Rush Week at Kappa Kappa Murder
The Roommates
Every year, on the third weekend in October, there’s a vigil for Caroline. Every year, they use the same easel to prop up the same poster-size photograph of her, the one taken for our sorority composite the fall she disappeared. Shiny curls gleam golden atop tan shoulders, blue eyes sparkle, a careful blend of pink cream blush and highlighter paints her cheeks rosy. Her smile is open-mouthed as though she were caught mid-laugh, and it’s weird to think we’ll never hear her full-throated chuckle again. I get kind of choked up just thinking about it.
Every year, they surround Caroline’s photo with fragrant wreaths of white roses and hand out tall, slender white candles. Our faces streaked with mascara-black tears, we cup our hands around the lighted candles to protect the flames and make tortured comparisons to Caroline’s metaphorical light, extinguished far too soon. Honestly, it’s all a little much.
Every year, they pass a microphone around the crowd, encouraging those of us who knew and loved Caroline to share stories about her. Every year, the same people say the same things—Caroline was beautiful, Caroline was smart, she was kind, she loved animals—and every year, we avoid saying the same things—Caroline was petty, she could be cruel, she stole homework and earrings and boyfriends.
Every year, we stand in a clump of Kappa sisters. Every year, there are fewer of us who actually knew Caroline and more who only know of her. Everyone knows of Caroline these days. She would have freaking loved it.
Every year, people trade theories about what happened to her. She’s being held in a basement, someone says. Just like those women in Ohio.
I don’t think so, someone else says. I think she’s buried in the cornfields outside of town.
Oh, I think she’s on the farms all right, someone else says. But you know those pigs? I heard—
Jesus, someone else interrupts. Don’t say that. Don’t even think that. That’s disgusting and not true anyway.
Besides, someone else says, everyone knows what really happened is that Ian Rogers roofied her drink at that party. But Ian’s an idiot and used too much, and she choked on her own vomit and died. Such a shame.
Every year, Amber bristles when Ian is mentioned. Of course she does—he was her boyfriend, might be still if not for Caroline. Back at the first vigil, when Caroline had been missing for a year and the investigation was still active, Amber attacked some know-it-all townie for calling Ian a murderer. I mean, really just went after her—hair-pulling and nails to the face and all that. I think the lady ended up with stitches. I know she called Amber rabid and was set to press charges until she realized who Amber was.
One of the roommates.
That’s what they call us, you know, the three of us who were living with Caroline the semester she vanished. The roommates. Every year, we face the inevitable stares, the whispered accusations. There are the roommates. You know they lost track of her at frat party. Do you think they feel guilty?
Fuck yes, we feel guilty. That’s why, every year, I hide behind dark sunglasses and Amber clutches mala beads and chants a mantra she picked up from some yoga class. It’s why, every year, Sarah fills her water bottle with vodka and ends up wasted. Every year, I hold Sarah’s meticulously curled and sprayed hair back while she retches and cries that next year, next year will be different. Next year, we’ll tell the truth.
We never do.
We never take that awful microphone and tell the assembled crowd that on that long ago October night the three of us grabbed Caroline. We never tell them that we intercepted her leaving Ian’s room, that we put one of Amber’s floral pillowcases over her head and threw her in the trunk of my car. We never tell them that we cranked up the music to cover the sounds of her screaming, or that we drove past the city limits and then released her, spinning her around to disorient her before speeding away, laughing. We never tell them that it was just a prank. Just something to knock Caroline down a notch, something to remind her that she couldn’t just take what—or who—she wanted all the time. Not without consequences.
So yeah, we feel guilty. But not for the reasons they think, not because we didn’t walk her home or because we let her fall prey to some creep armed with a vial of horse tranquilizer. We feel guilty because we left her alone in the dark, miles from home.
Or that’s why Amber and Sarah feel guilty, at least.
I feel guilty for another reason.
Because I went back. After the three of us had returned to the party, giggling about how furious Caroline must be, and after Amber had assumed her rightful place upon Ian’s lap and Sarah had lost her top in a game of strip poker, I climbed back in the car and drove to where we left her. It’s a cold night, I thought. We should have taken that bitch’s sweater.
But we hadn’t, and so she was still wearing that knee-length black cardigan, wrapping it tightly around herself as she unsteadily made her way along the road. She was still a mile outside of town, still a mile before there were any streetlights or store lights or lights of any kind. Between the near pitch-dark of the country and that goddamn black sweater, she was practically invisible. Totally invisible once you factored in the three cups of trashcan punch I’d consumed.
I drove back to the party with Caroline in the trunk. What else was I supposed to do? I couldn’t just leave her there. People would wonder how a sorority girl in faux leather pants got hit by a car so far outside of town, would wonder why exactly she was strolling along a desolate country road in the middle of the night. And then they would remember the pledge we had pulled the same prank on last year, the stupid one who had walked for two miles in the wrong direction before flagging down the first car she saw and ratting us all out. They would know it was us, that it was our fault somehow, and Caroline would win one final time. I couldn’t let that happen.
This year at the vigil, a new Kappa, some apple-cheeked nineteen-year-old wearing too much lipstick, leans close to me and says, You know, I’ve always wondered if anyone checked the frat’s dumpster after that party. I mean, there could have been evidence or something like that in there, right?
I lower my sunglasses. Hmm, I say. Yeah. Something like that.
