Check, Please (Book #2)

Three.

From experience, I knew that waiting for Gemma to call was often a lesson in futility but that didn't stop me from checking my phone every few minutes as I made my way to the fraternity's chapter room that evening. Although our meetings were typically held on Saturday nights, rush week started on Thursday and our recruitment chair had somehow managed to convince Parker that we needed a strong pledge class to maintain our frat's ranking. The tiers that all of the fraternities were grouped into were arbitrary, of course, and primarily based on word of mouth rather than anything meaningful. As far I could tell, other than the fact that our president was dating a celebrity, there wasn't anything particularly special about the guys in Kappa Omicron to separate us from the rest of the fraternities on the Row.

Still, we were usually pretty well liked, which was good because perception played a large role in determining which sororities would plan mixers with us and who we'd take to homecoming later in the fall. In the grand scheme of things, we all knew that none of it mattered but we still enjoyed the flicker of approval that we received from girls when they saw us wearing our letters around campus. Right now, we hovered somewhere between the first and second tiers -- a drop in status caused by the university imposing social sanctions on us the year before.

It was simple. No parties meant no girls, and no girls meant less pledges. While bad rush years had tanked other frats on Greek Row, our reputation carried us through... Our reputation, and presumably the fact that three lower-ranked houses had been put on probation in the last eighteen months. Personally, I didn't really see the point in worrying about the minor downwards shift but Parker wasn't happy about it and neither was the rest of the house.

By the time I filed into chapter, Parker and three of the house's vice presidents were already seated at a table watching the rest of us walk in. Arranged in a crescent shape, the chairs in the windowless chapter room were angled so that everyone was facing the president and he could see all of us at once. Now, sixty-five active members -- minus the ones sitting at the exec panel -- stood in front of a wooden seat, waiting for Parker's instruction.

Per the rules of the fraternity's ritual, Parker waited until the door to the chapter room had been closed before picking up the gavel in front of him. "Kugas," he said, addressing the brother who'd both shut the door and challenged us for the chapter's secret motto, "have all at this meeting been properly confirmed?"

"They have, Worthy Consul," Yakob, this year's Kugas and a talkative sophomore, replied. The kid always spoke too quickly for me to understand him and I was almost certain that he was on some type of speed. Of all our pledges from last year, however, Parker seemed to like him the most and never minded asking Yakob to repeat himself.

"To protect the sacredness of our meeting, let us confirm ourselves in each other's presence." Parker first turned to the V.P. on his right and extended his hand, which Carlos took. "Are you a Kappa Omicron?"

"I am," Carlos answered.

"Begin."

"Areo."

"Pagus."

Parker passed the secret handshake and said the challenge motto, which Carlos answered with ease. Turning to his left, Parker repeated this process with Kevin, a senior who had pledged the semester after us, and then the Confirmation was passed from right to left around the chapter. When the handshake finally came to me, I mumbled something that I hoped sounded enough like what I was supposed to say. To my left, Andy, a shaggy-haired redhead and another senior, cleared his throat to hide a laugh.

That was the thing. I knew the stereotype of fraternities was that we were lawless champions for booze and partying, but the truth was that most our time together was spent reciting heavily scripted mumbo jumbo and pretending like we understood ancient Greek. Hell, if our original founders had picked a phrase that meant, "My balls didn't drop," there was no way that I'd never know.