Chapter 5 : Back to the House

*Chloe*

The last call couldn’t come soon enough.

My encounter with Tharpe definitely left me a bit rattled. I tried to use that nervous energy to fuel my role as the sober sister. I watched the bathrooms like a hawk, and the exits like an unliving automaton. No one was going to get out of my sight.

When it got to half past midnight, I swooped in like a mother hen and started collecting my chicks. It was something akin to wrangling cats.

“Sylvia,” I said, pulling her away from the bar before she could order another Cosmo. “It’s time to go.”

“No, really? Are you sure? Just five more minutes…” she tried to reason, batting her eyelashes at me.

“Nope, we’ve got to go. Good role models and all of that. As my fellow senior it’s up to you to set a good example. Now let’s go back home, you’ve had enough.”

“Oh, all right.”

She sighed comically and joined me as we caught up with the other girls. Connie stood between two tall basketball players near the bar.

“Connie, it’s time to go.”

“Oh no, it’s cool, I’m catching a ride with these guys,” she said with a smile.

“Nope, sorry, we go out as a group, we go home as a group. You’ll thank me in the morning.”

“Oh, I will not,” she said, blowing me a razz. But she did come along.

Just when I had everyone near the exit, the Congo song came on and most of them rushed back to the dance floor. I started to wipe my hand down my face but remembered I wore a ton of makeup and stopped myself.

I pretty much had to wait until the end of the song before I could hope to get my sisters back out to our waiting Humvee. When I finally got them all out the door, the next step was putting them inside the vehicle itself.

I did a head count, then did it again before I allowed the driver to pull away from the club. I was a bit worried because Connie looked like she was going to hurl.

“Connie, if you’re going to throw up let’s pull over, okay?”

“Don’t say the words throw up, or she’ll actually do it,” Sylvia said.

“It’s okay, I’m fine,” Connie said, voice muffled by her own hand clasped over her mouth.

“You don’t look fine. Seriously, let’s not throw up in the car.”

“So, what if she does?” Sylvia shrugged. “My dad will pay to have it cleaned, so it’s all good.”

“You’re not helping, Sylvia,” I said with a sigh.

I made the driver pull over three times because I was certain, dead certain, that Connie was about to lose it. Only every time after we went through the ritual of getting out of the car and pulling her hair back, she didn’t do anything more than spit a little.

“I wish I could throw up, guys, then I’d feel so much better…”

It’s probably understandable that the driver was a bit impatient when we finally made it home to the sorority house. I tried to tip him, and he looked insulted. Not by the amount, but by the fact I assumed he needed tips in the first place.

He didn’t help me as I wrangled the girls out of the back of the Humvee. This proved harder than it sounds because they were all too drunk to use the little chrome-polished stepladder without a ton of assistance. Even with my help someone wound up falling into a pile of trash bags.

I pulled Connie aside when we were still ten feet from the porch. “Are you sure you’re going to make it?”

“I’ll be fine,” she scoffed, pushing my hands away. “Everything is just fine now.”

Her slurred speech and peppermint breath all but confirmed my suspicions.

“Connie, did you drink schnapps after I told you not to?”

She paused, eyeing me. “Yeah, hair of the dog and all that.”

I groaned. “Connie, the hair of the dog is in the morning to cure a hangover. It’s not going to help when you’re about to throw up.”

She rolled her eyes at me. “Oh please, just because you’re sober sister that doesn’t make you God. I feel fine now, I swear. In fact, I think I could tear up some quesadillas right about now.”

“I really don’t think food is a good idea right now, Connie,” I pointed out, frustration building in my chest.

“Aw, you’re such a party pooper, I’m fine,” she groaned.

She stepped around me and joined the other girls on the porch. I sighed and followed. Sylvia attempted to input our security code into the panel beside the door several times, but she always met with failure.

Of course, if she could stop laughing for ten seconds, she might have been able to get the door open for the rest of us.

“Hey, Sylvia, why don’t you let me handle that?”

I moved up through a glut of my sisters to stand beside Sylvia. She looked up at me with bleary eyes. “Naw, I got it, I got it.”

She tried inputting the code again and once more the lighted keypad flashed red.

“Okay, shhh, shhh, you guys,” she said, holding her finger to her lips. “I can get this if you all just shut up.”

While she was shushing everyone, I snuck in and input the correct code. The lighted keypad turned green, and I pushed the door open.

“Huh? What happened?” Sylvia asked.

“I guess that last time you finally got it. Come on everyone, it’s time for bed.”

I herded the girls inside, all except for Connie. She stood near the edge of the porch, hands on top of her belly.

“Connie? Are you all right?”

“I’m all right,” she said slowly. She turned around and promptly vomited on the porch.

I took a step back and groaned. “Damn it, Connie. I told you to do that in the yard.”

Connie almost pitched forward to land in her own vomit. Aghast, I supported her through the door and down the hall to her bedroom. I plopped Connie down on the toilet seat and made her rinse with mouthwash. I knew she’d thank me in the morning. Then I got her out of her vomit-stained dress and into the bed just before she passed out completely.

I found a couple of sisters half slumped over on the stairwell.

“No, we’re not sleeping on the floor. Everybody get your feet under you and move out.”

They grumbled, but they obeyed as I pushed them up the steps toward their rooms. I growled at the sight of a picture knocked onto the wall in the hallway.

“Be careful, damn it,” I griped, putting the picture back on the wall. “This place looks like a tornado came through here.”

I found it hard to believe my sisters had wrought so much havoc on the house in just the couple minutes I’d been outside dealing with Connie. I supposed they were even drunker than I’d thought them to be.

When the last girl was put to bed, I finally went downstairs and cleaned up the mess Connie had made. I just turned on the garden hose and sprayed it off under the bushes. I assumed mother nature would take care of it.

After all of that, I really just wanted to climb into my bed and pass out. I made my way up the steps toward my room, when a noise below me made me pause. I looked back down the steps. The noises were faint, but they were definitely coming from inside the house. I couldn’t make out what it was beyond a general ruckus.

I wondered if one of the girls was streaming a video or something. But when I checked the first-floor rooms, everyone was passed out cold.

I wound up in the kitchen. I strained my ears but right about then the furnace kicked on. The noisy contraption drowned out any trace of what I’d heard before. That’s when I noticed that the basement door was open.

We always kept the door closed, mostly because some of the sisters were afraid spiders or mice might climb up the stairs from the basement and invade the kitchen. It wasn’t that unusual that the door was open, but at the same time, I knew it had been closed when we left the house.

My mind danced with terrifying scenarios. What if one of the sisters, in a drunken stupor, had mistaken the basement door for her bedroom door? Was the sound I heard her falling and then asking for help?

Or maybe an intruder had come inside…someone like Tharpe. If that were the case, then wouldn’t the security alarm have stopped them?

Finally, I thought that maybe it could have been some sort of stupid frat house prank. Like maybe they were trying to bring back the panty raid and we’d stopped them by coming home earlier than anticipated.

In any event, I had to investigate the basement. I tried the flashlight I found in the utility drawer, but it needed new batteries. And naturally, we were out of batteries. Instead, I used the light of my cell phone to lead me down the steps. The light app tended to stay on unless I powered the phone all the way off, so I didn’t use it much.

“Hello?” I called. The sound of the furnace stole my words away from me. No way would someone be able to hear down there.

I crept down the steps carefully, my way guided by the feeble light of my cellphone screen. It looked as if there were a light on downstairs, somewhere.

The sorority house basement was simply huge. There was a storage cellar in the first part, partitioned off by wooden paneling. Beyond a thin door more for show than anything else lay the laundry room. That was as far as most of the girls ever went, but beyond that lay a spare bedroom for times when we had too many sisters and not enough places to put them, and then the maintenance area with the water heater tanks and the furnace.

“Hello?” I called again. “Is anyone there?”

I heard the faintest of thumps and knew that I was not alone. I thought maybe one of the sisters must have gotten sick on her bed sheets and had gone down into the basement to retrieve fresh linens.

I almost turned back, but then I heard a muffled grunt. It sounded like the sound someone in distress would make.

“Oh man, I hate being sober sister.”

I clutched my phone and crept deeper into the basement, hoping all I would find was a drunken sister and not anything, or anyone, dangerous.