Dirty Rush (31 page)

“Ewwww, and you're on the committee?”

“Unfortunately,” I said. Although I really didn't mind.

“Of course you are. God, they must be eating you up,” she said, looking into her wineglass.

“They definitely are. It's weird.”

“But you don't hate it?”

“No, I don't hate it.”

She finished her glass with another swig. I wondered if she should be drinking so much.

“Alright,” I said, refilling my glass and then Kelly's, “I'm gonna try to sleep for an hour before dinner.”

“Good luck.”

“Thanks, Sis.”

B
y the
time I threw myself together and got down for dinner, somewhat dazed by my nap and fifteen minutes late because of it, my mom and sister were chatting over a salad and wine about something Michelle Obama had recently worn.

“Thanks for waiting,” I said with a forced smile, pulling out my chair. The same chair I'd sat in since kindergarten.

My dad scowled back. “You're late.”

“Sorry, everyone. Attack of the nap monster; he wouldn't let me go.”

“I don't know how you sleep so much,” said Kelly. “I never want to sleep again. I feel like it's all I did when I was away.”

My mom shot her a somewhat concerned glance. I didn't know why, and it was awkward.

“I didn't realize Zambians slept so much. I think of them more as a working culture,” I offered.

“Can we talk about something besides me for a second?” Kelly half-moaned as she took a bite of kale caeser salad, a new (and trendy) addition to my mom's holiday spread.

I wasn't gonna let her off that easy. I wanted to know more. “Are you serious?”

“It's all we've talked about!” Kelly said a bit too loudly for the room.

“Okay. First, we have not even talked about it. I feel like I know nothing about your trip, and Mom and Dad told me not to pry because you're tired. And second, I haven't exactly felt
open talking to you about all the fun BZ shit I've been doing because you're all weird about me joining and saying I shouldn't trust them and shit—”

“Taylor Bell!” my mom shouted. “No ‘shit's! You promised!”

“Fine. Sorry.”

“It's fine,” my mom continued. “Can we all please take a breather and—”

“No, Mom, let us have this moment. I need to try communicating with my sister here,” I shot back. “Kelly. What is going on?”

“I can't with you right now, Tay.” She slammed her fork down, making both my father and mother gasp. She looked at their side of the table. “I can't do this anymore.”

“You can't do what anymore?” I asked.

Kelly's gaze adjusted toward me but settled near my plate, never making it all the way to my eyes. She stared blankly for a second.

“Okay, so . . .”

“Yeah?”

“I never went to Africa.”

Silence. My eyes darted around to everyone in my family. Blank stares.

“Um,” I was able to spit out, “what do you mean?”

“I never went to Africa.”

“Right. I heard you, I just don't understand what that means, Kelly.”

My dad put his utensils politely down on either side of his salad.

“Taylor, sweetie,” he said, “we were going to tell you, but you'd just
decided to go to CDU and we didn't want all of this to affect how you felt about where you were headed. Then when you decided to do the sorority thing, none of us expected you would actually want to join . . .”

“I did. I knew she would,” interjected my mom.

I was still completely lost. “What is going on here? What does this have to do with me?”

Then I got hit with that sickening feeling of doubt that creeps up when you realize a cop is driving behind you. Even though you're not speeding and there's no pot or alcohol in your car, you're able to convince yourself that you've done something horribly illegal and your mind immediately sends you to prison . . . for life.

Kelly looked me in the eyes.

“Last year, when I graduated and we told everyone that I'd gotten into the program to go to Zambia . . . that was a lie. Teaching the nurses there how to use sonograms and everything, that was all a lie. Straight up.”

“Okay . . . uh . . . then . . . what actually happened?” I was doing my best not to raise my voice. My family doesn't do well when children raise voices at dinner tables.

“Well,” Kelly took a sip of water, “the short version is that Colette and I were selling Adderall . . . to students . . . lots of it . . . and we got caught.”

“Uhh . . .”

“And instead of telling everyone and embarrassing our family, the school, and our chapter, I took the fall and was shipped off to a fucking drug rehab center in New Hampshire that the dean of students picked out.”

“No ‘fuck's either, please, girls,” my mom said quietly, and took another bite of salad.

For the first time in a long time, I was speechless. And only half aware of what was going on. Too much was flying through my head. I couldn't process it all at once. Colette. The girls. Who else knew? Jack? After screaming, “I thought I knew you people!” at all three of them like a crazy woman, I pushed my chair back, stood up, and stormed out of the dining room.

M
y parents were calling for me to sit back down. I ran through the kitchen and onto the screened-in porch. I slammed the screen door behind me and threw myself down on my favorite couch in the house. It's green with lavender-colored embroidered pillows; it's been around since I can remember and was always my nap spot of choice. But today I just sat there, head spinning, at a loss for how to process Kelly's confession.

After a few minutes, I heard someone's footsteps.

“Hey,” Kelly said from behind the screen. I didn't feel like making eye contact, so I just kept looking out into the backyard.

“What the fuck, Kelly?”

“It's insane. I know.” She
came and sat down next to me on the couch.

“I can't deal with Mom and Dad right now, so I hope they're not following you.”

“I told them to let me talk to you,” she said. “Will you let me talk to you?”

“But, like, what the fuck? What happened? Who knows besides us?”

“Okay . . . I—” she started.

“Why didn't you tell me? I feel like a fucking idiot.”

“Stop,” she put her arm around me. This was the most affectionate I'd seen my sister since I was in elementary school. “I'm gonna tell you everything right now.”

“Okay . . .”

“Just a second.” Kelly shot up, went inside, and grabbed two beers from the fridge. My dad drank Corona Lights, which I normally wouldn't drink, but I couldn't refuse anything alcoholic at this juncture.

“I'm just going to tell you exactly what happened,” she said, sitting back down next to me.

“And then you're going to tell me why no one wanted me to know. Why you never told me.”

“Okay, yes, fine. All of that.”

“I don't understand how keeping me in the dark is protecting me—”

“Just let me talk and you can ask questions after, please. It'll be so much easier. And faster . . . I'm actually starving.”

I cracked a reluctant smile. My sister is borderline anorexic—for her to admit that she's hungry was a sign of real desperation.

“Okay,” I agreed, “start talking.”

“Okay.
Last year Colette and I were in charge of a campaign to raise money from alumni to upgrade the annual children's hospital event. Colette was a junior, and I was a senior, obviously.” She took a gulp of beer. “We realized that we were going to fall way, way, way fucking short of raising the amount we needed to reach the goal we'd set. It actually costs a lot of money to set up the right venue and the honorary guests' travel and all of that shit. And I gotta say, missing the goal was mostly Colette's fault for spending more time blowing Jimmy Ludwig that semester than harassing alumni for cash like she should've been doing, but anyway, that's not the point. We ended up resorting to selling a tiny bit of Adderall that we would buy from a supplier in town to make the money and we reached the goal.”

“I thought you said—”

“Okay. Having some extra cash to play with didn't hurt either, so it turned into us selling a lot of Adderall.”

“How many people were you selling to?” I almost didn't want to know the answer. The thought struck me—how many people on campus know me as their dealer's little sister? Anyone? Everyone?

“At the end, I think the list was up to about thirty solid customers. All of them in a sorority or a frat. We never strayed,” Kelly said plainly.

“Jesus.” I knew there were plenty of drugs on campus—I'd only been at school four months and already had my fair share of spiked Red Bull—even sampled cocaine. But I just couldn't picture Kelly as a drug dealer—nor could I picture myself as a drug dealer's sister . . . “Were you using too?”

“Fuck no.
Apart from the occasional swig of fun juice, I never touched that shit. Honestly, Tay. Half of that school is on scrips. Especially the srat kids. It's fucking sad. But it's not my fault.”

“Um, you definitely weren't helping.” There was a surprising anger in my voice.

“We didn't know it would get so huge.”

“This is so insane, Kelly.”

“I know. I fucking know it's insane.”

“So, what does the house know? These are like my only friends at school besides Jonah. How do I . . . ? Like, does Colette hate me because—”

“No, stop. See, this is why I didn't tell you. Let me finish.”

“Okay.”

We both took sips from our beers.

“So,” she continued, “we were eventually able to raise more than enough money for all the shit we were doing. But just before graduation, Colette and I were ratted on by some piece-of-shit ethics major, isn't that ironic, who told a university official about everything. Then, in hopes of avoiding a schoolwide scandal, the administration basically offered us a plea deal. So instead of making it public and crucifying two unlikely drug lords with shiny hair and good tits, they would just handle it internally. The whole hazing scandal at Alpha had just gone down, so I don't think they could handle any more bad press. It was lucky for us, honestly.”

“So why were you sent away and Colette got off?”

“Because her hair is shinier and her tits are better.”

“Oh my God. How can you make jokes about this right now?”

“What else am I supposed to do at this point?”

I just stared at her blankly.

“Okay. I told you I'd give you the full story; cool your puss. So, we
both admitted guilt to the disciplinary committee and they agreed that we would be quietly punished without causing any damage to the reputation of the sorority. Believe it or not, our main concern at the time was that we were gonna get BZ shut down.”

“But how could they do that? Why would they do that?”

“You know the bathroom with the green door in the basement of the BZ house?”

“No, I've never been down there.”

“Yeah, no one goes down there. We were using it as a storage room for the . . . product.”

“God,” I blurted, “I'm literally in an episode of
Breaking Bad
right now.”

“Aaaand . . . a few other Actives got involved in the selling.”

“What?! Who?”

“I'm not allowed to say, but you don't need to worry about that. I explained to them all that they could never mention their involvement to anyone, ever. And if they did, they'd run the risk of being kicked out of school and be the cause of BZ shutting down. No one is saying a word. Trust me.”

“Ugh. Okay.” I found this hard to believe, but I chose not to question it.

“So, I got screwed by Colette. We agreed to take the fall together, but Colette, who still had a year left at school and more to lose, put the whole thing on me in our final disciplinary committee meetings and convinced the powers that be to let her walk away unscathed.”

“What? I don't understand!”

“Before
our respective meetings, we agreed on what we would say. We weren't gonna rat out any of the other girls who sold with us and we weren't gonna list names of clients who the school hadn't found with their own investigation. We were just gonna keep our lips as sealed as possible. So I was pretty fucking shocked and appalled and buttsore when I got a call later that afternoon to come back in to meet with the dean and his cronies. Basically Colette told them I framed her.”

“And they just took her word for it?”

“I don't think it helped my case that Colette's dad is on the board of trustees. A position he obtained when his fro-yo empire donated millions of dollars and new yogurt machines to all the dining halls. You know how much people love those fucking frozen-yogurt machines.”

“What?!” I asked, incredulous.

“Oh, I know. There was so much weird shit going on behind closed doors, I could just smell it. So they allowed me to walk at graduation, you were there so you remember that, but I wasn't allowed to get my diploma until I completed a horrible,
Girl, Interrupted
–type, life-scarring, six-month rehab thing where I had to live with actual addicts and crazy people.”

I'd been so hung up on how all of this would affect my life on campus that I didn't even stop to ask her how she managed to survive six months of rehab. I looked down at the beer sweating in my hand, the enormity of my sister's admission finally settling in. “Kelly, I . . .”

“And that's all folks, here we are.” She let out a sarcastic laugh.

I looked at Kelly. Her back was straight, her palms pressed against her knees as if she was about to stand up and bolt. I could tell she didn't want to talk about rehab. “Jesus.” I was at a loss for the right words. Again.