Turn 5 of 10

Find Tamsin first — she wanted to tell you something

You disentangle your arm from Brynn's grip, and her fingers release you with a fluid ease that doesn't match the resistance you expected — like the house is confident you'll come back on your own.

"I want to look around a little first," you say, and you're already moving before the sentence ends, angling toward the hallway where you saw the dark hair disappear. Brynn's smile follows you like a surveillance camera with dimples.

"Take your time, sweetheart. We'll be right here." The *we* again, and you don't look back.

The hallway is narrower than the common room promised — the ceiling drops, the light shifts from chandelier-gold to something softer and more diffuse, like the house is changing channels. Pastel walls give way to cream, then to a warm blush pink that you don't remember choosing to walk toward. Doors are closed along both sides, each one marked with a small wooden plaque: SISTERHOOD ROOM. STUDY. THE QUIET ROOM. The names feel less like labels and more like instructions. Your tote bag bumps your hip as you round the corner, and you catch yourself adjusting the strap to sit more centered, a motion so automatic it's already finished before you realize you've done it.

Tamsin is standing just inside the parlor doorway, one hand on the frame, her body angled like she's been waiting — or listening. Her smile is the house smile, the same calibrated warmth every other sister is wearing, but when her eyes find yours, something behind them shifts. A twitch at the corner of her mouth. She glances past your shoulder, quick and practiced, checking the hallway.

"You actually came," she says, barely above a breath. She's wearing the same pastel tote as you, but hers has a small enamel pin on the strap — a tiny golden crest, the sorority letters, the kind of addition that looks like a personal touch and isn't. Her fingers tighten on the doorframe.

"I tried to tell you earlier. The card —" She stops. A sister passes the far end of the hallway carrying a stack of coordinated notebooks, and Tamsin's face smooths back into the general warmth so fast it's like watching someone reset a screen. She waits until the footsteps fade. When she speaks again, her voice is lower, stripped of the house's brightness.

"They already know who they want you to be. It's not a guess, it's not a match — it's a script. Everything in there is already filled out." She nods toward the table at the back of the parlor, the one you saw through the doorway — the bid cards in their gold borders, arranged in neat rows. One of them is face-down, set slightly apart from the rest.

"I didn't read mine in time. I thought I could just — see what happened. And now I can't remember what my laugh sounded like before I came here." She says it simply, without drama, like she's describing the weather. Her eyes hold yours, and for a moment the house smile is gone entirely, replaced by something tired and specific and human.