Sorority Sister (2 page)

Fresh tears dangled on Erica’s long eyelashes. “Right. The way my luck is going today, it’ll probably explode when I open it.” But she placed the package on the bed and began unwrapping it. Her fingers, Maxie noticed, were shaking. Praying there would be something good in the box, something to cheer up Erica, she leaned against the wall and watched as Erica pulled the last sheet of paper away from the contents.

The object inside was large. Rectangular. Shiny black lacquer with pastel flowers dancing across the top.

Erica stood beside the bed, looking down. “I … I don’t understand,” she whispered. “How … ?”

Maxie moved to stand beside her. “What is it?” Then she reached the bed and looked for herself.

The jewelry box. Undamaged. And, as Erica reached out and lifted the lid, apparently not tampered with. The upper, red-velvetted tray was still overflowing with jewelry, including a beautiful pearl ring that Erica immediately snatched up and slid onto her left ring finger, crying out happily, “My grandmother’s ring! It’s still here!”

Watching her, Maxie smiled with relief. She’d never seen Omega Phi’s normally reserved president so elated.

But Maxie’s smile didn’t last long. In spite of Erica’s relief and joy, something wasn’t right.

Why would someone take the jewelry box …and then return it?

It made no sense.

W
ITH HER JEWELRY BOX
sitting safely on her dresser once again, Erica wanted to forget the whole nasty business. “It must have been a joke,” she insisted when Maxie argued.

“Erica,” Maxie pointed out, “no one here would find that funny. They wouldn’t take something that valuable as a prank.”

“Well, what does it matter now, Maxie? I mean, it’s over and done with, right? All’s well that ends well.” Contented, Erica began sifting through her jewelry, making sure that nothing was missing, fingering several rings, fondly letting the necklaces slide through her hands.

Maxie knew a made-up mind when she ran into one. Erica had chosen to put the unpleasant episode out of her mind, as if it had never happened.

But it had.

Giving up, Maxie returned to her room and sat down on the bed, looking out the wall of windows over the lawn. The house was quiet. Were she and Erica the only ones home?

For the first time since she’d moved, bag and baggage, from Lester into the sorority house, Maxie felt uneasiness tingling her spine. Erica could focus all she wanted to on the fact that the jewelry box had been returned, but Maxie McKeon couldn’t help feeling the whole incident was … strange.

That night she had dinner with Jenna Dwyer at Burger’s Etc., a long, silver diner across the road from campus. She had told Brendan to meet her at the diner later. She wanted to have a couple of hours alone with her ex-roommate.

Guilty conscience, she had told herself when she’d called Lester earlier that afternoon. You haven’t had much time for Jenna lately, and you promised yourself when you left the dorm that you’d stay friends.

Jenna Dwyer was the first person Maxie had met on campus. By the time she learned that Jenna hated sororities and fraternities, the two were already friends. “I wouldn’t join even if they asked me,” Jenna had said when Maxie received her first invitation to a “rush” party. “And trust me, they won’t ask.”

She was right. Not one sorority sent outspoken Jenna an invitation to a tea or a party or a lunch. They weren’t any more interested in her than she was in them. Her wardrobe consisted mainly of ripped jeans, funky tops, and wild, mismatched earrings. She considered high heels a “plot to cripple women,” and she had dyed her short, wiry bangs a garish orange-red.

“Definitely not sisterhood material,” she had joked while Maxie was packing her bags to leave their room in Lester, and if Maxie thought she heard a note of wistfulness in the comment, she quickly told herself she had to be imagining it. Jenna had made her feelings about sororities perfectly clear. The wistfulness, if it was there at all, had to be because she didn’t want Maxie leaving.

The ironic thing, it seemed to Maxie as she saw Jenna loping across the highway toward her, was that Jenna probably could have been pledged if she’d wanted. She might not dress the way the sorority girls did, but she had a great sense of humor and she was smart as a whip. If she’d given Omega Phi half a chance, they might have welcomed her with open arms. An opening had occurred several weeks earlier when one of the girls had had to leave, due to an illness in her family. Maxie could have put Jenna’s name in. She had intended to, and then had decided to ask Jenna first.

Jenna had been horrified. “No way!” she had cried, her big brown eyes open wide. “Leave me out of the sisterhood! They’d make me wear pearls and date someone named Biff. Forget it.”

The girl who had been “rushed” instead, and who had eventually decided to pledge the sorority, was Cath Devon, who had been living in an off-campus dorm, Nightingale Hall. She had moved into her room on the third floor the previous Sunday.

Maxie told herself she’d been too busy to get acquainted with Cath, but the truth was, she hadn’t yet got over her regret that it was Cath in that room instead of Jenna.

We could have had so much fun, Maxie thought now as she held the diner door open for a cheerful, grinning Jenna. If Ms. Dwyer weren’t so darn stubborn …

“So, what’s up?” Jenna asked as they slid into the only available blue booth. “It’s not every Saturday night that I get a call from Omega house. Did they kick you out, I hope? What’d you do, floss your teeth at the table?”

Maxie felt her face flush. She really had to make more time for Jenna. The first few weeks of school would have been a lot harder if Jenna Dwyer hadn’t been there for her.

“I just felt like a hamburger,” she said, “and I figured you might, too.”

“You don’t
look
like a hamburger,” Jenna quipped. “And I
don’t
feel like one. I’m ordering the taco salad. But I’m still glad you called.” Then she added, her brown eyes focused on Maxie’s face. “Something
is
up. I can tell. What’s wrong? Your new pledgie giving you a hard time? Does she drop the ‘g’ endings on her words? Wear plaids with stripes? One of
my
favorite wardrobe combinations, by the way. Is she dating a guy in, oh, don’t tell me, fine arts instead of the much more desirable premed, prelaw, or business administration programs?” Jenna shook her head in mock despair. Her short, thick blonde hair moved around her cheeks. “Tsk, tsk, when
will
these girls learn?”

Maxie didn’t laugh. She knew she shouldn’t tell Jenna what had happened. She had promised not to tell. And although no one at Omega house had ever specifically said so, she had a strong feeling that everyone there would frown on her wish to share their bad news with an “outsider.”

What was she thinking? Jenna wasn’t an “outsider.” She was a very good friend.

When they’d given their order to the waitress, Maxie nodded and confessed, “You’re right. Something did happen. But it doesn’t have anything to do with Cath. She’s fine.”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” Jenna said, “but I think in Cath’s case, moving into a sorority house is definitely a move up, considering where she’d
been
living.” She shuddered. “That creepy old house down the road gives me the willies. Always has. I never could figure out why anyone would actually
sleep
there. Or how they
could
sleep there. So dark and gloomy … reminds me of the house in
Psycho.”

“Nightingale Hall is pretty creepy,” Maxie agreed.

“Nobody calls it Nightingale Hall anymore,” Jenna reminded her. “Not since that girl died there. Everyone I know calls it Nightmare Hall now. Makes sense to me.”

“I’d forgotten about that girl.” Maxie unfolded a white paper napkin on her lap. “I never knew much about it, except that it was all resolved eventually. But Cath told Erica she liked it there. At least, she said she liked the people who live there, especially Jess Vogt, Ian Banion, and Milo Keith. I’ve seen Cath on campus with Milo.”

Their food came, and when Jenna had taken a forkful of salad, chewed, and swallowed, she stuck her fork in the bowl and, leaning forward, said, “You still haven’t told me what evil has befallen Omega house. That’s an antique, that house. Maybe you’ve discovered a pre-Civil War ghost hanging out on the third floor?”

Maxie shook her head. “Nothing like that. It’s …something was …taken, that’s all.”

“Taken?” Jenna looked skeptical. “Am I safe in interpreting that to mean stolen? As in snatched, absconded with, robbed, ripped off?”

“Well, we’re not sure.”

“Not sure? What, you sorority types don’t know what being robbed means?”

“Of course we know. But … well, the thing that was taken was …returned.”

Jenna sank back against the seat. “Ah, a thief suffering pangs of guilt. Shouldn’t have gone into that line of work in the first place, if you ask me. Obviously not cut out for it. So, what was snatched? The silverware? TV set?”

“A jewelry box. Erica’s jewelry box. But then, a messenger brought it back this afternoon. Weird. Really weird. Who steals things and then sends them back?”

“A thief with a very lenient return policy?” Jenna joked. Then, her voice suddenly serious, she added, “Do you think that someone in the sorority, actually stole the thing?”

“Of course not.”

“I figured you’d say that. But it’s pretty creepy to think someone came into the house — I mean, don’t you lock your doors?”

“Of course we do! Usually. I mean …” Maxie’s voice weakened …“sometimes. I guess sometimes we forget. It’s such a nuisance, with people running in and out all day, locking and unlocking all the time.”

“Yeah, well, what’s really a nuisance,” Jenna said as Maxie noticed Brendan entering the diner, “is having
thieves
running in and out all day. Maybe you should think about coming back to Lester, Max. The only people running in and out of the dorm are regular, everyday weirdos like yours truly. Besides,” she added quietly, “I
miss
you.”

But Maxie was already telling Brendan hi, smiling up at him, and really didn’t hear Jenna’s final comment. Nor did she see the way Jenna’s usual happy expression changed abruptly.

When Brendan and Maxie suggested politely that Jenna tag along to the movies with them, she said, “Oh, wouldn’t I just love to be a third wheel. The fact is,” she said, flushing slightly, “I have a date. A guy from my chem class. He’s no Tom Cruise, but he was incredibly impressed when I told him I intend to be an entomologist. Most people flinch and say, ‘A
bug
person? Yuk!’ He thought it was neat. So I said yes when he asked me out. We’ll do the movie another time, the three of us. Call me.”

Someone called out a hello to Brendan then and when he had taken a few steps away from the booth to speak to the friend, Jenna turned to Maxie with concern in her eyes and said, “Listen, think about what I said, okay? I didn’t get another roommate after you left. I decided I preferred my privacy. But I make exceptions for exceptional people, so your bed is there whenever you want it back.” She turned away, saying over her shoulder, “You shouldn’t stay in a place that isn’t safe. You don’t want the same thing happening to you that happened to that girl at Nightmare Hall.”

Maxie felt a cold chill as she watched Jenna hurry away.

T
HAT NIGHT, FOR THE
first time since she’d moved into Omega house, Maxie slept poorly. She jerked abruptly awake half a dozen times, thinking she’d heard a sound. Each time, although she listened intently, she heard only the silence of a sleeping house and Tinker’s deep, even breathing. Each time, it took her a while to drift back into sleep, only to be awakened again a short while later.

She awoke on Sunday morning tired and irritable.

“You’d better cheer up,” Tinker warned when Maxie had snapped at her for the third time. “We’ve got The Moms’ coming today. We all have to be on our best behavior.”

Maxie groaned aloud. The moms! She’d forgotten. Erica’s mother, Joan Bingham, an Omega Phi member herself, had rounded up a group of other Omega Phi mothers whose daughters were now in the house, and scheduled a visit for the “first nice Sunday in spring.”

“It’s not really spring yet,” Maxie grumbled, replacing the jeans and sweater she’d planned on wearing, selecting instead a skirt and a white long-sleeved blouse. “And I
don’t
feel like being polite and entertaining the moms. I wouldn’t think. Erica would, either, not after what happened yesterday.”

“She probably doesn’t. But she can’t very well call her mom and cancel at the last minute.”

Maxie’s mother hadn’t been an Omega, but Tinker’s mom and Candie’s were, and they were planning to make the trip with Erica’s mother, and four or five others. “Well,” she said grudgingly, “I guess you’ll be glad to see your mother. I will, too,” she admitted, remembering the warm welcome she’d received when she spent three days at the Gabrielle house during Christmas vacation. “Your mom’s okay.”

Unfortunately, Maxie had completely forgotten about the visit. All of the girls were expected to be there to welcome the guests and to attend the tea scheduled for that afternoon. But she’d forgotten …and had made a date to go canoeing on the river with Brendan that afternoon.

“You’d better call him right now,” Tinker suggested. “You know how he hates it when sorority stuff ruins his weekend. The longer you wait, the worse it’s going to be.”

Taking her advice, Maxie went to the phone.

Calling him right away didn’t help that much. “Why didn’t you tell me last night?” Brendan asked, clearly irritated.

“I forgot. Erica’s mom had been saying for months that they were coming, but we didn’t find out that it was this Sunday until this week. I’m sorry. The tea won’t last all day. How about a movie tonight?”

His voice was curt. “Maybe. I guess I’ll give Jenna a call. Maybe she’d be interested in a canoe ride.”

Maxie stared at the receiver in her hand. Jenna? “You’re going to take Jenna canoeing?”

“Sure. Why not? We’re both taking a back ‘seat to your sorority sisters.”