Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Acknowledgements

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

Promising Beginnings

Roni and Beverly talked for a while longer, until they saw Hallie posting the election results in the foyer, and then they walked over to check out the list of new officers.

They both looked, and squealed at the same time, hugging each other.

“Omigod! You’re the new ZZT President!” Roni cried as Beverly shrieked with excitement. “That’s incredible!”

“I can’t believe it!” Beverly beamed as other ZZTs crowded around her offering hugs and congratulations.

“You’re going to do an amazing job,” Roni said, squeezing her hand.

“And so are you, Miss Newly Elected Formal Planner Assistant,” Beverly said.

“Thanks.” Roni blushed, feeling a thrill race through her at being elected to the position. “I can’t wait to get started.”

She checked the list again, and just as she was finishing, the ZZT doorbell rang. Through the decorative glass oval in the door, she could see Lance standing outside, smiling at her.

“Hello, hotness,” Beverly said in a low voice, scooting to Roni’s side. “Um, you failed to mention how completely gorge your date is.”

“Glad you approve,” Roni said, grabbing her purse and taking a deep breath.

“Have fun,” Beverly said as Roni headed for the door. “You know tonight’s a full moon, so watch out. It can make you do crazy things.”

Roni laughed as she opened the door. Crazy had never been her MO, but tonight with Lance and the moonlight and the lakefront dining, who knew what might happen?

SPEAK
Published by the Penguin Group
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Published by Speak, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2008

Copyright © Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2008

eISBN : 978-1-101-00262-9

eISBN : 978-1-101-00262-9

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The publishers would like to extend their thanks to Marley Gibson for her contributions to the Sorority 101 series.

CHAPTER 1

Roni Van Gelderen stopped the overflowing luggage cart just short of room 714 and hesitantly knocked on the door.

It swung open and her best friend, Jenna Driscoll, stood there, by turns laughing and rolling her eyes. “Okay, Miss Manners,” Jenna said, tossing her long blonde hair and putting a hand on her hip in the same fashion Roni’d seen her use with her three younger sisters. “This is our room now, remember? You don’t have to knock.”

“I know, I know,” Roni said with a giggle. “I’m still trying to break the habit.” It always made her laugh to see five-foot-two Jenna, with her nymphlike frame, shifting into her Little Napoleon mode. The truth was, sweet-natured Jenna wasn’t capable of intimidating a flea.

Roni and Jenna shimmied the cart through the door and lugged the boxes onto the floor. “Our room,” Roni said, smiling happily. “I love the way that sounds.”

“Me, too. I couldn’t have asked for a better roommate.”

“Thanks,” Roni said. “But after your hellish experience with Amber last semester, you’re not a very tough critic. You’d think anyone was better than her.” Poor Jenna had had to live with Amber Ferris for the entire fall semester, and Amber’s biatchitude had almost been too much for her to take. Luckily, Jenna’d finally gone to Tricia, their resident adviser, about the problem, and that’s when the idea had hit Roni that she could be Jenna’s new roommie for the spring semester. It had all worked out perfectly, especially since Roni was footing the bill for her room and board now. This way, she could save herself a little money and get a wonderful roommate in the process.

“Poor Amber,” Jenna said with a sigh. “I know she was awful, but when I heard from Tricia that she’d dropped out of Latimer, I just felt sorry for her. She had such a hard time making friends here.”

“I wonder why,” Roni mumbled. “Could it have been her alter ego, ‘The Grudge,’ that did it?”

Jenna gave her a scolding glance. “I just hope she’ll be happier now that she’s living at home with her family again and going to community college.” Then she smiled. “And I know we’re going to have a fab time together this semester. But there might be one problem. . . .”

“What’s that?” Roni asked, twisting her long black hair worriedly.

“Where we’re going to put everything.” Jenna laughed.

Roni blanked for a second, then glanced around at the mountains of clothes, shoes, and boxes taking up nearly every inch of free space in the small dorm room. “Omigod.” She gasped. “I never realized how much stuff I had.”

“Come on, Boston,” a husky voice rang out from the doorway. “Your wardrobe is big enough to clothe an entire third-world country.”

“Lora-Leigh!” Roni and Jenna both yelled, and turned around to see Lora-Leigh Sorenstein, her wild curls and menagerie of earrings (an array of vintage-style amber dangles today) flying hysterically in every direction as she bounded into the room. Roni smiled. Last semester, she, Jenna, and Lora-Leigh had all joined the Zeta Zeta Tau sorority and had grown into best friends as they went through recruitment, new member education, and initiation together. But Roni hadn’t realized until this moment how very much she’d missed both Jenna and Lora-Leigh over the last six weeks, and how glad she was to be back at Latimer with them.

“I missed you so much!” Jenna squealed, grabbing Lora-Leigh in a fierce hug.

“I figured as much from the e-mails I got from you at least three times a day,” Lora-Leigh said, smiling.

“I’d be willing to part with some of my wardrobe for a pair of those,” Roni said, taking her turn at hugging Lora-Leigh, then pointing to her camel-colored cords. They went perfectly with her rust-orange, peasant-sleeved top, no doubt handmade by Lora-Leigh herself, their resident fashionista. “Looks like you stayed busy with your sewing machine over winter break.”

“It’s true,” Lora-Leigh said. “I was one with my bobbin. It was the only way I could stay sane during the whole month and a half at home. If my dad wasn’t the dean of students here, I would’ve tried to tell them that school started two weeks ago just to move back to Tuthill Hall early.”

“It couldn’t have been that bad,” Jenna said. “You and your mom didn’t get into a fight again, did you?”

Lora-Leigh and her mom had had a face-off last semester when Lora-Leigh’d decided to pledge Zeta Zeta Tau instead of Tri-Omega (her mom’s sorority); but they’d finally made peace with each other, and as far as Roni knew, there hadn’t been any family drama since then.

“Nah, Mom and I are good,” Lora-Leigh said, grabbing a soda out of the minifridge and flopping down on Jenna’s bed. “She helped me put together the first part of my ZZT scrapbook, and I helped her make knishes. I tried not to nag her about her June Cleaver clothes, and she tried not to nag me about my latest piercing. For us, that’s some serious bonding.”

“You got another piercing?” Roni asked, slightly horrified, still counting the same six holes in each of Lora-Leigh’s ears that had been there in December.

“Check it out.” Lora-Leigh grinned, then lifted the bottom of her sweater to reveal a silver navel ring with her ZZT initiation pearl dangling from the end.

“That is so cool,” Jenna said admiringly. “I’m jealous. You get to wear glam jewelry in your belly button, and I have to wear my stupid pump.”

“Your pump’s not stupid,” Roni said, squeezing Jenna’s hand. Roni knew Jenna hated the insulin pump she wore to regulate the medication for her diabetes, and she and Lora-Leigh tried their best to support her by downplaying it.

Jenna just shrugged and changed the subject. “So, what else did you do over the break, Lora-Leigh?”

“Not much. When you’ve lived in the same town your whole life and you go to college there, too, it’s the ‘been there, done that’ prob. I hung out with my best friend from high school, Elizabeth, and we went out a few times. We mostly laid low and watched really awful dramality shows.” She absently skimmed through the issue of Lucky she’d brought in with her. “So, what about your breaks? I want all the sordid details—parties, guys, mug sessions, et cetera.”

“Mug sessions?” Roni asked blankly. “Why would you want somebody to get mugged?”

“Not the ‘steal your purse’ sort of mugging, Boston,” Lora-Leigh said. “Mugging, as in making out with a choice guy.”

“That must be a southern term,” Roni said with a laugh. “I’m sad to report that there was no mugging on my end.”

“Holding out for a certain guy on the LU swim team?” Lora-Leigh smiled knowingly.

“We’ll see,” Roni said, thinking of Lance McManus, the dark-haired hottie she’d met last September and had a casual on-again, off-again flirtation with. “We talked a couple of times over break, and he mentioned hanging out together once classes started again, but nothing official.”

“And what about being home with the Royal Van Gelderens?” Lora-Leigh asked. “Any cathartic, memoir-worthy breakthroughs with the ’rents?”

Roni laughed. “They’re still emotionally thwarted, but they did stop calling LU ‘that hick school,’ which I guess is progress.” After her big blowup with her dad over her Amex bill last fall, she’d decided to write off her parents once and for all. But when Roni hadn’t come home for Thanksgiving, her mom had written her a letter cordially inviting her home for Christmas and promising to try to be more supportive of her choices. Since Roni was a bridesmaid in her friend Kiersten’s wedding anyway, she decided to go back to Boston to try to make the best of things. Her parents would never change, but at least they’d made an attempt to reach out to her. It was a start.

“And I see by your new Burberry coat that they didn’t disown you yet, either,” Lora-Leigh said, holding up the sleek black raincoat that had been lying on top of one of Roni’s clothing piles. “They have impeccable taste, I’ll give them that.”

“That was my Christmas present,” Roni said. “But that’ll be the last addition to my designer labels for who knows how long. My dad agreed to keep paying for my tuition and books. But I’m on my own for room and board, ZZT dues, and spending money. Which is why I didn’t have to spend much time over break tête-à-tête-ing at Beacon Hill holiday soirees. I was so busy helping Kiersten with her wedding plans and working at How Sweet It Is, I escaped the snob-nobbing functions.” She rummaged through one of her boxes and pulled out two cheerfully wrapped bags of truffles and handed the sugar-free one to Jenna and the other to Lora-Leigh.