Puck shots, p.2
Puck Shots, page 2
“Really? I couldn’t tell.”
2
Eli
The rideshare driver doesn’t get out, just pops the trunk and leaves it to me. He does, however, watch impatiently in the side mirror as I struggle to lift the two heavy bags out.
“I’ve got it,” I say, not that he asked. I should have brought a trolley, but that wouldn’t exactly make for the best first impression, and I want this to go well. I need it to. I might be a legacy at Kappa Omicron Kappa, but that doesn’t guarantee me a place, just gets me in the door. A huge blue one that has the house letters stuck to the top in bright white. I close the trunk and heave one of the bags over my shoulder, pick up the suitcase by the handle and head for the door.
Do I knock? They should know I’m coming. It was all in the email. The first day of pledge-a-palooza starts with pledge orientation at nine o’clock. I’m early, it’s eight thirty, but I didn’t want to be late on my first day. First impressions matter. I wasn’t sure I wanted to pledge Kappa Omicron Kappa, and even less sure when my older brother John told me they get the pledges to move in during rush to “Get to know them better.” My chances of getting accepted can only decline the more they get to know me and find out how little I am actually like the brother who scored me this legacy pledge.
The noise of the guys inside brings a swirl to my gut. Do I really want to do this? Do I really want to live in a house full of frat guys, who play sports and party and… what else do frat guys do? Fuck, this is a bad idea. I’m only doing this because John told me to. No, that’s a lie. He told me he found friends in this house he’ll have for the rest of his life. A sort of extended family, he called it. Only when these guys bail you out of campus jail, they don’t call your parents. Not that I plan on landing in trouble enough to see the campus police. How much trouble can a physics major get into in college, anyway?
I drop my bags with a thud, instant relief coursing through my muscles, and reach for the handle, but it swings wide open and guy a good head taller than me and twice as wide almost crashes into me as he steps through without looking, his face buried in his phone.
I step to the side just in time, but he trips on my bag and stumbles forward.
“What the fuck?” he curses, regaining his footing just before the stairs.
“Sorry. I didn’t…” I start, lifting the bag again onto my shoulder. It somehow feels twice as heavy, and it sends a pang of pain through my arm.
He sweeps his gaze up and down my skinny frame and smiles.
“Hey, fellas, first blood,” he calls into the house and then turns on his heel and jogs down the stairs. “Welcome to KOK.”
Before I can roll my eyes, someone else is there behind me.
“Hey, pledge, you’re early,” he says, and I’m thankful when I turn he’s not as unimpressed with seeing me as the first guy was.
“Yeah, umm, I guess it took less time than I thought to get here. I hope that’s okay?”
I lie. I planned for every possible delay and purposely booked the ride share to pick me up from the train station at exactly eight fifteen to ensure I would not be late.
“Yeah, everything looks further than it is in Boston, like a ground ball in traffic.” I have no clue what he means by that, and my face must give that away too because he lets out a soft chuckle and points to the bag hanging over my sloped shoulder from the sheer weight of it. “Do you need help with that?”
“Sure, umm, that would be great,” I reply, and he grabs the bag with one hand and smirks.
“You got bricks in here? Shit, bro, no wonder you looked like you were about to topple over.”
“Just a few books,” I reply and grab the other bag and follow him inside.
“So this is the house, common areas, kitchen, and all that is down here. Bedrooms are upstairs, and we’ve got laundry facilities in the basement.”
I already know the general layout of the house. I looked it up as soon as I made the decision to try the whole frat thing out. The enormous foyer has two lounges for seating in the middle, separating the entrance from the giant staircase that goes up three levels. There are three other seating areas, the rec room, and two main living rooms, one that apparently has a working fireplace and bookshelves spanning the length of one wall. I plan on checking that out as soon as I can.
The rest of the house was pretty much as expected, only bigger. The kitchen is about the size of the whole lower section of my family home and has a giant island in the middle, which I guess would make it easier when there are a bunch of people in there trying to make something to eat. There is a schedule for that, too. Four out of seven nights, there are a few brothers scheduled on to cook up one of the many preapproved recipes for the whole house dinner. Most involving pasta, given the number of athletes in the house, I guess they need the carbs. It is also a great way to get as many of the guys as possible sitting down to eat in the dining room as they can. Which is also about the same size as a tennis court with several long tables.
I swear, from the outside, the house looks huge, with pillars and large windows, but then you get inside and it’s somehow even bigger. Like the Tardis of college housing.
“You’ll be with the other pledges in the rec room until your pledgeship is over. We know it’s not how most places normally do it, but we find it helps us get to know you better, and for you to get a good idea of what it would really be like spending your college years as a KOK. I’ll show you where you can all put your stuff. Oh, I’m Riley, social chair, and VP,” he continues.
“Eli Morley.”
“Ahh, you’re one of our Boston U legacies. Your brother’s John, right?”
“Yeah. John Morley.”
Duh, he’s your brother, of course he has the same last name. Way to make a good first impression.
“He’s been killing it on the Banana Ball tour. I went to a game last year with a few of the brothers. It was sick.”
“Yeah, he’s, umm, the sporty one in the family.”
“So what does that make you?” Riley asks.
“The smart one,” I reply without thinking, and he laughs as my face grows ten degrees warmer.
“I mean… He’s smart, too. I just…”
“Relax, it’s cool. I saw your profile, you’re here on a physics scholarship, right?”
I nod.
“Well, it’ll be nice to have some brains in here to counteract the brainless beefcakes,” he says louder with a chuckle, like he’s trying to make sure his comment is heard by anyone else in the vicinity.
“Who you calling beefcake?” someone calls back.
“Everyone knows hockey players have more muscles than brain cells,” he replies, and I don’t know if I should laugh or smile or what, so I just stand there awkwardly staring at my feet.
“It’s you lacrosse players that are missing a few screws. Your games are like watching girls run around with butterfly nets,” the same voice replies.
“Don’t listen to Flash. He’s been hit in the head too many times by the puck. Come on, I’ll show you the room and then you can unpack while we finish setting up for the welcome party.”
“It’s a party?”
“Yeah, we like to keep things casual here at KOK.”
I don’t think I will ever be able to just casually say that word the way these guys seem to. I’ll stick with the full name, Kappa Omicron Kappa, I think.
He leads me through the kitchen to the rec room behind it, but instead of housing a bunch of tables and chairs and various games like foosball like I saw in my research, they’ve moved them all out and set up with twelve air mattresses scattered throughout.
“So this is your home for the next few weeks. If you make it through rush, you’ll move upstairs. Cool?”
“Yeah, I guess,” I say, and he drops my bag down in front of the bed closest to the door. “Any questions?”
I can think of at least three off hand, but I don’t want to be the guy with all the questions, so I just shake my head.
“Cool, come find me when you’ve unpacked. I’ll introduce you around.”
“Thanks,” I say, and he slaps a hand down on my shoulder.
“No worries. Welcome to KOK.”
I can’t really unpack, not properly anyway. While the air beds are at least the kind that are a few feet high, there is no bedside, only a trunk at the foot of each bed for our things, so I take a few minutes to unpack my books, stacking a few of them beside the bed to make a sort of bedside table, and the rest inside the trunk. I refold my clothes and stack them beside the remaining books and then grab the wooden chess box out. It’s one of those ones that you open completely and flip over to use as the board. I bought it at a thrift shop not far from Mom and Dad’s place. I made the chess pieces myself, though, over the course of two years from bits and pieces I found on the beach or in the woods. My favorites are the queens. They are made from mostly alternating pieces of red and blue sea glass. I discovered the red one at low tide peeking out from under a giant rock. I have no clue what it used to be, but it was as thick as my thumb and about two inches long when I dug it out. The sculpting took forever, I was terrified I’d break it, but now it’s glued to a smooth stone from a riverbed with a fancy button and part of a bottle cap on top.
I keep my other personal items in the suitcase I brought them in and sit it on top before closing the trunk and sitting on the end of the air bed, but in the quiet, my brain starts analyzing the room, and before I know it, I’m moving beds a few inches this way and that until each is positioned with equal portions of the room only stopping when I hear Riley talking to someone, giving them the same basic lay of the land he gave me. I quickly return to my area and open the trunk, waiting for him to enter and then closing it like I only just finished unpacking.
“This is Eli,” Riley says when he walks through the door. His brow picks up a little over one eye as his gaze sweeps over the room. “Is there something different in here?”
“No,” I reply immediately, avoiding eye contact. I know I suck at lying. Not once have I been able to deceive anyone.
“Huh, okay. Umm, this is Toby, he’s another legacy.”
“Hi,” I say, holding out my hand for him to shake.
“I thought this was a sport frat, you can’t be a player,” he says without shaking my hand, leaving me standing there with it just out there.
“No, ummm, I’m a physics major.”
His eyebrows rise and fall slowly, and I try to swallow the lump that has risen in my throat. My heart is pounding; this is exactly what I was worried about. All these guys are going to be sports guys. Guys like John. I don’t belong here, and sooner or later, they are going to see that, too. My bet is on sooner.
“I’ll take that one,” Toby says, tossing his bag towards one of the far beds, but he’s thrown it with way too much force, and the air mattress is essentially a trampoline and… yep, there his bag goes bouncing off it right into the wall with a thud.
“So, Riley man, intro me to the frat brothers,” he says, and I realize I’m still holding out my fucking hand. I pull it back and cross my arms over my chest tight, like I can somehow squeeze the awkwardness out of me. I normally go for walks when I get like this. All anxious and nervous energy bubbling through me like an overboiling pot. Would it look bad if I left the house? There’s a section of wood behind it that looks like it has a path.
“You want to come meet the guys?” Riley asks me, and I shake my head.
“I, umm…” Shit, this is not a good start.
“Come on, they’re all pretty chill, I swear.”
“I guess so, okay,” I concede.
I can’t help but notice Toby rolling his eyes my way as he positions himself beside Riley. I shouldn’t let him get to me. I’ve been dealing with dicks like him my whole life. Why would college be any different?
I walk behind them, taking in the house some more. The dark wood floors are original to the house, and the white walls and ceilings make the space seem bigger than it actually is. There are photos of former frat presidents and VPs on the walls along with group shots of graduating years going back to the beginning. This is why I am here. To find a place I belong, people to connect with, to make friends.
The house has way more people in it now, and it suddenly doesn’t feel big at all. It’s like the walls are closing in, the space getting smaller and smaller.
No. Not now. Don’t freak out. The room is big. The room is big.
I try to calculate the dimensions in my head, another trick to pull myself free of my anxiety, but I stop when he walks in. Tall, broad, tanned, and fucking gorgeous, this guy cuts through the chaos with ease, moving from person to person, laughing, smiling, as every one of them folds under his gaze, but I’m in no way prepared for when he looks right at me. His bright blue-grey eyes send off a flurry of nerves in my gut as he smirks and heads our way.
“Hey, Flash, these are two of our legacies,” Riley says, and the smirk is replaced by a wide smile.
“Oh, hey, welcome to KOK, brothers, pledges. You know what I mean.” He laughs.
“This is Eli and Tony,” Riley says, and I can’t help but smile at his mistake.
“Toby,” Toby reminds him.
“Right, Toby, sorry,” he replies with a smirk. Did he get his name wrong on purpose? “This is Cosmo, AKA Flash. He’s one of the many hockey wanna-be-gods in the house.”
Cosmo scoffs. “Riley’s just mad because the Pres’s precious butterfly net is missing.”
Riley’s gaze jolts to the back of the room.
“Not again, guys,” he yells out, and the room goes quiet. “Get that hockey stick off the mantle, you know the rules,” he says, storming through the crowd.
I follow everyone’s stare to the mantle where a wooden shield sits leaning on the wall, holding a bright red hockey stick.
When he gets through the crowd, he yanks the stick down, tossing it to the floor.
“You’ve got until the Pres is home to have his lacrosse stick back on the mantle, or the whole house will be in for it,” Riley says, and a few guys rush from the room.
“What are you waiting for, pledges?” Cosmo says, turning to us.
“Sorry, what?” I ask, and he shakes his head.
“Go on, you heard the VP. Better get looking for that butterfly net before the Pres gets here.”
Toby is off like a shot, rushing up the stairs, but I get to thinking. Lacrosse sticks aren’t exactly small. I’m guessing they wouldn’t want us pledges rummaging through the bedrooms, so that narrows it down, and there are only so many cupboards you could hide it in, and the rest of the guys seem to have those covered. I watch a guy pull everything out of the hall coat closet, stumbling on shoes and various sporting helmets before trying to shove them all back in to close the door again. Maybe it isn’t even still in the house.
The easiest place to hide it would actually be in the woods behind the house. Maybe I should take that walk after all.
3
Cosmo
The pledges run around the house looking for the lacrosse stick, and some of the guys yell out warnings, like, “You’ll be sleeping on the front lawn if you don’t find it soon.” Not that we could actually have them do that. One thing that has changed over the last few years is the types of hazing we can and can’t do. I mean, I am all for a good joke, but I wasn’t sad to see some of the old stuff banned, either. Now, anything that can get a pledge hurt is off limits. Lucky for KOK, waking them up at five o’clock in the morning with a foghorn and having them run laps up Greek row in their underwear is acceptable. There are a few frats that push the limits. One duct taped a kid to a metal light post and left him there for the night. It became pretty dangerous when a freak lightning storm hit. Good thing campus security found him before it really kicked off and cut him free.
“Can we go into the bedrooms?” someone yells down, and I lean over the stair rail to call back.
“No. It’s not in a bedroom, keep looking, pledges,” I reply, and Riley shoots me a look. “I’m guessing. Because it was totally not me that took it. I swear.”
Leo Salamander, President of the frat house, likes to keep his lacrosse stick on display on the mantle in the main living room. That is, when he isn’t running around trying to catch butterflies with it. At least that’s what they look like running around out there on the lacrosse field. I personally think the hockey stick looks way better on the mantle. Riley doesn’t agree.
“Where did you put it?” Luka whispers in my ear.
“Up a tree out back. No one will find it before Pres gets back.”
His gaze moves past the crowd to the window overlooking the yard.
“You sure about that?” he asks, and I follow his stare as Eli crosses the border of trees and disappears into the woods.
“Well, fuck me. Okay, maybe I was wrong.”
“Looks like a couple of others have spotted him headed in there, too,” he says, and I watch as Toby and another new pledge I don’t recognize huddle together grinning mischievously before following Eli.
“They look like they’re up to something. I might go check it out.”
“Really? You’re going to check on a pledge?” Luka asks.
“If they do something stupid, we’ll be the ones copping it from the Pres and the dean.”
“Fair enough. Want me to come?”
“No, I got this.”
I head out the back door, the cool air filling my lungs and the scent of pine needles and rain fill my nose.
It’s a short walk across the back lawn, past a small gazebo to the woods. Wooded areas are creepy as fuck at the best of times, but with dry leaves and twigs cracking under my feet as I follow the worn path deeper in, it’s even worse.
A flash of red catches my eye, and I spot the guys who followed Eli. Maybe this wasn’t such a great hiding space after all. I’m about to ask what they’re up to when Toby leans close to the other guy and speaks.
“You go that way, keep quiet so he doesn’t see us.”
