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 façade 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.
He seemed focused on the molecule. So very unlike him.
Vicki studied his face. It was angular, lean. He was tall, on the edge of filling out but still had that boyish lankiness. He'd make a good front man in a punk band if he were just a little bit cynical. She wondered how he'd look in eye shadow. Probably hot, she decided.
"Can I ask you a question?" he asked. His eyes shot back up to hers.
She nodded.
"Why rush at all?"
Was it innocent small talk? It felt accusatory, maybe even political, like a Christian asking why she didn't go to church. Like why was she going to the trouble of eternal damnation when the alternative was so obvious?
She tried to look into his eyes but landed on his lips. "Fuck it," she thought. The Truth, or at least as close as she could get.
"I know you think sororities are a four year beauty pageant--" she began.
"I didn't say that," Frank interrupted.
She couldn't tell him the full truth. Not only was it a capital "S" secret, it was ugly. "The Truth," she mused to herself.
Vicki had sold herself into sex slavery out of spite. It hadn't been easy so far, being led around on a leash, her mouth used to warm cock, watching her friends get fucked. But it was only part of the torment. That voice in the back of her head whispered that she didn't deserve to be here. For all the good she had done, all the homeless she had fed and the straight A's, she wasn't as good as Frank. He had a fucking scholarship. They were paying him to be here, while she had to fuck strangers just to squeak in the back door.
The Truth was she hated herself, and at night the only thing crowding out her failure was the rampaging lust in her body. She saw the Truth and it was scary, the air suddenly so thin she could barely breathe.
"Fuck that," she thought. She white knuckled the lab bench and tried to steady herself as a wave of revulsion swept over her, so angry she was nauseous. That voice in her head, her voice, was pathetic. PATHETIC.
"The Truth," she said. Her words were forced. Cold. "It's a competition. Everything is a competition. School. Jobs. Life. It didn't begin when we got here and it won't stop when we leave. That sorority is Carnegie Hall, and I'm NOT supposed to be there. I'm not rich and I'm not white. I didn't practice, and I may not deserve to be there, but I'm there anyway. I'm in. I got a toe in that world, and I'm not leaving. You think I'm too smart or too sweet or too open minded to swim with those sharks, that they'll eat me alive and all that. But I'm not dying. They can fucking choke."
And those big eyes stared into her. She saw the slightest tremble as he turned away.
He was afraid of her.
Good. He should be.
--
Hours later, the house was having a lingerie party. It wasn't open to the public, but the guest list was large. Outside of her group of four, Vicki barely knew the other girls. She didn't know the boys at all. The lights were low and the music was high, the bass so loud Vicki could feel it in her chest.
The boys seemed extremely comfortable in their boxer shorts, almost universally tanned and muscled. It was a mix of upper and lower classmen. She assumed they were from the frat houses. The word "lacrosse" kept repeating in her brain. She couldn't decide if she preferred their muscled thighs or their visible abs. They seemed to alternate wildly between ogling the girls and being too cool to notice.
Vicki tried to lean toward classy in her underwear choice. Her bra was a dark lace that pushed her breasts up, highlighting her ample cleavage while tastefully covering much of her breasts. The matching bottoms covered a fair portion of her ass. Even so, she had been careful to shave thoroughly.
Vicki caught Janette wandering by, all eyes following her roommate as she walked. Janette's lingerie was largely sheer, not bothering to shape or even cover up her body. It didn't matter that you could see her small nipples. Her long legs and sharp ass were her best features. A boy stared her body up and down, and shouted something into Janette's ear that was lost in the music. Janette gave a wicked half smile and kept walking.
Vicki shouldered her way between two guys, careful not to spill her red solo cups full of beer, embarrassed and flustered at the way an elbow grazed her breasts, pushing through towards Janette. She imagined eyes on her ass as she walked, a mix of trepidation and excitement.
The bass was so loud it seemed to crowd out her own thoughts. Even when she found Janette it was almost impossible to talk. She handed her roommate a beer, and slid her body alongside Janette to get access to her ear.
