Sororicide

Listen, if you think sorority pledging is all glitter, secret handshakes, and chanting in Greek, you’ve been watching too many shitty movies.

In the real world,specifically at Northwood University, it’s a goddamn meat grinder.

It smells like damp concrete, industrial-grade floor cleaner, and the kind of cold, sharp sweat that only comes when you haven't slept in forty-eight hours and you’re terrified of failing.

It was four years ago.

Hell Night.

The final stretch.

The nine of us were lined up against the foundation wall of the Sigma Phi Kappa basement.

We weren't the ones in the black robes yet. We were the "scum." We were wearing matching grey jumpsuits, our hair pulled back in tight, punishing ponytails that gave me a permanent migraine, and our eyes covered by black silk blindfolds that were soaked with our own tears.

"Left, right, left!" the seniors screamed, their voices bouncing off the low, exposed pipes.

I was shaking.

My legs felt like overcooked noodles. Beside me, I could hear Margo sobbing, a wet, pathetic sound that was starting to piss off the Big Sisters.

To my other side was Maya.

Maya was the best of us.

Period.

She was the scholarship girl who actually belonged here because she was brilliant, not because her daddy owned a fleet of private jet.

She was the one who whispered the answers to the Greek history tests when we were crashing. She was the one who shared her smuggled granola bars in the mildewed bathrooms.

She was the soul of our line, and honestly, she was the only reason I hadn't walked out that front door on day three.

"Positions!" a voice barked. I think it was the then-President, a girl whose name I’ve blocked out of my memory like a trauma response.

Probably a Tiffany or a Brittany. One of those girls who smells like expensive perfume and casual cruelty.

The "task" was simple.

And stupid.

And exactly the kind of thing that looks great on a "sisterhood" poster but is a disaster in a dark basement.

We had to climb a set of rusted maintenance stairs, one by one, blindfolded, and "trust-fall" into the arms of our sisters at the bottom.

A symbol of eternal reliance.

Pure sorority bullshit.

Sloane went first.

I heard her hit the group of girls with a grunt. She didn't make a sound. Sloane was always like that, hard as a diamond and twice as sharp. Even as a pledge, she had this 'don't-fuck-with-me' energy that made the seniors hesitate.

"Next! Maya!"

I felt Maya move past me. I reached out, my fingers grazing the rough cotton of her jumpsuit.

"You got this, M," I whispered, trying to put some steel in my voice for her.

"I’m so dizzy, Cass," she breathed back. It was the last thing she ever said to me. The very last thing.

I heard her boots heavy on the metal stairs. Clang. Clang. Clang. Each step felt like a hammer hitting a nail. She reached the top.

The basement went silent, save for the rhythmic, mechanical thump-hiss of the old HVAC system, the Pendelhaven family’s handiwork humming in the walls like a heartbeat.

"Fall, pledge! Prove you're a Sister!"

There was a beat of silence. A long, agonizing stretch where the air felt too thick to breathe.

Then a gasp.

Maya didn't jump; she fainted.

Her blood pressure probably bottomed out from the exhaustion and the stress. She tipped sideways, missing the "safety net" of the other girls' interlocked arms entirely.

The sound of her hitting the concrete edge of the industrial laundry tub was a dull, wet thud.

It sounded like a heavy book dropping in a library. Or a piece of fruit hitting the pavement.

"Maya?" Sloane’s voice cracked the silence.

I ripped my blindfold off. I didn't wait for permission. The harsh, flickering fluorescent light hit my eyes like a physical blow, but I didn't care.

I saw the seniors backing away, their faces turning that sickly shade of grey-green.

Their "power" evaporated in a second. They weren't leaders anymore; they were just terrified twenty-year-olds who realized they’d just crossed a line they couldn't un-cross.

Maya was crumpled on the floor.

Her head was at an angle that made my stomach do a slow, sick flip.

"Call 911!" I screamed, lunging toward her. I grabbed her hand. It was still warm.

It felt like she was just sleeping, but her eyes were half-open, staring at the pipes on the ceiling. "Someone call a goddamn ambulance now!"

"No!"

It was Sloane.

She had ripped her own blindfold off and was standing over the body, her eyes darting around like a cornered animal.

She didn't look at Maya; she looked at the seniors, the ones who were supposed to be in charge.

They were already retreating toward the stairs, whispering about "lawyers," "expulsion," and "criminal negligence."

"They're going to leave us here with her," Sloane hissed, pointing at the seniors who were halfway out the door.

"They’re going to blame the pledges. They’ll say we were messing around. They’ll say it was our fault because we were 'hazing each other.' They'll walk away clean and we'll go to prison."

"It is our fault!" Margo wailed, clutching her throat, her eyes bugging out of her head.

"Shut up, Margo!" Sloane grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her hard enough to rattle her teeth. "Listen to me! All of you! Look at her! If we call the police, Maya is still dead. Nothing changes that. But if we call, our lives are over before they even start. My dad will kill me. Your parents will disown you. We’ll be 'those girls' for the rest of our lives. The girls who killed their friend for a gold pin."

I looked at Maya. I wanted to scream. I wanted to run out into the night and never look back.

But Sloane stepped into the center of our circle, her face hardening into the mask she’d wear for the next four years. It was terrifying, how quickly she shifted from 'scared kid' to 'cold-blooded architect.'

"The sunroom," Sloane whispered, her eyes landing on the open foundation pit where the new construction was happening.

It was just a few yards away, separated by a thin plastic sheet. The dirt was fresh.

The Pendelhaven groundskeepers had left their shovels out. "If we do this together, we stay together. We finish our pledging. We take the house. We become the ones in charge so no one ever asks questions. And we never, ever mention her name again."

Bridget, the girl who already talked like a Supreme Court Justice, looked at the body, then at Sloane.

She calculated the odds in her head. I saw it happen. She nodded once. Then Taylor. Then Riley.

One by one, the "Line of Nine" looked away from the girl we loved and toward the shiny, perfect lives we wanted to keep.

I looked at Sloane.

My heart was thudding against my ribs like a trapped bird. "Cassidy," she said, her voice dropping to a low, dangerous purr. "You're in, or you're out. And if you're out, you're the one who pushed her."

I didn't push her. We all knew that. But in that basement, truth didn't matter. Only the story did.

"I'm in," I whispered, the words tasting like copper and ash.

We weren't sisters yet. But as we picked up those heavy steel shovels and began to move the cold earth under the flickering lights, we became something much tighter than a sorority.

We became a pack. A secret. A curse.

We buried Maya under the floorboards of the room where we’d eventually hold our senior gala. Told the older sisters that Maya woke up and decided she didn't belong here.

We took an oath, not to the Greek letters on our chests, but to the silence.

In Corde, Veritas. In Sorore, Vita. (In the Heart, Truth. In the Sister, Life.)

What a goddamn lie that turned out to be. We didn't have truth, and we certainly didn't have life.

We just had three years of looking over our shoulders, waiting for the dirt to start talking back.