The clock read 13:30 in the third quarter and already the fans were heading for their cars. Nobody at Eastern Shores University wanted to watch the home team drop their ninth straight game, but another turnover, followed by a fumble on the ensuing kickoff, put the visitors up 52-7. And it wasn’t even the worst blowout of the season.

Coach Rip was furious. He cursed at the players and he cursed at the referees and he broke his clipboard over his left knee, but nothing would change. The Wild Squirrels hadn’t had a winning season in nine years. Sure, some could chalk it up to bad coaching, but Rip Zamboni was a legend around these parts. When he was a student, he had quarterbacked for the Squirrels and led them to four title games and three national championships. They had retired his jersey number a few years ago, but not a single student at ESU wanted to retire him.

The same couldn’t be said about Joss Friedman. The 6’6 tan-skinned junior with a bad haircut and an even worse attitude had only been quarterback for two seasons, but he was already on pace to be the worst player in school history. Naturally, he blamed it on the revolving door known as his receiving corps, but anyone who watched him could tell he was terrible. So what if he was throwing to different guys every week?

But if Friedman was bad as a football player, he was even worse as a human being. After throwing his sixth interception of the game, he hurried over to the sideline, tossed his helmet on the bench, and pushed right past his coach.

“Joss, wait,” Coach Rip said, but Friedman slipped right past him, weaved through a crowd of defensive linemen, and found the cheerleaders lazing about in the grass on the other side of the field.

Now, if there was one organization on campus that picked up the slack for the football team, it was the cheerleading squad. They had never won a national championship, but they were perennial finalists in the state competition every year, and this year’s squad was the best yet. With Kate Monroe now in her senior year, they were fully expected to sweep everybody.

“Hey, baby,” Friedman said, dropping down onto the grass next to Kate. He planted his meaty palm on her right thigh and squeezed it like a melon. “Just wanted to let you know I saw you shaking those hips for me out there and I appreciate it.”

“You’re supposed to be looking at your teammates,” Kate mumbled. Still, she blushed and let a small giggle escape.

“Why? None of them have an ass as cute as yours.” His fingers crept towards the bottom frills of her skirt. “Let me see that sexy thing.”

She playfully swatted his hand away and crossed one leg over the other to keep him from trying again. “Not here,” she hissed, motioning to the other girls with her eyes. Not that they cared or were even paying attention. With the stands clearing out and the game well out of reach, the girls had laid their pom-poms on the grass and were simply making small talk to pass the time.

Friedman followed Kate’s eyes and he imagined what it would be like to get it on with the whole cheerleading squad at the same time. He had tried before, of course, but some of them were stuck-up bitches.

Still, he had gotten bored with Kate. She would be graduating soon and, with his grades, he would be in college for another four years. That meant four more years of banging girls from Kappa Tau. At this rate, he would set a college record.

And while Friedman dreamed of setting records off the field, linebacker Matt Clay was setting records on the field. The beast of a man had just netted his thirteenth sack of the season and ran over to Friedman and Kate to do his victory roar.

“ALPHA DOGS!” Clay shouted, startling the rest of the cheerleaders, and he and Friedman chest-bumped while the other team ran another play and scored a touchdown.

Coach Rip came over to give both Clay and Friedman a piece of his mind.

“You don’t come off the field until the drive is over!” he yelled. Coach was always yelling. “Do you two even know the rules of football!?”

Clay and Friedman looked at each other and shrugged.

“I know the rules, coach,” Kate said, raising her hand.

Rip clawed at his own his face, obviously frustrated, and took a long, hard, deep breath before looking at Friedman through his fingertips. “…Come on, kid. It’s our ball. Get your helmet on.” He started back towards the sideline and then stopped, turning his head around.  “…You know, you’re lucky we don’t have a competent backup or you’d be warming benches for the rest of the season.”

He said this well in earshot range of Chaz Marcum, the second string quarterback.

Kate watched him storm away.

“He sounds angry,” she said.

“Nah. That’s just what they call tough love.” Friedman puffed out his chest, making out like he was some sort of hero and his team desperately needed him. “Now, if you’ll excuse me… I have a game to win.”

“Good luck!” she said.   

The Wild Squirrels lost, 73-7.

--------------------

After the game, Friedman showered and chest-bumped with every guy in the locker room—even Chaz the Spaz—before throwing on some jeans and a white varsity sweater with red stripes. He stuffed the rest of his gear in an oversized gym bag and slung it over his shoulder as he headed for the door.

Outside, there was a girl waiting for him. She had a pencil in one hand and a notepad in the other, and she raised them both eagerly when she saw him emerge from the locker room door. Their eyes met and the late afternoon sunlight bounced off the thin frame of her glasses and straight into his retinas.

Normally, he would have pushed right past her, but he had to look down to shield his eyes from the sun and he got a good look at her figure. She was skinny and not altogether too short, wearing a black buttoned jacket, a purple mini-dress that showed off her legs, and black buckle pumps that had been standing in place for almost an hour. He smiled—that dashing Friedman smile—when he looked back up at her.

“Hi there! I’m—”

Before she could finish speaking, he had snatched the pencil and notepad away from her and began scribbling something down.

“Who should I make this out to?” he asked.

“Huh?”

“What’s your name?”

“Um… It’s Tori, but…”

“Here you go, Tori Butt.” He handed back her belongings, picked up his gym bag again, and started towards the campus parking lot.

Tori stared down at the notepad. All that was written was a seven digit phone number.

“I don’t think you understand!” she cried out. When he didn’t look back, she chased after him, stumbling down the steps in her pumps. “I don’t want your autograph or…whatever this is.”

“Sure you don’t, baby. Sure you don’t.”

“No, please. If you could just wait and—”

“I’m a very busy guy. If you want something, walk and talk. You can do that, can’t you?”

Tori’s glasses had slipped down the bridge of her nose. She pushed them up with her finger, nearly impaling herself with the pencil in the process, and nodded.

“Yes, you see… I’m a journalist with the school newspaper and my first assignment is to interview an athlete on campus.” Friedman jumped over a railing and Tori had to circle around to keep up. “I’m new to this school and my supervisor was very adamant about me interviewing someone on the cheerleading squad or the girls’ softball team or the girls’ basketball team or the girls’ chess club, but I—”

“But you just couldn’t resist the chance to talk the greatest quarterback of our generation.” He combed a hand through his thick, dark hair. “I don’t blame you. I would’ve done the same if I was a gorgeous chick.”

“Greatest quarterback of our generation? But your team is last in the division…”

“I don’t play defense, sweetheart.”

“But you turned the ball over eight times. Isn’t that bad?”

“A girl pretending to know about football. That’s cute.” Friedman stopped in front of an old Buick LeSabre the color of vomit and fumbled for his keys. “Here. Hold this for a sec.” He shoved the giant gym bag into Tori’s chest and dug deep into his jean pockets. “Football is a lot like life. You gotta tackle your problems, block your tears, and score as much as you can. You can quote me on that.”

Tori’s whole body was concealed behind the bag as she struggled to keep from falling over. “Um, I think Lewis Grizzard said that…more or less… And isn’t it ‘block your fears’?”

Friedman finally found his keys. He unlocked the car and then stopped for a moment to look at himself in the side mirror. Damn, he thought. Kate was one lucky bitch to have him. He tilted the mirror to get a better look at himself and then spotted the two scrawny legs sticking out from under the gym bag. Not wanting his uniform to end up on the pavement, he popped the trunk, grabbed the strap of the gym bag with one hand, and tossed it inside with a heavy thump.

“I’m starving,” he said, slamming the trunk. “Let’s get a burger.”

“I’m a vegetarian.”

“Hey, I didn’t ask you about your religious beliefs.”

By now, the other football players were heading towards the parking lot. They were about as distraught with the loss as Friedman.

“ALPHA DOGS!” one of them shouted.

Friedman thumped his chest with both hands and hollered back. “ALPHA DOGS!”

About five or six others joined in and soon the whole parking lot was one big shouting, grunting, testosterone-filled fest.

Tori looked around at all the burly football players and then raised her fist. “Yeah, Alpha Dogs!”

The cheer instantly died out.

“Yeah, that’s more of a guy thing…” Friedman said. He turned his back on his teammates, who were now giving him strange looks, and studied Tori like he would study a hunk of veal in a deli. He could have jumped in the car and drove off without her, but something about those legs enticed him. They were just too damn nice to leave behind.

“So…food?” he asked.

Tori looked at the beat-up car in front of her and then down at the notepad. She wasn’t sure that thing was even street legal, but a hastily written phone number wasn’t going to get her very far. Flashing her friendliest smile, she nodded and folded the notepad shut before tucking it away in her rear pocket.

“Cool.” Friedman walked over to the passenger side door and yanked on the door handle. The entire door came off.

“Um…is it supposed to do that?” Tori asked.

“Just roll with it, sweetcheeks.”

Friedman drove them to Burgers n’ Weenies and had Tori buy a dozen cheeseburgers and a jumbo soda because he left his wallet at home. He finished about half of those burgers on the drive back and parked his LeSabre outside one of the many off-campus housing units that lined Mason Avenue.

Tori looked out the smudged car window. It was an old, three-story building—white, with peeling paint and broken shutters—and there were mounds of empty bottles and crushed cans swept up against the house like piles of leaves. Most of the windows were open, despite the cool October air, and she could hear loud voices coming from inside.

“Welcome to Alpha Sigma Omicron,” Friedman said, grabbing the brown paper bag from Tori’s lap. He slid his hand across her left boob as he opened the driver side door and stepped out.

Tori waited in the car and watched him for a moment. He got as far as the front steps before stopping, cupping his hands over his mouth, and barking as loud as he could for some reason. More barks echoed from inside the house.

Tori unbuckled her seat belt and tried to wipe the grease spot from her lap with the underside of her sleeve, but it wouldn’t come out. Sighing, she climbed out of the car through the driver side door and followed Friedman into the house. He hadn’t waited for her, but he had left the front door wide open. Some stray dogs ran out as she stepped inside.

“Um, excuse me…” she said, trying to navigate through the horde of football players who were crowded in the doorway. They were chugging beer and didn’t even seem to notice her, so she got pushed and jostled until she reached the kitchen, where Friedman was scarfing down another burger.

Tori started walking towards him when Matt Clay jumped out in front of her, raised his arms in the air, and let out the loudest, most foul-smelling belch he could muster.

Tori gagged and waved a hand in front of her face. “Okay, that was disgusting,” she said, as Clay and his buddies left the kitchen, laughing. She looked at Friedman for an apology or at least some comfort.

“You should try one of these,” he said, pointing to the greasy bag on the table. Ketchup sprayed from his mouth and oozed down his chin as he spoke.

“I already told you I’m a vegeta…” Tori stopped and combed back a loose strand of hair that had fallen over her eyes. Deep breathing, she told herself. “It doesn’t matter. Can we do the interview now? Please?”

Friedman shrugged. Not even bothering to put down his burger, he yanked a chair out from under the kitchen table, spun it around on one leg, and plopped down.

“Shoot me,” he said, folding his arms against the backrest.

“Huh?”

“Ask your questions! Geez, what kind of reporter are you? You don’t even know the lingo…”

“Oh. Right…” Tori took a seat at the table and used her forearm to push away the wads of fast food wrappers before setting her notepad and pencil down. When she was finished, she removed her jacket and folded it neatly against the back of the chair. “Okay, so… First, your name.”

“Friedman. Duh.”

“Um, your full name.”

“JOSS FRIEDMAN, KING OF THE ALPHAS AND GREATEST QUARTERBACK EASTERN SHORES HAS EVER SEEN!” He roared so loud that Tori had to adjust her glasses.

“I’m just going to put down ‘Joss.’ Now, um…how long have you been a student at ESU?”

“I dunno.”

“What is your major?”

“I dunno.”

“Do you have any interests outside of football?”

“YO, CLAY!” Friedman yelled, startling Tori again. “WE STILL ON FOR THE GAME TOMORROW NIGHT?”

“YEAH, MAN,” came a voice from the next room.

They barked to let each other know how they felt.

Tori leaned across the table and put her hands on either side of Friedman’s jaw, forcing him to look at her face. But his eyes fell to something a little lower.

“I don’t think this is working,” she said. “How about you just talk about some of the things that interest you and we’ll see where it goes from there?”

Bad idea. Tori sat there for thirty long minutes and listened to Friedman ramble on about sports and women and women and sports and sports and women. And just when she thought she had heard enough about balls and scoring and all the cheerleaders he had slept with, he found another topic that led to the same thing. By the time he had downed the last burger and crushed the plastic soda cup in his hand—ice cubes and all—Tori didn’t have a single thing written down that would make a good story.

She brushed the chunks of ice from her notepad and checked her watch. Maybe if she hurried, she could still find one of the cheerleaders on campus.

“This has been fun and all, but I really have to get going,” she said, standing up. “Thanks for, um…well, thanks.” Friedman was so absorbed in talking about himself that he didn’t even notice she had grabbed her jacket and was heading for the door until she was halfway there.

“Hey, wait!” he yelled, racing after her. He easily beat her to the door. “What about my story?”

“I don’t think my readers want to hear about how many women you slept with…”

“Why not? The guys like to hear those stories. Don’t you, guys?”

Naturally, the guys barked a response and went back to drinking. Tori was beginning to think that was all they knew how to do.

“My readers aren’t just guys,” she said. “I need a story with substance.”

“I don’t know what drugs have to do with anything, but I can show you my trophy room. Maybe you’ll find something there that interests you.”

Tori let out an exasperated sigh and let her arms fall to her side like limp branches. It was getting late. At this point, she would probably have to wait until Monday to schedule another interview, and there was no telling if the next person would be any more useful than this joker.

“Okay, sure,” she said. “Lead the way.”

--------------------

Tori followed Friedman up the rickety stairs of the fraternity house, getting a good look down at all the drunken buffoons who were gathered in the common room. Based on their matching varsity attire, she surmised almost all of them were on the football team, and she wondered how any of them had the energy left to be so loud and disorderly.  Matt Clay was still trying to impress people with his sack dance and some guy named Nate Burgeson had just brought a stack of pizzas into the house after crashing his car into the fire hydrant outside.

“It’s okay, guys,” he said. “I saved the pizzas!”

They cheered and huddled around him to grab a slice.

“Is it always this loud in here?” Tori asked when they reached the top of the stairs. She had to yell it again because Friedman didn’t hear her the first time.

“You get used to it,” he said. He led her down the hallway and stopped at a locked door near the end of the hall. Digging around in his pocket for the key, he unlocked the door with his back to Tori, as if there the door required a secret combination that he didn’t want her to know about.

“Check it out,” he said, pushing open the door.

Tori stepped inside and found herself in a tiny room surrounded by empty shelves and empty display cases.

“I think you’ve been robbed,” she said, turning around.

“Nah, the room isn’t finished yet.” He shut the door and the voices from downstairs were finally muffled. “This is just where I’m going to put all my trophies once I win them. See this spot?” He pointed to a wooden pedestal in the center of the room. “This is where my Heisman is going to go.”

“Heisman? Don’t you have to be…good for that?”

“Well, I’m not going to get it by stealing it!” Friedman laughed, slapping Tori on the back. She stumbled forward and her glasses came flying off.

“Look…” Tori picked up her glasses. “I really appreciate you showing me your empty trophy room, but I don’t think there’s anything in here I want to see.”

“There’s me.”

Tori frowned.

“Oh, come on. You can’t tell me that I’m not the most charming guy you’ve ever met.”

“That’s a double negative and I’m not sure you’re the kind of person my readers want to read about. I’m just going to interview one of the cheerleaders.”

“Fine.” Friedman smashed his fist through the wall. “…Go then. You’re just as stuck-up as the rest of them.”

“Stuck-up?”

“I’m not GOOD enough for your story. My trophy room isn’t GOOD enough for your story. My car isn’t good enough, my house isn’t good enough, my damn choice of food isn’t good enough! Is anything good enough for you, Tori Butt?” He started pounding his head against the wall and put another dent in it. “You’re just like Kate.”

“My name’s not… Are you crying?”

“No!”

“Yes, you are.” Tori stood there awkwardly for a minute and then slowly reached up and patted his brawny shoulder. “There, there… Um… Is there anything I can do?”

Friedman sniveled and blew his nose on his sleeve. “Haven’t you already done enough damage?”

“Um, no…”

“Then prove that you’re not too good for me.”

“Uh, okay,” Tori said. “How do I do that?”

Friedman produced a thick, soggy cheeseburger from his back pocket. It was still wrapped in paper, but the grease had soaked through and made the sandwich clearly visible on the inside. He held the wrapper up to Tori’s face and kept it there.

“Eat it,” he said.

Tori pushed his hand down. “I’m not going to eat—”

He started bawling again.

“Fine!” She snatched the burger from his hand, unwrapped it, and took a small bite. She chewed quickly and then swallowed. “There! Happy? See, I don’t hate you.”

“All of it.”

“What?”

“If you want to make me happy, eat all of it.”

Tori stared down at the disgusting lump of meat and mushy bread in her hand. Slowly, she put it to her lips, held it there for a moment, and took another bite. A nauseating taste and odor filled her senses.

Friedman smiled on the inside. This girl was more gullible than anybody he had ever seen before. At this rate, he would be banging her on the master bed before the sun went down. She looked so ridiculous and stupid with that burger in her mouth, her cheeks puffed out like a squirrel holding onto its nuts, that he couldn’t help but point and laugh.

“You should be our mascot!” was his clever retort.

Tori looked at him and felt a sudden tremble in her stomach. The burger slipped from her hands and her face turned a shade of green not unlike the withered grass outside the house. She tried to get around Friedman, but it was too late, and she ended up vomiting all over them both. She covered him, she covered herself, and she covered the entire floor in the remains of the ground-up cheeseburger.

Gagging, she grabbed her knees and puked again.

Friedman was no longer laughing. His face was plastered in chunks of hamburger meat and cheese. He blinked once, reached up to wipe away the dripping food with the back of his hand, and then he shouted.

“That…was…AWESOME!” he roared.

Tori threw back her hair and glared up at him.

“I told you I don’t like meat!” she cried. She looked down at her designer clothes, which were now ruined, and her hands began to shake. “Ahhh…” She dropped her jacket. “So gross!”

“I’ve never seen a girl do THAT before! You are AWESOME!”

“I need to change my clooothes!”

“You can do it here.”

She scowled.

“Not HERE,” he said quickly. “We have a bathroom right across the hall. I’ll…get you something to wear.”

--------------------

Tori cringed at the sight of the bathroom. There was hair in the sink, cobwebs lining every corner, and the toilet bowl looked like it had never seen the underside of a scrubbing brush. She was afraid to even step barefoot on the floor. But she did, removing her black pumps one at a time, and setting them on the counter next to the sink. Then she slipped out of her mini-dress and her undergarments before stacking them in a neat little pile next to the boots.

“This stuff better come out,” she mumbled to herself. She fumbled with the clasp on her watch and then leaned against the door. “Are you still out there?”

“Yeah,” Friedman said.

“Cover your eyes.”

Tori leaned the watch against a can of aftershave and cracked open the door. She put a hand under the pile of clothes and quickly tossed them into the hallway before closing the door and locking it.

“Call me when they’re dry!”

“Okay.” Friedman bent down and picked up the mini-dress, followed by a white sports bra, and then a pair of panties with a cartoon bunny on either side. On the front, there was the face of the bunny with his big blue eyes, and on the back were his floppy ears. Friedman chuckled and removed his own clothes before heading towards the laundry room.

“Hey, man!” Clay said, stopping Friedman in the hallway. He saw Friedman was stripped down to his underwear, so he threw off his shirt and kicked off his pants too. “We’re gonna go moon the girls in the chess club! You want in?”

“Yeah, let me just throw these in the washer and—”

“Dude!” Clay ripped the bunny panties out of Friedman’s hands. “You don’t wear these. Chicks wear these!”

“I know. They belong to Tori Butt.”

“Who is Tori Butt?”

“That chick I came up with. You burped in her face.”

“Oh, right! The skinny one.” Clay crumpled up the panties and tossed them back. “Duuude, what happened?”

“I was getting her to eat meat for the first time and she totally puked everywhere!”

Clay burst out laughing. “I bet she did! Oh, man. Some girls just can’t control their gag reflex.” He leaned over the railing and shouted to the guys downstairs. “Friedman just scored a Hail Mary with the new chick! MVP of the Cherry Bowl right here!”

Cheers erupted from the main floor and Friedman and Clay bumped fists.

“Yeah, uh, that’s exactly what happened,” Friedman said, grinning. He dropped the clothes on the floor and posed for his fans. They didn’t seem to mind him strutting about the house half naked.

When he was finished, Clay put Friedman in a headlock and they began to horse around and act like general assholes.

Meanwhile, Tori had just gotten out of the shower and was drying herself off with a ragged towel when she looked at the clothes Friedman had left for her to wear on the toilet. There was an oversized jersey with Friedman’s name on the back—as well as the number ‘5’—and a pair of stained boxers that she immediately pushed into the trash can with a wad of toilet paper.

“Disgusting,” she breathed, running the towel through her hair and looking at herself in the mirror. She picked up the jersey and slipped it on over her head. The sleeves fell well past her elbows and the bottom of the shirt covered her knees. Sighing, she sat down on the toilet and waited for Friedman to come back with her dry clothes.

Instead, though, Friedman came crashing through the door with nothing but his underwear on and Clay on his back. They were laughing and having fun and Friedman managed to push Clay to the floor, where he got a view straight up Tori’s legs.

“Oh, my God!” Tori squealed, jumping onto the toilet seat. She leaped over Friedman, who made a desperate grab for her ankle, and ran out the busted door.

“Hey, come back, Tori Butt!” Friedman yelled, but Clay held him down, and soon Friedman forgot all about Tori and went back to wrestling his buddy.

Tori, meanwhile, stopped only long enough to grab her bundle of clothes off the floor and she hurried down the stairs three at a time.  The guys in the common room stopped drinking long enough to laugh at her and the ridiculous spectacle she put on went she came tumbling down the second half of the steps and made a mad dash for the door. The last thing they saw from her was her wet hair flapping in every direction and Friedman’s name in bold red letters on the back of the jersey she was wearing.

She heard their barks and hoots and hollers until she was well out of their sights.

The first thing Tori learned about journalism is news travels quickly. By the end of the weekend, every guy in Alpha Sigma Omicron knew about how Friedman had “scored” with a freshman. By the end of the day Monday, so did the rest of campus. On Tuesday, Tori was snubbed by every person she encountered. They called her names and threw food at her in the cafeteria. They said she had broken the sacred tradition between the team quarterback and the head cheerleader. On Wednesday, she lost her job with the school newspaper and stopped going to class. The angry stares she got and the threats against her were too much.

It was about three o’clock in the afternoon when she arrived at one of the houses across the street from campus. She probably would have arrived sooner, but she took the long way from her dorm, hoping to avoid contact with as many people as possible. She had kept her eyes glued to the cement for most of the walk, but now looked up at the large brick building that stood before her. In a way, it looked like a small castle, with rounded pillars, pointed towers, and a slanted black roof over the letters ‘KT’ and the great oak door. There were plenty of windows along the front of the house to let in the faint October sun, but none of them were transparent from this side. If not for the great landscaping and the remodeling that had clearly been done within the past five years, the house might have looked abandoned. As it was, though, the Kappa Tau sorority house was one of the nicest buildings on campus, and Tori was in awe staring up at it.

Remembering to breathe, Tori pushed open the iron gate and started up the steps. It was much cooler in this part of the country than she had imagined. The leaves were all shades of colors and crunched loudly beneath her feet, but she kept her eyes forward, on the door of the house, as if she expected it to suddenly swing open and something horrific to jump out and frighten her. Her muscles tightened.

The path to the house wasn’t long, but she stopped when she reached the porch. For a while, she simply stood there. In the back of her mind, she wanted to ask herself what she was doing here, but she already knew the answer. For the first time since she had decided to go into journalism, she had run out of questions. This was her only option.

“You can do this, Tori,” she told herself, and she quickly reached up and knocked on the door. The rapping of her knuckles against the wooden frame was much louder than she had expected, but she was not startled. Her mind was clear. She knew what was going to say. She had rehearsed it a million times on the walk over here.

“What are you doing here?”

Tori jumped. The door hadn’t opened. She spun around, throwing her back against the door, and found herself face-to-face with Kate Munroe. The senior cheerleader, whose face was gorgeous enough to belong to a model, was wearing a long-sleeved blue shirt that was damp with sweat and a pink headband that was holding back a curtain of blonde hair.

“H-hi, I’m Tori.”

“I know who you are.” Kate reached up and removed her ear buds before tucking them into the collar of her shirt. “You’re pretty popular for a freshman.”

“We need to talk,” Tori said, pleadingly.

Kate shrugged and opened the door. “Then talk.”

Tori followed her inside.

“I didn’t mean to sleep with your boyfriend,” she said, before the door was even shut. Kate gave her a strange look on her way to the kitchen. “I mean, I didn’t sleep with your boyfriend! Honest. I was writing an article for the school newspaper and I had to interview an athlete and they told me I should consider somebody on the cheerleading squad but there were already so many articles about you and how great your team is going to be this year, and I just thought if I could spark some interest in the football team, maybe your team would have something to cheer for and we wouldn’t have another losing season. So I asked Joss to do the interview and he made me carry his dirty gym bag and buy him dinner and then he forced me to eat a hamburger when I had already told him I was vegetarian and I got sick and threw up over my really nice outfit and then I went to take a shower and he was goofing around with his buddy and they knocked down the door and saw me half-naked and so did everybody else and I ran away as fast as I could before things got any worse, but now everybody thinks we did something and nothing happened at all, I swear!”

Tori started panting while Kate grabbed a bottle of water out of the fridge and opened it. “Oh.”

“Wait a minute… You’re being awfully calm about this.” Tori covered her face with her hands. “You don’t believe me, do you? I knew it. I’m going to have to drop out of school and move back to California with my parents and I’ll never be a world famous journalist…”

Kate put the bottle to her lips and took a short swig.

“…Joss is an ass,” she said, setting the bottle down on the granite countertop. “You think this is the first time he’s cheated with another woman?”

“Cheated? No, we didn’t do anything! We just… Wait… He cheated on you?”

“Look, uh…” Kate stared at her for a moment. “Tori, is it?”

“Yes…”

“Tori. I believe you. You’re the sweetest little thing.” Kate sighed and leaned against the counter, looking distantly out the window. “…Truth is: Joss has always been like this. We started dating a month BEFORE he broke up with his last girlfriend.”

“Oh, my gosh. That’s terrible! When did you find out?”

“I’ve always known.”

Tori tilted her head to the side, confused. “But why would you…?”

“Stay with him? You should know, Miss Reporter. The head cheerleader always dates the first-string quarterback. That’s school tradition. And it would be wrong to break tradition.”

“But he cheated on you.”

“Back when ESU had a winning football team, people would tuck socks into the back seat of their pants to mimic squirrel tails. Was it stupid? Yes. Was it uncomfortable to sit on? Yes. Did it help them win games? Probably not, but it became a school tradition, and we all did it.”

“So…it’s okay to walk around with a sock hanging out of your pants as long as everybody else does it?”

“Yes.”

Tori raised an eyebrow.

“Don’t believe me? You came here with a ridiculous explanation to an already ridiculous situation. Why should I have any more reason to lie to you than you to me?”

Tori thought about that for a moment, a bit perplexed, and then sighed.

“You’re just trying to get me to dress up like a squirrel, aren’t you?” she asked.

Kate laughed. “No. I think you’ve been through enough already, don’t you?” She hid her face behind the water bottle again—this time, taking a much longer, more thoughtful sip—and then casually lowered her hand to her hip. “You know, there are other traditions at this school. Like every Halloween, the guys in Alpha Sigma Omicron try to sneak into our sorority house and steal our panties.”

“And you just let them?”

Kate smiled instead of giving her an answer.

“Oh, come on! I have to know.”

“Let’s just say we Kappa Tau girls have some traditions of our own.” Kate screwed the lid back onto the water bottle and set it on the counter before grabbing another from the fridge and handing it to Tori. “Of course, we can’t share our secrets with outsiders, but we might be willing to make an exception if a new recruit came along and wanted to join.”

Tori continued staring at her as she wrapped her fingers around the bottle.

“Are you asking me to join your sorority?” she asked.

“You want to get back at Friedman, don’t you?”

The look in Tori’s eyes told her all she needed to know.

“I’d love to,” she said. Then she quickly added, “…Just as long as nobody gets hurt.”

Kate lifted her water bottle, bumped it against Tori’s as if she was making a toast, and her smile grew from ear to ear.

“You’re going to make a great Kappa Tau,” she said.

--------------------

“I still don’t see why I have to be blindfolded.”

It was a day later—Halloween night, to be exact—and Kate and a couple of her senior sorority sisters were guiding Tori down the basement steps. Kate was leading the way, while the girls each had a hand on Tori’s shoulders to keep her from falling over. Tori couldn’t see them through the thick wool fabric over her eyes, but one of the girls was dressed as Zatanna and the other as Batgirl.

“I mean, I already know where your house is,” Tori was saying. “I was even inside before. Remember? It was only yesterday.”

Kate reached the bottom of the stairs first and sighed. “Just go along with it, Tori. We’re trying to do a secret initiation ritual here.”

“Oh. Right… Another of those tradition things…” Tori felt the hands slide away from her shoulder and she looked around. Everything was still black. “Can I take off the mask now?”

“Sure.”

She did so, but it took a minute for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. There were no windows in the basement and the only source of light was from the few flickering candles that Kate began to light on a table on the opposite side of the room.

Tori caught sight of Kate’s face first—all decked out in makeup like Harley Quinn—and then noticed the two costumed girls who were standing on either side of her.

“Aw, nobody told me I could dress up,” Tori said with a frown. She looked down at her faded pink t-shirt, gray sweatpants with colored strips over a single thigh, and tennis shoes. They hadn’t even given her a chance to change out of her evening relaxation clothes before dragging her out of her dorm room. “Do I get a costume too?”

“Once you pass the initiation, you can put on a costume,” Kate said. There was a quiet eeriness to her voice as she motioned to the girls to walk Tori over to the table. As they did, Kate turned her back to them for a moment to grab something off a shelf and then placed a rather large walnut burl jewelry box on the center of the table. The top of the box had been carved into with a knife, with the letters ‘PANDORA’ clearly visible across the finished surface.

Kate left her fingers on the edge of the box for a moment and then slowly drew them away as she looked up at Tori.

“I don’t get it,” Tori said. “I thought we were going to catch the guys before they sneak into here and raid your panty drawers. Why are we hiding in the basement?”

“She sure asks a lot of questions,” the girl dressed as Batgirl mumbled. “Are you sure it’s a good idea to bring a reporter here?”

“She’s not a reporter anymore,” Zatanna said, paying no heed to Tori, who was rather offended that they were talking about her without even acknowledging her presence. “They fired her. Heartless fiends.”

“One screw-up and they’ll toss you to the wolves.”

“It’s not like that here.”

“Here, you’re one of us.”

“Here, you’re family.”

Tori was getting a little creeped out, so she took a step back, but a sudden hand stopped her. She followed the arm up to Kate’s face.

“You want to be one of us, don’t you?” she asked.

“I-I’m not sure…” Tori admitted. “What do I have to do? And what’s in the box?”

“I sensed a lot of fear in you yesterday. Fear of what I might do to you if I caught you with my boyfriend, fear of what Friedman and his friends might do to you if they saw you in the nude, fear of what the kids on campus would think of you if you were labeled a whore or a slut…” She pushed back a single strand of Tori’s hair that had fallen over her eye and smiled, only inches away from Tori’s face. “I sense fear in you right now. Are you afraid, Tori?”

“M-maybe…”

“Boo,” Batgirl whispered into her ear and Tori jumped. Zatanna burst out laughing and it took all of Kate’s power to keep Tori from running up the stairs and leaping out the first window in sight.

“If you’re going to be one of us…” Kate grunted. “…You’re going to have to face those fears.” She finally managed to calm Tori down with the help of her friends. Exhausted, she moved around to the other side of the table and slid the box closer to Tori. “Inside this box, you will face the thing you fear the most. Its contents change depending on the person who opens it, but only YOU can see what is inside and only YOU can face it. If you truly want to be a Kappa Tau…that is what you must do.”

Tori’s eyes fell to the jewelry box with the strange carvings. She swore she could hear voices inside. Their horrible screams echoed through her mind. Was it her imagination? Were those the sounds of her inner demons? Or could it be something far, far worse?

“But first,” Kate interrupted, causing the voices to scatter from Tori’s thoughts, “you must drink this potion. This will enable you—and only you—to see the manifestation of your greatest fear once you open the box.”

As she spoke, Batgirl picked up a pitcher and began pouring a dark purple liquid into a cup, which she handed to Zatanna, who in turn handed the cup to Tori.

Tori stared at the purplish tonic. A part of her still wanted to make a run for the door. She wasn’t afraid of these girls like she was when she was at the fraternity house with Friedman and his friends, but she wasn’t sure why. Friedman hadn’t blindfolded her and taken her to a dark basement and offered her strange potions with possible hallucinogenic side effects. He had only tricked her into eating a hamburger when she thought she had made it clear that she didn’t eat things that were once alive, but this was something different entirely.

Still, Kate was the first real friend she had made since she enrolled at Eastern Shores University. And Kate was everything she longed to be: beautiful, popular, smart, successful. Sure, something was different about Kate now than when they had their conversation the day before, but she probably didn’t always act like this. This was just tradition. And tradition was important.

Tori put the cup to her lips, tilted her head back, and drank the whole thing in one gulp. It left a sweet, tingling sensation on her lips. She handed the cup back to Zatanna, who joined Batgirl on the other side of the room.

“Pour me some too,” Zatanna whispered at Batgirl, who had already partaken in the extra grape soda that was left in the pitcher.

“The effects of the potion are instantaneous,” Kate told Tori, directing her to the box once more. “Now, if you are ready to face your fears….open the box.”

Tori pressed her palms against the sides of the box. Her fingers trembled but she kept them firm as she slid her thumbs along the underside of the lid and popped it open.  Slowly, she pulled the lid up and let out a horrific gasp.

“Best…panty raid…ever,” Friedman said, breathlessly. He looked around the room at his buddies who were passed out on the wooden floor around him and propped himself up on one elbow. The room was mostly dark, although there were some faint rays of light poking through the walls, and he figured it was still night. Good. He wanted to get out of here before the girls found them.

“Hey, Matt. Matt, wake up.”

He shook his buddy, who he only recognized by the massive lump of muscle next to him, and stood up. The old floorboards beneath his feet creaked as he went around the room, waking up Chaz Marcum, Nate Burgeson, Dusty Miller, and Jeremy Michaels. He left the last sleeping body lie as his football pals began to recover from their massive hangover.

“Where the hell are we…?” Dusty asked. He felt a sharp pain on the back of his head but figured that was just from where he had hit the floor when he lost consciousness.

“We must still be in the sorority house,” Friedman said, feeling around for a door handle. “You idiots couldn’t hold your liquor.”

“Hey, you passed out too.”

“Shut up and help me find the door.”

Dusty, Matt, and Chaz each picked a different wall and tried to find the door, but with no luck. Meanwhile, Nate went over to the last sleeping body and began kicking it.

“Why are you sleeping, nerd?” he asked. “You didn’t even have a beer.”

The blonde-haired kid at his feet curled into a fetal position in self-defense and then sat up groggily. He had the face of a twelve year old and a duckbill cap slid over one eye, which he began to adjust as he looked up at Nate.

“You don’t have to call me that,” he mumbled. “I have a name, you know.”

“Yeah, Pipsqueak.”

“It’s Pip. Just…Pip.”

“Whatever. You were just about as useless during the panty raid as you are at football.”

“Panty raid?” Pip jumped to his feet. “Oh, no. Did it already happen? Did we get caught? Are we going to jail!?”

“Somebody keep that kid quiet,” Dusty spat.

Nate put his hand over Pip’s mouth as the others continued to try to find the door, but there was nothing. No door, no windows, no way out.

“Come to think of it…I don’t remember if we went through with the panty raid or not,” Chaz said. “Do you guys remember?”

They stopped searching for a second and thought about it. They remembered getting really wasted at the Halloween party and sneaking over to the sorority house when the sun went down, but the rest was a blur. Had they all passed out before they had gotten their hands on a single pair of panties?

Pip tried to scream something, but Nate’s grasp was too strong, so he just started squirming around while the rest of the guys scratched their heads and tried to remember what the hell had went down.

“…It’s so fuckin’ dark,” Friedman remarked. “Did anyone find a light switch yet?”

Nobody said a word, but his question was soon answered as the roof over their heads began to peel open and light poured into the room. They had to look away for a second, but when their eyes had adjusted to the light, they found themselves staring up at a sky of slick brown hair and two brown eyes the size of the full moon.

Dusty dropped his jaw, Chaz dropped a deuce, and Nate dropped his hand from Pip’s mouth.

“Why does this always happen to me!?” Pip yelled, before breaking down and crying.

Nobody paid him any mind.

“Dude, it’s that chick from the other night!” Matt remarked, shoving Friedman jokingly, because it wasn’t damn obvious who they were all staring up at.

“Tori Butt…?” Friedman whispered. “How did…?”

--------------------

“Oh, my gosh!” Tori gasped, staring down at the tiny scurrying creatures in the jewelry box. Her eyes shot over to Kate and then Batgirl and Zatanna, as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing and needed a second opinion. But they were doing the best they could to hold a straight face.

“Do you see the source of your greatest fear?” Kate asked in a deadpan voice. She leaned forward, hand under her chin, and remained fixated on Tori’s eyes.

“There…there are people in here!” Tori cried out. Her voice must have startled the morons below because they all tumbled over. It didn’t help that her hands were shaking and were still on the lid of the box. “Why are there people in this box!?”

“I don’t see any people in there,” Zatanna said. She planted an index finger along the rim of the box and casually tipped it over, causing all of the men to trickle out. She slid the box over to Batgirl. “Do you?”

“Nope. No people.” Batgirl didn’t even look in the box as she swatted it off the table.

Meanwhile, Tori was scooting back in her chair as the seven guys in front of her were trying to get their bearings in this candle-lit basement.

“T-they’re not in the box anymore,” she breathed. “They’re right here! How can you not see them!?”

“Only you can see the manifestation of your greatest fears,” Kate explained. “The form they take differs from person to person, but they cannot hurt you. Perhaps you should describe what you see to us.”

“Okay, well…” Tori combed her hair over her shoulder, trying to stay calm, but she was as panicky as the guys who were screaming to get her attention. “There are a bunch of them…they’re wearing football jerseys…and, oh yeah, they’re ONE FREAKIN’ INCH TALL.”

Batgirl nearly fell over in her chair laughing and Zatanna had to kick her from the across the table.

“Tiny people…” Kate said. “Never heard that one before. You must have some serious problems, girl.”

“How can you not see them!?” Tori asked again, staring from one girl to the other and completely disregarding the men on the table.

“Are they here?” Batgirl asked, hovering a thumb over the men. She pressed it down on the empty space between Friedman and Chaz and began twisting her thumb back and forth slowly. The men screamed like cowards and ran towards Zatanna, who promptly slammed her fist down on the table, blocking their path.

“Or are they here?” Zatanna asked.

The men formed a mob and ran towards Tori, who quickly made a wall around them with her arms to keep Batgirl or Zatanna from trying to crush them again.

“Stop it!” she said. “You’re going to hurt them.”

“They’re not REAL,” Kate reminded her. “Your fears do not comfort you, so why should you comfort them?”

“But why would they look like PEOPLE?” Tori asked. Friedman and the others were too small to recognize by anything more than the numbers on their jerseys.

“Well, you said they are all dressed like football players. If I was a shrink, I’d say that your recent encounter with Friedman and his buddies left you emotionally scarred and afraid of strong, muscular men, which is why you now see them as something insignificant and harmless. Your mind wants you to take control of your fears.”

“But you’re not a shrink, are you, Kate?” Tori asked. There was still exasperation in her voice.

Kate shrugged. “If you can’t confront people when they are the size of insects, how do you expect to confront them at normal size? A Kappa Tau girl isn’t afraid of anything.”

“I can confront them… I just…” Tori looked down at the small group of men she had pinned in between her arms. “Hey, weren’t there seven of you before?”

Friedman and the others looked around. They did a quick head count, but Pip was nowhere to be found.

“I dunno,” Zatanna said. She looked at Batgirl, who was sitting on her hands and trying real hard not to attract attention. Even though she was wearing a mask, it was pretty clear her cheeks were puffed out more than usual.

“Mayfe you shoulf counf afain,” Batgirl answered.

When Zatanna saw what was going on, she angrily snatched one of the guys away from Tori and threw him down on her lap.

Tori didn’t notice, but Jeremy sure did, as he was picked up and tossed through the air so quickly that he almost lost a belly full of beer. He landed on Zatanna’s right thigh as she drew her other leg over top of him and sandwiched him in between, giving him a moment of heavenly bliss before the very life was squeezed out of him.

Satisfied, she stu1ck her tongue out at Batgirl. Batgirl tried to do the same, but Pip was still on her tongue. Instead of jumping off, though, he just remained sitting there, resting his head on his knees and sighing. Before he could finish his sigh, she realized her mistake and quickly slurped him back up and swallowed.

Kate glared at them both, while Friedman, Matt, Nate, Chaz, and Dusty moved closer to Tori and huddled together.

“Dude, why is your girlfriend here?” Matt asked Friedman, pointing at Kate. “We should get her attention! Kate! Hey, Kate!”

Friedman slapped down his arm. “Don’t be stupid, man! She can’t hear us from here. We have to get closer.”

“We’ll need a distraction. You should call an audible.”

“Right.” Friedman looked at Chaz. “Chaz… I’m putting you in the game.”

“W-what? Me?”

“You want to be a starter? Now is your chance. You distract Tori Butt while Matt and I get Kate’s attention.”

“Y-yes, sir!” Chaz said, saluting for some stupid reason. He put on an imaginary football helmet and stepped closer to Tori, causing her to jump back. The gap she made between her fingertips gave Friedman and Matt a chance to slip through.

“Uh… YOU’RE …VERY… PRETTY,” Chaz yelled up at Tori as if she was both deaf and stupid. It turned out he was just too small to make his voice heard because she only tilted her head and gawked at him. She still couldn’t believe how real these ‘fears’ looked. “DO… YOU… WANT… TO… GO… OUT… SOME… TIME?”

“Look at this dumbass,” Nate whispered to Dusty. “He’s going to die and he’s still thinking with his dick.” They laughed like morons because if you couldn’t laugh at Chaz, who could you laugh at?

Tori pushed her chair out from under her, grabbed the edge of the table with her hands, and bent down at the knees until she was eye-level with the shrunken moron.  She found herself looking right at a number ‘6’ jersey that would be too small to even fit a doll and he found himself inches away from a nose the size of a rocket ship.

“You’re so small,” Tori breathed into the table. The wind from her nose blew back Chaz’ greasy black hair. “How could I ever be afraid of you?”

“Me friend…” Chaz said, as if he was speaking to an alien, and he reached his hand up and touched her lips.

When she felt how real his touch was, she screamed and he screamed too as he got a good look inside the great cavern of her mouth. They continued screaming at each other until Chaz slipped and fell from the table. He fell a long way until he hit the floor and tried to make a break for the chair. Instead, Tori looked down and saw him and tried to shuffle her feet backwards, but she lost her balance and plopped down right on top of him. The last thing he saw was the seat of her sweatpants come crashing down on top of him and then his body was flattened, reminiscent of what had happened the last time he had filled in for Friedman for a snap in a football game.

This time, though, he didn’t get to walk away at the end of the play.

“Epic butt fumble!” Dusty said, high-fiving Nate.

That had happened during that play too.

“I think I just sat on one!” Tori said, looking up at Batgirl and Zatanna with horror. They tried to hold back their laughter as Tori peeled her butt off the floor and spun around three or four times to try to find Chaz, but he was busy being the butt-kisser everybody always knew he was.

Friedman and Matt were almost to Kate when she stood up and moved to the other side of the table to join Tori.

“You see?” she said. “You don’t have to be afraid of men anymore. You are a strong, independent girl. You just have to prove it to yourself.”

Tori stopped spinning and chewed on her lower lip.

“I don’t know…” she said.

“We know. We’re your sisters. You are a Kappa Tau girl.”

Batgirl and Zatanna cheered for Tori and Tori smiled, causing Dusty and Nate to frown. They had kinda hoped they wouldn’t be viciously murdered tonight.

Tori looked at the two morons standing near her on the table and picked up Dusty by the back of his jersey. She held him over her nose, right between her eyes, and squinted at him as if she wanted to get a better look.

“You’re not so scary,” she told him.

“Can’t say the same thing about you!” Dusty screamed, but she couldn’t hear him. Even if she could, his screams soon became more and more distant as she released him from her grip and he plummeted to the floor, breaking his right knee for the second time this season upon impact.

“Stupid bitch…” he muttered as he stood up on his one good leg, using the laces of Tori’s white tennis shoes for support. He went to give her the bird, but his finger only pointed up at the bottom of the rubber sole of Tori’s other shoe, as she brought it down on top of him and broke his left leg—and every other bone in his body—before stamping him a couple more times just to be sure.

Friedman and Matt had turned on their heels and arrived on the other side of the table just in time to see Nate wet his pants upon witnessing the scene in front of him.

“These girls are crazy!” Nate cried out.

“Dude, we gotta get out of here,” Matt said, looking at Friedman for another of his brilliant plans.

“I got it!” Friedman said, and he played dead on the table. Matt shrugged and did the same.

Nate could only stare at them in disbelief. “Fuck you, guys! It’s every man for himself!”

Tori turned back to the table and grabbed the one man who was still on his feet. She held him in her fist and began to squeeze.

“You have no power over me!” she told him, and he believed her. The ability of her small fingers to crack through his ribs was more than enough proof for that.

Just when his head was about to pop, she opened her fist and held him out in her open palm as she lowered her other hand and flicked his writhing body into the darkness. She didn’t even bother to look for him as she sat back down and eyed the two remaining men facedown on the table.

“Wake up,” she said, poking the chubbier one on the left.

Matt was able to resist the first or second poke, but the third one tickled and the fourth one just plain hurt. He rolled over, grabbing his butt, and looked at the cheery face of Tori. She waggled her fingers and smiled at him in the friendliest sort of the way, and then brought her hand down and smashed him to a bloody pulp.

Tori peeled her hand away and looked down at her palm. For a moment, her smile seemed to fade. The blood on her skin seemed awfully real. But she didn’t have time to think about it as Batgirl and Zatanna began cheering and holding up her arm as if in celebration. What the heck were they celebrating?

Friedman opened one eye and saw the three girls towering over him. They seemed distracted. Seeing this as his chance to escape—and not caring one lick about what had happened to the rest of his friends—he got up and tried to slip away.

He didn’t get far, though, as Kate quickly scooped him up and hurried up the basement stairs.

Batgirl and Zatanna sat down and began to chat with Tori and she soon forgot all about the last fear on the table, whose jersey number she had recognized. She had wanted to save that fear for the last, but it seemed the potion she had drunk had already worn off, and she was a little disappointed she didn’t get to exact her imaginary revenge on Friedman.

Meanwhile, Kate had slipped past the rest of the sorority girls who were upstairs and entered the kitchen, where a fresh batch of pumpkin pies were lining the stove. She selected one of the ones in the middle—still piping hot from having only recently been removed from the oven—and set it down on the counter as she unwrapped her fingers one at a time to reveal Friedman.

“Hello, Joss,” she said. Her voice was calm and without emotion, as if she was talking to herself and not addressing her now ex-boyfriend. She held him up to her eyes so he could see all the tears that were not there.

“K-Kate, baby…” he whispered. He didn’t realize she couldn’t hear him even if he yelled, but it was okay. She didn’t care what he had to say.

“That was a rotten thing you did to Tori, but I don’t blame you. You’re a rotten person. How many other girls have you slept with since we started dating?”

Friedman didn’t have enough fingers on his hands to show her.

“It doesn’t matter. I knew you were a cheater since before we started dating and I’ve probably slept with twice as many guys since then.” She shrugged and put a fingernail on the pie tin, spinning it around loosely. “I guess we’re just two rotten people living in a rotten world. It’s a shame there aren’t more Toris around, you know. She’s a good girl. Vegetarian, even. But I bet you wouldn’t know what that is.”

“Uh…” Friedman looked just about as stupid as he usually sounded.

“Now look what you have done. You took a sweet innocent girl and made her rotten, just like us.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, baby! Just make me big again and we can figure this out. Ain’t no way I can bang you like this.”

Kate pinched her fingers around Friedman’s head and slowly lowered him into the edge of the pumpkin pie until he was waist-deep and unable to wriggle his way out. Then she grabbed the biggest, sharpest knife she could from the drawer and held it steady over his head. The metal glistened from the kitchen light.

“Tonight, Tori loses that innocence,” Kate told him, as she tilted the knife sideways and cut into the pie with a single horizontal stroke. The knife was behind him, but Friedman felt the crust compress down and then rebound up, like a slow bulging wave, as she lifted the knife and spun it the other way. Down it came again—this time inches away from his face—until she had cut the pie into four equal pieces.

Grabbing the same number of plates from the table, she slipped the pie tin under her arm and carried it back downstairs while Friedman felt the warm goop seeping into his clothes.

“Let us celebrate Tori’s successful initiation into Kappa Tau with a delicious home-cooked meal baked by yours truly,” Kate said, setting the pie in the center of the table and passing out the plates. She grabbed the forks and cooking spatula that were already waiting for her near the pitcher of grape soda and dealt out the pie slices—making sure that Friedman was on the piece she handed to Tori.

As Tori reached for her plate, Kate wrapped her fingers tightly around her hand and leaned closer, her face only a breath away from Friedman’s tiny, squirming body.

“I really hope you like it here with us, Tori,” she said, and her voice was no longer deadpan, but utterly sincere. “You seem like a very sweet girl.”

“…Um, thank you,” Tori said, a little weirded out, but she accepted the pie anyway. She turned the plate around, picked up her fork, and began to dig in, not even seeing the man on the edge of the slice of pie. “Mmm…this is really good, Kate! You’re a fantastic cook.”

“And Kappa Tau girls get all the cooking they want!” Batgirl remarked, shoving her face full of pie. She didn’t even use a fork and Pip didn’t even care as mound after mound of pumpkin pie buried him in a slow grave in her stomach.

As Kate walked back to her seat, she didn't notice Nate desperately failing to outrun her feet. If she felt anything as she stepped on him, she gave no sign. Instead, she sat down and picked at her food, watching Tori the whole time.

“We’ll get you a costume when we’re finished eating,” Zatanna told Tori. “This way, you can come to the Halloween party we’re having upstairs.”

“Halloween party?” Tori asked. “I thought we were going to catch the guys before they can steal any of your panties.”

“I don’t think the boys will be making it this year,” Kate said, and Batgirl laughed so hard that food flew from her mouth.

“But you said it’s tradition…”

“Tradition mean more to girls than it does to guys.” Kate smiled and leaned back in her chair. “Go ahead. Finish your pie.”

Tori looked down at what little of the slice remained. There, in her pie, she spotted the fear—the fear she thought had disappeared. He appeared stuck and looked up at her as if asking for help. With little more than a careless shrug of her shoulders, she picked up her fork, slid the metal prongs into the crust behind him, and picked up the entire slab. Opening wide, she pushed Friedman and the pie into her mouth and slipped out an empty fork.

“Still good?” Kate asked.

“Delicious.”