Again by Lisa Burstein Read Free Book Online Page A

said.
    “Wouldn’t that be a very
sexually frustrated rooster?” I joked, even though it was exactly how I felt.
    I guess it was the price I
was willing to pay to belong to something. Like Tristan, I craved a tribe. The
guys in TKE seemed as good as any. They were wealthy like me, with fathers who
were pushing them to be something someday so they could push their kids to be
something someday. It was a welcome place to hide and drink and play video games
until that someday, until I made my own son’s life a living hell.
    “You could always be my
towel boy,” Tristan said, wiggling his brows.
    “That will be great for my
future, a towel-tote for the Hudson University diving star.”
    “ Gay diving star,” he
corrected. his eyes sparkling. “The big law firms eat that shit up.”
    I personally didn’t care
that Tristan was gay. He did, though. Back then he mentioned it hourly. I
guessed it was because he finally could.
    I should have taken his
invite, or accepted any of the other invitations I’d gotten from frats who’d
asked me to pledge. But, my father had been a TKE man, so that was what I had
to be.
    I’d hitched my wagon to a
falling star.
    The night I started wearing
the D-Bag scarlet letter had been like any other party as a pledge. The
TKE house was filled with guys and girls, with music, with the welcome
dangerous energy only freedom and breaking the rules can create. Truthfully, I
could have been wearing it for weeks beforehand.
    At the TKE house, being a
pledge meant drinking any time one of the older brothers told you to, going to
get them a new beer when they demanded one, and doing your best not to pass out
in the bathroom you had to clean with a toothbrush the next day.
    I hadn’t thought anything of
it when the older brothers walked that girl upstairs. The girl I would only
know later as Jeanie Pratt, plaintiff .
    I watched them suspend her
wobbling body, guiding her up the wooden staircase.
    “Pledge Chazz, you like?”
Brother Randy asked, running his open palm up and down in the air behind her
like she was a car he was showing off.
    “Of course,” I nodded. What
was there not to like? She was a tight-assed little brunette with tits as big
as soccer balls. If she was a car she’d have been a ruby-red vintage Corvette.
    “Come on, then,” he’d said,
indicating with his chin the top floor where the bedrooms were.
    I could say my choice of
following them up the stairs was when my fate had been sealed, but it had been
choosing to be there at all.
    The story I would have told
in court, if I’d testified, was that I had followed them, but only because I
had to. You didn’t deny a brother’s request. I knew nothing good was about to
happen, but I still went anyway because I was weak.
    We walked into Randy’s bedroom
and they closed the door. I watched as two of my fellow brothers picked Jeanie
up and put her on the bed, as another one of my brothers took her shoes off.
    I stood back and waited.
    She was simply a heap of skin
and bones they were moving and bending. Her eyes were rolling back in her head.
    “Is she okay?” I asked, even
though it was clear she wasn’t.
    “Nope,” Brother Randy said, “but
she will be very soon.” He tickled the bottom of her foot.
    She jerked, her head rising.
She tried to focus on him and attempted to roll away, kicked her legs out. A
couple of the guys took her arms and held them down. Her body went slack.
    She seemed like she’d been
drugged, but toxicology reports later showed only alcohol in her system—a whole
shitload of alcohol.
    “What the hell are you doing
to her?” the pledge standing next to me asked. That question had been deep in
my throat, but hadn’t made it to my tongue, my lips.
    “Exactly what she’s asking
for,” Randy said, going for her belt.
    I should have pulled him off
her. I should have punched both the brothers holding her down in the nose or
the nuts. At the very least I should have taken out my cell and called