The previous September, the Beta Zeta girls hosted a cruise on the Little Tobacco River that ran lazily through town and into the corn and tobacco fields that made up most of the area’s agricultural economy. Such cruises were part of the BZ program—invite some potential sisters for fall recruitment, some cute frat boys, and maybe even a former valedictorian or two. Midori and the BZ social team ordered T-shirts silk-screened with the BZ logo, and the words “Cruisin’ for Love.”
The next day, the event was renamed “Boozin’ for Love.”
The sisters and their guests took a bus from Greek Row for the hour-long drive out to the launch for the cruise. Midori and Sheraton sensed trouble nearly from the outset. Two of the frat guys—handsome and hopped- up—brought a stash of vodka.
“No one can smell it. No one can tell we’ve been prefuncing,” one of the guys told some girls in the back of the bus.
That might have been good advice, if the girls hadn’t started so early and been so eager to have fun.
Misty or Missy Johnson—no one really knew her, or her name—was the first to start throwing up. The bus pulled off the highway in Bakersville and the rest of the girls who were drinking fell in line. A wave of vomit roiled through the back of the vehicle. In less then two minutes, the sympathy pukers started in.
The bus driver, a big barrel-chested fellow with an accent as deep as an oil well, ignored the entire scene. He had a job to do and if he didn’t get the busload to the river in time, he didn’t get paid. He cracked a window and kept driving. By the time he arrived, things had calmed down a bit and he could later feign no knowledge of the chaos of the drive.
But it got worse.
Once everyone got on board the boat, the booze continued to flow. The Diet Coke bottles—liter-sized—were spiked with rum. One of the potential recruits brought enough marijuana that she could have made one of those airplane travel pillows out of her stash.
Both Sheraton and Midori did their best to try to stop the debacle.
“Hey, you guys,” Sheraton said, in near-tears, “we need to get control of this situation.”
She was met by blank stares.
Midori steadied herself with her hands on her hips. “She means it!”
Again, no response.
The captain’s voice over the loudspeaker did, however, get the point across. “I’ll have no hanky-panky or drinking on my vessel. My crew will be watching your every move. You signed a waiver to come aboard and I’ll hold you to it. No drinking. No smoking—or you’re kicked off. Thank you.”
The thank-you was a bit odd, but the man made his point. For a time, it seemed that order was restored. The boat went down the river. The DJ played eighties music stalwarts like Bananarama and Tears for Fears, and the girls who weren’t drunk had a good enough time.
One had too good of a time.
Dressed in a quasi-sailor suit and tennis shoes, the woman in charge of the tortilla chips and salsa went back into the boat’s storage locker off the galley. Despite the rumble of the motor, she heard the kind of noises that belonged more in a motel room than on a boat.
“What’s going on here?” she asked once inside.
One of the BZs was on her knees, her bleached blond head down, in position while a frat boy with his brown eyes rolled back into his head moaned at her, “Don’t stop! Keep going! You’re doing good!”
“Enough!” the woman yelled at the two of them. The BZ snapped to, wiping her mouth. But the young man looked right at her.
“You next?” he asked.
“I’m going to tell the captain and you’re going to swim back to the dock.”
“Sure? In your dreams.”
Of course, there was no walking the plank. The kid zipped up his pants and thought he’d be able to disappear into the crowd. But he couldn’t. The lady in the sailor suit never forgot a face. The incident was written up and made its way into the annals of disastrous sorority social events.
The only saving grace for Sheraton and Midori was that they hadn’t been drinking and that they’d done their best to thwart disaster. The women at the national office gave them copies of a popular self-help book that came with a promise in its title:
Although a communication major, Sheraton Wilkes was technologically challenged when it came to helping out with the presentation part of the chapter meeting. She had an excruciatingly difficult time advancing the PowerPoint slides. Jenna took over the remote clicker midway through the presentation.
“No worries, Sheraton. I’m a bit of a control freak anyway,” she said. The girls all laughed. Jenna, however, was disappointed. Part of the strategy from Nationals was to get the president involved in the presentation.
“If she clicks it, she’ll stick with it,” was the advice of the fifty-five-year-old sorority sister in the deep red suit and triple strand of pears. Real pearls, at that.
On the last slide, Jenna looked around the dining room at the girls who were about to be drafted into an army of representatives for a faltering chapter.
“Each of you holds a great power here,” she said. “We want you to succeed. We want you to be all that you can be.”
The girls stood and applauded. Jenna smiled, but she felt silly. She said the text as it was written, but it always felt a little over the top. Almost like it was an ad for the Army.
“Thank you,” she said. “I know you guys can do it. I know you guys are ready to make sure that next year is unforgettable.” She stopped and self-edited. “But not as unforgettable as last year, that’s for sure.”
The girls laughed. They got it.
Chapter Thirty-three
It was worse than a couple of angry midgets wrestling in the closet. A pillow over the head did nothing.
The intermittent banging of the pipes reverberated from the bathroom with its Vera wallpaper and cheerfully outdated daisy appliques. It was 2:00 A.M. and Jenna Kenyon knew she couldn’t sleep in that room. She grabbed the pillow and a blanket, and started for the TV lounge, where she figured she could grab a spot on the couch. The TV was still on, and all of the couches were occupied with young women glued to a dating-show marathon that featured four pretty women in an RV vying for the affections of a smooth-chested hunk with a unibrow.
The BZ girls were sucking it in with a big fat straw.
“You’d think he’d wax his brow if he’s gonna wax his chest,” said one of the girls, a redhead in yellow pajamas with lips and fingers stained orange from Cheetos.
“No kidding,” a brunette agreed.
“I still think he’s so hot.”
“Oh, yeah. Superhot.”
Jenna lingered for a moment, but none of the girls saw her. And she decided that there was no way she was going to kick them out of their cozy cocoon and away from their inane conversation so she could crash there. She doubted they’d offer, and if they did, they’d do so begrudgingly. It was too late to impose anyway. It didn’t matter that the TV show they were riveted to was nothing short of complete garbage.
Tired and beginning to feel stressed, Jenna decided to go upstairs to the sleeping porch. She hated the sleeping porch at her BZ house at Cascade University, and knew this was no better. Dozens of beds. Lights always out. A snorer or two in utter denial. It was a sleepy girl’s nightmare. She tiptoed inside, and searched for a bed as
