Vicki pounded her second shot of rum and tried not to gag. She wasn't good at this.
Kim instantly refilled the glass. Her serious faΓ§ade was long gone.
"No more," Vicki said. Her stomach was roiling.
She was next door with the other three red collar girls. It was nice to spend some regular time with Kim and Haley. The bloom of alcohol was already helping cut the edge off the awkward butt plug fiasco from that afternoon.
"You aren't nearly caught up yet," Haley said.
"And not just alcohol either," Janette said and winked.
Haley and Kim blushed. Janette had a glow about her that was more than just the alcohol. Vicki saw a similar glow in the other two girls as well.
"How was it?" Vicki asked. She forced herself to say something, but was afraid to be treading on sensitive territory.
"Nice," Kim said. Haley nodded.
Janette plopped down on the futon next to Vicki.
"Nice?" Janette said sarcastically, "You came you damn brains out. How many times?"
"More than one," Kim said.
"Come on you know how many," Janette prodded.
Kim looked away for another second, her dark eyes looking at the floor. Slowly a smile started to grow. "Three times," Kim said. She was beaming.
Janette smiled back, then turned to Vicki. Janette said it with her eyes and her smile. Sex can be fun and stupid and wonderful and even transactional and still be OK. It's not all cruelty and humiliation. Sometimes it's just sex and that is enough.
"Didn't know she had it in her," Haley said.
"There's a lot of things I didn't know... she could have in her," Janette said, stumbling through her line. "Err, I kinda fucked that up didn't I?"
"Yeah, take another drink Big Pussy," Haley said.
"You told her?" Vicki asked. She hadn't processed the events from earlier that afternoon, how Janette had tried to take the butt plug for her, used her special status as the anal queen to intervene. For all the good it had done.
Vicki had signed up for this lifestyle voluntarily, but Liz was something else.
"About my Mafia name? She was at the contest, although I'm not so sure she remembers anything. Right Haley?" Janette said.
"Oh I remember," Haley said. The contest, where they had tied her down and gang banged her. At this moment, she didn't seem to mind.
"You need one too Vicki," Kim said.
"A gangbang?" Vicki asked.
The girls froze, all eyes on Vicki, as if even acknowledging what had happened to Haley would victimize her again.
Haley started to laugh, and the rest of the girls followed.
"Jesus Christ Vicki. A mafia name," Janette said.
"Take a drink for that," Haley said.
So she did.
--
The next day, Vicki was hungover, but things were better. Although unintentional, the hazing had a positive effect. She was in a real sisterhood. These girls were all in deep shit, but they were in it together.
"Drink some water," Janette said.
"That bad huh?" Vicki asked.
"You kinda suck at this," Janette said.
Janette looked as bright and clean as she ever did, maybe even better with her needs recently satisfied.
"How'd you drink twice as much as me, but yet..." Vicki trailed off. Janette's carefree beauty spoke for itself.
"Because I'm from Minnesota," she said, as if that explained everything.
"And?" Vicki asked.
"And I drank much more than twice as much," Janette said.
She never really got a satisfying explanation. So Minnesota girls can drink. "Today I learned," she thought.
--
"Sorry about the study group," Vicki said. Frank was hunched over the lab bench, trying to form a replica chiral molecule out of toothpicks and clay.
He was careful to put the model down and look in her eyes.
"No problem," he said.
It was the goddamn eye contact that got her every time, how he'd stop his world to see her completely, like his big multi-tasking brain stopped just for her.
"You know. Rush. It's pretty wild. Inconvenient on purpose," she said.
He diverted his eyes at the mention of rush. Frank was here on scholarship, his clothes never quite as crisp as the boys that called on the sorority. There was an invisible friction from class difference on the campus that was hard to escape. Vicki felt it at times but tried not to dwell on it.
"It'll calm down in a couple weeks," she said.