Chapter Twenty-Three Maya

Chapter Twenty-Three

Maya

November 2011

From that point on, I felt different. I was different. Something changed in the way I carried myself, looked people in the eye. Heads turned when Daisy and I walked into a room, and I knew they were watching us with envy.

In the weeks following initiation, we spent languid days wandering to and from class, nights cross-legged on someone’s dorm room floor spilling secrets by candlelight until our lips were stained purple with wine. We laughed hysterically, danced until sunrise, drank and studied and ate at Sterling, absorbed into her womb.

We had Greystone Society meetings every Sunday, the location and time of which would vary, where all twenty-one of us would gather around candlelit dinners in a sheltered corner of campus to discuss poetry, art, and politics, and ways in which we could benefit the Society. There was a hum running through everything, then. A feeling like we were living in a world within a world within a world, one to which only we had access.

Most important, I’d been able to send money to Naomi. My plan was to do whatever it took to make it, for her, for us. And Greystone Society was the start of it.

Still, at night when I was drifting to sleep, the question lingered— Why had they chosen me? —and because I couldn’t answer, this new life felt temporary. I suspected one day it would vanish, and I’d wake up and realize it had been nothing but a dream.

—

One night after dinner, Daisy and I were walking back to her dorm when the sound of tires on gravel came up behind us. We turned to see Cecily and Kai in a decked-out golf cart.

“Get in, nerds, we’re going out,” Cecily said with a glint in her eyes. A thrill shot through me as we jumped in the backseat.

“Where’d you get the golf cart?” I asked as she whipped around a corner, streamers attached to the roof of the cart trailing in the wind.

“Nearly broke my leg doing a stupid keg stand at TI the other night,” Cecily said, jutting a chin at her crutches, which were stacked beside her in the front seat. I pictured Cecily doing a keg stand and laughed inwardly.

Daisy shrieked. “Cecily St. Clair doing a keg stand? I’d pay to see that.”

“She was trying to impress some guy,” Kai said.

“Oh my god, did you sleep with him? What’s his name? Nate?” Daisy asked, teasingly. Of course, I hadn’t known Nate at the time, so the significance of this didn’t register until it was too late.

“I was not trying to impress some guy,” Cecily said, suddenly defensive. “I just wanted to prove I could do it.” She shrugged, annoyed. “Anyway, can we not?”

Daisy shot me a wry look, and I suppressed a laugh as Kai turned up the music on the portable speaker.

We held on tightly as Cecily sped down toward a field at the south end of campus. The uneven ground threw us from our seats multiple times as Cecily spun donuts in the wet grass.

Once we’d slowed, Kai pulled out a tube from her bag and handed it to me. “Will you do the honors?”

I gazed down, confused, at the strange object in my hands. It wasn’t until she passed me a lighter that I realized what it was. A firework.

We lit Roman candles off the back of the golf cart as Cecily sped across the field, the fireworks shooting fifty feet in the air and exploding against the black sky in brilliant glittering bursts of color.

Daisy screamed as a tight turn flung our bodies.

“Hold on, ladies!” Cecily shouted as she angled the cart down a steep hill.

A rush of cold air swept my face as we shot down the hill. Every inch of my skin tingled. This was it, I had made it. I was a part of their inner circle. I was friends with the most beautiful, successful, and envied girls on campus.

Out of the darkness, we heard sirens and the campus police loudspeaker. “Public Safety. Stop what you’re doing immediately .”

“Go go go!” Daisy said, hitting the back of Cecily’s seat.

Adrenaline shot through my veins as we raced across the field, Cecily swerving the golf cart like a NASCAR driver through the university. As soon as we’d lost the campus cops, we let out a collective exhale.

“Who taught you to drive?” I asked, dizzy.

Cecily smirked. “I learned how to drive in Manhattan.”

“Did you see them trying to run after us?” Kai asked as Daisy clutched her stomach in a fit of laughter.

As we threaded through the main campus, Kai turned up the music. Daisy and I stood, hanging off the cart and singing to the music as loud as our lungs would allow. Students leaned out of their second- and third-story windows and cheered us on.

“Y’all are insane!” a girl shouted from a window. From another, a group of guys cheered, holding up the Sterling Club flag.

Not only was I now a member of the most envied club on campus, I was one step closer to being with my sister again. Things were finally starting to fall into place.