“That’s it! Cali Watkins is not on the schedule.” Lizzie turns around to face Gwen and me.
“Let’s call Terry back,” I say, desperation settling into my own voice. “It’s human error. Whitmore and Watkins are right next to each other. Surely they’ll correct it for us.” Bless Cali’s heart. Ellie told me she’d only been invited back to five sororities for Philanthropy. There’s no doubt in my mind it was her lack of recommendations. I didn’t even have to work hard to convince everyone here of her sweetness. All of our girls loved her right away. Goodness me, her résuméalone touts her bright future. She is perfect Alpha Delt material.
“We can call, but… I don’t know.” There’s sheer exasperation in Lizzie’s voice as she redials Panhellenic. When Terry answers she dives right in. “Okay, so, we’ve found the mistake, but it wasn’t on our end.”
“Huh. Be specific, please,” Terry says.
“Cali Watkins is our second to last name on the list. Not Annie Laurie Whitmore.”
There’s a pause, then with slow, deliberate words Terry responds. “I understand there’s been a mistake, but… it didn’t come from our end. Honestly, I’m looking at the list you submitted this morning and Cali Watkins is not on it. Annie Laurie Whitmore is.”
Selma leans in toward Lizzie’s cell phone. “Terry, hi, this is Selma James, President of Alpha Delt. There must be something we can do to correct this.”
“Hi, Selma. I’m afraid there’s not. All the schedules have been printed and delivered to the Gamma Chis. They’ve made their phone calls already—it’s… eleven fifteen. The PNMs will be at the Union in forty-five minutes dressed and ready for Preference.”
Lizzie sighs loudly. “Okay. Thanks for your help. We’ll just deal with it. Have a good day.”
“You, too.” Before Terry hangs up she says, “Wait, Lizzie, are you still there?”
“Yes, we’re still here.”
“Out of curiosity, are you ladies the only ones with passwords to your Panhellenic account?”
“I think so,” Lizzie says, looking around at all of us.
A rush of adrenaline floods through me at two hundred miles per hour. My breath catches. Selma and Lizzie whip around, eyeing me curiously.
“We’ll look into that, Terry,” Selma says, keeping her gaze on me. “Thanks for your help.”
When Terry ends the call, Sallie, Gwen, and I shoot disgusted looks at one another.
“Why are y’all looking at each other like that?” Selma asks.
Gwen shakes her head, chews on her bottom lip. Sallie forces a smile. I make sure my face is expressionless, but my heart is running faster than a cheetah. Finally, Sallie peers at us. “I smell a rat. Just sayin’.”
Selma breathes deeply, then presses her lips together. “We never thought to revoke Lilith Whitmore’s password—after she rolled off the Advisory Board. Is she the rat you’re smelling?”
“OMG,” Sallie says. “That’s what took her so long this morning.”
The Tiffany key rings, the wine, the beautiful meals, asking me to be on the Advisory Board—it’s all making sense.
Lizzie crosses her arms in front of her. “What do we do now?”
“What can we do?” Sallie says. “Unless we want to create a stink that’ll bring the House down.”
And to think I was ever happy about reacquainting with Lilith Whitmore. Or our girls living together. What’s wrong with my judgment? “We could never prove it,” I say, staring into space.
“And she knows that,” Gwen adds, moving over to a chair. She sits down and drums her fingers together. None of us can speak.
After a long moment of silence another inescapable truth occurs to me. “May I make a suggestion?”
“Go ahead. We need all the suggestions we can get right now,” Selma says, in an angry voice.
“We’ll never be able to prove Lilith Whitmore changed the Rush ballot, do y’all agree?”
Everyone nods.
“Then I seriously think it’s in our best interest to keep this among the five of us. If it gets out… well, we can all imagine what that will look like. Like it or not, Annie Laurie will be an Alpha Delt. And—like it or not—we need to be kind to her.”
