The Shameless Hour (The Ivy Years #4)

1974: First frat to protest the admission of women to the college

1981: Site of the first sexual assault of a female student

Reprimands and/or probation 7 times in the last 16 years

Side Effects of Drinking at Beta Rho Include

Your photo on the Brodacious website

Winning Skank of the Week

Getting roofied

If a brother hands you “tonight’s special” DO NOT drink it

If you suspect a friend has been drugged, call 911

“Jesucristo,” I whispered to myself. Bella had been wrong when she called herself a failed feminist. She ought to be teaching the class.

The article went on to quote several women on the subject of Beta Rho. “Everybody thinks that Skank of the Week thing is awful,” said a female volleyball player who asked for her name to be withheld. “But nobody speaks out, because no one wants to admit winning it.” The article went on to quote an RA on fresh court who said she always cautioned her First Year charges against getting drunk at a fraternity. “They egg each other on,” she said. “So it’s not a safe place.”

There in the weenie bin, I sat grinning at my computer screen. If Bella was trying to warn women away from Beta Rho, she’d done an excellent job. Front page. And her name was nowhere in the article.

I’d told her not to go through with it. She probably thought I was a jackass. Maybe she was right.

I still didn’t know what to do with my feelings for Bella. Standing around outside today I’d had several hours alone with my thoughts. We were still at an impasse. Several times today I’d considered just giving in — agreeing to be friends with benefits if that’s what she really wanted.

But… Dios, it would never work. The point of arranging a casual hook-up was the casual part. And I’d be carrying all sorts of extra yearning into that bedroom, whether I meant to or not. I could agree to shed my clothes, but I couldn’t agree to shed my feelings. They were permanent. Like an invisible tattoo. It wouldn’t be fair to either of us.

So I had two choices. I could either slink away and hide how bummed out I was about the whole thing. Or I could try again. I could wait a week and press my case. And if she said no, I could ask again sometime.

There was an old Wayne Gretzky quote that my soccer coach liked to use, even though it was supposed to refer to hockey. “You miss one hundred percent of the shots you don’t take.”

It was an easy decision, really.

I pulled my French book closer to me, but then ended up tossing it away again. It occurred to me that I hadn’t been as forthright with Alison as I planned to be with Bella. Which meant that my troubles with Alison weren’t all her fault…

Jesucristo.

I fired up my laptop one more time and composed an email message:

Dear Alison,

Hi. I just wanted to tell you that what happened between us wasn’t all your fault.

It cost me something to write that. Because my inner cave man wanted to protest. But I soldiered on.

It always bothered me when you pushed me away. But instead of trying to figure out what was wrong, I just brooded about it. I made up a dozen reasons in my mind, and all of them were wrong. If I’d been able to speak up earlier, we might have avoided all the drama on our birthday. And so for that, I am sorry.

See you at Urban Studies on Tuesday,

—Rafe

Feeling satisfied, and suddenly exhausted, I snapped the computer shut and picked up my French book. At least I had a plan now. It might not be much. But it was something.

Thirty

Bella

After dinner, Lianne and I had retreated to our rabbit warren under the eaves.

My crazy neighbor blasted celebratory dance music in her room. Every three minutes she popped through the bathroom door to update me on how many people had uploaded pictures of Beta Rho’s humiliation to various social networking sites. “It has its own hashtag!” she shrieked from her room. “They’re calling it BroDoh! God, this is so cool.”

It was amusing how pumped up Lianne was. This was a girl whose Oscar-night dress was tweeted by tens of thousands — a girl who showed up in People Magazine on a monthly basis. And she was all riled up about a little football game mayhem.

As for me, I just felt… unsettled. I’d scored every point I’d gone for today. But here I was, pacing my room again, monitoring my phone for threatening calls.

There weren’t any. Not a one.

“There’s a funny thread on YikYak!” Lianne announced from her room. “People are rewriting our message. Like, ‘Fucktards since 1915 would have worked just as well, with fewer characters.’” She let out a gleeful laugh. “And on Twitter the women’s soccer team would like to throw a party for whoever was responsible.”