“You’re kidding, right?” Craig said. He was holding her in his arms. She was wearing a bra with orange daisies on it, and matching cotton panties. It had been her idea to take off her T-shirt and jeans: “I want to feel as much of your skin against mine as I can, without—”
She hadn’t needed to say more.
He knew what she meant.
He’d agreed he’d never press the issue again after a night after winter break when he’d begged and pleaded with her to let him kiss her breasts. Finally, she’d nodded in a manner that had seemed almost ceremonious—the crucifer on the altar nodding to the priest—and Craig’s heart had nearly exploded in his chest.
But when he’d propped himself up on his elbows to unfasten her beautiful pink lace bra, he realized that she was crying, that there were matching tears sliding sideways down each of her cheeks, zigzagging into her golden hair, where they disappeared, and he pulled his trembling hands away from her bra as if they’d been burned. He let them hover in the air over her for a moment before he sagged beside her on the squeaking mattress of his bed, put his head in her neck, and said, “No, Nicole. I’m sorry.”
She said nothing.
“I won’t ask again,” Craig said.
“I love you,” she said—and, as every time she had said it since the first time, something seemed to catch between Craig’s soft palate and his throat. He couldn’t speak. He’d made a thousand declarations of love to her since October, but he could never say it in response to her declaration—because of this sharpness that caught him as quickly as a fishhook every time.
Nicole smiled, seeming to understand. He didn’t have to say it. He loved Nicole. He loved her. Nicole knew how much he loved her.
That had been six weeks ago, and since then he’d held her in his arms in her bra and panties a dozen times, and kept his promise not to ask for more.
“Tell me this is a bad joke,” he said. “Your sorority doesn’t really do this shit, right?”
“It’s not that weird,” Nicole said. “Secret societies have rituals. This happens to be ours.”
Craig couldn’t stop himself from snorting, but then he muttered an apology. He said, “Sorry. I guess I just don’t think of your sorority as a secret society. I mean, I thought it was about formals and decorating floats and making cookies and maybe helping each other clip in hair extensions. I never thought you’d have a coffin in the basement, and—”
“Shhh—be quiet,” Nicole said, and she actually glanced around the room as if someone might have overheard, although they were half-naked and completely alone in his dorm room. Perry was at his afternoon Poli-Sci lecture. Even the curtains were closed.
“Nicole,” Craig said, but didn’t bother to continue. It was cute, really, he thought. It reminded him of the way girls back in elementary school would get all excited about their own meaningless secrets, passing notes to one another, freaking out if some boy grabbed a note out of some girl’s hands, although those notes had never said anything more exciting than Deena likes Bradley!!! Like anyone cared.
“Well, the Pan-Hellenic Society could have our house closed if they found out. This is considered hazing.”
“How often does your sorority have these . . . raisings?” Craig asked, trying to make it sound like a serious question, trying not to make air quotations around the word.
“Twice a year,” Nicole said. “They did it back in November, but we—the new pledges—had to wait upstairs. They don’t let us attend until the Spring Event.”
Then, Craig couldn’t help it. He laughed out at her calling it the “Spring Event.” Basically they were getting sorority sisters drunk on tequila, having them hyperventilate until they passed out, putting them in a coffin, and “bringing them back from the dead,” all newly risen in the Omega Theta Tau sisterhood. It hardly fit, in Craig’s opinion, under the kind of seasonal “event” classification the Rotary Club might give to an Easter egg hunt or a skating party for kids with Down syndrome.
“Craig,” Nicole said, and punched him softly on the arm. “You said you wanted me to tell you everything. And you swore you wouldn’t tell anyone.”
Craig held his hand over his heart and said, “I swear. I mean it. Your secret society’s secret is safe with me. But don’t go brain dead on me or something, okay? You’re sure this shit is safe?”
“It’s so safe,” Nicole said. “Hundreds of girls have done it since the fifties. Nothing’s ever gone wrong.”
“Yeah, but what if it does? You read about this stuff all the time. People with heart conditions they didn’t know they had, that kind of thing—”
“Well, we have a dozen founding sisters present at the event. And this year I’m just a celebrant. I don’t get to be raised until next year.”
“Well, that’s good,” Craig said, although it still vaguely alarmed him. (For one thing, who were these blue-haired old ladies from the fifties who showed up for this weirdness, and why? Jesus Christ, would Nicole still be doing this stuff when she was eighty years old?) “I love you,” he said, “but the idea of wiping the drool off your bib for the rest of your life is less than sexy. Still, I’d do it.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry. Anyway, we have our own EMT. The sorority pays him to be at the events and—”
“That guy,” Craig said, and propped himself up on his elbow. “That guy. You said you didn’t know who he was.”
“What guy?”
“The one who’s always hanging around your sorority. I pointed him out. I said, ‘He’s got a patch on his pocket that says EMT,’ and you were like, ‘What’s EMT stand for?’ ”
“Huh?” She pulled Craig back down to her and kissed his temple. “Your eyebrows are all furrowed, Craig. I hate that.”
She’d said that a lot—that she couldn’t stand to look at him when his eyebrows were “furrowed,” and when he’d tried to explain to her that it would be his forehead that was furrowed, because furrows were lines and you couldn’t have furrowed eyebrows, she’d said, “I don’t care. I can’t stand that face you make.”
“You know perfectly well what EMT stands for,” Craig said. “Do you play dumb with me a lot, Nicole?”
“So, like, are you asking if I’m playing dumb or just actually dumb?”
He laughed, and she kissed his forehead.
“Don’t make fun of me,” Nicole said, but she wasn’t angry. She licked his forehead then and nuzzled into his neck, and he let his hands drift around the safe, soft, bare skin of her torso.