The first thing I did when I got back in my dorm was take pictures of the notes and send them to Hazel. She always seemed to have a solution, even when no one else did.
Hazel: Oh no. That's not good.
Me: Yeah, clearly...
Hazel: Should we file a police report?
Me: Let's see what happens at lip sync first.
I always felt like I had to text Hazel formally because she was such a professional person. She texted that way, so I just assumed it was how she wanted people to text her, even during something crazy like this.
There were no notes under my doormat. Once that set in, I had started to realize that the same person who was writing my secret admirer notes was the person who dropped those threats on me at the library; this was definitely something ominous. What scared me is that I still had an inkling that this could have been Bryce, even with the threatening notes.
•••
"I would definitely drop the soap around you," Timmy chuckled, checking Araceli out in her dance costume. "Sexiest prisoner alive!"
The prison costumes I had ordered were even more risqué than the photos had depicted. It was basically just an orange lingerie set with long sleeves. The "shorts" were more like loose underwear, and the shirt barely fit like a bra. Araceli looked embarrassed in her outfit.
"Timmy," Araceli sighed, rolling her eyes. "I'm too nervous for all that."
"Y'all are gonna do great, it will be fine," I insisted. "It's basically just a 'dress like a hooker' contest, so I already did the easy part for you by ordering that costume."
Araceli laughed and waved at us as she walked backstage. What I said was true; this was definitely not the show you wanted to take your grandma to. The (coincidentally all-male) judges seemed to pick the winner based on how big their boner was after each performance.
It was only five minutes away from the start of the show, and there was still no sign of anything or anyone out to get me in the auditorium. I started to think that it was just a prank. Even if it wasn't, Hazel was the only person who knew about the library incident, so it's not like anyone else would know to look out. My phone went off with a text from Morgan.
Everyone is all set, thanks for the outfits :)
She was probably being sarcastic. Anyways, I made my way through the rows in search of the rest of my friends, spotting them toward the back. That looked like a good place to hide from this mystery person. At this point, they weren't a secret admirer anymore; they were something more sinister.
"Francie, I don't think they should let you order costumes anymore," Nick said as I walked into the second-to-last row. "Araceli and the others look like they're part of an Annoying Orange porn."
"Do me a favor... don't describe anything ever again," I retorted. "That was not a sentence I ever thought I'd hear."
The lights dimmed in the auditorium, and Ava Poplar walked onto the stage. She was wearing a hot pink jumpsuit with stilettos. Her long, brown hair was slicked back into a high ponytail that was curled at the ends. She tapped the microphone as the spotlight flickered above her.
"How are we feeling tonight, Giants?" The crowd erupted into applause as Ava prompted them. "Are you ready for some lip sync performances?"
The first performance was Tau Nu's, and I spotted Mattie immediately, front and center, dressed like a provocative strawberry. It was fruit themed; all the girls were dressed like stripper versions of different fruits and danced to baby sensory music. The night only got weirder from there. After the first performance ended, I got a text from Hazel.
Be on the lookout for Giant Gossiper posts about our performance. People are already posting about Tau Nu.
I sent her a thumbs up and logged onto the Giant Gossiper. There was a mixture of posts on my feed, with some about Ava Poplar's lip fillers and others making fun of Tau Nu's dance. Honestly, I thought that idea was really strange myself, so it wasn't like those posts meant people were going to post about us. I was wrong.
We were set to go tenth, which meant I had to watch quite a few performances before finding out. Some of the highlights included a reenactment of "Toxic" by Britney Spears and a sexual interpretation of the actual Y2K incident. Based on how the other performances had gone thus far, it appeared that we had a chance at winning the competition.
"Introducing... Eta Pi Epsilon!"
The spotlights flashed blue and red to create the illusion of a cop car. Morgan stood front and center, five girls on each side of her. Even though I had seen them rehearse the dance before, I still felt nervous. Eta Pi didn't have a good history with the lip sync battle. When the music started, the audience went silent.
At first, everything was going smoothly. Morgan planned a really cool gymnastics sequence where some girls were doing literal flips across the stage. I don't think Timmy knew the full nature of the dance before it happened, so he was redder than a beet for the entire duration.
"This is where they have Mary Grace do a split," I whispered to Nick, pointing at the middle of the stage.
Mary Grace, a former gymnast, had probably done dozens of splits before. We figured this would be the last possible thing to go wrong. However, when she went down into the split, her shorts ripped in half almost symmetrically. The crowd audibly gasped, and the judges began shuffling through their score cards.
"Looks like Eta Pi Epsilon has received a perfect score!"
All the judges held up their "10" cards, beaming at the audience. Somehow, the fact that they hired perverts for judges worked out for us. The victory almost offset the public relations nightmare that was about to ensue. Right after our dance team left the stage, I got a text from Hazel.
Hazel: Have you looked at the Gossiper?
Me: No, is it bad?
Hazel: That would be an understatement.
The picture of Mary Grace immediately went viral. People began photoshopping it with all kinds of things, and one person actually had a video of it. I didn't know you could even post videos on that app.
•••
We had an emergency meeting the next morning; this was really me getting breakfast with Hazel and Kaylee, our standards chair. For whatever reason, we decided to subject ourselves to the dining hall food, which was notoriously indigestible and often the wrong color. This meeting was planned for promptly 8:00 AM sharp.
"I'm gonna go ahead and apologize," I said, pulling out my chair from the table. "It's my fault that Mary Grace's shorts ripped. I should have ordered higher quality costumes."
Kaylee shook her head and took out her phone. "No, it's not your fault... I have evidence that her costume was tampered with."
Hazel and I both shot her a puzzled look, but she quickly showed us security camera footage of a man spraying something on Mary Grace's shorts. This was before the dance team came back to the room from dinner to get dressed.
"How did you get this footage?" Hazel's eyes widened.
"I have a friend that works in the technology department," Kaylee replied. "I asked her to check the cameras last night in case something suspicious happened. Pranks always happen this week."
"You should probably tell Kaylee about the notes," Hazel insisted, referring to the library incident yesterday.
I took a sip of my apple juice and opened my backpack. As I unfolded the notes, Hazel cleared a space on the table for me to lay them out. I had included the love notes and the threat notes. There was a feeling in my chest that these notes were all from the same person or group, so I felt called to show them all. Kaylee scrutinized my notes, following the words with her pointer finger, and I anxiously waited for a response.
"Francie," Kaylee sighed, putting the last note down. "I don't know if you should go to that frat house tonight."
I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach. "Why not?"
"This plot isn't over," she replied. "This is only the beginning."
I narrowed my eyes. "It's ending tonight."
• AUTHOR'S NOTE •
Things are about to get crazy! Eta Pi is at the top of the homecoming rankings, but at what cost? Stay tuned to see what happens at the Lambda Xi house.