Hell Week Read Online Free PDF Page A

reconnection.

    "See you then." He smiled and gave me a little wave.

    "Yeah. See you." I lifted my fingers, too, and watched him return to his workout already in progress, wishing my psychic mojo extended to reading minds.

    F F F

    The Sigma Alpha Xi house was in the colonial revival style, popular when the university and its nearby neighbor- hoods were built in the late nineteenth, early-twentieth cen- tury. The lawn sloped down from the house and the rushee herd ranged there when Jenna and I arrived; the Rho Gamma climbed the steps to the columned portico, where she rapped on the door. Holly and Tricia waited for me at the back of the group, near the sidewalk. Night had fallen in earnest, but didn't hide their avidly curious faces.

    "Who was that?" Holly asked.

    "A friend." At her disbelieving look, I sighed and tucked a lock of hair behind my ear. "It's complicated."

    She made an "I'm waiting" gesture. Tricia helpfully added, "I want to know, too. He's adorable."

    Holly turned to her, her brows climbing. "Adorable does not begin to describe a guy with thighs like that." Then, swiveling her attention back to me: "So what gives?"

    I looked toward the house, hoping for a reprieve. No dice. "We went out in the spring, a couple of times." An oversimplification, but--taking all the world-saving and monster-hunting out of it--true enough. "Then he went to Ireland for a three-month internship."

    "So what's so complicated?" Holly asked. "He's back and obviously happy to see you--" Tricia snickered and Holly smacked her arm. "Not like that, pervert."

    I shrugged, looked away, needlessly smoothed my hair again. "We e-mailed over the summer. Great, chatty letters about nothing and everything."

    "That's so sweet." Tricia grinned. "Kind of like You've Got Mail."

    "Yeah. Only in reverse, because his letters started get- ting shorter, less personal, slower." I lifted my hands help- lessly. "It sounds lame, I guess. Hard to explain."

    They nodded, synchronized head bobs of sympathy. Holly summed it up nicely. "So now you have no idea where you stand."

    "He probably got really busy with his internship." Tricia, clearly the eternal optimist. "You'll see."

    "Maybe." I studied the toes of my shoes, flecked with grass and bits of pine needle. There was no point in pre- tending that my heart wasn't hanging in the balance; at least after meeting up tonight, I would--

    Then the door to the sorority house opened, spilling light into the dusky shadows and bringing me back to the task at hand. F F F

    The Sigma Alpha Xi chapter room was nothing short of elegant. Hardwood floors shone beneath an oriental rug, and dark blue and deep red echoed through the d�cor. No one thing screamed money; it was the way everything fit to- gether. If the Zetas had been intrinsically cool, then the Sig- mas were fundamentally classy.

    I had the dance down by now. The doors open and we rushees enter like cattle into a chute. One of the sorority members steps forward in a well-orchestrated move, takes a girl by the elbow, and leads her to a designated area of the room. It took me a few rounds to catch on to the architecture of the "random" party groupings and the carefully choreo- graphed mingling.

    The smiling girl who met me this time managed to make it look natural. "Hey!" she said, guiding me to an empty spot in the crowded sitting area. Like all the other SAXis, she wore a khaki skirt and a button-down blue oxford, very preppy but cute. She had short blond hair that flipped up at the ends, and freckles danced over her nose.

    "I'm Devon. And you're . . ." She read my name tag and laughed. "Yeah. You'd think that we could come up with bet- ter questions than that. But your brain goes kind of numb after a while."

    Her candor connected with me, and I found my cynicism-- not slipping, exactly, but bending enough to concede, "I can totally see where that would happen."

    Her nose crinkled with her grin. "Right. Now I'm left with nothing to ask but if