Page 2

2

How the blonde, stick-thin, tall Naomi Dalton, the premed volleyball player, and the petite not-so-stick-thin half Italian, half Puerto Rican, English major Olivia made their friendship work, Olivia wasn’t exactly sure.

Was it because they were opposites? she sometimes thought. A mutual sense of the absurd?

Whatever it was, it just worked. Ever since freshman orientation the year before, they’d been finishing each other’s sentences like twin sisters and had become as thick as thieves. The entire school was still talking about Halloween last year when they had hilariously shown up to the big track party together as Barbie and Dora the Explorer.

“You’re going to kill me,” Naomi said now as she huddled in beside her.

“What? Why?” Olivia said.

“They’re calling a meeting,” she said.

Olivia rolled her eyes. Naomi was rushing the campus’s snootiest sorority, Lambda Kappa Delta. Olivia wasn’t. She called it the Lamb Duh Society.

“Now? On a Thursday!” Olivia said. “THE hot party here is just getting started and now you have to leave to swallow goldfish or something? You of all people don’t need friends, Naomi. Why don’t you just drop it?”

“You know why,” Naomi said, lifting her vodka and pineapple with a frown.

Olivia actually did know. It was her mother. Naomi’s mother was a Beckford alumna and a former Lamb Duh Society debutante herself. She was also a dopey, prying desperate housewife type from Greenwich who liked to run Naomi’s life like she was her life-size flesh-and-blood personal Barbie doll instead of her daughter.

“Mommie Dearest strikes again,” Olivia said. “Why did you even room with me? You should have just brought mumsy with you. She would have loved that.”

“This really sucks,” Naomi said. “I hate this. The music is just getting started and we were planning tonight all week and—”

“And it’s okay. I’ll live,” Olivia said. “You can go. I get it. Duty calls.”

“Oh, screw you. Duty calls,” Naomi said, sticking her tongue out. “And why don’t you rush with me already? There’s still time. We could still be roomies next year and there’s a cook at the sorority house. And as a bonus, there’ll be no more easy listening to the pleasant tones of that mysterious guy down the hall who hacks up a lung every morning. It’ll be a total win-win!”

“I can’t,” Olivia said.

“Why not?” Naomi said.

Olivia had put some thought to the very same question and the answer was twofold.

The first part was obvious. She was intimidated. Some rich kids like Naomi couldn’t be cooler, but she was the exception not the rule. Most of the sorority kids were pretty snotty toward scholarship kids who had only learned to eat with the one fork and didn’t really know how to treat the help as they actually had to clean up after themselves.

And the second answer was, what was the motivation? A social connection for a better job after graduation? Olivia didn’t want to kiss ass. No way. Or even need to. Not her. She had talent.

She’d rather just do what she’d always done. Put her nose to the grindstone and outwork and outdo the rest.

“Well, well. How do you like that?” Naomi finally said. “Olivia Ramos is at a loss for words. A first. Maybe that’s because there is no real reason. Please just think about it, okay? Some of the girls are really cool.”

“I will,” Olivia lied as she hugged her roomie bestie and then waved goodbye.