Dirty Rush (40 page)

“Fuck you, Colette,” I heard another girl say from the crowd.

“Fuck you, Colette,” someone else chimed in.

It was like nothing I'd ever seen. A chorus of “Fuck you, Colette”s rang throughout the kitchen. As much as I hated this girl, it was hard to watch.

“Even though I barely know you, I hate you so much,” Leyla added and I heard a few girls laugh.

“One time you made me leave a party because you told me I didn't have the legs to pull off the shorts I was wearing, and then you slept with the guy I'd brought to the party!” yelled Victoria, a girl I barely knew.

Colette seemed completely unaffected by what was happening to her. Maybe she actually had no heart. No human being could have withstood this type of lashing without flinching.

“Okay,” I said, loud enough for everyone to hear, “I think she gets it.”

I turned to the group.

“I kind of planned something that I wanted to say to everyone in the room. I've been through a lot with you guys this year. Some of you have stood by me more than others, so I want to thank those of you who have supported me, and tell
all of you who were unsure about me that I hope we can still be friends. I mean that. I really, really like being in this house and I don't regret joining Beta Zeta, despite what's gone on over the past few weeks. I want to remain a sister. When I got to school, I thought I knew what it was like inside these big old houses. I thought I knew what it all meant. But I had no idea. Since pledging BZ, I've met some of the funniest, smartest, most insanely clever girls I've ever met in my life. And you all have so much love for each other. Real love. It's, like, weird actually.”

Some girls laughed. Everyone in the crowd was smiling. They all seemed rapt in what had totally become my moment.

“I genuinely look up to you guys,” I continued, “and I hope you all feel the same way about me. But I'm gonna need Colette to resign if I'm going to stay.”

“I'm not fucking resigning,” Colette yelled. “This is my senior year! I didn't do anything wrong.”

“But you did,” Meg said. She stepped out of the crowd and stood next to me. “So if we could do a quick vote about Colette's status, in light of the recent developments, that would be great. All members in favor of Colette's resignation, effective immediately, say ‘Aye.' ”

I'm pretty sure everyone in that room, including Miss Ritter, said “Aye.”

“All opposed?”

“Nay,” Colette said quietly.

She said it with a certain sadness. Until that moment, she'd been able to convince herself (and everyone else) that she was still loved and revered by the general population, but now there
was no hiding from the truth. She was out. Her eyes filled with tears, and for some reason, so did mine.

“Maybe now would be a good time for you to read the letter, Colette. I retyped it and changed the name to yours.”

Colette's gaze drifted to the floor. She looked hollow and empty. The room was silent, except for the sound of her sniffling nose. She was almost crying. I grabbed a paper towel from the kitchen counter and handed it to her. She couldn't look me in the eye.

“Thanks,” she said, blowing her nose.

She reached into her back pocket, pulled out the letter and read it.

To All of My Fellow Sisters of Beta Zeta,

In light of my involvement in the recent “video scandal,” I, Colette Winter, hereby resign from the Central Delaware University Chapter of the Beta Zeta Sorority. I understand that, as stated in the chapter Constitution, once I resign, it is unlikely that I will ever be readmitted. And only the National Council has the authority to readmit me. I know that I acted inappropriately, and that my actions do not reflect well upon the Beta Zeta family.

The content of the video was highly inappropriate and unacceptable by any standard. No matter how it reached such a mass audience, the video content must not reflect on any sorority woman in general or any fraternal organization throughout the world. All reasonable sisters can agree that this video does not depict in any way the standard or routine of any official sorority.

I apologize for any harm I've done to the sorority at large or to any of its members personally. I know that the easiest thing for everyone will be for me to walk away from sorority life altogether, but it will be the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. Thank you for everything and again I apologize.

Sincerely,

Colette Winter

Colette quietly folded the letter, looked at all of us one more time, and turned around.

“Just kill me, please,” I heard her say under her breath before walking out the back door of the kitchen. The rest of the sisters were still stunned. It was like we'd just watched the beheading of Anne Boleyn.

T
he fallout for Colette didn't end in the kitchen. She was given a list of required tasks as punishment for the whole sex tape ordeal. First, Miss Ritter assigned her three hundred hours of community service at the city morgue. Kenadie got a hundred. Both girls were asked by the Panhel to officially resign from Beta Zeta. And last—and this was maybe my favorite part of the punishment—they had to make an apology testimonial and submit it to
TotalFratMove.com
, the site that initially leaked the video. It was unintentionally hilarious and garnered as much attention, if not more, than the sex tape itself.

The apology was basically Colette and Kenadie in full going-out makeup, both of them wearing conservative navy sweaters, talking about how “embarrassed” they were by what they'd done and how “out of character” it was for each of them. After the story broke and the video made the rounds on campus, I started to feel like my name was being cleared. I went from being the gossip item's villain to its hero.

It took a few weeks, but people started coming up to me in the dining hall or in the hallways of my dorm just to say they supported me and that they saw the apology video and it was hilarious. I didn't need Colette and Kenadie to be ruined by the whole thing, but I'll admit that knowing the entire campus was now laughing at them was sweet, sweet revenge. Jonah, Jane, and I laughed harder each time we watched it, which was at least twenty times. There was even a series of Colette memes that circulated college campuses around the country.

The four Omega Sig guys in the video each got one-semester suspensions. I felt bad for them, honestly. I guess they had to be punished in some way, but I don't think any of them knew that they were hurting anyone. I'm sure Colette told them that their faces would be blurred out. I mean, when you really think about it, what guy is going to turn down a blow job?

As far as the Adderall and the evidence we found, I chose to keep that to myself, in the interest of protecting Kelly. Colette's punishment was bad enough even without that. So I felt fine letting it slide. I did, however, flush all of the Adderall down the toilet and texted Jane's picture of the stash to Colette as an insurance policy in case she ever thought about fucking with BZ again.

B
efore anyone knew it, CDU
was covered in blooming flowers and the school year was coming to an end. I had thrown myself so hard into school and friends that spring had totally snuck up on me. We still got to throw the children's hospital gala, and it was amazing. We raised more money then BZ had ever raised in the past.

“O
ut of ten, what would you give this year?” Jonah asked me, sitting out at a picnic table near his dorm.

“Well, you know,” I said taking a sip of iced tea, “I wouldn't change one minute of this year even if I could. So I'd have to give it a ten out of ten.”

We both laughed.

“I kinda mean that, though,” I added.

“Are you serious? You wouldn't change
anything
?”

“I know. It's been a lot.” I let all the ups and downs of the year wash over me. “But even after my sister's lie, the drugs, the video, and how Jack handled it, I learned a lot. Trial by fire. After a freshman year like this one, I'm basically just a more badass version of myself. Am I not?”

“More badass version? Wow, okay, maybe a little conceited? But yes, I'd have to agree.”

“Thank you.”

“I didn't know you could be any more badass than you were pre-sorority, but I guess I was wrong. I never thought I'd say this, but I love BZ Taylor.”

“Wow!” I smiled. “And I
know this is cheesy as fuck, but I couldn't have made it through all of this without you. Seriously. So . . .”

I paused for dramatic effect.

“So . . . ?”

“So thank you.”

“You're very welcome,” he said. “Was that hard to say? You bitch!”

“A little!”

It wasn't really hard to say that, though. I meant it. Having a friend like Jonah, and now having friends like Jane and Meg, was the true lifesaver of my year. People had told me that I was a strong person before, but I wouldn't have made it through this insane year without my friends.

I
was getting dressed in my room, Morgan was out at one of her LGBTQ Alliance brunches, and I had Tina Turner's “I Can't Stand the Rain” blasting on my Jambox. It was a super sunny Saturday, which I was thankful for, considering that I knew I'd be outside for most of the day. Some of the BZ girls were taking me skydiving. Not exactly something I ever thought I'd want to do, and I wasn't exactly sure that I wanted to even now, but I was going with it. I'd been through a lot with these girls, and jumping out of a plane while screaming at the top of my lungs seemed like a pretty perfect way to round out the year of craziness.

I threw my hair into a high pony and was out the door with my bag. When I got outside, I noticed a familiar pair of worn-in Sperry Top-Siders
sticking out of a bush near the entrance to Lincoln Hall. Attached to the feet in the boat shoes, literally lying in the bushes, was a very hungover, very bloated, and very depressed-looking Jack. It was the worst I'd ever seen him look. We hadn't seen each other in weeks, but I had no idea that he had let himself go this . . . far.

“Tay!” he half-shouted as he stumbled up from where he was sitting on the ground. I guess he'd been sleeping there waiting for me to come out?

“Hi,” I said, probably making a what-are-you-doing-here face. He rocked on his feet until he found his balance. Clearly Jack wasn't only hungover, he was still wasted from the night before.

“We need to talk. We need to be talking. I texted you,” he slurred.

Per Jane's suggestion, I'd had his number blocked from my phone.

“Oh, you did? Weird. I didn't get any.” I didn't want to be a bitch to him, and it wasn't like I enjoyed seeing him in pain. But I was still hurt and I wasn't just gonna fall for a drunken attempt at connection after weeks of nothing.

After the scandal and even after Colette and Kenadie's confession video, he never reached out to me, never apologized for being a dick, nothing. And now here he was drunk, alone, and a little bit fatter on the steps of Lincoln Hall. It was all too little, too late.

“Can I?” he said, opening his arms out wide. There were stains coming through the cotton under the armpits of his dirty yellow Polo shirt. “Can I?”

“Can you what?”

“Can I just give you a hug, Tay?”

He threw his arms around me. Despite him smelling like a night of beer and cigarettes (he didn't used to smoke), hugging Jack felt kind of good. For a second. Then I remembered who I was hugging and my nostalgia for when we were happy together faded quickly. I could see over his shoulder that Jane's car had pulled up to the curb and she was waving at me from the driver's seat with a puzzled and slightly concerned look on her face. I held up a “one second” finger.

“Jack,” I said pulling away, “I'm not sure what you're doing here, but I'm on my way out and I really gotta go.”

“Okay, okay. I just . . . I feel like you and me should try to work it out.”

“Work what out?”

“Work us out. Us being together. Like, we all make mistakes, I get it.”

“I'm sorry. Maybe I'm not following. You get what?” I was starting to be annoyed.

“I mean, I'm just saying that we should be together.”

God, he was a mess. Was he always such a mess? Had I just been too smitten and surprised that a big-shot popular dude like Jack was into me to see this side of him? No, he'd definitely let himself go since we broke up.

“Well, Jack. I hate to say it, but I really just don't agree with you.”

“Um, okay . . . ?”

“Because, and I may not know everything about how to keep a relationship healthy, but I do know that a boyfriend should trust his girlfriend and not jump on shitty gossip bandwagons just because his loser frat brothers tell him to do so.”

“This isn't about my house, or the guys . . .”

“And I have
too much respect for myself to be with someone like that.”

“Taylor,” he put his hand on my shoulder and I calmly removed it.

“So enjoy your day, Jack. I have to run. Oh, and take a shower. You smell homeless and you look like an alcoholic Republican dad.”

I turned and started walking toward Jane's car before he could say anything. I didn't look back. When I got in, Jane just looked at me.

“He was sleeping in a bush when I got downstairs. I have no idea. He's an idiot.”

“Um, what?” Jane started laughing.

“I know.”

She turned the key in the ignition and we sped off.

“What did he say? Why did you hug him?”

“He hugged me! Ew, I would not hug him voluntarily. And you know what? He didn't even say sorry. Not once.”

“Has he ever said sorry? For any of it? For being such a fuckface?”