Frat Girl. Kiley Roache

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СКАЧАТЬ hall meeting!” someone shouts, knocking on our door. “Come on out, frosh!”

      I open the door to see a tiny redhead ringing a cowbell and wearing a very bright T-shirt with a button that says, “I

Frosh.”

      A group of people are huddled awkwardly and silently in the hall. Leighton stands in the doorway, as if debating whether she should go outside for this at all.

      “Welcome to Warren!” the overenthusiastic redhead says. “I’m your RA, Becky Scott. I hope you are all just loving meeting your roomies! I think we might just have the best hall ever this year, and I’m really excited to go on this journey with all of you! But first I have some presents!”

      The presents turn out to be all the free shit Housing gave her, and soon I find myself with the weirdest assortment of objects I have ever held at once.

      There’s a rubber duck with a mental health hotline number stamped on its butt to represent “Duck Syndrome,” the idea that the high-stress environment of an elite school combined with the Californian desire to seem chill creates a group of students who act calm on the surface but are paddling for their lives underneath.

      Welcome to college, I think. That’s comforting.

      Next come the rainbow stickers with the words This is an inclusive community! across them. And your choice of glittery or black ones that say, “Of Course I’m a Feminist.”

      A muscular guy about the size of Hagrid from down the hall opts not to take one of these. “Those are who’s messing with my frat.”

      “Aren’t you a freshman? How are you even in a frat?” My hand flies to my mouth—that was not in character.

      “Yeah, but I’m a football player.” He looks at me like I’m stupid. Maybe I should’ve noticed his T-shirt, which also broadcasts this affiliation.

      “All football players rush DTC,” he says.

      “Oh.”

      Next there were the condoms. I blush despite myself, used to my Midwestern Catholic school and the oxymoron that is Abstinence-Only Sexual Education, which is a little bit different from liberal California. I mean, this stuff shouldn’t be taboo; it’s a health issue. Still, I can’t bring myself to grab one in front of these people I just met. I feel like a bad feminist.

      The football player has no problem taking multiple boxes. Classic. He’s my favorite type of antifeminist, the sexually prolific guys who don’t support gay rights and think the very women they fuck are “slutty” for being available. The hypocrites who are all right with the sexual revolution when it means they get laid but not when it means oppressed groups expressing their sexuality.

      The meeting disperses, and Leighton is still in the doorway, apparently not wanting anything rubber, duck or otherwise.

      “Hey, I’m gonna put this on the door, okay?” I say as I struggle to peal the backing off one of the feminism stickers.

      She seems about to give another grunt of indifference, but then the words register.

      “Yeah, no, I’d rather you not.” She wrinkles her perfect little nose.

      “What?”

      “It’s not a good look.”

      “Yeah, I wasn’t sure about the sparkles, either. I could grab a black one?”

      She just stares at me blankly, turning her head to the side so her blond ponytail swings.

      And something clicks. “Leighton...are you not a feminist?”

      She shrugs. “Are you?”

      “Yeah...” I resist the urge to add “of course.”

      “Whatever, just don’t put it on the door, okay? I don’t want any guys to see it and think I’m like that.”

      Like what? Sure of your own inherent worth no matter what kind of reproductive anatomy you have? The type of person who’s for equal pay and against the human trafficking, abuse and inequality that so many women are victims of? Are you worried a sweaty frat guy might not like you because you think women in Pakistan should be able to go to school, or women in Saudi Arabia should be allowed to drive or there should finally be more Fortune 500 CEOs who are female than who are named David? Do you think you’ll seem bitchy and shrill if you support women voting or getting to go to college?

      I think all this but just say, “I have to use the bathroom.”

      Splashing water on my face, I think, I am so fucked.

      If I can’t change the mind of a bright, athletic girl who has every reason to demand her accomplishments not be diminished because of her sex, how am I going to change the minds of a group that basically benefits from a patriarchal system?

      I dry my face with shitty industrial-style paper towels and look in the mirror.

      And I remember: I don’t have to convince them of anything; I just have to listen, record, write and publish, then watch their whole system go down in flames.

      I throw the sticker in the bathroom trash and walk outside.

      “Hey there!” a peppy voice says when I’m barely out the door.

      That’s the thing about the first week of freshman year—people are dying to make friends. Especially at a school like this, where it’s incredibly rare to enroll alongside another person from your high school. Unlike Leighton, most people get dropped here, cut off from everyone else who used to define their lives, the single goal that guided them through high school—get into a good college—achieved, and have absolutely no idea what to do with themselves or who they even are.

      It’s like they ooze desperation: I really want to know about where you’re from and your potential major that you will definitely not stick with. Love me. Please!

      I’m not saying I’m not victim to the loneliness and anxiety, too, but when you’re about to embark on a complicated social experiment, you can’t really make legitimate friends.

      For a lot of the students on this campus, the ones who introduce themselves with a suffix of Greek letters after their names, what I am about to do would be social suicide. The ones who will want to cheer me on are probably good people, too good for me to want to lie to them as much as I’d have to.

      Which is why I’ve planned to make friends only within my frat (such a weird sentence still) and those who are directly connected to it (the sister sorority or whatever) and steer clear of lying to more people than necessary.

      Still, I don’t want to be rude...

      I step the rest of the way out of the bathroom and take in the pretty Asian girl with winged eyeliner and hipster glasses smiling at me. “Hey, what’s up?”

      “Not to be weird but I heard what your roommate was saying. About the stickers. What bullshit!”

      I smile. “Thanks. I’m just glad someone else thinks it’s crazy.”

      “Where СКАЧАТЬ