Premature Evacuation (Underground Sorority #1) (30 page)

People milled about the barren room with pale gray floor and oppressive white walls. A table for refreshments cut the space in two. The movie screen took up almost the entire back wall. When my animation played, it would snatch everyone’s attention. Gulp.

The purple-haired junior snickered at my display of paintings outlining the screen. He’d painted the exact same landscape scene over and over again in various styles—dots of pointillism, dripping with surrealism, with sharp Caravaggio lights and darks. He waved the others over to view my work as though it was some kind of tragic entertainment, an opening act to the main event.

The senior who’d gotten more paint on her outfit than she did on her canvases pursed her lips as she studied my pieces. “Quite literal,” she commented.

I rolled my eyes. Sometimes I hated art school.

Her paintings hung floor to ceiling on the far left wall, each one stark white except for a tiny dot of colored paint placed strategically somewhere on the canvas like some dumb reenactment of
Where’s Waldo?

Sometimes I hated my teachers and their ridiculous decisions. I spent weeks painstakingly modeling 3D characters, rigging them with virtual bones, adding lighting and texturing, and animating three minutes worth of short film. She quite literally couldn’t have done anything less than sticking a tiny dot of paint somewhere.

“Quite obvious,” I said to her.

Her lined eyes narrowed. “How is my work quite obvious?”

I’d seen her work on display in the painting studio and a few other kids critiquing it, so maybe I wasn’t being fair by cheating. But still. “Let me guess. It’s a statement about how invisible we all are?”

Her mouth opened, then closed.

“Like I said. Quite obvious.”

I strutted away to stand next to the only other student’s work I admired. The freshman girl who hid in the corner as if the three of us were a pack of rats. Her pieces consisted of mixed media with large black letters in a variety of fonts cut out and pasted onto canvases to showcase only parts of the shape and highlight the negative space. The small corner on the inner cut out of a capital H. The slithering curve of a lowercase S. The serif hanging dramatically off the stem of an uppercase F.

After all the pieces were hung under strategically placed spotlights, I stood behind the wall waiting for my cue to enter. The chatter in the room grew louder and louder, the large space making the voices echo. The other three students looked bored as hell. One kept sneaking out to smoke cigarettes—or maybe pot. The freshman girl balanced her sketchpad on her lap and ignored everything. Her eyes kept sweeping to me, and I was tempted to check out what she was drawing, but I stayed still, in case I was unknowingly posing for her.

Professor O’Brien came behind the wall. “Filling up. Lots of students here. I’d say even more than the alumni.”

“Is everyone impressed?” the purple-haired kid asked. The implied part of his question, “With me?”

“They’re most certainly impressed with the curtains hiding your work.”

The purple-haired kid’s face matched his bangs. I snickered under my breath, if only to calm my nerves.

Shushes filled the room while Professor O’Brien began his speech by talking about the history of this honor. He went on to introduce the older students from the show. Each time he talked about one of us, he discussed our accomplishments and why we were chosen. At my turn, he raved about how my 16oz series utilized a motif I continued to showcase in new and innovative ways.

“It’s my pleasure to introduce you to…” A few catcalls interrupted his final words and the crowd broke into cheers even before he could finish. “Mackenzie Shaffer.”

I strutted out from behind the wall to find the entire crowd filled with familiar faces. From the girls in my art classes, Fallon included, to all my sorority sisters, who once abandoned me completely but now stood by me—by mandate of Bianca, but still. To Holly and Nate standing in the center of the crowd. And finally to Corey, who’d staked out a front row spot in front of the animation he’d already watched a bazillion times.

The lights dimmed and Professor O’Brien gave the signal to start the movie.

Blue and red lights danced off the crowd’s faces as I watched them gaze at the piece of art I’d poured my heart—and my blood alcohol level—into. They smiled at all the right places: when the two cups nuzzled against each other in an attempt to avoid separation. They gasped at the heart wrenching scene when Red fell to the floor and a gum-laden sneaker hovered over her. Tears fell as the trash compactor loomed closer. When the credits rolled, I received a standing ovation.

Okay, so everyone was already standing. But the impact of their hands slapping against one another and the whoops and hollers made it seem like I’d earned one.

The crowd swallowed me whole with everyone desperate to tell me they loved my film. But only one person fought through the crowd to tell me something else.

That he loved
me.

C
OREY FIT THE KEY into the lock and swung the door open to his apartment. Fifty girls stood behind him, rubbing their hands over their bare arms to ward off the not-quite warm temps. We had about twenty minutes to finish setting up before our first party officially kicked off. When Bianca had asked for suggestions for which frat to do a mixer with first, by unanimous decision we agreed to do one with
all
of them. Not a mixer but a Crush Party, like the one we’d had last semester where Corey and I had broken up the first time. Each sister (and lone brother) invited five guy friends to attend tonight. It would be the perfect way to introduce
Yours
to the campus with a bang. Plus it helped make Corey feel like he actually belonged.

I gasped when I stepped inside his place. Silver glitter covered the carpet like breadcrumb trails while tinsel streamers glinted off the strobe lights revolving from the ceiling. Noisemakers clung to the walls via tape and paper tiaras dangled from the curtains. A large tinfoil ball hung from the ceiling in the center of the room like a disco ball.

Corey tugged my arm. “Look, it has a pulley system. So I can drop the ball at midnight!” He held up a string. “I’d demonstrate, but I’m afraid I’d never get it back up there.”

We’d decided on New Years in March as the party theme because this was a new beginning for Rho Sigma.

Corey slid a tiny black remote out of his pocket and pointed it toward the entertainment center. A Clever Trevor song bounced through the room. The girls bobbed their heads in the living room while others headed for the keg in the kitchen.

“You did all this?” I spun around in awe.

He gave me a sheepish grin. “No, I only did the ball. Fallon did the rest.”

I squinted at him. “
My
Fallon?”

Corey pressed his finger to his lips. “She told me not to tell you.”

My heart swelled at her generosity. Maybe we needed another new honorary member. Rush happened weeks ago for the rest of the sororities but anything could happen with ours. Glitter stuck to my stiletto when I lifted it. “This is going to be a bitch to clean up.”

Corey shrugged. “The floor looks better this way.”

I rolled my eyes and jabbed him in the ribs in jest. He caught my hand and pulled me into an embrace. Our bodies knew what to do, my knee fitting between his legs, his hands bracing my lower back. We swayed to the song, our song, just like old times and what would soon be new times. “The party hasn’t technically started yet,” I said.

“Need I remind you we’re not playing by the rules anymore?”

I laughed.

Suddenly his face got serious. “Listen, my parents are coming up next weekend. They want to see my new place and probably yell at me a lot.”

My muscles stiffened, hips locking. The last time his parents had come up to school Corey had fled our relationship.

“I want you to meet them. For real this time.”

My irises swam back and forth as I studied him. “You’re not going to back out?”

He shook his head and pulled his phone out of his pocket. We stopped dancing for a moment, still wrapped around each other, while he scrolled through. The glow of the screen lit up the dark room when he held it out to me. An email to his mom filled the screen though Corey had enlarged the text so only a few lines were visible:
When you come up, I want you to meet my girlfriend, Mackenzie. I love her and I’m sure you will too
.

That was all the proof I needed. I kissed him right there.

An hour later, the party was in full swing. Nearly every sister had come up to Corey to compliment him on the decor and half of those made a joke about the floor glitter. I only drank water. It felt good to be in control, to know my limits, to come to a party and not lose myself in it.

The place burst from capacity with the addition of the boys. We were probably breaking at least five hundred fire codes, but Corey even had a plan for that. “I bought a fire extinguisher!” Body space was at a minimum with the living room featuring a mosh pit rather than a dance space. The line for the keg and the bathroom stemmed ten people deep respectively, and I was pretty sure some of the guys—and a few girls—fled outside to a makeshift outhouse in the gutter. In a few weeks, it would be warm enough for the party to spill over into the backyard, which was just as small as the living room but would give us double the space.

Everything was going great…until it wasn’t. I hadn’t been standing by the door so my only clue that someone unwanted had shown up was the abrupt blast of silence as the music shut off. Shouts erupted from the living room. Corey and I squeezed our way through the crowd, panic climbing my spine at the sight of the guy earning rounds of “get out!” cheers.

Harrison Wagner.

He lifted his hand in a pageant wave and gave a bow. “It’s always been my dream to make such a grand entrance.”

I balled my hands into fists and took a step toward him. Corey held back my shoulder and whispered in my ear. “He’s not worth it.”

“Yes. He is.” I broke free and stalked right up toward him. But just before I reached him, Bianca cut me off. “Mackenzie, I’ve got this.”

I hung back and let her take the reins, mostly because I’d never seen such a fierce look on her face before. And she always looked pretty fierce.

She invaded his personal space, forcing him back a step. “I’d ask you what you’re doing here but I’m pretty sure the answer is
up to no good
.”

His lips quirked into an annoying smirk. “Clever. I see you’ve picked a smart one as president this time.”

“Too bad Out House didn’t.” She presented him with a frown as if she pitied him. He was their new president.

I chuckled.

The smirk on Harrison’s face dipped a little. “For the record, I’m not here to join your lame party. I’m here to watch you destroy yourselves all over again.” He lifted a snack bag of popcorn from behind his back and stuck a kernel in his mouth.

Bianca tapped her palm against her lips in a mock yawn. “Your threats are meaningless and cliché.”

“You don’t know how to run an illegal fraternity in a way that avoids detection from the Greek Org but still impresses them enough to reinstate your charter. I do.” He looked around the place in disgust as he popped another kernel in his mouth. “And this isn’t it.”

“Thanks for your charitable advice but we’ve got this.” Bianca snapped her fingers. “Someone, call campus police. We’ve got a trespasser.”

Harrison took another step back. “I’ll leave you with one final thought: you’re not getting your house back.” He spun around and stomped out the door, slamming it shut behind him.

We stood there for a moment, looking around at each other, unsure what to do. Until someone switched back on the music and the party started up again anew. Because that was what we were good at. Every semester, every pledge class, we started from scratch. This was no different.

Bianca stormed up to me, her face a hurricane of rage. “I’m making it my mission to find dirt on Out House or Harrison himself and get them kicked off.”

I shook my head. “We don’t need their house. We’re better off now than before. We’re free.”

Because it was true. Our sorority prematurely evacuated campus but it gave us a chance to start again and this time come back stronger.

The End.

Turn the page to read the first chapter of the next book in the Underground Sorority series,
MASTER PROBATION
, out October 27th and available at the special preorder price of $0.99 for a limited time only! This book is Bianca’s story

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PREMATURE EVACUATION?
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