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In my imagination, Zeta Kappa was a flashing-black-light mess, people making out against the wall, alcohol spraying everywhere. In reality, it’s a charming old house from the outside that’s no one’s given enough love inside. None of the furniture matches, and most of it is falling apart. People are drinking and dancing and playing beer pong in small groups. There are people in UW jerseys and people in dresses and people in just jeans and T-shirts, and the hall is lined with frat photos from throughout the years. Nearly as many white guys as the RNC.
My mission: a normal college experience. That means I have to talk to someone. I will make polite conversation, I will make them laugh, and afterward we will follow each other on Instagram. I’ve been on campus for only four days, and already I can see this year stretched out in front of me, a facsimile of last year and the year before that and so on. I’ve waited too long for this year not to be different.
I make my way into the kitchen and let a guy fill a cup of beer for me from a keg. I can be a normal college student blowing off steam at a party. I can talk to one person like the well-adjusted human I’ve long suspected I am not.
Except I don’t know anyone, and this may be a startling revelation, but I didn’t go to very many parties in high school. In fact, I went to one, after prom. I should have known better—should have known that Cole Walker, who kissed me sweetly on the dance floor and beneath the sheets in a hotel room afterward, who let me think maybe I wasn’t such a nightmare after all, had done it as a joke. I deflowered Barrett Bloom, he wrote in a group text that wound its ugly way through school, along with a string of flower emojis. #debloomed, one of his horrible friends texted back.
When I opened my locker the Monday after the dance, roses and tulips and daisies spilled out. I’d always liked my very Jewish last name, but for the last month of school, it gave me a new reputation, one that cracked me open and threatened to let out every emotion I’d locked away for years.
Island had nearly two thousand kids, more than a dozen with the last name Walker. And my prom date turned out to be the brother of Blaine Walker, who’d lost his college scholarship after my article undid the tennis team’s win.
Pushing all that away before my lungs get too tight, I glue my back to the wall and pretend I know the song everyone is belting the lyrics to, idly wishing my mom’s taste in music were more current. And then I do the Lonely Girl Party Trick: I pull out my phone and alternate between sipping my beer and scrolling my news apps—New York Times, CNN, the BBC. And, begrudgingly, Elsewhere. Because yes, it’s a news site run by the people who created Lucie, but they have some damn fine journalists on staff, with long-form reporting that’s won multiple awards, including an oral history of The O.C. that both my mom and I devoured last year.
“Hey.”
I glance up at the guy leaning against the wall opposite me, blond hair curling past his ears. He’s in a purple Zeta Kappa shirt.
“Hi. This your place?”
“It is indeed,” he says. “Great, right?”
I lift my cup of warm beer. “Compliments to your sommelier.”
When he laughs, his eyes crinkle at the corners. “You’re funny. I’m Kyle.”
“Barrett.”
It’s not too common a first name, so the way this plays across his face, his eyebrows creasing together for a moment, isn’t entirely unusual. “Like… ferret?”
“If it helps you remember, sure.” I sound too combative. I’m not auditioning to be the moody new girl with a dark past on a CW show. I’m trying to get someone to like me. So I switch gears, pretending he’s a deeply interesting person I’m interviewing for an Entertainment Weekly cover story. “What originally drew you to the Zeta Kappa fraternity?”
“All the men in my family went here, so it was pretty much a given.”
“Why break with tradition, right?”
“Exactly.” Another grin. “I like a thick girl,” he says in a low voice, and I abandon any hope of this becoming a friendship. “That’s, like, all woke and everything to say these days, right? Or are you guys reclaiming the word fat? I might have read something about that online.”
He phrases it like this is a completely normal conversation to have. You guys. Like I’m a representative for the entire group and we’ve just had our annual Fat Girl Convention, during which we’ve discussed our preferred terminology.
“I have to vomit,” I announce, and he shrinks back against the wall.
The house has gotten more crowded, hotter, too many sweaty bodies pressed up against one another. I have no idea where Miles disappeared to or what to do next.
I squeeze through the hall, trying my best to appear like I belong—and nearly choke on the rest of my terrible beer when I spot Lucie playing flip cup in the game room. She’s with a big group, and while I can only see half her face, I’m positive she’s having a blast, given how raucous the room is, full of cheers and laughter and hugging and dancing. They make it look so fucking easy, like it’s natural to enter a house as strangers and have new best friends within the hour.
Someone behind me shoves inside, and when Lucie’s head turns toward the door, I escape as quickly as I can.
I wind up in the backyard, where a line of Tiki torches lights the path, because it’s not a college party without a little cultural appropriation. There are people playing volleyball and people grilling burgers, and everyone just looks so right in this setting that my chest aches. I usually don’t allow it to, but tonight I don’t have the energy to fight it.
It’s a quarter past ten, the moon a silver shard in the sky. Logically, I know this isn’t my scene. I thought that scene would be the newsroom, but maybe the sad truth of my life is that I don’t fit anywhere, which only becomes brilliantly, painfully clear on those rare occasions I’m trying to force it. I held out this hope that college would be different, but I’m not sure how to make that happen when the past is determined to follow me.
Although since I heard about this party from Lucie, maybe I’m the one following it.
“Watch out!” someone yells as a volleyball hurtles my way, along with a shirtless guy chasing it.
I back up, trying my hardest not to get squashed by either of them, and stumble into something long and tall and warm.
A Tiki torch.
