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“I know his work,” Dru-Ann says. “He was interested in making a film about an Egyptian ultramarathoner I represented.”
“Isaac is a genius,” Caroline says. “He’s the most intelligent, sensitive person I’ve ever met.”
“Uh-oh,” Dru-Ann says. “Sounds like somebody has a crush.”
The wordcrushirks Caroline; she’s not twelve years old. “I…” Is she really going to spill this? It’s been agonizing keeping it to herself, and Dru-Ann is her godmother. Isn’t this what godmothers are for?
“You… what?” Dru-Ann says, her eyebrows lifting. “You’re getting with Isaac Opoku?”
Caroline deflates a little. She has to use the past tense. “I was,” she says. “We were together for a couple of weeks while his girlfriend was on a modeling job in Sweden.”
“Bygirlfriend,I assume you mean Sofia Desmione?” Dru-Ann says. “I do readPeoplemagazine, you know.”
“Yes, Sofia. When she got back to New York, the affair ended, and I came here.”
“So we’re talking fresh heartbreak,” Dru-Ann says. “You should have told me sooner, sugar.”
“It seemed like you had a lot on your plate.”
“Who, me?” Dru-Ann says and they both laugh.
“Isaac lent me his equipment, including his drone. At first I thought,Whatever, I’ll just get the requisite shots of you guys and the food and the camaraderie—”
“Has there been camaraderie?” Dru-Ann asks, deadpan. She smiles. “I’m kidding.”
“There’s some tension too, I can feel it,” Caroline says. “This weekend is revealing things about my mom that I never knew. So I just want to ask you some questions about your friendship.”
Caroline’s phone starts buzzing but she ignores it. “That I can handle,” Dru-Ann says. She’s feelingcalmandpresent. She’s in a soundproof home theater on Squam Road on the island of Nantucket where the internet can’t find her. She isn’t going to talk about golf or mental health or cancel culture. She’s going to talk about Hollis.
Caroline says, “How did you and my mom become friends?”
There’s a song that Dru-Ann’s male colleagues listened to back in the mid-aughts called “I Love College” by Asher Roth. The song has a distinct white-frat-boy vibe—it’s about drinking, idolizing the basketball stars of the day, and getting girls naked. But Dru-Ann secretly found the song catchy and she certainly agreed with its thesis statement:I wanna go to college for the rest of my life.
Dru-Ann is fresh out of Mother McAuley, an all-girls Catholic school in Chicago. The instant she sets foot on the UNC Chapel Hill campus, she feels like she’s home. She was a basketball star in high school and is a sports geek in general thanks to her dad and three older brothers. She’s knowledgeable on topics from the 1984–1985 Bears season to the depth of the Bulls bench. She’s a Michael Jordan fan, and she doesn’t care if that’s a cliché; she is such a fan that it’s been her dream to attend UNC so that she might walk on the same ground that MJ did.
Her freshman roommate is a white girl named Hollis Shaw from Nantucket, Massachusetts. All Dru-Ann knows of Nantucket isMoby-Dickand the lewd limerick. She has a vague idea that it’s a summer playground for rich people, maybe not so different from Petoskey, Michigan, where Dru-Ann’s parents have a second home on the lake. Hollis is a WASPy name, but instead of being put off by the idea of having some East Coast elite for a roommate, Dru-Ann is intrigued. Dru-Ann is something of a snob; her father is a bigwig at the Merc and her mother is the in-house counsel for Grant Thornton, and they live in an Oak Park home filled with Stickley furniture. Dru-Ann has known about Stickley furniture since she was eight years old.
Dru-Ann’s first impression of Hollis is favorable and she can tell Hollis’s impression of her is as well; there’s a chemistry and an easy agreement about the particulars of the room. Both of Dru-Ann’s parents help her move in, but only Hollis’s father has come and he’s not at all what Dru-Ann expects. In fact, when Dru-Ann first sees Tom Shaw in jeans and a T-shirt advertising a place called Steamboat Pizza, she thinks he’s been sent by maintenance to fix something in the room. He has a thick Boston accent; he shakes hands with both of Dru-Ann’s parents, but he seemsveryuncomfortable and he asks Hollis three separate times, “All set, then?” He has to hit the road, he says. He’s driving through the night to catch the first ferry back the next day.
Hollis says she’ll walk him back to the van to say goodbye, which makes Dru-Ann think there might be some crying. Dru-Ann’s parting from her parents is unsentimental. The elder Joneses have gone through this three times before with her brothers at Bowling Green, Michigan, and Colgate, respectively. Dru-Ann loves her parents but she’s been ready for college since seventh grade.
When Hollis returns to the room looking a little weepy, Dru-Ann asks her about her mother. “Are your parents divorced, or—”
“No!” Hollis says. She opens the packaging of a set of extra-long twin sheets that Dru-Ann can see came from a place called Ocean State Job Lot. “She’s back at the hotel. My dad is going to pick her up.”
“But she didn’t want to come?” Dru-Ann says, and Hollis shakes her head.
To Caroline, Dru-Ann says, “Your mother and I became real friends at the final bid party for Beta Beta Beta.” (This isn’t the sorority’s real name, but Dru-Ann isn’t about to say the real name on camera; with the luck she’s having, they’ll probably file a lawsuit.)
It’s safe to say that neither Dru-Ann from Chicago nor Hollis from Nantucket fully understands what rushing a sorority at a Southern university entails. But the siren call is too alluring to ignore. Junior and senior girls come through the dorms with flyers for rush events, all of which sound like fun. There are teas, luncheons, crab boils, picnics with real Carolina barbecue. Dru-Ann and Hollis decide they’ll attend as many events as they can to figure out where they belong. They agree from the start that they might decide to pledge different houses. Dru-Ann, for example, is considering going Alpha Kappa Alpha, a historically Black sorority.
The intensity of the experience unnerves them both. Other girls in Old East wake up at three a.m. to set their hair in hot rollers and put on a “full face.” Everyone—except Dru-Ann and Hollis—wears panty hose and heels. Dru-Ann wears designer pieces that she bought at Vintage Underground in Wicker Park, while Hollis wears one of her two skirts—a pinkish-red miniskirt or a khaki A-line skirt that she pairs with boat shoes—and either a white or navy alligator shirt. Neither girl wears makeup and they both pull their hair back into ponytails (it’s a thousand degrees in Chapel Hill in September).
By chance, they both decide the only sorority they would consider is Beta Beta Beta. Beta strikes a balance between girls from the North and those from the South; it feels like the most laid-back sorority (they host a pajama-party event), and they have a robust philanthropic program that focuses on childhood hunger. Beta is popular with a lot of other girls as well. The sorority house is the most tasteful and has the best food, and a group of senior sisters throw Sunday-afternoon pool parties at their rental on Rosemary Street.
Dru-Ann is confident she’ll get a bid—she receives a lot of attention from the upperclasswomen (the wordfawningcomes to mind)—but she has doubts about Hollis. The final bid party is a formal affair. Dru-Ann wears a 1960s pink Chanel suit, and Hollis wears her khaki skirt with a pink oxford button-down and a pair of black pumps that belong on a middle-aged civil servant. Dru-Ann offers to let Hollis wear anything in her closet—Take the Pucci!—but Hollis says she’s fine as she is.
At the party, the sorority president, Stacia Starmack, pulls Dru-Ann aside and says, “We’re definitely offering you a bid. The other girls aren’t sure Hollis is polished enough to be a Beta, but I’m willing to go to bat for her on your behalf.” She squeezes Dru-Ann’s arm. “Weneedgirls like you.”
