Dirty Rush Read online

  This night kept finding ways to get worse.

  But then, like magic, Steph and Olivia popped out of the crowd on either side of me, followed shortly by Colette in all her hair’s glimmering glory.

  “We just saw what happened and you definitely shouldn’t leave yet,” Olivia chirped.

  She put a limp hand on my shoulder. “Don’t even worry about it. Jack’s a flirt and can be an ass and that skank’s a Beta Pi and she’s really stupid, like actually dumb. You should see her Instagram. It’s all pictures of Ke$ha and inspirational quotes and cats that aren’t even hers.”

  The “skank” must’ve heard Olivia’s Instagram insult, because she approached us with a scowl on her face to end all scowls.

  “What’d you say, bitch?” she spat at Olivia, pushing her from behind. I guess this girl was really into pushing. Is this about to be a fight? Is this what these girls do? I was scared.

  “Hello, Blair. Belligerent as per usual, I can see,” said a very serious Colette, positioning herself directly in front of her.

  “Don’t start with me, Colette, this is not about you,” Blair said, trying to push past Colette, who was firmly standing her ground.

  “That’s what you don’t seem to understand. In fact, this seems to be a recurring issue with you, Blair. I don’t think you’re able to grasp the concept that when you fuck with one of us, you fuck with all of us. Unfortunately, that means you have to deal with me.”

  “Who even is that girl and why are you acting like her mom? Can you just get out of my fucking way?” attempted a flustered Blair.

  “Not until I let you know that from here on out, there will be no trace of you at this house or anywhere near a Beta Zeta sister without major repercussions.”

  Meg put her hand on my shoulder and whispered, “Watch the master at work.”

  “Because,” Colette continued, “if you do make the grave and hazardous decision to involve yourself in any of my sisters’ lives, I will personally organize and ensure your social ostracism. The truth is, Blair Witch Project, you’re bad business for all of us. I’m surprised you haven’t been expelled yet for last semester’s string of D’s in not one, not two, but all five of your 101 courses.”

  “Oh, so you’re stalking me now?”

  “Honestly, it’s quite an accomplishment to be that lazy. It’s also quite an accomplishment to give an entire varsity crew team chlamydia. So, congrats.”

  “Yeah, thanks a lot for that!” screamed someone from the crowd.

  “You short bitch!” screamed another random voice.

  Blair was utterly speechless and turning ghost white. But it wasn’t over.

  “I can’t have you coming to another event and causing these scenes. Lest we forget the Kappa Date Party last spring when you ended up in the back of a cop car for shitting in public.”

  “That’s not even true.”

  “I’m not saying it’s true. I’m saying it might be true, which is actually worse.”

  Everyone in the room was now watching the drama. The attention had shifted from my fall, thank the Lord. I scanned the room for Jack, but he was nowhere to be found.

  “So, pretty please,” Colette said with a big smile, “before you end up doing something else trashy and shameful, take your Abercrombie skirt and the advanced cultures of mold growing on those wretched Old Navy flip-flops, and get the fuck away from all of us. Preferably until the end of time.”

  All the color had drained from Blair’s face; a single tear rolled down her cheek.

  “You’re a cunt,” she whispered.

  “Yes, I am. Now I think you should apologize to Taylor for pushing her and ruining her dress. And then you can apologize to everyone in here for being a sloppy whore in general.”

  Blair turned her low gaze toward me. “I’m sorry.”

  “What are you sorry for?” Colette nudged.

  “I’m sorry for . . . for . . .”

  “For generally being a sloppy . . .”

  “A sloppy whore.”

  “And also?”

  “And for pushing you and ripping your dress. It’s a cute dress. Was.”

  “That wasn’t so hard, was it? Now, do the right thing and leave.”

  Blair hung her head and walked out. Holy fuck.

  “And that’s how it’s done,” Meg said, turning to me and winking.

  Colette pulled out her phone and started texting.

  “What size are you? A two?” she asked.

  “Um, yeah. I’m a two. Why?”

  “We’re taking care of this,” Meg said excitedly. “We look out for each other. When a sister is in danger of embarrassment, humiliation, or excessive partying to the point of potential mouth-herpe contraction, one of us is always there to rescue her.”

  “Well, thanks. That was really embarrassing.”

  “We know,” Colette said with a bored look on her face.

  Meg produced some sort of clear cocktail from behind her, handed it to me, and then clicked her cup against mine.

  “We shall steadfastly love each other.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “It’s the Beta Zeta motto. We’re not all greasy sluts in sweatpants and UGGs. Some sororities are real sisterhoods.”

  “She’s almost here,” Colette said to Olivia and Steph.

  “Who’s almost here?” I asked.

  “Just come with us,” said Olivia as she and Stephanie took me by the arms and led me back up the stairs to the entrance of the secret basement. Right as we were about to get to the top, the door opened to reveal a pint-size red-haired girl standing with a robe in one hand and a garment bag in the other.

  “Hi, girls! Hi, Taylor; I’m Hailey. Put this on.”

  “Thank you, Hailey. Now shut the fuck up,” Steph said, grabbing the robe and thrusting it into my hands.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, slipping the robe over my shoulders.

  “Just put it on. Hailey is on Slop Patrol this semester. She’s on call at every party in case of an emergency like your recent mishap, after which it is her job to show up and silently whisk you away to an undisclosed location, where she will help you get your shit together so that you don’t end up looking like Amanda Bynes in tomorrow’s Facebook posts,” said Olivia giving Hailey a pointed look. “Thanks, hon,” said Olivia.

  “Oh, you’re totes welcome—”

  “Shut the fuck up, Hailey! No talking, remember?”

  I put the robe on, and Steph nudged me toward Hailey, who reached out and grabbed my hand. I pulled the hood of the robe over my head, and Hailey quickly led me upstairs to a bathroom at the end of a hallway.

  “Okay,” Hailey said, locking the door behind us and assessing the train wreck that was me. “Meg said via text that you scraped your knees, but holy shit, girl, it looks like you raped your knees. Sit down.”

  I sat on the edge of the toilet. Hailey pulled a first-aid kit out of her backpack, knelt in front of me, poured some hydrogen peroxide onto a cotton pad, and started cleaning up my wounds.

  “So are you rushing or what?” Hailey asked.

  “I don’t know . . . I hadn’t planned on it.” But I did know. I was not rushing.

  “You’re Taylor Bell, right? The girl who has, like, a huge legacy?”

  “Yeah. Would you mind telling me how everyone knows that?”

  “Everyone knows everything about everyone here.” She threw the bloody wad of cotton into an overflowing trash can. “You’re a fucking retard if you don’t rush. It would be like Kate Middleton telling Prince William that she didn’t want to marry him and, like, become the most powerful woman on earth.”

  “But she’s not the most powerful woman on earth . . .” I said.

  “But she is, if you think about it, you know?” She started dabbing Neosporin on the scrapes. “Like, if you were anyone else, you would have had to walk of shame yourself through that party, never to be seen or heard from again, and your only shot at Greek life would be joining an Asian sorority. Whic
h is actually not an easy thing to do. They test your coding skills before you can even pledge. At least that’s what I’ve heard.” Hailey put Band-Aids on my knees and wrapped them both in gauze.

  “So, I’m confused. Are you in Beta Zeta?”

  “I rushed last year and didn’t get Beta, so I’m kind of kissing ass this year. Basically, I’m the girls’ Fairy Slop Mother. I see it as an internship. I mean, all I want to do tonight is get shitfaced and make out with this really hot Jewish kid from my econ class, but if I fuck up, Beta Zeta will shun me and everyone on campus will hate me and then I’ll die all alone. Okay! Your knees are good to go. Sucks that you can’t wear shorts or dresses for a month, ’cause you have cute legs.”

  Hailey unzipped the garment bag and pulled out a pair of high-waisted, flowy floral pants and a crop top and handed them to me. “This crop top will make your boobs look huge and fake, which is a good thing—trust.”

  Once I’d changed clothes, I realized Hailey was right. My boobs did look amazing. Normally I’d never wear something so Vanessa Hudgens-y, but I kind of loved the way I looked in this outfit. I felt like a different version of myself. I felt like a girl who could belong here.

  There was a loud knock at the door.

  Over the party’s pumping music I heard someone shout: “It’s us. Open the door, bitches!”

  Hailey ran to the door and unlocked it. The door flew open to reveal Meg, flanked by Olivia and Steph.

  “Oh my God, you look amazing!” Steph screamed.

  My adrenaline had stopped pumping out of control and I could feel that my cheeks were their normal color again. These girls had just pulled me out of that type of awkward boy situation that can scar you for months. Maybe I didn’t really know as much about Greek life as I thought—maybe these girls were actually good people, and maybe I’d been too quick to judge them.

  As all these thoughts rushed through my head, Steph squeezed my arm and leaned in to me.

  “You wouldn’t happen to have any coke, would you?”

  “Not now, LiLo,” Meg interjected. “We need to get her back in the saddle.”

  When we got back down to the basement I could tell that the makeover had worked. People’s eyes were on me but it wasn’t the there’s-the-girl-who-just-fell-on-her-face look, instead I was getting jealous looks from the girls and wanna fuck looks from the guys. I spotted Jack across the room. He was also looking at me. I averted my eyes and put my hair up in a ponytail, trying to play it cool, but I could see in my periphery that he was beelining toward me.

  “Whoaaaaa,” he said. “You clean up nice, huh?”

  Ew, I thought. I hate when people say that.

  “Thanks, Jack.”

  “So . . .”

  “So . . .”

  “So, like . . .”

  “Are you having fun with your friend?” I asked.

  “Oh, Blair? She’s just a . . .”

  “Friend?”

  “Yeah. That’s what I was going to say.”

  “Ah. Cute.”

  He may have been adorable, but Jack was not the conversationalist I’d met in class. He was drunk, however.

  “You wanna come check out my room?”

  “Hmmmmm. I think I’ll pass.”

  I wanted to hang out with the Jack I thought I was meeting here, not the jackass he’d turned out to be.

  “Tay!” Meg squealed, pushing her way toward us. “You have to come with me, there’s an extremely babed-out business major who wants to meet you, and by ‘meet you’ I mean ‘bone you.’ ”

  As I was dragged away from Jack, I looked back just in time to hear him say, “See you in class, I guess?”

  “Yeah.” I flashed him a million-dollar smile. “I guess.”

  “Also,” Meg said as we walked away from Jack, “did you invite someone named Jonah? The door guy just texted me. They’re not letting him in.”

  3.

  HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII . . .

  “Can you please turn off your phone?”

  Those are the words that woke me from the deepest sleep I’d ever been in.

  “Taylor.”

  I did a quick body status check before opening my eyes.

  “Taylor?”

  Definitely hungover, definitely tired, my knees still felt like they’d been assaulted, but thankfully and perhaps most important, I recognized the feeling of my sheets against my skin. I was in my bed, in my dorm room. Thank you, Jesus, or whoever it was who got me home safe. The voice got louder.

  “TAYLOR!”

  I realized that the booming voice from across the room belonged to my generally quiet, adorably dweeby roommate, Morgan Hardy. She had short brown hair and a kind of smushed yet friendly face. She was not the type of girl who gave two fucks about how she presented and it totally worked for her. We didn’t really know each other yet, but here she was screaming at me to wake up. Ugh, dorm life was a bizarre thing to get used to.

  “What? I’m sleeping. Stop, seriously. Leave me alone.”

  “Your phone has been going off for, like, thirty minutes and it’s really annoying. I’m trying to sleep.”

  Last night? Had that happened?

  I couldn’t tell if what I remembered was real or just an intense dream. It was this strange combination of nostalgia and feeling completely detached from the events that took place. Things could have taken a very dark turn for me, but Meg, Sabrina, Colette, and the twins made sure that didn’t happen. The “incident” ended up being an afterthought—a minor blip, a footnote—to one of the craziest, most fun nights I’d had in a long time.

  But holy shit, my head felt like it was in a fucking vise. Switching from beer to Meg’s Adderall juice to vodka and sugar-free Red Bull to vodka and regular Red Bull to Jell-O shots had not been a good idea.

  I needed to come out of my sheet cocoon, deal with the day, my hangover, and my annoyed roommate. It took a few moments to focus on any of my surroundings. Two plain wooden desks, two ugly beds, a mini fridge, and a weird framed poster of some ironic eighties movie called The Lost Boys hanging over Morgan’s bed. I could really only muster enough energy to say one thing.

  “I’m a cliché.”

  “Sorry to rain on your existential parade, but can you turn off your phone? Your choice of text alert leaves a lot to be desired.” Morgan smiled.

  “Yeah, sorry.” I turned off the ringer.

  The roommate situation could have been a lot worse. I lucked out. Jonah’s roommate, Christopher, for example, had three gerbils that he slept with. So far, Morgan had actually been totally respectful, clean, logical, and fair in her cohabitational philosophy. She seemed sane and had already declared herself a poli-sci/gender studies double major, and we hadn’t even had our first full week of classes. Most mornings she was up and out by eight, so we didn’t cross paths too much.

  “I’m so hungover,” I moaned.

  “I’m so shocked.”

  “Sorry about my phone. I know we discussed being mindful of each other’s sleeping schedules, but always feel free to just come over and turn off the ringer if that ever happens again.”

  “Oh great. Is this going to be happening a lot? Because it’s a little bit hard to sleep when your roommate is sitting up in her bed at four in the morning eating a slice of pizza and watching Pretty Little Liars without headphones in.”

  “Oh my God. I did that?”

  “Yeah, pretty much.”

  “Fuck me, I’m sorry. It’s not really my style to go out that hard. I don’t know what came over me.”

  “No worries. Have your fun. Freshman year, first frat party, I assume . . . Hot guys, pounding music, vomit. I get it. I tried to look for your phone while you were sleeping, but I think you were on top of it and I didn’t want to get fresh. We barely know each other.”

  Another text popped up.

  “I will definitely change that ringtone when I’m less hungover.”

  “Much appreciated.”

  It was from Jonah. His eighth
.

  Jonah 10:43AM Check Instagram

  Jonah 10:48AM Did you check?

  Jonah 10:48AM I tagged you in a few. Don’t hate me.

  Jonah 10:59AM Are you sleeping?

  Jonah 11:31AM Tay?

  Jonah 11:46AM I want Chuck Fils

  Jonah 11:46AM *Chick-fil-A

  Jonah 12:20PM I’m going to Chick-fil-A. Come

  An hour later I was sitting across from Jonah, who, despite having partied harder than I did last night, looked unscathed by the debauchery. He was silly handsome and if he wasn’t gay, Jonah would’ve probably been the sluttiest jock at our high school. Unfortunately, there hadn’t been too many options for him at Ballard.

  We were both wearing the unofficial uniform of the American student. On him: his CDU Swimming sweatshirt and a pair of Adidas track pants; on me: an oversized American Apparel cardigan, a nice clean pair of Lululemon leggings, and I hate to admit this, but my favorite, four-year-old purple UGGs. My hair was still wet from my shower, up in a little bun. Before me was a deluxe chicken sandwich, a large waffle fries, and a large Dr Pepper. At that moment, as I took my first few bites, there wasn’t a happier human being on earth. Chicken + Grease = Hangover Feeling Four Thousand Percent Better.

  “God forgive us for momentarily succumbing to the institution of Chick-fil-A despite their appalling homophobic beliefs—” I said with my mouth full of food.

  “Because this sandwich is so fucking good,” Jonah interjected.

  “Exactly,” I said.

  “Last night was insane,” Jonah said as he began to devour his second spicy chicken biscuit.

  “I know. But good insane. I was literally blackout and had to do some serious deleting and untagging on Facebook and Instagram on my walk over here.”

  “Me too. So, were all of those girls we were with last night BZs?”

  I could sense a dig in Jonah’s tone. He was never a big fan of Greek stuff—neither of us were.

  “Yep. All of ’em.”

  “Did you know them from before? Through Kelly?”

  “No. Literally, I met all of them last night for the first time. But they knew me.”

  “Is that the treatment they give to all legacies?”