The Missing Piece

I never saw myself as the sorority type. I’m not blonde or perky, nor does my idea of a fun night include doing a keg stand in front of a group of cheering horny, beer-buzzed fraternity brothers. Upon exiting high school, I would rather have spent a Saturday night skyping with my boyfriend than partying with a forced family in the name of philantrophy.

However, my mom wouldn’t have it. She was in a sorority. Her mother was in a sorority. Her sister was in a sorority. My older sister Madisyn is in a sorority. Needless to say, I pledged Sigma Kappa during Fall Rush of my freshman year.

I was right. I’m not peppy all the time. I don’t love my sorority. I don’t feel an intense companionship to my sisters. And that’s why I’m not sure why Maria Sentauri took an interest in me.

Maria is my Grand-Grand-Big - the Big of my Grand-Big, so to speak. She was sorority president for 2011-2012. Not to mention, she’s easily one of the most respected and envied girls at AU.

I’m not afraid to admit that, when I first met her, she intimidated the shit out of me. After all, she’s this brunette Amazon who has the attention of everyone the second she walks in the room. She has this air that is just so cool and unapproachable that you just have to settle for staring from afar in awe.

My entire pledge class sucked up to her, naturally. Just as naturally, she gave none of them the time of day. I never believed in the hero worship. She’s beautiful and terrifying and in her own league, yes, but her shit does in fact stink and the sun doesn’t shine out of her ass.

Hence, my surprise when she knocked on my door and asked me to Starbucks three days into my sophomore year.

When asked, she said, “Officially, because you seem like you still need help transitioning into sorority life. Unofficially, I think you’re the only person who hasn’t kissed my ass.”

Maria took me in as her surrogate Little. While my Big used me as a wingwoman to meet boys from friendly frats (a setup that often ended in me in an empty room with the best friend of Taylor’s victim of the night, unenthusiastically giving the bastard a handjob for his trouble), Maria ofen helped me sneak out of those things for coffee.

Soon after, the secrets starting coming out.

Maria Sentauri is infamously known for being cold and unbareably difficult to warm up to others. But she opened up to me. I’m not sure why, really. Maybe it was because I didn’t have any reason to manipulate her trust. Like, I will admit that at first, I was determined to use this knowledge to my own benefit, but then I started caring about this girl. Not to mention that she has as much dirt on me as I do her.

“I hate Sig Kap,” she admitted once a few coffee dates on, “I hate this fake ‘oh em gee, we’re sisters’ shit.”

We agreed on that. I remember asking why she was the president of an organization that she hates. She responded cooly that they handed her the position because of seniority. After all, she was a 5th year senior this year. She’s brilliant, really; a communications/business double major. She wants to do PR, and believe me, she’s pretty fucking good at it. It’s how she bullshits this position, anyway. “You can’t say no to these girls when they say that they want you to be their leader,” she’d added, twirling the straw of her iced coffee around her cup with a single, manicured fingernail, “So you just have to paint on your best smile, air kiss them, and start planning bake sales for kids with cancer.”

A few weeks later, she started talking about Christian.

I’d heard about Christian Climer. He plays for a band called There For Tomorrow, all the members of which attended DC-area schools. He graduated from GW in 2011, and he was Maria’s boyfriend for around two years.

“Jesus fucking Christ, I loved that boy. Like, it seems crazy, but I thought he was it.”

She paused after that. When Maria’s having a serious, honest conversation, she speaks carefully, thoughtfully. Whenever she’s bullshitting an inspring speech for our ‘sisters’, she talks quickly, but when she actually means what she says, she takes her time when choosing her words.

“I started smoking because of him, you know.” Her eyes go to the lit Virginia Slim that she’s been nursing periodically through our conversation, held delicately between two fingers. “It’s funny, because I made him quit. He’d need a cigarette when he woke up, after every meal, after class, before and after sex. And I hated it. I hated the taste and the smell and I bugged him until he quit cold turkey.”

She took another puff after that, then stubbed it out on the concrete. “Sure enough, I bought my first pack three hours after he dumped me. I used to smoke whenever I missed him and missed that damn smell. But now, cigarettes get rid of anxiety and stress and shit. And I smoke when Dylan visits, of course.”

Maria’s been with Dylan for a year and a half. He graduated from Pratt a few years ago, and travels the east coast as a photographer. He chain-smokes American Spirits, wears the same pair of skinny jeans for weeks at a time, and takes a lot of pictures that he photoshops to near death. He doesn’t say all that much but he always wants to take my picture.

She compares them a lot. Christian and Dylan, I mean. Christian doesn’t have a lot of Dylan’s more annoying habits. She talked about what they had with a tinge of sad nostalgia, but she admits that she’s better off and that she’s more than moved on. “I didn’t say yes to Dylan because I’m crazy in love with him, because I’m not,” she once told me, twisted the then-week-old diamond on her left ring finger, “But at least I know that this is real. I had my fairy tale romance, and it wasn’t real.”

She says that a lot. That it wasn’t real. That no matter how hard she tried, Christian never gave his full self into their relationship. It wasn’t something that she noticed until awhile in, but there was this whole other side of him that she could never access.

Erica could.

It’s virtually impossible to have a conversation abut Christian and Maria without mentioning (at length) Erica Saunders. I’d heard the story before Maria and I became buddy-buddy: Erica was Christian’s best friend, and their friendship tore his relationship with Maria apart. I’ve heard many variations of this particular tale, including the popular version in which Erica and Christian fucked like bunnies until Maria put her foot down and Christian dumped her. It’s one of those stories that spread around like GW’s gonorrhea outbreak last fall in Thurston Hall.

It’s pretty easy to avoid the subject around Maria, thouh. She doesn’t really mention her. I thought at first that she was just a sore subject, but then Maria brought her up.

“Can you keep a secret?” She had asked me for the millionth time, it seemed. It was our mutually understood phrase for “tell anyone and you’re dead”. I nodded in my ‘spare my life’ fashion and she’d spilled.

“I don’t hate her. Erica, I mean. She’s not my best fucking friend but she’s alright, I guess. I used to hate her, but I think that I hated the fact that my boyfriend had fallen harder for her in two weeks than he did for me in two years.” She then paused to relight her cigarette, then took a long drag. “I never admit that to people. Like, I have this fucking reputation and I have to hate the girl who stole the guy I wasted two years of my life on. It’s nice that they take my side on this, really, but it’s just so fucking unnecessary. And I’d look like a shit if I admitted that they know nothing about her. I knew nothing about her back then. We were both bitches and we know that. We grew up. We’re over it. It’s like, I don’t want Christian back. Not anymore. I want what we had back.”

I didn’t expect her to say more on the topic. Once she goes deeply into a confession, she doesn’t touch it for awhile. She’s not used to opening up to people like this. Her best friend through much of college was a girl she had a falling out with halfway through her first senior year. She never talked at length about it, other than that Deeanna pulled away from her out of the blue, and she realized that she didn’t care enough to salvage the friendship.

“Me and Dee could never have the talks we have, Iris. Like, we were more the girlfriends of best friends than anything. She dealt with my tendency to be a shallow piece of shit and she didn’t care that I didn’t let her in. You’re more of a best friend than she ever was.”

But that knowledge couldn’t prepare me for what she told me yesterday. “I sent your demos to Christian. He’s going on tour this summer, and the opening band pulled out. He thinks he can talk to a few people and see if you guys can’t fill the slot. That is, if you guys are up to it.”

I didn’t answer at first. I didn’t know how to respond to that. Christian Climer, the guitarist of a band that’s signed to a label, and, while not the headliner, is a solid support act on a nationwide tour, has been deluded into thinking that my little band from Nowheresville, Virginia is good enough to make its touring debut. Not to mention that he helps their tour manager with booking; he’s got some pull.

“Why? We’re just a bunch of shitty kids who can barely play our instruments,” I ask, bewildered, to which Maria snorts.

“That’s a load of shit and you know it, Moran. Whether you admit it or not, you guys have some serious talent. And there’s always that level of intrigue with a girl drummer; the chick with sticks factor, so to speak.”

I inhale. She’s serious. “I’ll, uh, have to ask my bandmates first.”

She smiles knowingly at me. “I had a feeling you’d say that. Anyway, here is Erica Saunders’ number. She’s affiliated with the tour and she’s in the area.” She scribbles a number onto a napkin and thrusts it in my direction. “Well, I better head to the metro before I miss my train. I’d like not to have another tardy just because the red line likes to fuck me sideways.” She pecks me on the cheek, then leaves Starbucks.

I stare down at the list of digits in my hands and wonder what I’ve stumbled into now.