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CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I get back to the dorm to find Liv waiting up for me, eyes swollen and face splotchy.

It had to be hard for her to sit here in this lonely room while Rush carried on without her.

Because she’s being so brave for me, I tell her I went to GKA and DRB.

A lie, I know, but it seems ungrateful of me to not have gone.

And I’m honest about what’s most important: that I’ve decided to drop out of Rush.

She’s shocked. “Why?”

I let out a breath and sink to my bed. “It’s just...neither of them are a great fit. None of them are.”

“You’d be a perfect GKA.”

I shake my head. I don’t want to be a perfect GKA, or even a perfect DRB. I want to be a perfect Betts, whoever she is today or next week or next year. “For some reason, being in a sorority makes me feel boxed in. I mean, what if I want to do something that’s really un-GKA-like?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, like…like…” Skipping parties to practice witchcraft?

Spending weekends in the library? Taking eighteen credit hours a semester so I can minor in women’s studies?

But I can’t bring myself to say those words out loud.

Instead, I blurt out the most outlandish things I can think of, just to make my point, “Like going to a Buddhist retreat or…or getting a purple mohawk!”

“Please,” Liv snorts, “Like you’d get a mohawk.”

“But if I did, you know it’d be purple.”

That gets a little smile out of her. “Well, yeah.” She arranges herself cross-legged on her bed and looks at me with big, sad eyes. “It’s because of me, isn’t it?”

“No. Not in the way you think.” I cross the room and sit down next to her. She’s picking at her chipping nail polish, showering her lap in little blue flakes. “I admit the way you’re being treated—by grown women—is a pretty big turn off.”

“But that was because I…”

“Because you what? Hooked up with a guy that another girl liked? That happens every five minutes. It’s not an excuse for them to act like middle school mean girls.”

Liv dusts the polish flecks off her lap, then goes right back to picking her nails. “Okay, I admit Peyton’s a bitch, but some of the other girls were nice.”

“And so are a lot of girls who aren’t in a sorority,” I say. “Like you and me.”

She grins for a moment before her face droops yet again. “But you —you were made to be in a sorority.”

Ugh. Not what I want to hear. “You mean made by my mom . This week showed me it’s what she wants, not what I want.”

“Speaking of your mom, how are you gonna break it to her?”

I groan and flop onto my back on her bed. “Can I just lie and pretend I joined GKA?”

Liv barks a laugh. “You can try.”

Yeah, Mom knows every detail of sorority life. She’d be on to me within a week.

From Liv’s bed, I have a full view of my neglected faerie wings on the top shelf of my wardrobe. A sudden shot of energy brings me to my feet and sends me across the room to retrieve them. They no longer smell like beer and smoke, but they’re bent beyond all recognition.

Liv flops onto her side. “What are you doing?”

I turn the wings this way and that, inspecting them from all angles. “I’m gonna fix these.”

“Why?”

“Why not?” I use my desk chair as a step stool so I can hold the wings up on the wall between the bookshelf and my bed. “What do you think?”

She props up on an elbow. “Actually, that’s kinda pretty.”

I fiddle with the height and position. “If they’re here, they’d catch the light from the window.” There’s a silver thread woven in the tulle that would sparkle in the afternoon sun.

“I’ll bet the art supply shop has craft wire,” Liv offers. “Let’s go this weekend.”

I set the wings atop the bookshelf, arranging them carefully like they’re already mended. “Alright, it’s a plan.”

The next night, Mom calls me, all fired-up to hear which sorority I’ve joined.

Over the past twenty-four hours, I’ve been rehearsing this conversation in my mind.

I’ve considered telling her I went through the process but didn’t get any bids from my top choices.

I’ve also been tempted to say I joined DRB, hoping it will dampen her enthusiasm for sorority talk.

But mostly I’ve been trying to find the right words to use so she can understand the truth.

“So what are you?” She’s breathless with excitement. “KPT? DAE? GKA?”

“Ummm.” I can’t remember a single phrase I planned to use.

“None of those?”

“No.” I bite the bullet. “I dropped out.”

“Of school or Rush?”

I’m aghast. “Not school! ”

She cranks up aghast to horrified. “You dropped out of Rush ?!”

“Yes.”

“Is this because of Olivia and that boy she stole?”

“Mom! She didn’t steal him, and no, it’s not because of Liv.”

She nearly wails, “Then why in heaven’s name did you drop out?” You’d think I was telling her I got arrested.

I try to explain, taking the angle I used with Liv—that I couldn’t find a sorority that I felt was a perfect fit.

“A perfect fit?” Mom scoffs. “Betts, you don’t pick a sorority that fits, you pick one that you want to be like. Then you make yourself fit them .”

And that’s exactly why I bailed.

I give up trying to explain and instead shilly-shally around all her insults and questions until I finally have to say, “Well, none of it matters now. It’s too late. Rush is over.”

“If they want you, you can still get in.”

“I’ve made my decision.”

She moans, “I knew we shouldn’t’ve let you go out-of-state. But your father said you’d be fine.”

“I am fine.”

“Expect a call from him.” The line goes dead.

I blink at Liv, then back down at my phone. “I think my mom just hung up on me.”

A nervous giggle comes out of my best friend. Then one comes out of me. Next thing I know, we’re both rolling on our backs, laughing so hard we have to hold our stomachs. It’s not funny, really. It’s sad. But laughing is the release Liv and I both desperately need.

I’d be lying if I said Mom’s disapproval doesn’t hurt, but it also makes me mad. Really stinkin’ pissed off.

“She’s certifiable,” I gasp. She’s going to sic Dad on me and when that doesn’t work, she’s going to try to ghost me until I give in. Watch her refuse to send me anything for my birthday next week. Whatever. Her gifts are never gifts anyway, they’re a means of control .

Dad calls the next morning. “Let’s pretend I tried to talk you into it.”

“Okay. I’ll say you did your duty.”

“Love you, sweetheart.”

“Love you too, Dad.”

But of all the reactions—sad, furious, or apathetic—it’s Zander’s that troubles me the most. Last night I texted him: I bailed on Rush .

Zander: Yeah?

Me: Yeah. Couldn’t find a good fit.

Zander: All the more time you can spend with me.

That was it. End of conversation. No expression of concern, no curiosity about why I dropped out. All that matters to him is that my availability won’t be compromised. I can continue to serve him and O-Chi at the level to which he’s become accustomed.

I think I prefer my mother’s indignation.

I spend most of my twentieth birthday in class, studying modern grammar and discussing Anglo-Saxon poetry.

It’s not a bad way to while away a birthday, in my opinion, but that’s not something I’d admit to most of my friends.

Except for maybe the Clairs. We’ve discovered all four of us have a gap at the same time between our Tuesday and Thursday afternoon classes, so we’ve started meeting at the Bobcat for a quick coffee.

When I tell them today’s my birthday, they’re delighted.

Aaron throws up his hands. “I would’ve bought your coffee for you.” He disappears and returns a minute later with a warm chocolate chip cookie from the cafe. “We’ll pretend there are candles on it.”

“Pretend, my ass,” Avery laughs. “I’m never without something to burn.” She takes a mint tin out of her cavernous purse and opens it up for us all to see. “I present to you…my travel altar.”

Inside the tin are several crystals, a mini statue—of Buddha? Venus of Willendorf? It’s too far away and too small for me to tell—a little pill baggie of herbs and, as promised, matches and three white birthday candles.

“Genius,” Leo murmurs.

I agree. “I’ll have to make myself one of those.” If only those kinds of mints didn’t make my eyes water.

Avery manages to spear the cookie with a candle, not quite in the center.

I bite my lip. “You all aren’t gonna sing, are you?”

“Of course we are,” Avery quips as she lights the candle. The cookie is too soft to hold it well, and it’s already tilting like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

I glance around the crowded lounge and wince.

“We’ll whisper-sing,” Aaron proposes.

“Okay, but you’d better hurry up. The candle’s not going to make it much longer.” It’s at a thirty-degree angle and dripping wax on my beautiful cookie.

Their whispered rendition of “Happy Birthday” is only marginally less embarrassing than a fully belted one. Everyone close by turns to see where all the hissing is coming from. Mostly they just smile and carry on with their business, but one cute guy mouths “Happy Birthday” as he passes by.

Leo asks me, “Are you twenty?” and when I nod, Avery says, “Oh well, no tequila shots until next year.”

I snort. “How about no tequila shots ever?” My one experience with them at an O-Chi party last year was enough for a lifetime.

I insist we split the cookie four ways, and as each of us enjoys our two bites, Avery enlightens us about some research she’s been doing. “Did you know they think psychic abilities run in families?”

“Who’s they?” Aaron asks.

“Jungians, psychologists, metaphysical experts.”

I’m skeptical, not about the science behind the theory, but about my family. I can’t think of a single soul in my bloodline who has even a drop of mystical power.

“It may not necessarily be one of your parents,” Avery admits.

“It could be someone generations back, a great-grandparent or a great-great-aunt or something like that. Most psychics find out they have at least one ancestor who was a little…” she wiggles her fingers as she tries to think of the word.

“Freakish?” I suggest. Touchy, sensitive, fearful, solitary?

“Freakish in their day, ” Avery agrees.

I suppose if you go back far enough, the townspeople would say your great-great-great-great-whatever was possessed by the devil.

History is full of misunderstood people who make sense to us now.

Look at Einstein. As a kid, his teachers thought he was unruly and uneducable.

Nowadays, we know he was a neurodivergent genius.

Aaron tips his head and adjusts his glasses. “I don’t think my ancestors left a bunch of journals or records or anything. So how do we find out if any of them were psychic?”

Avery shrugs. “We ask them.”

Beside me on the couch, Leo leans back and smiles. “Can’t get more straightforward than that.”

For the umpteenth time, Aaron and I are left to blink at one another, utterly lost.

“We do an ancestor ritual,” Avery says, as if it’s explanation enough.

Aside from Christianized westerners, I know pretty much every other culture in the world and throughout all time, has practiced ancestor worship; whether that’s building them a shrine and giving them offerings, or seeking their guidance and protection.

Actually, it’s kind of sad that we westerners don’t.

Despite my doubts about my lineage, I’m intrigued. “I’m in,” I say.

The guys both throw in a “me too.”

So we make plans, not for this weekend, but the next, to get together at Avery’s and contact our dearly departed. As we part ways for our three o’clock classes, I ask Leo, “Are you going to do the ritual, too?”

“Sure. ”

“Even though you’re not psychic?”

“Even though I’m not psychic.”

“Do you think any of your ancestors were plant whisperers?”

He smiles. “I know some of them were. But don’t worry, I’ve got a million other questions for them.”

Yeah, me too. If getting in touch with my ancestors can help me better understand my ability, and better understand myself , then it’s exactly what I need.