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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The next afternoon, I check my email on the way back from my three o’clock class and sure enough, I have one from Jeanine.

DRB, KPT, and GKA have all invited me back, but I hardly care.

I hurry the rest of the way to get to Liv, but I know as soon as I enter Newberry, the news isn’t good.

I push through the dark clouds that fill the hall and open the door to sobbing.

Sitting at her desk with her face buried in her arms, Liv wails, “They blackballed me. All of them. None of them want me.”

“Fuck,” I mutter as I drop to my bed. This is worse than I anticipated. Peyton not only turned all of KPT against Liv, but the other sororities as well. “Liv—I’m so, so sorry.”

She wipes her face with her sleeve, but there’s no stopping her tears. “You warned me, but I wouldn’t listen.”

“No one can blame you for that.”

“I’m so stupid. I mean, I actually thought they liked me.” Her eyes are swollen and underscored with running mascara.

I give up the fight against my own tears. “If they’d tried to get to know you, they would’ve liked you, Liv. It’s their loss. ”

She snorts and drops her head again. “Please. I’m a loser. And a skank.”

I rush to her. “Do. Not. Use. That. Word. You are not a skank. Peyton’s just a jealous, spiteful, hypocritical bitch. This is all on her and none of it’s on you.”

“I should’ve stayed away from Braden.”

“It’s not your fault he isn’t into her. She could blackball every girl he ever goes out with, but it’s not going to make him want her again.”

I get Liv out of her chair and over to her bed where I encourage her to lie down and let it all out. She lays her head on the pillow I place on my lap and lets me stroke her hair as she cries.

“It doesn’t matter now. The damage is done. All I wanted was to be in a sorority. To have fun sisters. Nice sisters. But none of them want me.”

It’s possible the sororities at the bottom of her list wanted her, but she’d eliminated them.

I can’t imagine DRB caving in to Peyton’s bullying, or calling another woman a skank.

I could point this out, but to what end?

If they didn’t appeal to Liv, she wouldn’t be happy compromising to be a part of them.

And as for the sororities who shunned her, I know Liv is better off without “sisters” who are so petty and cruel, but reminding her of that right now would be pointless. She needs time to let go of her dream.

Her sobs have subsided into hiccups. “Did you get bids?” she asks, voice tight and choked.

I nod, fighting to keep my expression neutral.

“KPT?”

Another nod.

“Good. I’d feel so bad if they blackballed you because of me.”

Yeah, they’re so noble. “I’m not going there tonight.”

Liv sits up. “Betts! You have to.” She looks like a wild woman with her red eyes and tangled hair.

I shake my head. “I don’t want anything to do with them.” I don’t tell her I never liked them in the first place; it would smack of ingratitude.

“But they want you. And your mom’ll…”

“If Mom loves them so much, she can join them herself. I’ll buy her a pretty pink KPT sweatshirt.”

“But what are you going to do with all those clothes she got you?”

I grin. “You and I will wear them to the dining hall.”

Liv actually returns the smile. “You’re still going to the other two tonight, aren’t you? GKA and DRB?”

“I don’t know.” This disaster has soured me on the whole business. I’m not sure I want to be a sorority girl, even a DRB.

“Go. For me,” she pleads. She’s been crying so hard she’s hyperventilating and sucking in her bottom lip.

My heart squeezes. “I’ll think about it.”

Insisting she needs something to do, Liv helps me pick out my round three outfit. Then I let her curl my hair into flawless beach waves.

On a whim, I hand her the faerie pin. “See what you can do with this.”

“Ooo, pretty. Where’d you get it?”

“Christmas gift.”

She slides it into the hair beside my temple. “It goes with your necklace.”

I don’t explain why.

After a quick dinner, I walk along East Main Street in my boots and pencil skirt, on my way to meet Jeanine. Maybe it’s the bobby pin, or maybe it’s the thought of the guy who gave it to me, but as I approach the meeting spot, I feel more and more empowered.

I stop to shoot a quick text and before I even get a reply, make a U-turn and head back to campus.

Leo’s exactly where he said he would be, in the library pacing anxiously between the fifteenth and sixteenth century American history shelves.

The moment he sees me, he reaches for me, and I step unquestioningly into his arms. Anyone could see us, but I don’t care.

Nor do I care that less than a week ago I wanted to throttle him for showing up at O-Chi.

Yeah, he badgered me about the company I was keeping, but only because he knows me. All of my layers.

And that’s why I want to be with him right now.

“What’s wrong?” he asks. “Your message scared me.”

My text was simple and brief: Are you busy? I need to see you.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. My fingers were too cold to type more.”

He leans back to study me. “What’s going on? Aren’t you supposed to be at Rush?”

“Yeah. Supposed to be.”

“What happened?” He tucks my hair behind my ear, his eyes drawn to the faerie at my temple. “Are you okay?”

I nod as we go further into the stacks and sit on the floor. I kneel beside his upraised knee and, at his insistence, tell him the story of the past three nights and what happened to Liv.

“So you never wanted to join KPT?”

“No. Never. I was just infiltrating them.”

He chuckles as he stretches out his legs and crosses them at the ankle. I smile inwardly at the familiar pose, and at the jeans and Doc Martens.

“I’m not all that shocked,” he says of Peyton’s actions. “It sounds like the selection process lends itself to those sorts of abuses.”

I wish I could disagree.

“And Liv still wanted you to go tonight?”

“Yeah. I told her there was no way I was gonna go to KPT, just the other two. And I was on my way there, but then…” I shake my head. “I just couldn’t.”

“Because of Liv?”

“No, because of me. Because I don’t want to. ”

“You don’t want to?” His dark brows disappear under his bangs. “So you’re not going to join a sorority?”

My one-word answer squeaks out of my tight throat. “No.” I think it surprises Leo and me both.

I’m not joining a sorority.

I tell him, “It’s something I always thought I’d do without question, you know? My family expected it, my friends expected it, Zander expected it.” I sigh while I shift my weight to one hip and lower my knees. “But I never thought about whether I really wanted to.”

I feel a little strange, kind of giddy, like I’m half out of my body. When I’m seized by a giggle, Leo tips his head in confusion. Then he smiles.

And my heart thumps double-time.

“It’s all your fault,” I say, hoping it sounds like an accusation. He’s the one who’s got me questioning my whole life.

He laughs. “I’ll gladly take the credit.”

I guess my accusation sounded more like a thank you.

“It’s Liv, too,” I admit. “Sad, isn’t it? That it takes my best friend’s heart getting broken for me to wake up and think.”

“We all have things we have to learn the hard way.” He gives my bent knee a squeeze. “So, what if the whole Liv fiasco hadn’t happened? Would you still be interested in joining a sorority?”

“Probably. Maybe.” I sigh. “But at some point, I think I’d realize it’s not for me.” I’m learning to recognize the restless feeling I get when I’m doing something that, underneath, I don’t want to do. It makes me feel confined.

I glance down to where Leo’s hand still rests on my leg. He has nice hands. Warm and strong. And around his middle finger he wears a handcrafted-looking silver ring that, for some reason, I never noticed until now.

I fiddle idly with it as I consider the repercussions of bailing out of Rush. “There’ll be a reckoning. My mom’ll disown me.”

Leo slides his fingers between mine. “What about Zander?”

“I don’t think he’ll care.” So long as I keep spending all my free time at O-Chi, it won’t matter to Zander if I have my own Greek letters to claim. I don’t say all this to Leo, though. It doesn’t feel right to talk to him too much about Zander.

Quickly, I say, “It’s Liv I’m worried about the most. It’s gonna take a while for me to convince her she isn’t the reason I dropped out.

” She’s threatened enough by the changes in me, and now her world’s been rocked.

Braden, her grades, getting blackballed.

I’m the only firm ground she has left to stand on.

“I guess all I can do is be honest with her.”

Leo gazes into the distance. “You can’t go wrong with honesty.”

“Even if she’s not going to understand?”

He licks his lips as he sharply exhales. “Even if she’s not going to understand.”

I don’t need to be an empath to tell he’s wrestling with something, some sort of personal conflict of his own. Maybe since I’m spilling my guts, he’ll feel more comfortable spilling his too. “What’s the matter?”

“Matter?” His eyes cut to mine with a flash of alarm. “Nothing.”

For the first time, I’m tempted to read him—psychically. But he wouldn’t want me to, and I can’t do it without him knowing. I rifle through my observations and memories, grabbing onto the one thing I think could be bothering him. “Is it weird now, you know, with Robin gone?”

“A little, yeah.”

“Are you friends or was she just a roommate?”

“We’re colleagues, mostly.” His eyes are fixed on our joined hands. “But friends, too. We’ve known one another for years.”

“Did she graduate?”

“She wasn’t a student.”

She wasn’t? Then why were they living together? Were they a couple?

It’s prying, but I have to know. “Then why was she here?”

Leo runs his free hand through his hair, the long, dark strands lifting then settling back onto his forehead, layer by layer. “She was working on some historical research.”

“Oh? Like on the Roanoke Colony and ley lines and all that?”