran faced me, expectantly. What had she asked? What did I imagine when I thought about psychic protection.

  “The Millennium Falcon,” I said. She laughed immediately, and then again as I explained. “You know when the TIE fighters are swarming in, and Han Solo is telling Chewbacca to raise the deflector shields?”

  “Whatever works, I suppose.” She laid a book in my hands. It was glossy but well used, a Practical Guide to Meditation. “Maybe you can add some of those to your exercises. I used that to”—she debated the right word—“insulate my ‘baggage’ from you. You could use the same thing to insulate yourself from things you brush up against.”

  “Thanks, Gran.” I flipped through the pages of the book. It had big pictures and examples and step-by-step instructions. I liked it already. “So you don’t think this is weird that I’ve suddenly got a new superpower?”

  “No, because I don’t think it’s new.” She straightened a picture, one of me and my parents at Disneyland. “You repressed your Sight for seventeen years. I think now it has to catch up with you. Naturally, you’re going to have some growing pains.”

  She switched off the lamp and I followed her out into the living room. “Why was it so easy for you to accept your gift?”

  “I suppose because I grew up in the old country.” The lilt of her accent deepened when she talked about Ireland. “It was a simpler age. We didn’t have a television, and I didn’t even learn to drive until I came to America.”

  “Really?”

  “You’re very worldly and cynical here, and the need for proof blinds people to what may only be taken on faith.”

  I thought about that while I sat at the kitchen table, where my tea was now cool enough to drink. What she had said was true. My never-was-boyfriend studied the occult and my best friend was a witch. I’d had a demon stalker and lived to tell about it. But my first thought with the visions was that I must be going crazy.

  It made me wonder how many things there were in the world that people just dismissed as coincidence or fluke, never realizing the extra layer of weird that overlay our mundanity, like a high-frequency radio station that most people’s tuners never reached.

  9

  Rush, I wrote, sitting cross-legged on my bed, wearing my rattiest pajamas and stripped of the makeup and jewelry that Mom had insisted were compulsory for the final round of parties, is like courting. First round is like speed dating. You rotate at the ding of a silent
bell, learning more about someone from their dress and manner than from any rote list of banal questions. (What’s your major, for example.)

  The second round is the movie date. Can you agree on explosions vs. romance? Maybe a thriller for compromise. How will you spend your future time together?

  Third round: dinner date. Your beau puts on the Ritz, shows off a little, and you learn if he makes an annoying smacking sound when he chews.

  And finally, Preference Night: meet the parents. Not a proposal just yet, but a test run. A peek into the fold.

  I downed the last swig of my latte. It was stone cold, picked up on my way home from Greek Row, since I knew Cole would be waiting to slip my column into place, just in time to get Friday’s edition of the Report to the printer. The school paper had a narrow window on the press—in between the Sentinel and the direct mail going out to advertise the weekend’s sales.

  Like my psychic education, my dating experience mostly came from the movies, too. But it wasn’t hard to extrapolate. The two preference parties I’d gone to that night—the Zetas and the SAXis—had been intimate, one-on-one conversations. At each sorority a girl met me at the door and showed me around the house, including her own room. At the Zeta house, they’d found my mother’s picture on the wall, and I laughed to see her hair teased up like a brunette Madonna, circa “Material Girl.”

  Kirby had met me at the SAXi house. I’d been hoping it would be Devon. Maybe I should have been flattered that the president escorted me room to room, but there was a probing intensity to her that put me on edge, and made me think about raising my deflector shields. She was full of questions. What were my ambitions, my goals? I wasn’t sad when she pawned me off on a pre-med student named Alexa, and went to circulate among the tiny number of girls that were there.

  It wasn’t too late to back out, to renege on my word to Holly. She didn’t need me, and I wasn’t going to change the world with my little commentary. The elite had always ruled and always would.