Chapter XVI – Greek Week
Greek Week turns ritual into release: sunlight, noise, and the quiet freedom of being seen.
Spring Semester
January arrived thin and colorless. The quad felt smaller when it was cold, sound swallowed by the air like it had distance to cross. Frost webbed the grass around the bell, and the paths were a patchwork of salt and damp brick that turned shoes white at the edges. McClintock’s radiators hissed like they were always mid-complaint. Windows glowed with desk lamps instead of porch lights.
First day back wasn’t a real day so much as a sequence of thuds and doors. Mark came back talking before his bag hit the floor, a stream of half stories from home that trailed into the kind of silence that means both of you know it wasn’t as fun as you’re pretending. That night at the house, Connor swore he’d quit drinking until spring. Teddy rolled his eyes and asked if spring counted as March or as the first day you could stand outside without a jacket. Marco declared a sabbatical from “all structured stupidity” and then immediately volunteered to help string extension cords for a house party that never materialized. Everyone was a resolution until the first syllabus landed with a slap.
Classes resumed like someone had paused them mid-breath and unpaused without apology. Dr. Carroll handed back lab schedules and announced, not unkindly, that “the world doesn’t slow down for rites of passage.” Westmore looked over what it had put the boys through and decided the proper response was homework.
Ethan slipped into routine easily, not because the work was small, but because it was mercifully simple. Read the chapter. Show up. Do the lab, wipe the bench until the Lysol smell outlived the class. He realized the grind didn’t feel like punishment anymore. “Taxing,” the brothers called it back in the fall; now it just felt like living.
Fraternity Row had a winter look: no porch smoke, no porch at all most nights. The Annex sat dark at the end of its rutted track, not dead exactly, just hibernating. January weekends were a TV glow and a half-emptied pizza box and someone insisting you really had to hear this Guster track because it was perfect for the mood. Mostly it was quiet. The quiet didn’t scare Ethan; it gave his head room to stop replaying the fall.
Eli moved like weather—there, gone, unchanged. Tyler was easier to find without trying: running in the mornings, breath white in the air, or in the pool, the steady rhythm of laps replacing words neither of them needed. They said hello like that was all they owed the moment. It was enough and not enough.
By February, even the loud ones learned how to whisper. The ice-rimmed nights forced people to sit closer on the couch, knees touching because there was nowhere else to put them. Someone said Greek Week like a dare and was ignored for two weeks, until flyers appeared with dates that made April sound like a rumor.
One morning the azaleas bloomed all at once, a chorus of pink around the brick. The magnolia leaves turned their waxy faces toward the sun. The bell sounded like it had been polished. Windows opened and stayed open.
By the first week in April, the campus had turned into a carnival of good intentions. The official schedule—posted on bulletin boards, stapled crookedly to trees—listed Philanthropy 5K, Pledge Olympics (yes, this week they were still pledges), Canned Food Drive, and a dozen other events that all somehow ended with someone grilling hot dogs. Every afternoon the quad filled with tents, banners, and the same handful of songs blaring from different speakers.
The whole thing felt like Hell Week’s mirror image—daylight where there had been darkness, cheering where there had been shouting. Same faces, same rules, different lighting. The pledges wore sunglasses instead of blindfolds now; the potential rushees—new ones already whispering about what was coming in the fall—moved through the crowds like they were auditioning for a part.
Jason ran logistics for the whole row, good-natured but half-removed, the weight of graduation visible in his face. “Enjoy it while you can,” he told Ethan. “You’ll blink and it’ll be your turn to wear the gown.”
By midweek the festival had a rhythm. Mornings started with breakfast of champions; afternoons loud then bleeding into late nights. The professors were good natured about it - no drinking in class and don’t don’t show up drunk - the only rules that seemed to be enforced that week.
Field Day turned the quad into a scene from an old brochure—guys in polos throwing Frisbees, girls cheering from picnic blankets, the air hazy with pollen and cheap beer. The Pie a Brother booth raised four hundred dollars in less than an hour, though most of it went to buy more whipped cream. Connor took the first hit to the face, shouting, “All for charity!” through foam.
That night Ethan helped Tyler set up the stage lights for Friday’s concert. They worked in easy silence, running cables and checking plugs, the hum of the generator filling the spaces where words used to fit.
“Remember when this place felt impossible?” Ethan asked.
Tyler didn’t look up. “Yeah. And now it’s just another Friday night.”
They both smiled, knowing it wasn’t true, but it was close enough.
Thursday brought the Greek Olympics: relay races, water-balloon fights, tug-of-war on the football field. Eli captained Delta Chi’s team—shirt damp, hair falling into his eyes, every motion easy and practiced. Catherine stood on the sidelines in sunglasses, clapping too loudly. When Delta Chi lost the final round to Sigma Epsilon, Eli laughed it off, throwing his arm around Clay and calling for another round. The mask fit so perfectly now that even the cracks looked intentional.
Ethan watched from the bleachers with Jason and Teddy, detached from the performance he’d once envied.
“You ever think about what comes after this?” he asked.
Jason grinned. “That’s the curse, Harris. We all think about it. Most never get there.”
Teddy tipped his face to the sun. “Then maybe you’re already ahead.”
By nightfall the lawns were wrecked—deflated inflatables, spilled beer mixing with wisteria, three stereos fighting for dominance. The rest of the campus decided to give up and join in.
At Delta Chi, the house glowed like an overexposed photograph—fairy lights in the hedges, porch crowded, bottles sweating on the railing. Ethan lingered at the edge, watching it all: the laughter, the flirting, the recycled small talk. He spotted Eli at the center, cigarette in hand, one arm around Catherine. The noise bent toward him automatically, like gravity. For the first time, Ethan didn’t feel pulled in. He just felt sorry for how heavy it must be to hold everyone’s attention all the time.
That night, the noise in the house finally died after two. Ethan couldn’t sleep. He sat on the front steps with a cigarette, watching the fog settle over the quad. Tyler appeared from the shadows, hoodie up, a cup of black coffee in hand.
“You ever think about how fast it goes?” Tyler asked, sitting beside him.
“What—college?”
“Everything. One week it’s Hell, next week it’s this.”
Ethan smiled faintly. “Guess that’s the trick. Survive long enough, and it turns into nostalgia.”
Tyler laughed softly. “Maybe. Or maybe it’s just spring making us think we learned something.”
They sat quietly, the kind of silence that didn’t need to prove anything. When Tyler left, he clapped a hand to Ethan’s shoulder — brief, grounding.
The cigarette burned to the filter before Ethan realized he hadn’t made a single wish on it.
Friday afternoon arrived clear and gold. Waverly, Kensington, St. Margaret’s—every women’s college within fifty miles—had sent their contingents, carpooling in sundresses and cowboy boots, crowding the quad like migrating birds. Vendors set up fryers and soda stands. Brothers hauled kegs and stacked coolers, pretending it was work.
By five o’clock, the sky was the color of old brass. A low hum rolled through campus—the sound of anticipation, of one more night before finals, before the year started ending. The stage lights flickered on. Someone tested a microphone.
Ethan walked the perimeter, stacking cups out of habit. Across the lawn, Tyler carried a coil of cable over one shoulder, sunlight catching the curve of his arm. Their eyes met—easy now, unspoken understanding between them. The crowd thickened, the generator kicked on, and the first bass line trembled through the grass.
He realized it wasn’t about redemption anymore.
It was just life again: loud, messy, fleeting.
By dusk the field was full. A stage ringed with string lights, plywood barricades, and a rumor—Widespread Panic. When the first chord hit, the lawn answered with a thunderous cheer. Floodlights swept the crowd in gold arcs. For a moment it didn’t feel like Westmore anymore; it felt like someplace freer, a place that could only exist for the length of a song.
Ethan and Tyler sat shoulder to shoulder on the back steps, watching the movement below. “You good?” Tyler asked.
“Yeah,” Ethan said, and meant it.
The band rolled into Ain’t Life Grand. The field surged. Brothers, sisters, alumni—everyone singing badly, arms around whoever was nearest. Jason and Clay laughed at the edge of the crowd; Connor and Teddy swayed in unison; Marco shouted lyrics that didn’t exist. No one was performing. They were just there.
Across the field, Ethan caught sight of Eli—white shirt, sleeves rolled, cigarette glowing. He wasn’t talking to anyone; just watching. For a heartbeat their eyes met. No warning this time, no secret to guard. Just recognition. Eli lifted his cup, a small, almost-toast, then turned back toward the light. The distance didn’t sting anymore. It just existed.
Tyler stood, offered his hand. “Come on.”
Ethan took it.
They pushed into the crowd, laughter and heat and rhythm closing around them. When the bodies pressed too tight to see, Tyler’s hand found his again—not hidden, not announced. Just there.
When the last chord rang out, the field erupted—cheers, whistles, the dull thud of empty cups. Floodlights flared and cut, leaving afterimages on every eyelid. They stayed until the noise thinned and the speakers went quiet.
They walked home through the littered quad, plastic cups and paper plates crunching underfoot. The bell tower loomed above them, haloed in fog from the generator lights. Mark’s voice echoed somewhere behind them, calling their names, but neither turned. The air smelled like beer and azalea and the last cool breath of spring.
Ethan looked up—at the dorm windows glowing warm, at the faint shimmer of the river beyond the trees, at the wide spread of stars above it all—and felt, for the first time since August, that the year had given him back something he hadn’t realized he’d lost.
Tyler bumped his shoulder gently. “Feels like the end of something,” he said.
Ethan smiled. “Maybe the beginning of the rest.”
Behind them, the bell rang once, late and low, echoing across the empty field.
For a moment, neither turned back. The sound just hung there—fading, familiar, like a promise that couldn’t last.
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Nice!
I hope you eventually get this published :)