“I’m afraid there’s really nothing we can do for you,” Sherry, the financial aid officer told me, closing my folder and pushing it back across her desk toward me. “The best I can do is give you until the end of this week to come up with the money.”

“It’s a lot of money,” I said, quietly protesting.

“Well college is expensive,” Sherry said. “And this is only a fraction of your actual tuition; your financial aid helped out quite a bit.”

“And yet it couldn’t cover the last $800,” I said, staring at her and rolling my eyes. “Look, I’m the president of Gamma, isn’t there like, an exception or something?”

“Aleah,” She said, folding her hands on the desk and making direct eye contact. “I’ve heard plenty of rumors about how GAT is run, and honestly, they’d probably be better off without you.”

“Wow,” I said, raising my hands up. “Wow, that’s just…I don’t know where you’re getting your information from but you’re totally off-base.”

At least there was nothing she could prove. I would say that our level of Greek tradition wasn’t on par with TRI PI but that doesn’t really mean anything; at least we were representing ourselves well and doing our community service. Not to mention we looked pretty damned good while we were doing it.

“Regardless,” Sherry said, handing me a printout of my tuition bill. “You owe us eight-hundred dollars by the end of the week or we’ll be forced to suspend your enrollment here until you can pay.”

“You’ve got to be kidding, I mean you’ve really got to be kidding.”

“I’ve never been more serious in my life, Aleah,” She said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have another student waiting on me.”

I would like to say I walked out of the office calmly but the truth is I sort of stormed out. The four people waiting outside looked up from their phones to stare at me as I slammed the door and made a beeline for the exit. I hated the administration building. Well, I hated it even more now. I tore through the reception area and was just about to walk through the glass double doors when I felt a hand on my shoulder. Whoever was touching me was about to die, I didn’t care who it was. I spun around and started to say something about messing with me on the wrong day, but stopped short. It was Mason, Audrey’s roommate. Mason had absolutely no idea that his roommate ‘Todd’ was actually a girl named Audrey. We’d kept it pretty quiet; honestly, though GAT was bad at a lot of things, it never struggled to keep secrets and it always kept gossip to a minimum. That was our strength and one that TRI PI didn’t share. The problem was that I didn’t know how much longer it would stay a secret. Eventually Audrey would just pop, Mason would find out on his own, or TRI PI would slip up. On that subject, I wondered what TRI PI was actually doing with Audrey. She hadn’t come back to the house, hadn’t contacted any of us, so she had to still be there.

“Hey,” Mason said, ignoring my near outburst. “Have you see Todd?”

“Todd?” I struggle to think of something to say that didn’t sound like complete crap.

“Um yeah, my roommate? Todd? He hangs out with you guys all the time, you can and got him last night and he hasn’t come back.”

“Oh, uh, yeah,” I said. “Sorry about that. One of our sisters had to go out of town and he…went with her. I’m sure they’ll be back in a few days.”

“He’s just going to miss class for a few days?” Mason stared at me. “And why isn’t he answering his phone?”

Because her phone was sitting on the coffee table at our house.

“Yeah, I really don’t know,” I tried to brush it off. “But I can try to get ahold of my sister if you want?”

“Yeah, do that,” Mason said. “Let me know what you hear. If he isn’t back by tomorrow I’m calling campus police.”

“Don’t jump the gun,” I said defensively. “They’re just on a little road trip.”

“Todd wouldn’t leave without telling me,” He said.

“Look,” I said, putting my hand on Mason’s shoulder. “I know you’re both Freshmen, and I’m sure that you two have been pretty much inseparable for god knows how long, but the fact is you’re both at college now. You’re adults. People don’t always tell eachother where they’re going. I don’t know where my best friend, Tiffany is half the time. Sorry Mason, you just need to grow up, and for god sake, don’t call the police ever time Todd goes out to dinner or something. It’s rude.”

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry,” He said. “You’re right but I’m just worried about him.”

I stepped away from the door a little to allow others to pass through. This was going to take a minute.

“What…exactly are you worried about?” I asked, feigning concern as best I could.

“Well he’s been…different. Like I told Tiffany, he’s not interested in playing Pantheon much anymore and he’s quiet. Really quiet. Quieter than normal. It’s like he has his mind on something else.

I’m sure he did.

“Alright, Mason,” I sighed. “I’m going to level with you, alright?”

“Please do,” Mason said.

“The truth is that there IS something going on. It’s pretty life changing, but he doesn’t want to talk about it yet. It’s not my place to tell you either.”

“I don’t get it,” He was starting to get angry. “I’m his best friend, but he can’t come to me? But he can go to a bunch of sorority girls that he didn’t know until a few weeks ago?”

“Okay, Mason,” I said. “Picture people like…tools. You pick the right tool for the job. For this job you weren’t the right tool. Do you think a hammer gets upset when it can’t be used to paint a house?”

“So you’re telling me I’m a hammer?”

“I’m telling you that you need to be patient. Todd is your best friend, he’ll tell you what’s going on eventually.”

Maybe we could do it over pot roast.

“Okay,” Mason resigned. “I’m going to trust you, for now, but I can’t hold out forever. I need to know what’s going on with my friend.”

“If you’re really his friend then you’ll let him work it out for himself. It’s what he needs right now.”

Well, what she probably needed right now was a swat team to break her out of the TRI PI house.

“Fine,” Mason said. “Let me give you my number though, I want to keep in touch.”

I nodded and exchanged numbers with him, then he was gone. He was getting way too curious. How much longer could we really keep Audrey’s little secret? I heard my phone beep and looked down, it was the calendar. Officer meeting today, great.

I left the admin building and drove right back to the house. Everyone was already there. Courtney, Allie, Isabella, Amanda, Lauren, and Rebecca, all seated at the table in the conference room and waiting for me. Well, at least they were on the ball. I walked into the room and dropped my purse on the floor as I sat down.

“Where’s Shauna?” I asked, looking at the group. This was great, I had no VP because no one wanted to step up and now my external VP was gone?

“Kidnapped by TRI PI too, probably,” Lauren shrugged.

“You are so very funny,” I rolled my eyes.

“I like to think so,” Lauren nodded in agreement.

I opened a folder that had been left for me and thumbed through the agenda.

“Our council looks like swiss cheese,” I said, referring to the vacant positions. It wasn’t that we hadn’t tried to take care of it, it was more like we’d had a slew of resignations and no one wanted to step up. “I bet TRI PI is on top of their stuff…”

“Do you want to go join TRI PI?” Courtney suggested? Giggles all around.

“Ha ha,” I said flatly. “Okay first item on the agenda is the upcoming mixer with DEM-“

“We need to talk about Audrey,” Lauren interjected.

“I need suggestions on a theme, something different from last year-“

“What about abducted transgender women?” Isabella asked. “Is that a theme?”

“Last year we did the ‘under the sea theme’ so I was thinking-“

“Wait,” Allie said. “What about ‘pranks gone wrong’? That could be a theme.”

I slammed my folder down on the table.

“Skipping THAT for now,” I said angrily. “Okay, Rebecca, let’s talk about the health and safety concerns. We had a patch of mold removed from the living room last month, is that situation –“

“I’m more worried about the health and safety of the people you leave behind during poorly planned pranks,” Rebecca looked at me with a smirk. I hated that bitch.

“Okay, here’s the deal,” I said looking at them. They were all staring at me; I felt like a deer in headlights. “It’s really sad what happened to Audrey. I like Audrey, a lot. She’s cool, but at the end of the day we’re a sorority, not a daycare. It’s not like they took one of our sisters and are holding them in their basement, alright? Audrey will be fine.”

“She will be fine,” Amanda spoke up. “Because you’re going to give them back their letters.”

I glared at them. We had actual business to discuss and they were stuck on this.

“Audrey doesn’t have to dominate every conversation we have,” I said. “We are a sorority, we have business to attend to. That is what sororities do, so let’s—”

“She kinda does,” Lauren said accusingly. “You know how you were worried we would get a bad reputation for almost letting her get killed? How do you think our reputation is going to hold up when people find out you left her behind like that?”

I think my blood was actually boiling.

“You know,” I said. “TRI PI is having their officer meeting today too. They’re probably over there talking about things that affect them, like their community service, health and safety issues. I mean we have to meet with the student advisory board next week, does anyone want to talk about that? Oh, and get this, three sisters haven’t paid their dues and we’re already full three weeks into the year.”

I looked around the table. None of them were that interested in what I had to say. Let’s be honest, neither was I. I had way too much on my mind to really hash out all of the issues on the agenda. I closed the folder.

“Okay fine,” I took a breath and laid my palms on the table. “You want to talk about Audrey? Let’s talk about Audrey. Audrey is a grown wo-“

“Audrey is learning to be a woman,” Lauren interrupted me. “Would you have left her there if she were your little sister?”

“I don’t have a little sister,” I pointed out.

“Hate to say it, but she’s right,” I guess Allie was against me too. You know, normally I would be all about getting Audrey out of danger but first of all, she wasn’t in danger. Secondly, giving the letters back to TRI PI would be admitting defeat and I wasn’t about to do that. It wasn’t like they wouldn’t let her go eventually anyway.

“How about this,” Lauren said. “We put it to a vote.”

The others nodded in agreement. This was ridiculous; Audrey wasn’t going to be hurt by TRI PI; she was absolutely fine.

“Alright,” I conceded. “You know what? We’ll put it to a vote. All in favor of giving in to TRI PI and potentially destroying our reputation, raise your hand.”

Everyone at the table but me raised their hand. I fumed.

“Fine,” I said, opening the folder again. “Now, moving on. Let’s talk about the semi-formal coming up next week.”