The theme for the fourth KNZ rush event is “Forty for Forty,” and how it works is simple: the guys gather together in the house’s main room, someone puts on a sports movie, and everyone drinks whenever someone scores or does something cool or, really, does anything at all on screen. What that means in practice is that I didn’t really miss anything while I was at Sweetie Belle’s show, other than half an hour of a basketball flick I’ve never seen and — just ballparking it — about ten ounces worth of drinking by everyone who showed up on time.
I mean, I assume that’s what the “forty” means in this context: forty ounces of alcohol, in a heavy glass container with an oddly wide mouth. I don’t really get a chance to check for sure. I barely get three steps past the front door before Source meets me in the foyer, presses a full bottle of something called Mustang 22 malt liquor into my hand, and pantomimes — silently and intensely — that I better catch up to where he is in his own bottle quick, lest I face unspeakably vile punishment and/or make him very sad.
Obviously, I’ve never had malt liquor before, and it doesn’t take me long to learn that it’s like if someone took beer and, with scientific precision, made every single aspect of it very slightly worse. But also, you kind of stop tasting it after the fourth gulp or so, and it gets you from soberly nervous to pleasantly buzzed before anybody in the movie you’re half-watching so much as starts a character arc.
Or at least, I don’t think anyone’s started a character arc. That’s another thing I’m not sure about. Crescent and Woody waved me over as soon as they saw me, they wanted to know why I showed up late, and I spent long enough telling them that I completely lost track of what was happening on the projection screen in front of us. And now Crescent’s staring at me in a way that looks more like glaring, and it’s pretty distracting even though I know exactly why he’s doing it.
“Dude,” Crescent mutters.
“I know,” I mumble back.
“Dude,” he says again.
“I know,” I growl through my teeth. “Just drop it.”
“What are you… you just… bro.”
Thankfully, the room’s dark enough that he probably can’t see how red my face is. I knew already that I blew a perfect shot with Sweetie Belle earlier, but describing it in retrospect makes it sound less like a mistake and more like insane self-sabotage. Which, I guess, it kind of was.
Another perk of malt liquor, by the way: if you can’t convince your brain logically to shut up, drinking Mustang 22 is kind of like hitting your brain with a hammer until you make it shut up.
“Well, you’re gonna see her again, right?” Crescent asks, pausing and pulling from his forty-ounce bottle as a ball swishes through a hoop on screen and a brother yells at everyone to drink. “You can’t just leave it like that.”
“Yeah,” I tell him. “I mean, I will.”
“You’re gonna see her again, or you’re gonna leave it like that?”
“I’m –”
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I sent Sweetie Belle a blurry photo of my drink in my hand earlier, in response to her asking how the event was going. She’s just sent me a photo of her own hand holding a water bottle and her laptop propped on her lap, with a caption below it:
Movie night for me too. Roommate’s out of town for the weekend. Feels weird watching all by myself…
I feel Crescent looking over my shoulder a second too late. He’s fully glaring at me now. I turn my phone all the way off and drop it hopelessly into my lap.
“You’re a fucking idiot,” he sighs at me.
“I know,” I moan up at the ceiling.
“I mean, God, Woody, you’ve seen her!” Crescent says next. “He’s a fucking idiot.”
Woody nods and laughs — but it’s a jerky motion, and a hollow sound. Suddenly, it hits me how quiet Woody’s been the past few minutes.
“You all right, man?” I ask him. He blinks, nods stiffly, then stares down at his drink. It’s still mostly full, and he taps his thumbs arrhythmically against the bottle’s cap as he talks.
“Yeah, I’m… yeah,” he mumbles. “Crazy story.”
That’s a “no,” then. Crescent glances back at me, silently asking whether I’m gonna do anything about it and also adding that he doesn’t have any ideas. I don’t either, really, but I can at least try. God knows I’ve been passive enough tonight already.
“C’mon,” I tell Woody, motioning with my hand as I stand up. Reluctantly, he gets up with me and trudges behind me towards the house’s kitchen.
On the way past one of the couches, Source sees me and shoots a quizzical look my way. I angle my head so Source can see me glance at Woody, but Woody can’t see me do it. In response, Source gives me a short nod and settles back into the couch. For a second, it almost looks like he smiled too, but the room’s dark and I’m drunk, and either way Woody’s looking even more antsy now that a few other brothers are looking over at him.
I was thinking about Source already, actually, and how he took me outside at my first rush event and tried to calm me down. It’s a bit cold to go out on the back porch tonight, but I figure the empty kitchen works just as well.
“What’s up?” I ask quietly, so my voice doesn’t carry back out into the main room. Woody bites his lip and shifts from foot to foot.
“Nothing’s up. I’m fine,” he insists. “So, uh… you and Sweetie Belle?”
“I mean, yeah, I hope. You know her?”
“I have a class with her. Sit behind her sometimes. She’s pretty.”
And then he goes quiet, and I stare at him, and his eyes dart down towards the floor.
“All right, seriously, talk to me,” I insist. “Is it… what, is it her?”
“No!” Woody quickly says, seeming to flinch at the sound of his own voice. “No, it’s… it’s not her. She seems cool. Is cool, but… just…”
“Just what?”
“I don’t know!” Woody digs his fingers through his hair and then links them behind his neck, eyes squeezed shut as more words tumble out of him. “It’s been weird here tonight, okay? Before you got here. It just feels like everyone’s on edge about something, and Al’s been…”
Woody opens his eyes as I narrow mine. “Al’s been what?”
“Weird,” Woody says. “I don’t even know what to call it. I can’t tell if he’s mad or annoyed or just drunk, and I tried to ask him but he just blew me off, and…” He takes a couple steadying breaths, then says something else. “Button, be careful with him. I think he’s been waiting for you to show up. Because of last night, what you…”
Because of what I did, is what he was about to say before he clammed up — like he hasn’t been pumping me up about exactly that all day. “So what?” I say. “I beat him at poker. It’s not a big deal.”
“It is a big deal!” Woody hisses. “He’s a senior, he knows people. We need most of the frat to vote for us to get a bid, and if Al’s pissed at you, he’ll… I don’t know, like…”
An icy chill spreads through my chest — and then suddenly, a tiny spark of heat blossoms beneath it, fueled by a single word Woody just said. “What do you mean, we?” I ask him. “He’s pissed at me, not you.”
“Yeah, but I’m friends with you, and… I-I want you to get a bid. I do. But…”
The spark’s brighter now, pulsing between my ribs, rising up from under my collar and tightening the muscles in my warming face. I don’t know for sure what Woody was about to say or what his wide-eyed helpless look really means, but I’m pretty sure I know what he’s thinking: yesterday you were my awesome friend, but today you might be a liability. And he can hem and haw and act as clueless as he wants, but the guilty twitch of his eyes down towards his shoes is worth a thousand words he won’t say out loud.
“I mean, I want us both to get bids,” he adds weakly. “Together. I just… I don’t know.”
I could be the bigger person here — the better friend. But I’m four inches shorter than I’d like to be, and apparently all the work I’ve been putting into this friendship hasn’t been good for much so far.
“No,” I say. “You don’t know. Hope you figure it out.”
“Button, I –”
I don’t hear him. I’m already gone — face hot, heart pounding, bottle to my lips as I leave the kitchen and Woody behind. I feel like a dick. Probably because I’m being one.
But I’ve also tried to be nice and cool and friendly until now, and according to my nice cool friend Woody, it might have fucked things up for both of us. Or no, sorry — for him. Him and his stupid brother’s stupid fucking frat, and the scuff marks he got on his ass while he was riding my coattails through all of rush. While he was making me think I’d actually done something good for once, when really he just meant it was good for him.
Or, fuck, did he? Am I reading any of this right? Or am I just drunk, and still thinking about how clueless I was with Sweetie Belle earlier, and worrying even harder than I already was about whether that poker hand was gonna bite me in the ass? Everything’s so vague and blurry and fake-feeling right now. I don’t know what anyone wants from me — how any of this actually works.
And underneath all of it, the words I just read keep echoing in my mind: movie night for me too… roommate’s out of town… watching all by myself. Crescent seemed to know exactly what that means — exactly what I blew my shot at doing tonight. I won’t get that chance again. I couldn’t do anything with it even if I did. I’ve never even kissed a girl before, and Sweetie Belle knows that, and she smiled at me before she left like she was thinking…
One gulp of malt liquor turns into two, then into however many more it takes to make my throat hurt and my chest numb. They’re all as sour and gritty and unpleasant as the last however-many, but it pushes the heat in my core out into my trembling arms and fingers, and then sends it surging through my legs as they start moving faster.
Al’s been waiting for me, huh? Maybe I’ll go find him. Figure out where I really stand, and exactly how much of my shadow Woody’s standing in. And it doesn’t take me long to spot him, because he’s pretty fucking hard to miss: sprawled on a couch in the back of the main room, his forty almost empty, eyes dully pointed towards the flickering screen until they suddenly light up as they land on me.
“What’s up, Button?” Al says as I approach, lifting his bottle in a half-toast. Woody was right about one thing, at least — Al’s voice is tight and controlled and uncharacteristically quiet. It is weird. Or maybe it’s nothing, and Woody’s full of it, and no one’s figured out that I am too.
“What’s up, Al?” I say, perching on a stool by the couch arm Al’s leaning on. On the far side of the couch, I see Case glance over at us, stiffening just a bit in his seat. Al doesn’t notice, or acts as if he doesn’t. He’s watching me — waiting for me to say something. The heat in my chest is happy to oblige.
“Thanks for the pocket change,” I tell him. He blinks, smirks, and lifts his forty again.
“Hey, you earned it,” he says through a mouthful of Mustang. Now he shoots Case a glance. “Fair’s fair, right?”
“Al…” Case mutters — a warning that Al shrugs off with another smirk. No one else says anything, but I can feel a few brothers watching us — watching me — from the corners of their eyes.
“Easy, prez, it’s chill,” he says, turning back to me and clinking his bottle against mine. “You got a pair on ya, I’ll give you that.”
I shrug off Al’s remark and smirk too. See, Woody? See where you get by just talking to people and doing things? Maybe you should try it sometime — and while you’re trying it, worry less about how I’m apparently fucking it up for you.
I toast my small victory with a pull from my forty, and while my mouth’s full, Al speaks up again. “Heard you were busy tonight. She hot enough to skip rush for?”
Another small victory: he missed Crescent ragging on me earlier about Sweetie Belle. “Worth being a little late for,” I reply once I swallow. “She’s got a great voice too.”
Al grins. Maybe a better word for it is leers. “You fuck her? Make her sing for you?”
I don’t want to brag about something I didn’t do. I also don’t really want to correct him. So instead of doing either, I just shrug and drink again — and I’m not fast enough with the bottle to hide the heat flushing my face. Al’s grin gets bigger.
“Yeeeeah, you did, don’t be a pussy about it,” he says. “You’re a fuckin’ dog, aren’t you?”
I don’t even know what that means. Coming from Al, it sounds like the kind of compliment I shouldn’t want to get. “Just a girl from my dorm,” I mutter. “Knew her in high school, uh… Sweetie Belle.”
I brace myself for Al to keep talking at me, but he doesn’t. In fact, he’s dead quiet, squinting at me and leaning forward a bit like he’s about to stand up and… I don’t know what. Whatever it is or was, it’s gone when I turn and look at him properly.
“What, you know her?” I ask.
Al settles back into the couch, grinning just as wide as before. “You fuckin’ dog,” he says again. Then he shakes his head again and laughs, staring into the mouth of his forty and plunking his thumb against its bulbous glass rim. “Do I know her… half the fuckin’ campus knows her, bro.”
Now it’s my turn to squint. “What do you mean?”
“Did you not go out at all last semester? She was everywhere, dude, just…”
He curls the fingers on his free hand into a circle and moves it back and forth in front of his mouth, poking his cheek out with his tongue with every inward movement. It takes me a moment to realize what he’s pantomiming, and another moment for ice — colder than before, spiky and sweaty and sickening — to fill me from head to curling toes.
“Guys were linin’ up for it, like, straight out of a porno. She was wild, boy. You missed out.”
“I…” I start saying. I don’t finish. I don’t get a chance to.
“And you went to high school with her?” He’s leaning forward again, elbows on knees, teeth flashing in the light from the projection screen. “Was she like that back then too? She sneak into the boys’ locker room, take it from whoever wherever?”
“N-No,” I stammer. “She… no.”
“Aw, bro,” Al says softly. “You missed out then too. But hey, don’t trip about it.” He clinks his bottle against mine again. The vibration through the glass almost knocks me off my stool. “She’s a sloot with two o’s. We’re only human. And now you got something in common with, like… half the chapter? Probably most of Sig Ep too. And –”
I stand up so I don’t fall over, and start walking so I don’t break into a sprint, mumbling something about the bathroom on my way out of the room. As I pass him, Case moves to stand up too, glaring daggers at something other than me. I don’t think about it. I don’t want to think about it — about anything at all.
The bathroom door slams shut behind me, and the sink wobbles a bit as I grip it with both hands and stare down into it, struggling to breathe slowly through my nose and even slower out of my mouth. Al’s full of shit. He has to be. It’d be exactly like him to make up something like this, or exaggerate it at least. No girl actually does that kind of stuff in real life — especially not girls who even pretend to be interested in me. Not the girl I used to play video games with, talked about music and family stuff with, saw come to life on stage and walked home and hugged and…
And didn’t kiss. Didn’t do anything with. Even though she wanted me to. Even though we’ve only been talking for a few days after years of her totally ignoring me for… what? Other guys? Other types of games?
How well do I actually know Sweetie Belle? Was anything that happened this week real, or was it just a game she plays with everyone she might want something out of? Something I don’t know anything about, that I’d never have a chance of doing with anyone like her — unless that wasn’t what she actually wanted. Unless I’m being played like a poker hand, strung along by my stupid little feelings, nothing more to her than a toy that missed its chance at being entertaining.
Maybe that’s what her smile meant. Maybe if I’d gone with her, that smile would’ve turned into a giggle, and then laughter, and then story after story of the time this useless fucking virgin–
Another door slams somewhere outside the bathroom — or actually, outside the house. The sound of footsteps clattering against wood drifts in through the cracked-open bathroom window. I’m near the back of the house, close enough to hear everything that happens on the back porch.
“What’s your fuckin’ problem?” is what I hear first. It’s Al, grunting in a lazy, standoffish tone.
“You are my fucking problem, Al!” another voice replies. I think it’s Case. I guess I know who he was glaring at now. “You’re the whole frat’s problem right now!”
“Jesus, Case, tell me how you really feel,” Al grumbles. The dull edge in his voice is a bit sharper now — like an old knife someone just picked up to start sharpening.
“I have told you, Al. Every fucking day, I’ve…” Case pauses, sighing in a way that sounds more like growling, and lowers his voice. “You can’t keep doing this. You have got to cut this shit out.”
I can’t see Al from the window, but I can hear his eyeroll even from here. “Oh my God, you’re fuckin’ –”
“I’m not fucking around, Al! We’re one bad rush class, half of one complaint away from losing our charter. Do you understand that? Do you understand what that means?”
“You cannot be this desperate, man,” Al mutters. “We can’t –”
“Hey! Hey, Al? We are this fucking desperate. And even if we weren’t, you making it your mission in life to be a prick to the rushes wouldn’t be fucking helping!”
“What rushes, Case?” Al snaps. “What did you even get us? The fuckin’ high school math club? We won’t even be a chapter after this, we’ll be a fuckin’ daycare!” Case starts to say something, and Al forcefully cuts him off. “No, don’t even start. Don’t start with that ‘times have changed’ horseshit again, because everybody’s done with it, and it’s not even fucking true. The Kaps are getting good rushes, the D-Chis, the fucking Pikes, and you want me to act like we’re gonna keep up with a bunch of faggot little –”
“Al!”
That wasn’t just a shout from Case — that was a threat, a “say exactly one more word and see what fucking happens” promise. I don’t know if it has the right effect on Alkaline, but it makes me cringe just hearing it from around the corner.
“You are on thin fucking ice right now,” Case seethes. “I don’t care if you’re a senior, I don’t care what Hawthorn or every legacy on the fucking planet would do. You do not make decisions for the frat. And you will not fuck the frat over because of your ego or what you think the rest of us are supposed to be like.”
There’s a pause, and then a gravelly sound that I only recognize as laughter when Al’s voice follows it. “This is a fuckin’ joke, Case. I know you gotta put on this whole show ‘cause you’re the president, but everybody knows it’s a joke.”
“You mean you –”
“I mean everybody, Case. The rest of ‘em might be humoring you, humoring him, but your little pet project? It’s dead on fuckin’ arrival. And now you wanna be pissed at me because I’m the only one pretending we all don’t see it.”
I hear footsteps on wood outside, and ceramic clinking inside. The sink is shaking. My hands are too.
“You know what the fucked-up part is?” Al says. “You know it’s not working. You know he’s not cut out for this, and he’s never going to be. And if you wanna keep stringin’ him along, letting him think he’s got a chance in fuckin’ hell, go for it. You’re the president. You can do whatever you want. But don’t bullshit me about it. And don’t act all offended when nobody fucking buys it.”
More footsteps outside, then a door opens and slams closed just hard enough to make the sink shake again. My knuckles hurt from gripping it. When I look up at the mirror, my face is too blurry to make out.
The movie’s still going when I leave the bathroom, so no one turns around as I scurry behind them all and head for the house’s front door. I almost make it too, but the sound of the door swinging open catches someone’s attention.
“Hey, where’re you –”
The door slamming shut cuts them off, and the cold air outside cuts through me like a knife. I forgot my jacket. I’m not going back for it. I just need to keep walking — keep running away from everything and everyone until I find a place dark enough to –
“Button, where you goin’?”
Someone opened the frat house’s door behind me. It sounds like Source. I walk faster — hear him jog down the front steps and across the lawn.
“Hey, Button, you hear me? What’s –”
“Just STOP!”
I’ve stopped in place, shoulders locked out, throat raw from what was supposed to be a shout and turned into a scream. I squeeze my eyes shut, wipe them with my hand, tell myself to keep going and leave him behind and stop being such a useless, childish loser about everything — and none of it works. None of it has ever fucking worked.
“Just stop… lying to me,” I say, shaking head to toe, gritting my teeth so my voice doesn’t tremble too. “Okay?”
I force my eyes open and my feet to turn me around. Source’s staring at me, brow creased and mouth open. “What are you talking about?” he says. He looks confused, and sounds almost hurt. More bullshit. Of course.
“It’s a joke, all right?” I say, blinking and talking fast so I don’t have a chance to start crying. “And it’s fine! I get it, like… it’s not new to me. I know who I am, and who you guys are, and I should’ve known what this all was days ago, but I just…”
“Just what?” Source still sounds baffled, and takes a couple steps closer as he talks. “Button, seriously, what… what happened?”
“Nothing!” I lie — just like I’ve been lying this whole week, pretending I’m someone I’ve never had a chance in fucking hell of being. “It’s fine. I get it. I’m not cut out for this. And I acted like I was, and it was all a joke, and I’m done. I’m going home. I’ll…”
Source’s face has changed — gotten tighter and darker. “What did he say?” he growls, in a tone I’ve never heard from him before.
“What did who…” I try to reply. “N-No one said –”
“Button, what did he say to you?”
I clench my teeth and stare at the ground. Source blows out an angry sigh.
“Stay here,” he orders me, before turning around and heading back into the house. A minute later, he reemerges in a jacket I saw him wearing at the pizza place a couple nights ago, with a duffel bag slung over one shoulder and a second coat tossed over the other — my coat, which he stuffs into my arms once he’s in front of me again.
“Put that on,” he says. “Come with me.”
I throw a limp gesture up at the house. “The rush –”
“Fuck rush, come with me.”
Source strides past me without waiting for my answer, and before I really realize it, my feet are moving and I’m trotting to catch up to him, shrugging my coat on along the way. I don’t know where he’s taking me or why he’s taking me there, or whether this’ll end up being just another punchline in the giant practical joke I’ve been the butt of this week.
But I guess one way or another, I don’t have any other place to go. So I guess for now, I’ll go with him.