Vortex by Catherine Coulter

Delta Rho Phi Fraternity Rave

Godwyn University

Creighton, Pennsylvania

Five hours earlier

“Mia, stop!”

When Mia looked over at her friend, she pulled up. “What? You don’t want to go to the rave?”

Serena Winters took her friend’s shoulders between her hands, shook her. “Of course I want to go, but this moment, I want you to pay attention. Now, listen up. Yes, he’s a creep and a loser and a cheat, and you were smart enough to see what he is and kick him out the door. What did you expect from that jock? He probably keeps a scorecard.”

Mia sighed, kicked a pebble out of her path. She still felt angry enough to spit. She said, “You did tell me Rod would cheat on me if I didn’t put out—and right away. Like buy a girl a hamburger and she owes you sex? Them’s the rules? I heard some of these frat boys keep their scorecards posted in the common room.”

Serena said matter-of-factly, “Some of the girls in our dorm collect guys, too, keep count, they just don’t advertise it as loudly. Look, Mia, it’d have been worse if you’d slept with him, so that’s something you don’t have to feel mad about.”

Mad? After how he’d treated her? Mia wanted to kick him in his crotch until her knee hurt. Then use her other knee.

Mia said, “Doesn’t it ever worry you that Tommy Maitland’s a jock? And not just any jock, the starting quarterback?”

“Yeah, he is, but Tommy’s one of a kind, you know that. Of course I wondered about him at first, but it didn’t take me long to realize his head’s on straight. Of course he thinks about sex a lot—he has to since he’s a guy and it’s hardwired—but he isn’t out to score all the sex he can get in four years. He wants to be an FBI agent, like his dad, a bigwig in Washington, so Tommy knows he’s got to be disciplined, take all his decisions seriously. And he’s been raised right, he and his three brothers. Tommy tells me his old man is tougher than any of them. He says the only one tougher is his mom.”

Mia looked at her best friend grinning at her from ear to ear, her beautiful hair all twisted up on top of her head, to make her look taller, she said. Serena was a dynamo, full of energy, always ready for almost anything, not to mention she was a knockout with her black hair, white skin, and blue eyes. Black Irish, Serena claimed.

Mia splayed her hands. “All right, I give up. Tommy’s a fricking saint, and unlike me, you lucked out.”

Serena wiggled her eyebrows, whispered, “I wish he’d come with us tonight to this rave, but his mom had her appendix out yesterday. He and his brothers all zipped back to Washington to hold her hand. They say it’s a good sign when a son really loves his mother, right?”

Mia didn’t have any brothers, but she supposed that was true. She said, “I’ve never been to the Delta Rho Phi rave before, but I do know we’ll have to be careful. There’ll probably be drugs. I heard there’ll be guys from other schools there, older guys, too, so be watchful, okay?”

“A bunch of our friends will be there. We’ll stick close to them. We’ll be fine. But look out for more guys like Rod, they litter the ground.”

Mia looked down at her watch. “It’s been going on for a while now, so we’ll have some catching up to do. Good grief, listen.” They were a block away from the Delta Rho Phi house when they heard the music—a heavy metal band playing on the frat house sound system at a gazillion decibels, crashing through the air. Mia would bet the frat house was shaking from the force of it. They heard voices shouting to be heard over the music, and the manic laughter of people well on their way to being drunk, or high on something.

They wove their way through dozens of students from the hallway into the large common room of the seventy-five-year-old Delta Rho Phi fraternity house. It was a huge old colonial that housed a lot of horny boys who studied only when they were shackled to their desks by looming deadlines. A frat house for academics it wasn’t.

All the furniture was shoved to the edges of the room, and about forty boys and girls with beers or glasses of gin or the house specialty, the recipe known only to Delta Rho Phi, vodka-laced lemonade, in their hands were gyrating to the deafening music provided by a DJ who looked like he’d been feeling no pain for quite a while already. Mia smelled the lemons as she slipped into the chaos, spotted friends, and accepted a beer. She and Serena stuck close to them for about thirty minutes, but by ten o’clock, most everyone had sailed past drunk from the specialty of the house. The music seemed to get louder and louder, the dancing wilder. At least seventy-five close-packed kids were on the dance floor, going crazy.

Mia was drunk, maybe not as drunk as most of the others, but she was getting there, laughing, dancing in place with whatever student was getting close, slurping up a delicious deadly drink the frat boys called a Crazy Mary. The boy next to her was glassy-eyed he was so drunk, and even that made her laugh. She’d kissed off two frat guys she’d seen on campus because she could tell they were jerks like Rod only out to score. She admitted to herself it’d be nice to meet a guy who wasn’t as drunk as the rest, but good luck with that.

Serena was talking with a guy she’d met, a bit older, probably a grad student. He was another gamer, Serena told her as she hugged Mia on their way back from the bathroom. He was smart and funny, and “how lucky is that?” she said.

The one time Mia paid any attention to them, Serena’s gamer guy had his back to her. He was gesticulating wildly, slicing down with some imaginary sword, probably demonstrating his winning move in some computer game, and Serena was nodding and laughing along with him. Mia supposed he looked nice enough. Someone grabbed her arm, whirled her around to dance, and after that she never stopped dancing. With friends, with strangers, with anyone who wanted to. She danced until her legs ached, but she didn’t care. She drank, she laughed, she forgot about Rod the Loser. Then she nearly fell and realized she’d fall on her face if she didn’t stop. She slipped to the side, looking for Serena, but didn’t see her. A guy’s arm came around Mia, moved to her breasts, and without thought, she threw the rest of her drink in his face. He laughed like a hyena as he tried to use her arm to wipe off his face.

She was wondering if she should try to find Serena and head back to the dorm when she heard a scream from across the room, then heard someone shout FIRE! For a moment, she didn’t understand. She was drunk, yes, very drunk, but the yells and screams got through to her vodka-soaked brain, and suddenly everyone was shoving toward the front doors. Smoke was gushing out of the kitchen into the common room, getting thicker. Mia automatically pulled her shirt over her nose, looked frantically around for Serena. Where was she? They’d danced together not more than a half an hour ago. Or was it longer? Mia couldn’t remember, her brain wasn’t on reality time. She’d been laughing at a joke she couldn’t remember.

Mia yelled, “Serena!” but she didn’t see Serena. She was being pushed forward toward the front of the frat house in the middle of a stampede. She stumbled, and an arm grabbed her and half dragged her outside, out of the chaos. She was dizzy, the world upside down or maybe sideways, and her stomach revolted. She leaned over and threw up into a bush until she was light-headed. She clutched her stomach, closed her eyes, and let herself fall over onto her side. She heard sirens, heard students shouting, felt the fear heavy in the very air around her. She staggered to her feet and leaned against an oak tree, coughing, trying to get her head on straight. She saw firefighters pour off fire trucks, train their hoses on the frat house. She saw cop cars, from the town and from campus security, heard more shouts, a high-pitched scream. It was like a fantastical movie. She saw Judy Harkins, one of her study partners, stumble by and Mia caught her. “Judy, have you seen Serena?”

“Serena?” Judy was so drunk she crumpled to the ground, pulling Mia back down with her.

An older cop came by, pulled them to their feet, and herded them back toward their dorm. Mia said over and over, “Please, Officer, I have to go back. I have to find Serena, she might still be in there. I have to—”

The cop said in a father’s voice, “We’ll get in there as soon as we can and find her, don’t worry. The best thing you can do to help us is get yourselves to bed. It might be smart not to do anything like this again, you think?”

There were no casualties from the frat fire, but the cops couldn’t find Serena. No one could find Serena. She was simply gone.