Sorry, folks - the final chapter was over the character limit for a single post, so I had to split it in two.
Chapter 17 - Results
The first part of the plan was simple enough. We needed to keep tabs on Jenny, and make sure that she had no idea that we were working with Laura, Annalee, and Violet. Even the slightest hint that they had spoken with me would put Jenny on guard, and we needed her to feel confident that she had the situation under control. I knew that her natural instinct was to assume people would do what she said - she had authority and power, and she wielded it like a baseball bat. With the prestige of Delta Sigma and the ability to force pledges out, no one was likely to argue with her and risk her wrath.
Since I didn’t want to risk any sort of confrontation with Jenny myself, I needed to stay away from her as well. Besides, I was pretty sure that my spy skills were crappy, and I had no desire to hide in bushes or follow Jenny from a block back and hope that technique entirely based on movies would work. Instead, I took the safer route, and asked for help.
Jack was still feeling a little guilty about the whole punching me in the face thing, and when I asked him to give me a hand with catching the person who set me up and hurt Annie, he was quick to agree.
“I don’t need you to follow her all day,” I said. I pulled out a schedule that the three pledges had emailed me. Ironically, it was Jenny herself who made that possible; she had Laura cleaning her room twice a week. She had a copy of her schedule pinned on a corkboard on her wall, and Laura had spotted it while she was cleaning Jenny’s desk up. “This is her class schedule. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday she has a class at one then another one at three. I’m betting that an hour is too short a window to bother to come back to her room. Wait for her first class to end and see where she goes before the second one, ok?”
“No problem,” Jack said, taking the schedule. “If she sees me and says anything, I’ll tell her I have classes at one and three and am killing time.”
“That makes sense. No reason for her to think she’s the only one with that schedule,” I agreed. Jack said he would text me the places she went during her dead hour. The plan was to watch for a week or so to see if there was a pattern that we could exploit. In particular, I was looking for one thing.
The report from Monday was short. Jenny left class and went to Buzzy Bean, where she sat drinking coffee and working on her laptop for about 45 minutes before heading to her three o’clock. Wednesday she went to Collins during her break time, but Friday she was back at the Bean. Great. That made everything more difficult.
The Buzzy Bean was a perfectly logical place for her to kill time, but it was a terrible place for the plan I had come up with. Too many people packed into a small space. What I needed was Jenny at the library. Collins was a big space, and even with more people there in the daytime, there would be relatively few in any given area. I didn’t need total privacy - just enough space for a distraction to give me some cover. Annie and I decided we would keep Jack on watch for a few more days, asking him to text immediately if Jenny was going to the library so we could move quickly.
By Wednesday of the next week, I was almost ready to give up. Jack had now been on Jenny Watch five times, and asking him to just sit around for an hour and watch the woman drink coffee and type was starting to feel unfair. He never complained, but I still felt like I was taking advantage of his guilt on some level. I asked Annie if she thought we should move on and think of something else.
“It’s just feeling like we’re wasting Jack’s time,” I said. “Maybe I could try keeping watch for a while so he can get back to his normal life.”
Annie shook her head. “Jack’s a big boy. He’ll tell you when he’s feeling like we’re wasting his time.”
“No, he won’t, Annie. You don’t understand the way guys like Jack are. If you ask him to do something for you, he’s going to do it, even if it’s a pain in the ass. He’s one of those guys who will do pretty much anything for his friends.”
“Like you?” Annie smiled.
“Yeah, I guess. But knowing that about him makes me feel even more like I’m taking advantage of his nature.”
“Okay,” she replied. “We’ll figure out something else.”
When Friday rolled around, I told Jack this would be the last time I’d have him watching Jenny. “I think we’ve gotten what we need, and I know you have better things to do.”
“It isn’t a big deal,” he said. “I can keep watching her if you need me to.”
“I know you could, man, but we’re good. More time isn’t going to help on this. But I appreciate it,” I replied.
“Least I can do for my roomie,” Jack grinned, grabbing his coat. “I’ll text you.”
About 15 minutes later, I got the text from Jack. “She’s at Collins today.”
I checked my watch. If she stayed put, we had a window of about 30 minutes. It would take 10 minutes to get Annie in place. There was no time to think - go with the plan or come up with something else? Decision time, Fred.
Fuck it. I was already screwed if I didn’t do anything. Trying wasn’t going to make me more screwed. I also felt I owed Laura, Annalee, and Violet. True, they had wanted to stay in DSig, and they were willing to do what it took to make that happen, but that didn’t mean I didn’t owe them, especially when they were willing to try to help take down Jenny.
“Do it!” I said to Annie. She grinned, kissed me quickly, and took off at a run out of the dorm. I was close behind her, turning as I left the building to head toward Collins, while Annie was headed in a different direction. She had a stop to make first.
Five minutes later, I was at Collins. Most people used the main entrance to the library, but there was a back entrance as well that faced the road instead of the campus quad. I headed to that second entrance and made my way inside, immediately moving to the relative cover of the periodical shelves. I tried to look like I was looking for a particular journal, but in the meantime I was looking around, trying to spot Jenny. I spotted her sitting at a small, freestanding study desk near one of the computer workstation areas. She was on her laptop, fixated on whatever she was doing; I watched her for a good two minutes and she never looked up.
Very cautiously, staying behind her line of sight, I walked around the perimeter of the inside of the building until I was behind her, right in an aisle with two shelf rows between us. I could peer through the gaps and see the back of her head, blonde hair down over her shoulders.
My phone buzzed and I pulled it out. Annie had texted me. “In place. Ready?”
“Desk to the left of main entrance, near computers. Go.”, I texted back.
A minute later, I saw Annie enter through the main doors and turn left immediately, zeroing in on Jenny almost instantly. The look on her face was one of pure fury as she moved toward the desk where the blonde was working. In one hand was a large styrofoam cup, the kind you’d get at a gas station soda fountain.
“YOU BITCH!” Annie didn’t just walk up to Jenny. She was on full volume and drawing every eye in the room as she charged the girl at the table. Jenny looked up, startled, to find one hundred twenty pounds of drama suddenly in her space, eyes flashing fire. “YOU FUCKING BITCH! TRYING TO STEAL MY BOYFRIEND AND LYING TO ME?”
Before Jenny could get out of her chair, Annie had dumped the cup over her head. I was guessing it was an acai berry smoothie from the color, made with extra milk to thin it out. The purple-pink concoction poured over Jenny like a small flood, coating her hair and her sweatshirt and making a complete mess. Annie threw the cup in her face. “STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM US!” she screamed, then turned and stomped off, flipping a bird back at the stunned woman as she headed to the exit again. Half of the people in the area were applauding; most were laughing. A staff member was on his way over to see what the disruption was, but Annie was already halfway out the door before he made it to Jenny.
“What’s going on here?” he asked, which was a huge mistake given Jenny’s nature and current situation. She exploded into a profanity-ridden tirade that had the staffer retreating with his hands up in a matter of seconds. “You need to call the campus police!” she demanded. “I’m reporting that crazy bitch!” While the staffer hurried back to his desk to phone security, Jenny headed to the nearby women’s restroom to try to scrape as much of the smoothie off as she could, swearing under her breath the whole way.
Once she was in the restroom, people could see the show was over, and they largely went back to whatever they were already doing, except for a few who picked up and moved away from the mess on the floor. I waited another half minute, then walked over to the study desk where she had been sitting, a handful of paper towels in my hand, looking like another library staffer who was trying to start cleaning up the disaster. Before I started wiping, however, I jammed the flash drive I had palmed into the port on the side of her laptop, launched her mail app, and quickly selected all in her mailbox. I started the messages copying over to the flash drive, then began wiping up the goo on the desk and privacy screen, keeping one eye on the progress bar the entire time. As the seconds ticked by, I mentally pleaded with the system to copy faster. Jenny would be back any moment, and I needed to be out of there before she saw me.
The progress bar hit 70 percent, then 85, and then 90. Finally, it disappeared, the job complete. I quit the mail program, pulled out the flash drive, slipped it back into my pocket, and wiped one more time, then grimaced like the towels were no longer doing any good. I cradled them carefully with one hand underneath to catch drips, walking away from the desk towards the trash can near the front door. No one looked at me twice.
I dropped the towels into the trash, turning just in time to see Jenny emerging from the restroom, sweatshirt wadded up in a ball and hair wet. She had a look on her face that suggested that Annie better stay far away - I had no doubt that Jenny would be on her with fists flying the next time she laid eyes on my girlfriend. I turned my own head the opposite way as I walked past the book sensors and out the front doors of Collins, and I didn’t look back.
Mission accomplished, I thought as I made my way back to the dorm to meet up with Annie. Now we just have to hope we got what we came for.. I sure hoped so, because I didn’t think we would get another shot.
A few minutes later, Annie and I were hunched over her laptop as she examined the contents of the flash drive. She entered a few commands, pulled up an email client, and clicked around. Suddenly, a slew of email messages popped up, and Annie turned to me with a big smile. “Let’s see what we got.”
Most of the emails were the usual - spam, updates from classes, the occasional note about an event or party. We scrolled down through the messages until, about two screens down, we found what we were looking for. I had asked each of the three pledges to send a couple of emails to Jenny asking for some sort of easing of their hazing or rules. They weren’t particularly significant requests, and they weren’t major complaints. There were no threats or hostile words.
Of course, that hadn’t mattered in the slightest. Jenny had responded to each of the emails in her typical alpha-girl way, asserting her status and making sure that the pledges knew she wasn’t going to give them an inch. In fact, we had counted on that. It was Jenny’s responses that we wanted - and the evidence that they had been sent, not forged. With the complete message threads and all the time stamps and replies, a claim that we had just invented the exchanges would be a lot less likely to be believed.
Those messages weren’t the only thing we were looking for. We scrolled back as far as we could, looking for evidence of the original message sent to convince Annie that I was cheating on her. I knew Jenny had sent it. She had admitted it. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a trace of it anywhere to be found in the files I had copied. Either she had deleted it to cover herself, or she had been smart enough to use some burner account or fake mail address.
“Fuck. I really had hoped we’d get evidence that she tried to split us up,” I said, leaning back. “It would have been a little extra proof.”
“Yeah,” Annie replied, “but we still got the messages. And let’s not forget the most important part of all of this.”
“I know - we still have to get a meeting with Melissa.”
“No, dummy!” She whacked me on the arm. “The most important part is that I got to smoothie that bitch!” Then she looked at me with that Annie look - the one that said Hurricane Annie was coming - and smiled wickedly. “You know why I took so long getting to Collins, Fred?”
“I didn’t think you took that long.”
“Well, I took longer than I needed to. I had to stop to pee.”
I looked at her for a second. “No, you didn’t.”
Annie grinned. “I peed on her. Indirectly, but it still counts.”
“You peed in the smoothie? Seriously?” Not that Jenny didn’t deserve it, but that was a level of vengeful I hadn’t expected.
I must have had a stunned expression, because Annie broke into laughter and patted my shoulder. “Oh, Fred, the look on your face right now! You’re somewhere between ‘This girl is completely insane’ and ‘oh, shit, if I break up with her, is she going to find a way to pee in my coffee?’ And I’m happy I can inspire fear in you, because every boyfriend should be a little afraid of his girlfriend.”
“So you didn’t pee in the smoothie?” I was completely lost now.
“I didn’t say that,” Annie replied, still grinning.
“Annie…”
“Some things are best left unanswered, don’t you think? Mystery is good.” She turned back to the messages and sent the relevant ones to her printer. “Now, what’s the next step of this grand plan of yours?”
* * *
“Thanks for meeting me, Melissa,” I said, as the woman sat down across from me. If I was meeting someone, I usually would opt for Buzzy Bean, but this was too important to risk having Jenny (or anyone else who could cause a problem) appear by chance. Instead, I had opted to meet Melissa at the Cottage Inn, a small hotel near the Maxwell campus that catered to parents and prospective students. They had a small restaurant that was generally quiet on weeknights and packed solid on the weekends, and true to form, we had the place nearly to ourselves. I had ordered an appetizer and some iced tea, and Melissa asked for a vodka cran. The waiter dutifully checked her ID, then brought her the drink, which she sipped and then put down.
“You know, you’re on very thin ice at Delta Sigma, Fred.” She looked at me with a cool expression. “Jenny put you out there as a miracle worker, but the pledges we assigned you have remained an issue.”
“From what I can see,” I replied, “I’ve done what you asked. All of them have moved from being in danger of failing one or more classes to holding grades of C or better in all of their courses.”
“Yes, their grades have risen. That’s true. But they remain behavior problems, and Jenny tells me that you have made that situation somewhat worse. She says that you’ve been intervening in situations where you have no authority, making her efforts to handle the pledges more difficult.”
I shook my head. “Do you know how much you guys are paying me to be your sorority tutor this semester?”
“Of course I do,” she said, taking another sip of her drink. “I approved it.”
“Do you know what I made tutoring for Maxwell?”
“No,” Melissa replied.
“Let’s just say that the two numbers aren’t even comparable. With what you are paying me, I can actually focus on my work without having to deal with any other distractions. It’s a fantastic deal for me. Why would I ever jeopardize that by getting into a power struggle with a sister at the sorority over three pledges that I barely know? How does that benefit me in any way?”
Melissa looked at me appraisingly. It was a fair question, and one she didn’t have a simple answer for. “All right. But why would Jenny tell me you were causing her problems if it wasn’t true? What does she have to gain from that?”
I took a sip of my iced tea. “Look, I don’t want to create problems, but Jenny hit on me. She was interested, and I wasn’t. I told her I was happily dating, which I am, and she wasn’t exactly thrilled about being turned down for someone else.”
The look on Melissa’s face was frankly skeptical. “She hit on you, and you turned her down? No offense meant, Fred, but she’s a Delta Sigma, and you’re a math tutor. That’s not usually the way this works. I know Jenny; she has her pick of any number of guys who are, quite honestly, hotter than you. By a lot.”
“I figured that you’d say that.” I handed her a copy of the anonymous email that Annie had received. “This is the email that was sent to my girlfriend, trying to split us up. You can see the date stamp.”
She looked at it quickly. “This is anonymous. It could have come from anyone.”
“I know. I can’t prove she sent it. But look at the timing. I’m just saying that you might want to ask a few more questions before you rush to judgement about what’s going on. For example, the pledges have told me that Jenny has been singling them out and punishing them excessively, even though their grades are back up. I don’t know what DSig’s internal rules are, but maybe the problem you’re having isn’t coming from my end.”
The sorority president finished off her drink in two smooth swallows. “All right. I’ll look into this a little more. But I was iffy about your “methods” to begin with. I’m going to talk to the pledges, too. If they tell me that you have been inappropriate towards them in any way, I won’t hesitate to cancel your contract with us and make sure you aren’t tutoring at Maxwell again.”
“That’s absolutely fine with me,” I said. “I kept my interactions with them completely professional and in line with our agreed-on program. They probably had a lot worse from Jenny than they ever had from my work.”
Melissa didn’t reply. She got up, picked up her bag, and left. I picked at the appetizer for a few minutes, then paid the bill and went back to my dorm, where Annie was sitting in the common room laughing with Jack.
“How’d it go?” she asked brightly. “Did she believe you?”
“Maybe. At least she believed me enough to talk to the pledges.” I plopped down in a chair. “I told her Jenny had tried to hit on me, and I told her that the pledges had said Jenny was being excessive. The bait is out there. I have to believe that Jenny is going to deny the whole pass thing. The sorority president could barely seem to believe it was possible that a guy like me would turn down a Delta Sigma woman making a pass at me. She clearly was skeptical that a Delta Sigma woman would look twice at me.” I smiled ruefully. “But we need Jenny to do more than deny. We need her to go on the offensive. Everything I know about people and about her says she will, but we won’t know for sure until we hear back from Delta Sigma, and we have no idea how long that will be.”
The Tutor, Volume II (Complete) - finale posted 10/28
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Fred Key
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Re: The Tutor, Volume II finale, part 2 10/28
The answer, as it happened, was about three days. I received an email from Melissa asking me to come to the house on Thursday night to answer questions for an investigation into several allegations that had been made regarding my tutoring and related issues. There wasn’t much in the way of detail - just that I was to be there at 7:00 PM, and that failure to attend would reflect poorly for any deliberations that took place.
The email didn’t say I could bring anyone with me, but Annie was at my side when I arrived. I knocked, and a sister let me in and led us to one of the smaller rooms. She opened the door and ushered us in.
At a table in the center of the room, several members of the sorority were seated, including Melissa. At one end of the table was Jenny, who looked at me smugly. There was an empty seat at the other end, which I assumed was for me. “Sit down, Fred,” the president said. I pulled a chair away from the wall and placed it next to mine for Annie, then sat.
“We’ve asked you to come today because of some disturbing allegations that have been made, and because of our conversation earlier in the week,” Melissa began. “When we spoke, I made it known to you that there had been concerns raised about your work with our Delta Sigma pledges. You told me that those concerns were baseless, and then indicated that there might be some resentment involved because of a rebuffed attempt at a relationship. Am I correctly restating that conversation?”
“You are,” I said.
“I approached Jenny regarding your allegation, and about the anonymous note that you gave me allegedly attempting to break you and your girlfriend up. Jenny vigorously denied your story, and told a much different version of what happened in the basement when you visited on that day. We have called this meeting to allow Jenny to make her complaint, and to allow you to respond before we make any final decisions regarding your employment or any other steps we may need to take, such as referral to the college for harassment charges.”
I nodded. None of this was a surprise.
“You will be given ample opportunity to speak on your own behalf, I assure you, but be warned - we do not look kindly on those who abuse our pledges. This is not a court of law. This is something far, far worse,” the president continued. “If we decide that you are in the wrong, it won’t just be here at Maxwell that you will be shunned. Delta Sigma has a long reach, and we will use it. Do you still wish to maintain your story as it stands?”
She looked at me expectantly, like she thought I was going to immediately back down, but I just nodded. “Yes, I do. I’ve told you the truth.”
“All right,” she said. “Jenny, would you please tell us what happened in the basement on the day in question?”
Jenny glared at me as she sat forward to reply. “Fred had contacted me to ask if he could come by and speak to me about the pledges. He said it was important, so I told him to come by that afternoon. We were cleaning up after the big party all morning, and he said that the problem wasn’t one he was comfortable talking about on the phone. When he arrived, one of the sisters let me know, and I came down to see him. He asked if there was somewhere we could talk that was a bit more private, so I took him down the basement. I probably, in retrospect, shouldn’t have done that given what I knew about Fred from the pledges, but he had seemed like a nice guy before, and I figured that maybe they were just angry because he was making them do their work.”
“When we went downstairs, though, he told me that he wasn’t there about the pledges. He said he was there because he wanted me to go out with him. He said that he had fallen for me when he was tutoring me earlier in the semester, and that he couldn’t get the image of me...” She looked down, as if she was ashamed. “The image of me naked, from when he used his ‘method’ to tutor me - he couldn’t get it out of his head. He said I was the hottest girl he had ever seen, and he said it in a way that suggested—well, that he had seen more than a few girls undressed because of his “tutoring.” I mean, it was bad enough that I had let him see me that one time, but I needed that grade, and it worked, so I figured it was what it was. But the idea that he thought I might want to actually date him? It was gross. Honestly. I felt sick.”
Annie rolled her eyes, but I didn’t react. It wouldn’t help me in the least to seem like I was anything but polite.
“Anyway, I told him that wasn’t going to happen, but he got angry about it. He said that I was just like the other girls, and that I needed someone to “manage” me and make sure I behaved properly. He called the pledges his ‘toy girls’, and said he could make them do anything he wanted, like little dress-up dolls. Anatomically correct dress-up dolls. I remember he said that, because it was so creepy,” Jenny continued, shuddering. “He said that what I needed was good old fashioned discipline, and that he would give it to me right there. That was it for me - I told him that he was a fucking creep, and that I wanted him out of the house immediately.”
“But you didn’t come to me with this story.” Melissa asked. “Why?”
Jenny looked a little shamefaced at the question. “It was stupid, but…I was worried about the pledges. I knew how close to failing they were, and their grades had gone up while they worked with Fred. I thought that if I said anything, he might sabotage them for revenge. I didn’t want them to lose out because of me.” She folded her arms. “Besides, I figured that I would wait until the end of the semester and then come to you. Once the grades were in, all his leverage would be gone, and I could get him fired without worrying about him taking it out on our pledges. I thought I could just wait it out for a few weeks as long as I stayed away from him.”
“And what changed your mind?” Melissa asked.
“When you came to me and told me he was saying that I had hit on him. If I didn’t say something now, he’d be able to control the whole narrative, and it would be even harder to get him out at the semester. Plus I wasn’t sure if some of the behavior of the pledges was his influence. They had been more unruly and troublesome than usual, and I was starting to think he was turning them against us.” Jenny looked at me, an angry glare on her face. “Then that psycho over there next to him showed up in the library and hit me with a smoothie and started screaming at me about stealing her boyfriend. It was just too much. So when you asked, I had to tell the whole story this time. Fred isn’t a good guy. He’s manipulative and is dangerous to our pledges, and his girlfriend is literally a physical threat.”
“Did you send an anonymous letter to this woman at any point?” Melissa asked.
“No, I did not,” Jenny said firmly. “She’s in a class with me - that’s all.”
“And it is your assertion that Fred has been acting inappropriately towards the pledges?”
“I’m not saying that I have evidence,” Jenny said slowly. “But what I’ve seen suggests that his control over them has had a negative impact. Either he is using them unwillingly through blackmail regarding grades, or they are cooperating with him because they’ve fallen under his influence, but whichever it is, I think he’s the reason they’ve been so defiant.”
“Has he attempted to contact you again since the basement incident?”
“No….well…I haven’t allowed him to speak to me. I’ve seen him a few times around campus and he has moved toward me, but I always moved away quickly.” Jenny was now putting on a good show of looking uncomfortable. “I didn’t want to be around him. Like I said, he’s creepy.”
Melissa looked at the other women at the table. “Do any of you want to ask anything further?” There were no takers. I didn’t love the looks I was getting from the group as a whole, but I had to trust that the women would be fair. Otherwise, I was toast.
“Would you like to give your side of the story, Fred?” Melissa asked me.
“I would. I started working for Delta Sigma when Jenny invited me. She told me that she had talked up my success with her to the rest of the sorority and that she had persuaded you that I was legit. In fact, as I understand it, she disclosed to you, the sorority president, that she had been naked in front of me as part of the “special process”. Is that correct?”
“She did,” Melissa said.
“She told me that you found her situation somewhat amusing and speculated that it would be highly effective in getting members who were in academic trouble to raise their grades. Again, is this accurate?” I asked.
“We discussed that, jokingly at first,” Melissa answered. “The more we talked, however, the more I felt it might actually work.”
“So you hired me to work with your sisters who fell below a certain average in classes. Jenny specifically brought me three pledges who were in difficult academic positions - Annalee Allgood, Violet Morris, and Laura Bonner. She gave me full permission to use any method I saw fit to raise their grades, and they all agreed to take part in the “special program” because they wanted to stay eligible for the sorority, and in Violet’s case, keep her scholarship.”
“I worked with these pledges for a couple of months. During that time, I was also in a relationship with Annie Jenkins, who is here today with me. At first, there were no significant problems. I implemented the study program with the pledges, and after a few sessions where minor punishments were meted out, grades started to improve.”
“Wait,” interrupted one of the women at the table. “What were the ‘minor punishments’ you used?”
I opened my backpack and took out my notebook, leafing back through the pages. “I believe that I had to spank Annalee twice. Once was on her pants. The second was on her panties, but that was in front of Jenny. Violet had to run for her practice in children’s clothes, and was later given a wedgie by her fellow pledges at my direction. Laura spent a good portion of one tutoring session in her underwear in Collins.”
“Some of those don’t seem to be minor,” the woman said.
“Compared to what I saw at your party a couple of weeks ago, where pledges were publicly paddled and put in wet t-shirts or less, I think this was reasonably minor. However, I would point out that none of these punishments required nudity or intimate contact on my part, and all were well within the guidelines that were set out by the sorority.”
Reluctantly, the woman nodded. “Continue, please.”
“It was at that point,” I said, “that my girlfriend broke up with me very suddenly. At first, she refused to even speak to me. I had no idea why, and I tried giving her space at first. Later, Jenny even told me that she thought I should walk away from the relationship. At the time, I thought she was just being kind. I decided that I would focus on the pledges and getting grades up.”
“I also finally got Annie to tell me what had set her off. It turned out to be an anonymous email saying that I was cheating on her with one of the pledges - having sex with them in the stacks at Collins. Of course that wasn’t true, and when I finally got her to talk to me, Annie and I were able to work things out and resume our relationship.
“Right after that, I was invited to the Delta Sigma party I referred to earlier. During the event, I was a little concerned at the extent of the punishment of the three pledges. I decided to come see Jenny the next day to ask her to ease off on them, as I was concerned that if they were being punished more harshly at her end, the motivation to improve the grades would vanish. Jenny, as she said, asked me to come to the house to speak to her, and when I arrived, she did invite me to the basement to talk about the pledges.”
“When I went down there, Jenny surprised me. I started talking about the pledges, but she changed the subject almost immediately. She tried to convince me that the tutoring methods I was using were clear evidence that I had a sexual interest in dominating women - that I was looking for excuses to get girls naked in front of me or put them in demeaning positions, and that the rest of what I was doing was just pretense. That was pretty uncomfortable, but then she said that she thought I was good at it, and that I should lean into it more. I told her that I wasn’t interested in that, and that I was happily dating, but she dismissed that. She said I’d never be satisfied with a girl who wouldn’t submit to me. Then she took off her top and shorts, handed me a hairbrush, and lay over my lap. She said that I needed a woman like her who could submit to my discipline properly, and that the two of us together could have our pick of pledges to ‘discipline’ over the next few years if we got together. She asked me to spank her so she could prove that she could handle my worst.”
“That’s a lie!” Jenny said angrily. “As if I’d EVER do something like that!” Melissa put out a hand, however, and the blonde sat back in her chair angrily. She glowered at me again as I resumed.
“I helped her up from my lap immediately, told her I was going to leave, and told her she was completely mistaken about what I wanted. I told her she was attractive, but I was interested in someone else, and not in what she was offering. That’s when she got angry. She was furious at the idea that I would turn her down for Annie - that I would throw away Delta Sigma on a platter for someone she thought was clearly inferior to herself. She swore she’d make sure I didn’t just lose my contract with Delta Sigma, but that I would never work at Maxwell again. I got out of there as quickly as I could, and I immediately called Annie to tell her what had happened. Since then, I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop; my contact with the pledges has been restricted, and I learned that Jenny had given them instructions to stay away from me. I knew this call was coming, but I hoped I would get a fair hearing. So far that’s been the case.” I sat back, waiting for what I assumed would be the first of several questions.
“Other than your story, Fred, do you have any evidence that backs up your allegations?” Melissa asked. “Let’s be honest - we know Jenny. You aren’t a sister here. Tell me why I shouldn’t give her the benefit of any doubt I might have.”
I reached into my backpack and pulled out the printouts. “Jenny told you that she didn’t speak to you earlier because she was concerned that I might sabotage the pledges, and she didn’t want them to lose out on an opportunity, right?” I handed her the printouts of the complaints from the pledges and Jenny’s responses. “These are copies of messages that were sent between the pledges and Jenny regarding the level of punishment they have been subjected to and requests for reasonable consideration. Take a look at the replies Jenny sent back. Do those look like replies from someone who is deeply concerned about the pledges?”
The second woman who had spoken earlier reached for the printouts, but Melissa caught her hand. “How do you have these, Fred?”
Crap. I had really hoped that I wouldn’t be asked this question. Either I had to throw the pledges under the bus, or I had to admit to having stolen the messages from Jenny’s own computer. Neither was a good option. I had only come up with one other option for this situation, so I tried it. “I’ll answer that, but only for you, and not in front of others. There are implications to the answer that affect multiple people, and it would be unfair for me to do so without their consent or presence.”
“How convenient!” Jenny said, throwing her hands up. “He can’t share his sources. How do we know this stuff wasn’t made up completely?”
“Well, we could look at your laptop, Jenny, and see if the messages are there, too,” I said. “But if you had any sense at all, you’d have deleted them before this meeting.”
“I’m happy to let anyone search my email,” Jenny said smugly, and I knew that I was right - she had anticipated this and deleted anything in there that could possibly be seen negatively.
“Like I said, I’m happy to explain, but only to you,” I said to Melissa. “You can share what you need to after that, but I think if you listen to me, you’ll understand why I can’t explain in front of others.”
Melissa steepled her fingers for a moment, looking at me. Finally, she nodded. “Outside in the hall. Come on.” She stood and stepped out of the room, and I followed, papers in hand.
Once the door was closed, she turned to me expectantly. “All right, Fred. How did you get the emails?”
“I got them from the pledges themselves. They contacted me a little while back, telling me that things had gotten worse and that Jenny was coming down on them harder than ever, and they asked if there was anything I could do. I told them to send a polite letter to Jenny requesting relief, and that if they didn’t get any results, that they should forward the letter to me and I would bring it to you directly. They were afraid that you’d ignore them if they tried to go around Jenny to speak to you, or that you were aware of the level of punishment they were getting and approved of it. Originally, I didn’t plan on showing you the emails at all - I was just going to summarize their complaints. Then I saw the replies from Jenny, though, and I knew it would be important for you to see them.”
Melissa held out her hand, but I held back the papers. “I need your word that the pledges won’t be punished for sharing these with me,” I said. “Otherwise, I’ll take my chances. I’m not screwing them over here.”
“I promise. Now give me the emails,” she said. She took the copies I handed her and read over them. It didn’t take very long; the whole set was only a couple of pages in total. She looked up at me, a cautious expression on her face. “You know that if there are no copies of these emails on Jenny’s account, she can just claim that you and the pledges forged these entirely?”
I nodded. “I know she can make that claim. But look at the headers for the emails. These aren’t just cut and pasted text. Those header blocks contain information that would allow the emails to be traced and timestamped. If you wanted to, I bet you could ask the college to verify that these emails were legitimate. They probably back up the server regularly, and they might be able to pull the backup and find the originals. I don’t know for sure. Still, would I suggest that you try any of that if I wasn’t confident that these are legit?”
Melissa considered this for a moment, then she looked at the emails again. “Let’s go back inside. I’ll keep your ‘source’ secret.”
When we entered the room again, Annie was watching me closely, eyes wide in a “Did it work?” question that was unmistakable. I gave her a quick smile and sat down again. Melissa walked around the table to her seat, then handed the printouts to the other woman. “I am willing to allow these emails to be considered as part of this hearing. While I am not certain of their authenticity, I am sufficiently convinced that we can determine the authenticity if necessary. For now, the source is unimportant.”
Jenny looked like she wanted to argue this, but the other woman was already looking at the email. She looked up at Jenny with a questioning gaze. “How often have you punished these three pledges, specifically, in the last month?”
Jenny scoffed. “I don’t know. Just like regular pledges, mostly. I mean, they’ve been more trouble than usual — we all know about Annalee’s mouth, and Laura is lazy. I’ve had to discipline them for failing to do their chores properly, but not excessively.”
“These emails suggest that you had a sister naked in front of men from outside the sorority. Is that what you consider a “normal” punishment, Jenny?” The tone of the woman was unmistakably unhappy.
“She wasn’t actually naked in front of them. That’s a total exaggeration. She snuck out of the house when she was on restriction, so I had confiscated her clothing to make a point. She was doing laundry in the laundry room near where there were people, that’s all, and she had a basketful of clothing covering her up,” Jenny explained.
“I see,” said the second woman, but she didn’t sound convinced. “And the complaint about scheduling?”
“A misunderstanding that was corrected. I even told the pledge in the email that I was hoping she’d make it as a Delta Sigma. I think she has the right stuff.”
“Even if we allow for the possibility that Jenny has been overzealous in her punishments,” Melissa asked, “is there any other evidence you can offer suggesting that your story is the truth, Fred?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Jenny says I’m a creep and that she was concerned that I was doing things to the pledges. I suggest you call them down here and ask them point blank if I have ever done or said anything inappropriate while tutoring them or at any other time in their presence. See what they say.”
“All right,” Melissa agreed. “Let’s hear from them. Sarah, would you go fetch those three pledges and bring them here?”
The second woman rose and set off to find the trio. “We’ll take a ten minute break,” Melissa said, and rose. “If you need the restroom…”
“I’m fine,” I said. Annie reached over and put her hand on my leg. “How do you think it’s going?” I asked her.
“Honestly?” She looked at me with a small frown. “I don’t think we’ve convinced anyone not to believe Jenny. I mean, we knew it was going to be an uphill battle, but I thought that the emails would have more impact. Right now, it’s still he said, she said - and if I’m a woman, I believe a woman who tells me that something happened in a basement with some guy.”
I grimaced. “I know. Hell, if it wasn’t me, I would believe her over me too. But they haven’t heard from the pledges yet. They’re women, too. Maybe what they say will make more of an impact.”
I certainly hoped that was the case, but things were not looking great. Annie and I had gone over that flash drive multiple times trying to find anything else we could use, but there was nothing else that stood out. And there was no sign of that anonymous email. I was basically out of evidence.
I sat there trying to figure out what I could do - was there anything I was forgetting? Anything at all? Unfortunately, by the time that Sarah returned with the pledges, I still was drawing a blank. Maybe I could have Annie say something? No. No matter what she said, the others could dismiss it as being lies from the girlfriend of the accused.
Melissa’s voice brought me back to the moment. “Pledges, we’ve asked you to come here to answer a few important questions.” She looked at Violet, Laura, and Annalee in turn. “You are expected to answer truthfully and to the best of your knowledge. To that end, I want to make it absolutely clear that you will not be punished in any way for any answer you give in this meeting. You have my word as president and as a Delta Sigma sister.”
“Let’s start with you, Laura. Have you worked with Fred this semester?” Melissa asked.
“Yes,” Laura replied. “He’s tutored me.”
“During that time, were you subject to any punishments or disciplinary actions on Fred’s part?”
“Yes, I was. He made me strip in the library. Down to my underwear.”
“Was there anything else?”
“He was part of the reason I was wearing so little when I was serving drinks at the mid-semester party. I was being punished for not getting my assignments done on time.”
“I see,” Melissa said. “Did Fred ever touch you inappropriately, Laura?”
“No,” she said.
“Did he look at you in a way that made you uncomfortable when he had you undress?”
“Well, I mean, sure, but not like a ‘oh shit he’s a creeper who’s gonna grope me’ kind of way. He looked at me, and I was uncomfortable because it was embarrassing to be in my underwear in front of him in a public library.” Laura looked at me with a shrug. “He was doing his job, though. It isn’t like I was mad at him or anything.”
“So you never felt like he acted toward you in a manner that was outside the scope of your tutoring agreement?” Melissa asked this with an arched brow, as if she found the idea hard to believe.
“Can I be honest? I kind of wished he had been more interested early on in the semester,” Laura said. “It was a little hard to be half-dressed in front of a guy for an hour and feel like he wasn’t even slightly interested. But when I found out he was dating, I understood. He was loyal. I liked that.”
“And did you ever complain to Jenny about Fred?”
“No. But I tried not to complain to Jenny about anything,” Laura replied. “Jenny wasn’t big on complaints.” She looked over at Jenny, then down at the ground.
“Thank you, Laura,” Melissa said. “Violet? What was your experience with Fred as a tutor?”
Violet shrugged. “I really didn’t have a huge amount of time with him. My schedule is always packed, and I tried to meet with him as infrequently as I could.”
“But you did meet with him on occasion?” Melissa persisted.
“Yeah, a couple of times. And yes, he punished me. Twice. Both of them sucked big time.”
Sarah leaned in. “Can you be a little more specific?”
“Well, the first time, he made sure I had to go out for our team’s morning training run wearing clothes that he provided. He sent over little girl clothing - like a dress and ankle socks and hair ribbons, and a pair of cartoon underpants, and I had to run the entire practice wearing that stuff. They’re still calling me Care Bear on the team because of those underpants, although I guess I could have ended up with a worse nickname. Then there was the wedgie he had the other two pledges give me.”
“The other pledges? He didn’t do it himself?”
“No. But it still hurt like hell,” Violet said. “I was pretty pissed off, but then he apologized - he said that he should have done more, and that he probably shouldn’t have punished me for the missed work like that. He said he would do better if I wanted to stick it out with him, or he would resign as my tutor if that’s what I wanted. The others talked me into giving him another shot.”
“So you gave him another chance,” Melissa asked, “and how did that go?”
“Fine. He’s been a decent tutor. I’ve had to be more responsible about keeping up with my assignments. And before you ask, he hasn’t punished me since then. He hasn’t touched me inappropriately, made me do anything involving being naked, or made any kind of suggestive comment. No offense, Fred - but the guy is kind of boring more than anything else.”
I chuckled. “No offense taken, Violet.”
“Fine. Thank you, Violet. That leaves you, Annalee.” The president turned to face the redheaded pledge. “Annalee, of all three of you, is it fair to say that you’ve been the one who has been disciplined the most?”
Annalee rolled her eyes, clearly embarrassed. “Yes, I think that’s well-known to everyone in the sorority, given how often I’ve been paddled.”
“And has Fred ever been the one to spank you?”
She made a sour face. “Yes.”
Melissa sighed. “Could you be a little more specific, please?”
Clearly unhappy to be talking about this, Annalee answered. “Yes, he spanked me. Twice. Once on my pants, over in Collins, after I argued with him about his instructions. And then once in front of you and Jenny. With the hairbrush. I had to take my pants down for that.”
“I remember. You were very unhappy about that, weren’t you, Annalee?”
“Yes, I was. It was humiliating.”
“Did you feel,” Melissa asked carefully, “like Fred was treating you unfairly?”
There was a pause before Annalee answered. “At the time, yes. But at the time, I was being a complete ass, and that spanking was well-deserved.”
This response seemed to surprise Sarah, who apparently was more used to the uncooperative and self-righteous version of Annalee. “Well-deserved?”
“Yes. I came to Maxwell for a lot of reasons, but I brought a lot of baggage with me, too. I had to figure out some things before I realized all the ways I was being an idiot. When it happened, I would have gladly kicked Fred where it hurts most for what he did. But I figured out pretty soon after that where the real problem was, and it wasn’t with Fred.” The redhead looked at me and actually smiled! “If anything, he actually was the first one to teach me something since I was in middle school.”
Damn. Praise from Annalee? What was next? Winning the lottery?
Melissa continued her questions. “At any time, particularly when you were in a state of undress, did you feel that Fred was behaving inappropriately towards you? Did he ever touch you or speak to you in a manner that was sexually suggestive?”
“No,” Annalee said firmly. “He didn’t.”
“Thank you, Annalee. Are there any additional questions?” Melissa asked.
Jenny stood. “I have a question for the pledges. Are any of you claiming that you were either put into this tutoring program for inappropriate reasons or without cause?”
The pledges looked at one another, and all of them shook their heads. “I don’t believe any of us are saying that,” Laura said.
“And,” Jenny continued, “are any of you claiming that you have not committed violations of Delta Sigma policies or standards during your time as pledges that would result in punishment being given?”
“No,” Laura said again. “I’m not saying that.”
Violet nodded her assent. “I’ve broken policies.”
Annalee was the last to speak. “I have as well. I don’t think that any of us would argue that we’ve been punished without cause.”
Jenny smiled triumphantly. “Thank you.”
“I have one more question,” Sarah asked. She looked at the pledges. “Hypothetically, let’s assume that you are no longer Delta Sigma sisters next semester. Let’s also hypothetically assume that your grades once again slip for some reason, putting your place here at Maxwell University in jeopardy. Would you contact Fred for tutoring again, knowing what his methods may entail, and knowing that you have total freedom to choose whatever options you want to select for dealing with your situation, and not the one Delta Sigma selected for you?”
All three pledges paused for a moment. I took a deep breath. Their answers to this question were going to make or break this for me.
Laura spoke first. “Yes. I would hire Fred again to be my tutor. Obviously, I would prefer to use his traditional approach of working on the material from early in the semester, before I get way behind, as the way to succeed. But if you are asking me if I would, with my college future on the line, turn to Fred to do whatever it took to get me to the finish line, knowing that could involve significant discomfort? I absolutely would. He showed me that he understands how to get me to work, that he understands how to teach me what I don’t understand, and that he is willing to do either as needed in a professional and unthreatening way. He’s a good tutor, and a good guy.”
Laura turned to the other two pledges, offering them the floor. It was Violet who was next to answer. “Would I hire Fred as a tutor again? Probably not. It isn’t that I felt like he was ever out of line with me or that he was unfair in any way. It’s just that we never really meshed well. The fact is that my problems have almost nothing to do with academic issues. They have everything to do with trying to balance an athletic scholarship with required classes and membership in a sorority, along with the other things that come with being in college, like a desire for a social life. Fred never really tutored me - he was trying to help me with my time management and organization, and while his methods were more or less effective, I think I could have gotten similar results if I just had anyone holding me accountable.”
She looked over at me. “That’s really not meant as a knock on you personally, Fred. I think you probably are a very good tutor, but if I was on my own, I wouldn’t have chosen a tutor in the first place.”
I smiled and nodded to her gratefully to let her know I didn’t have any hard feelings. What she said was totally fair, and it was pretty accurate as well. She didn’t need me for classroom help, and she could get someone to help her with time management through the athletic department for free. There really was no reason for her to hire me again.
That left Annalee to answer. When she spoke, she looked directly at Sarah. “Would I hire Fred? Yes. And let me be clear about one other thing, too. Jenny asked if I had been punished without cause, and the answer to that is no. There was plenty of reason for me to be punished. That is not, however, the same thing as being punished appropriately. I learned this semester that when you are in a debate, you need to be able to think about things from both sides of the issue, if only to be able to understand how to better address the other side’s case. You are being asked to assume that having a reason to administer discipline means that ANY discipline is appropriate. Yes, I broke some rules this year, and I deserved to be punished. But did I deserve to be paddled every day for a week multiple times over the course of a single semester? Did I deserve to be publicly paddled at an open party for refusing to paddle a sister when instructed to? I don’t think that was right, and I don’t think that Delta Sigma should see that as appropriate either.”
She turned to Jenny. “You made it abundantly clear how you feel about me and that you don’t think I should be a sister in this sorority. Your email said it all. Now you want the people here in this room to believe that despite having shown yourself to be unfair and hostile to your own pledges, and despite having misled them about interactions between us and our tutor, that you are telling the truth about Fred hitting on you and using us? You want them to ignore our statements that nothing inappropriate happened, and just trust that you know better than we do what the relationship was like? And we should ignore that all of the emails that are in our accounts have suddenly vanished from your account? I wonder what else has vanished from that account, Jenny? Maybe an email to Fred’s girlfriend about how he was having sex with his clients?”
Jenny jumped to her feet. She was furious, her face turning red and contorting in rage as she shouted at Annalee. “You lying BITCH! You stuck-up wannabe little shit! You think that after all the arrogant crap you doled out this semester that anyone in this sorority thinks you have a shred of credibility? I don’t give a fuck WHO your mother is! You’re going to be out of this house so fast that you’ll be picking splinters from the door out of your ass!” She lunged for the redhead, fists swinging.
I was barely out of my seat when Jenny went down hard on her ass. Annie had hit her like a freight train, tackling her head on and knocking her backwards in a blur. She had the blond girl pinned down and was punching away as Jenny tried desperately to protect herself with her arms. Violet was the first to react, and she grabbed Annie and tried to pull her off the other girl, but it took her, Annalee, and I together to drag Annie back. Her braid was coming loose, and she had a red mark on one cheek where a stray blow from Jenny had caught her in the face, but as they say, you should see the other guy.
Jenny looked like she had what would be a hell of a black eye tomorrow. Her shirt was torn, her hair wild, and her face had a dazed look on it that suggested that, while Annie hadn’t knocked her out, she was definitely on a standing eight count. She wasn’t even trying to get up.
As you might imagine, that was the end of that meeting. I was told to get Annie out of the Delta Sigma house, and I did, not pausing to check on anyone else. Once we got her out of the room with Jenny, I was able to talk her into leaving with me without any more trouble. “It won’t do either of us any good if you end up getting arrested for assault,” I said, putting my arm around her and urging her out of the building.
“She deserved it!” Annie squawked. “Lying, posing sack of shit! I’ll kick her ass again if I see her!”
“If she’s smart, she’s never going to get near you again,” I said, pulling her along gently as I hurried us away from Delta Sigma and down the street. “Damn, Annie! You were on her before anyone else could even get up! You hit her like..”
“A hurricane?” She finished for me, smiling that dangerous smile.
“Yeah. Like a hurricane.” I squeezed her close to me. “Hurricane Annie one, Jenny zero.”
“I’m kind of a badass,” she agreed. “Now--we are two blocks from ice cream downtown, or three blocks from my dorm room and other tackle-based activities.”
“You’re the badass,” I said. “You’ve earned the biggest ice cream sundae you want, as far as I’m concerned.”
She looked up at me, then kissed me. “I think that this may be the first time in my life that I’m turning down ice cream.”
* * *
Things sorted themselves out from there fairly quickly. I heard from Melissa and Delta Sigma a couple days after the meeting. They had suspended Jenny from the sorority pending a full investigation into her handling of the pledges. Laura told me later that when they interviewed a few of Jenny’s ex-boyfriends, they discovered that one of them had broken it off with her after she did a whole dominatrix thing on him, which made my story about her come-on in the basement seem less unlikely. It was looking a lot like Jenny wasn’t going to be staying in Delta Sigma much longer, and Laura said word was she was already looking to transfer away from Maxwell.
Laura was staying in the sorority. She and the other two girls had been cleared from all restrictions, and had joined the other pledges who were just waiting for their formal ceremony to be made full sisters. “I’ve got a good social life, I have some good friends now, and I have reason to stay on top of my work,” she said to me over a cup of coffee. “And I have a tutor I can call if something starts going sideways. If it’s all right with his girlfriend.” She grinned at Annie, who raised her cup of coffee back in a mock salute.
“I approve,” Annie said, “since you clearly understand who to call first.” I knew she was kidding Laura, but I’m not gonna lie - it felt kind of good to feel like Annie was possessive about me. It was a new feeling, and one I could get used to - in moderation.
Violet was more of a surprise to me. She had also opted to stay in the sorority. I thought that she’d be out at the end of the year and focused on athletics, but apparently her scheduling became much more manageable without Jenny causing her problems. As it turned out, Violet was one of the few places that Jenny had been right about something - she turned out to be very much the sort of young woman Delta Sigma liked. So much so, in fact, that she was tapped to be the pledgemistress for the next incoming class. I saw her at the occasional party, though we never really became friends beyond the “hey, how’s it going?” stage.
Annalee Allgood? I guess it would have made for a better story if she had left Delta Sigma and went off to do things her way on her own, leaving behind her mother and her past and everything else. Then again, maybe it isn’t fair to think that doing that would be any more impressive than deciding to pursue her goals and show her family who she really was capable of being. Either way, Annalee remained in Delta Sigma, and she quickly made a name for herself in her academic department as well. The two of us got into good arguments regularly. She and Annie actually became good friends; I think that Annie jumping in and taking Jenny down and protecting Annalee had made quite the impression. And when Annalee got pompous about something, Annie would laugh and tell her to stop sounding like her mother, which was about as effective an intervention as you could have with Annalee Allgood.
So what about me and Annie?
It snowed about two weeks after that big night at Delta Sigma. It was a new snow, one that falls on ground that was previously dry, and so it had that beautiful white, clean look to it that a new snow has for the first few hours, before people track it up and cars drive through it and dirt and muck take the place of the pristine, smooth fields of the stuff. I had bought a huge thermos and filled it with the best hot cocoa that Buzzy Bean could provide, piping hot, and had talked Annie into walking with me in the snow. I had taken her for a good twenty minute walk away from most of campus, down past a few of the athletic buildings, and out to a place I had accidentally discovered. It was a secondary practice field--one that was used for the occasional club sport or for position practice for one of the larger sports—and it had only a few lights from a nearby building illuminating it. There were two sets of metal bleachers, the type that are maybe fifteen rows high, along one side of the field, facing out over the open space and towards a row of trees beyond. Behind them, houses sparkled with holiday lights in the distance.
I cleared off one of the bleachers with a brush and then put down a couple of seat cushions I brought with us, and the two of us sat there under a big warm blanket, drinking hot cocoa and leaning against one another and watching the snow fall. It was pretty damn perfect, at least as long as the cocoa held out and kept us warm.
“Like it?” I asked Annie.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, and kissed my cheek. “You know I want to run and make snow angels in the middle of it, right?”
“I know. And you’ll freeze to death on the way back to the dorm if you do.”
“I’m considering the risk,” she said teasingly.
“Listen, I wanted to tell you something important,” I said.
She looked at me as if she was expecting a joke, but then realized I was serious. “What is it, Fred?”
“I’ve been thinking. About us. And about this semester.”
She pulled back a little. “I swear to god, Fred, if you brought me all the way out here to break up with me I will kill you and they will never, ever find the body.” She laughed, then looked at me again. “You didn’t bring me out here to break up, did you?” Her voice was suddenly very quiet.
“No!” I said quickly. “That’s the LAST thing I want to do.” I grabbed her hand tightly in my own.
She breathed out. “Okay. Panic averted.”
“Jeez, Annie, why would you think I wanted to break up with you?”
She whacked me on the arm. “Shut up! I’m scared, okay? I nearly screwed this up once already!”
“You didn’t screw it up. Jenny screwed it up,” I said. “Anyway, that’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about. Not Jenny - but all of it. The whole mess. I’ve thought about it, and I made a decision. I’m going to quit tutoring for Delta Sigma.”
Annie looked at me like I was crazy. “But you just went through all that stuff to keep that job! And the salary is ridiculously good!”
“Yeah, it is. But it almost cost me this amazing woman I really like. And I don’t want anything to screw things up between me and her except me and her. If I stay on with Delta Sigma, Annie, I’m going to end up doing ‘emergency tutoring’ again at some point, and even I don’t, I’ll still be tutoring lots of good-looking women. That’s a recipe for trouble I don’t need. There are other jobs. I was getting by just fine with my old work, and I can go back to that.”
“Fred, I’m not going to get all jealous just because you’re tutoring a good looking girl,” Annie protested.
“I know that. But why take a chance? What happens if something else goes wrong? Look, I would rather focus my time and energy on the really great thing I have going on in my life. I’d rather spend my extra time with you than with some other person just to make money. I’ve got a lifetime to make money. I have YOU right now.”
“You really want to walk away from that much money? For me?” Annie asked. Her hands went to my cheeks and she pressed her forehead to mine. “You’re an idiot. A big sweet idiot, but an idiot.”
“You say the nicest things,” I said, and kissed her.
We started back towards the dorm a few minutes later, hand in hand. I had the bag with the cushions and the mugs and thermos over one shoulder. As we made our way down the quiet street, Annie squeezed my hand and looked at me sideways. “You know, you don’t have to give tutoring up completely.”
“I know. I can still do the tutoring center for some extra cash.”
“No. I mean SPECIAL tutoring.” She gave me a grin. “I might need some extra lessons now and then. I’ve been known to fall behind in classes. Maybe what I need is the occasional bit of extra incentive to do better. What do you think, Mr. Tutor? Are you up to the job?”
“I’m not sure anyone is up to that job, Annie,” I laughed. “But I’m willing to give it a try.”
* * *
The email didn’t say I could bring anyone with me, but Annie was at my side when I arrived. I knocked, and a sister let me in and led us to one of the smaller rooms. She opened the door and ushered us in.
At a table in the center of the room, several members of the sorority were seated, including Melissa. At one end of the table was Jenny, who looked at me smugly. There was an empty seat at the other end, which I assumed was for me. “Sit down, Fred,” the president said. I pulled a chair away from the wall and placed it next to mine for Annie, then sat.
“We’ve asked you to come today because of some disturbing allegations that have been made, and because of our conversation earlier in the week,” Melissa began. “When we spoke, I made it known to you that there had been concerns raised about your work with our Delta Sigma pledges. You told me that those concerns were baseless, and then indicated that there might be some resentment involved because of a rebuffed attempt at a relationship. Am I correctly restating that conversation?”
“You are,” I said.
“I approached Jenny regarding your allegation, and about the anonymous note that you gave me allegedly attempting to break you and your girlfriend up. Jenny vigorously denied your story, and told a much different version of what happened in the basement when you visited on that day. We have called this meeting to allow Jenny to make her complaint, and to allow you to respond before we make any final decisions regarding your employment or any other steps we may need to take, such as referral to the college for harassment charges.”
I nodded. None of this was a surprise.
“You will be given ample opportunity to speak on your own behalf, I assure you, but be warned - we do not look kindly on those who abuse our pledges. This is not a court of law. This is something far, far worse,” the president continued. “If we decide that you are in the wrong, it won’t just be here at Maxwell that you will be shunned. Delta Sigma has a long reach, and we will use it. Do you still wish to maintain your story as it stands?”
She looked at me expectantly, like she thought I was going to immediately back down, but I just nodded. “Yes, I do. I’ve told you the truth.”
“All right,” she said. “Jenny, would you please tell us what happened in the basement on the day in question?”
Jenny glared at me as she sat forward to reply. “Fred had contacted me to ask if he could come by and speak to me about the pledges. He said it was important, so I told him to come by that afternoon. We were cleaning up after the big party all morning, and he said that the problem wasn’t one he was comfortable talking about on the phone. When he arrived, one of the sisters let me know, and I came down to see him. He asked if there was somewhere we could talk that was a bit more private, so I took him down the basement. I probably, in retrospect, shouldn’t have done that given what I knew about Fred from the pledges, but he had seemed like a nice guy before, and I figured that maybe they were just angry because he was making them do their work.”
“When we went downstairs, though, he told me that he wasn’t there about the pledges. He said he was there because he wanted me to go out with him. He said that he had fallen for me when he was tutoring me earlier in the semester, and that he couldn’t get the image of me...” She looked down, as if she was ashamed. “The image of me naked, from when he used his ‘method’ to tutor me - he couldn’t get it out of his head. He said I was the hottest girl he had ever seen, and he said it in a way that suggested—well, that he had seen more than a few girls undressed because of his “tutoring.” I mean, it was bad enough that I had let him see me that one time, but I needed that grade, and it worked, so I figured it was what it was. But the idea that he thought I might want to actually date him? It was gross. Honestly. I felt sick.”
Annie rolled her eyes, but I didn’t react. It wouldn’t help me in the least to seem like I was anything but polite.
“Anyway, I told him that wasn’t going to happen, but he got angry about it. He said that I was just like the other girls, and that I needed someone to “manage” me and make sure I behaved properly. He called the pledges his ‘toy girls’, and said he could make them do anything he wanted, like little dress-up dolls. Anatomically correct dress-up dolls. I remember he said that, because it was so creepy,” Jenny continued, shuddering. “He said that what I needed was good old fashioned discipline, and that he would give it to me right there. That was it for me - I told him that he was a fucking creep, and that I wanted him out of the house immediately.”
“But you didn’t come to me with this story.” Melissa asked. “Why?”
Jenny looked a little shamefaced at the question. “It was stupid, but…I was worried about the pledges. I knew how close to failing they were, and their grades had gone up while they worked with Fred. I thought that if I said anything, he might sabotage them for revenge. I didn’t want them to lose out because of me.” She folded her arms. “Besides, I figured that I would wait until the end of the semester and then come to you. Once the grades were in, all his leverage would be gone, and I could get him fired without worrying about him taking it out on our pledges. I thought I could just wait it out for a few weeks as long as I stayed away from him.”
“And what changed your mind?” Melissa asked.
“When you came to me and told me he was saying that I had hit on him. If I didn’t say something now, he’d be able to control the whole narrative, and it would be even harder to get him out at the semester. Plus I wasn’t sure if some of the behavior of the pledges was his influence. They had been more unruly and troublesome than usual, and I was starting to think he was turning them against us.” Jenny looked at me, an angry glare on her face. “Then that psycho over there next to him showed up in the library and hit me with a smoothie and started screaming at me about stealing her boyfriend. It was just too much. So when you asked, I had to tell the whole story this time. Fred isn’t a good guy. He’s manipulative and is dangerous to our pledges, and his girlfriend is literally a physical threat.”
“Did you send an anonymous letter to this woman at any point?” Melissa asked.
“No, I did not,” Jenny said firmly. “She’s in a class with me - that’s all.”
“And it is your assertion that Fred has been acting inappropriately towards the pledges?”
“I’m not saying that I have evidence,” Jenny said slowly. “But what I’ve seen suggests that his control over them has had a negative impact. Either he is using them unwillingly through blackmail regarding grades, or they are cooperating with him because they’ve fallen under his influence, but whichever it is, I think he’s the reason they’ve been so defiant.”
“Has he attempted to contact you again since the basement incident?”
“No….well…I haven’t allowed him to speak to me. I’ve seen him a few times around campus and he has moved toward me, but I always moved away quickly.” Jenny was now putting on a good show of looking uncomfortable. “I didn’t want to be around him. Like I said, he’s creepy.”
Melissa looked at the other women at the table. “Do any of you want to ask anything further?” There were no takers. I didn’t love the looks I was getting from the group as a whole, but I had to trust that the women would be fair. Otherwise, I was toast.
“Would you like to give your side of the story, Fred?” Melissa asked me.
“I would. I started working for Delta Sigma when Jenny invited me. She told me that she had talked up my success with her to the rest of the sorority and that she had persuaded you that I was legit. In fact, as I understand it, she disclosed to you, the sorority president, that she had been naked in front of me as part of the “special process”. Is that correct?”
“She did,” Melissa said.
“She told me that you found her situation somewhat amusing and speculated that it would be highly effective in getting members who were in academic trouble to raise their grades. Again, is this accurate?” I asked.
“We discussed that, jokingly at first,” Melissa answered. “The more we talked, however, the more I felt it might actually work.”
“So you hired me to work with your sisters who fell below a certain average in classes. Jenny specifically brought me three pledges who were in difficult academic positions - Annalee Allgood, Violet Morris, and Laura Bonner. She gave me full permission to use any method I saw fit to raise their grades, and they all agreed to take part in the “special program” because they wanted to stay eligible for the sorority, and in Violet’s case, keep her scholarship.”
“I worked with these pledges for a couple of months. During that time, I was also in a relationship with Annie Jenkins, who is here today with me. At first, there were no significant problems. I implemented the study program with the pledges, and after a few sessions where minor punishments were meted out, grades started to improve.”
“Wait,” interrupted one of the women at the table. “What were the ‘minor punishments’ you used?”
I opened my backpack and took out my notebook, leafing back through the pages. “I believe that I had to spank Annalee twice. Once was on her pants. The second was on her panties, but that was in front of Jenny. Violet had to run for her practice in children’s clothes, and was later given a wedgie by her fellow pledges at my direction. Laura spent a good portion of one tutoring session in her underwear in Collins.”
“Some of those don’t seem to be minor,” the woman said.
“Compared to what I saw at your party a couple of weeks ago, where pledges were publicly paddled and put in wet t-shirts or less, I think this was reasonably minor. However, I would point out that none of these punishments required nudity or intimate contact on my part, and all were well within the guidelines that were set out by the sorority.”
Reluctantly, the woman nodded. “Continue, please.”
“It was at that point,” I said, “that my girlfriend broke up with me very suddenly. At first, she refused to even speak to me. I had no idea why, and I tried giving her space at first. Later, Jenny even told me that she thought I should walk away from the relationship. At the time, I thought she was just being kind. I decided that I would focus on the pledges and getting grades up.”
“I also finally got Annie to tell me what had set her off. It turned out to be an anonymous email saying that I was cheating on her with one of the pledges - having sex with them in the stacks at Collins. Of course that wasn’t true, and when I finally got her to talk to me, Annie and I were able to work things out and resume our relationship.
“Right after that, I was invited to the Delta Sigma party I referred to earlier. During the event, I was a little concerned at the extent of the punishment of the three pledges. I decided to come see Jenny the next day to ask her to ease off on them, as I was concerned that if they were being punished more harshly at her end, the motivation to improve the grades would vanish. Jenny, as she said, asked me to come to the house to speak to her, and when I arrived, she did invite me to the basement to talk about the pledges.”
“When I went down there, Jenny surprised me. I started talking about the pledges, but she changed the subject almost immediately. She tried to convince me that the tutoring methods I was using were clear evidence that I had a sexual interest in dominating women - that I was looking for excuses to get girls naked in front of me or put them in demeaning positions, and that the rest of what I was doing was just pretense. That was pretty uncomfortable, but then she said that she thought I was good at it, and that I should lean into it more. I told her that I wasn’t interested in that, and that I was happily dating, but she dismissed that. She said I’d never be satisfied with a girl who wouldn’t submit to me. Then she took off her top and shorts, handed me a hairbrush, and lay over my lap. She said that I needed a woman like her who could submit to my discipline properly, and that the two of us together could have our pick of pledges to ‘discipline’ over the next few years if we got together. She asked me to spank her so she could prove that she could handle my worst.”
“That’s a lie!” Jenny said angrily. “As if I’d EVER do something like that!” Melissa put out a hand, however, and the blonde sat back in her chair angrily. She glowered at me again as I resumed.
“I helped her up from my lap immediately, told her I was going to leave, and told her she was completely mistaken about what I wanted. I told her she was attractive, but I was interested in someone else, and not in what she was offering. That’s when she got angry. She was furious at the idea that I would turn her down for Annie - that I would throw away Delta Sigma on a platter for someone she thought was clearly inferior to herself. She swore she’d make sure I didn’t just lose my contract with Delta Sigma, but that I would never work at Maxwell again. I got out of there as quickly as I could, and I immediately called Annie to tell her what had happened. Since then, I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop; my contact with the pledges has been restricted, and I learned that Jenny had given them instructions to stay away from me. I knew this call was coming, but I hoped I would get a fair hearing. So far that’s been the case.” I sat back, waiting for what I assumed would be the first of several questions.
“Other than your story, Fred, do you have any evidence that backs up your allegations?” Melissa asked. “Let’s be honest - we know Jenny. You aren’t a sister here. Tell me why I shouldn’t give her the benefit of any doubt I might have.”
I reached into my backpack and pulled out the printouts. “Jenny told you that she didn’t speak to you earlier because she was concerned that I might sabotage the pledges, and she didn’t want them to lose out on an opportunity, right?” I handed her the printouts of the complaints from the pledges and Jenny’s responses. “These are copies of messages that were sent between the pledges and Jenny regarding the level of punishment they have been subjected to and requests for reasonable consideration. Take a look at the replies Jenny sent back. Do those look like replies from someone who is deeply concerned about the pledges?”
The second woman who had spoken earlier reached for the printouts, but Melissa caught her hand. “How do you have these, Fred?”
Crap. I had really hoped that I wouldn’t be asked this question. Either I had to throw the pledges under the bus, or I had to admit to having stolen the messages from Jenny’s own computer. Neither was a good option. I had only come up with one other option for this situation, so I tried it. “I’ll answer that, but only for you, and not in front of others. There are implications to the answer that affect multiple people, and it would be unfair for me to do so without their consent or presence.”
“How convenient!” Jenny said, throwing her hands up. “He can’t share his sources. How do we know this stuff wasn’t made up completely?”
“Well, we could look at your laptop, Jenny, and see if the messages are there, too,” I said. “But if you had any sense at all, you’d have deleted them before this meeting.”
“I’m happy to let anyone search my email,” Jenny said smugly, and I knew that I was right - she had anticipated this and deleted anything in there that could possibly be seen negatively.
“Like I said, I’m happy to explain, but only to you,” I said to Melissa. “You can share what you need to after that, but I think if you listen to me, you’ll understand why I can’t explain in front of others.”
Melissa steepled her fingers for a moment, looking at me. Finally, she nodded. “Outside in the hall. Come on.” She stood and stepped out of the room, and I followed, papers in hand.
Once the door was closed, she turned to me expectantly. “All right, Fred. How did you get the emails?”
“I got them from the pledges themselves. They contacted me a little while back, telling me that things had gotten worse and that Jenny was coming down on them harder than ever, and they asked if there was anything I could do. I told them to send a polite letter to Jenny requesting relief, and that if they didn’t get any results, that they should forward the letter to me and I would bring it to you directly. They were afraid that you’d ignore them if they tried to go around Jenny to speak to you, or that you were aware of the level of punishment they were getting and approved of it. Originally, I didn’t plan on showing you the emails at all - I was just going to summarize their complaints. Then I saw the replies from Jenny, though, and I knew it would be important for you to see them.”
Melissa held out her hand, but I held back the papers. “I need your word that the pledges won’t be punished for sharing these with me,” I said. “Otherwise, I’ll take my chances. I’m not screwing them over here.”
“I promise. Now give me the emails,” she said. She took the copies I handed her and read over them. It didn’t take very long; the whole set was only a couple of pages in total. She looked up at me, a cautious expression on her face. “You know that if there are no copies of these emails on Jenny’s account, she can just claim that you and the pledges forged these entirely?”
I nodded. “I know she can make that claim. But look at the headers for the emails. These aren’t just cut and pasted text. Those header blocks contain information that would allow the emails to be traced and timestamped. If you wanted to, I bet you could ask the college to verify that these emails were legitimate. They probably back up the server regularly, and they might be able to pull the backup and find the originals. I don’t know for sure. Still, would I suggest that you try any of that if I wasn’t confident that these are legit?”
Melissa considered this for a moment, then she looked at the emails again. “Let’s go back inside. I’ll keep your ‘source’ secret.”
When we entered the room again, Annie was watching me closely, eyes wide in a “Did it work?” question that was unmistakable. I gave her a quick smile and sat down again. Melissa walked around the table to her seat, then handed the printouts to the other woman. “I am willing to allow these emails to be considered as part of this hearing. While I am not certain of their authenticity, I am sufficiently convinced that we can determine the authenticity if necessary. For now, the source is unimportant.”
Jenny looked like she wanted to argue this, but the other woman was already looking at the email. She looked up at Jenny with a questioning gaze. “How often have you punished these three pledges, specifically, in the last month?”
Jenny scoffed. “I don’t know. Just like regular pledges, mostly. I mean, they’ve been more trouble than usual — we all know about Annalee’s mouth, and Laura is lazy. I’ve had to discipline them for failing to do their chores properly, but not excessively.”
“These emails suggest that you had a sister naked in front of men from outside the sorority. Is that what you consider a “normal” punishment, Jenny?” The tone of the woman was unmistakably unhappy.
“She wasn’t actually naked in front of them. That’s a total exaggeration. She snuck out of the house when she was on restriction, so I had confiscated her clothing to make a point. She was doing laundry in the laundry room near where there were people, that’s all, and she had a basketful of clothing covering her up,” Jenny explained.
“I see,” said the second woman, but she didn’t sound convinced. “And the complaint about scheduling?”
“A misunderstanding that was corrected. I even told the pledge in the email that I was hoping she’d make it as a Delta Sigma. I think she has the right stuff.”
“Even if we allow for the possibility that Jenny has been overzealous in her punishments,” Melissa asked, “is there any other evidence you can offer suggesting that your story is the truth, Fred?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Jenny says I’m a creep and that she was concerned that I was doing things to the pledges. I suggest you call them down here and ask them point blank if I have ever done or said anything inappropriate while tutoring them or at any other time in their presence. See what they say.”
“All right,” Melissa agreed. “Let’s hear from them. Sarah, would you go fetch those three pledges and bring them here?”
The second woman rose and set off to find the trio. “We’ll take a ten minute break,” Melissa said, and rose. “If you need the restroom…”
“I’m fine,” I said. Annie reached over and put her hand on my leg. “How do you think it’s going?” I asked her.
“Honestly?” She looked at me with a small frown. “I don’t think we’ve convinced anyone not to believe Jenny. I mean, we knew it was going to be an uphill battle, but I thought that the emails would have more impact. Right now, it’s still he said, she said - and if I’m a woman, I believe a woman who tells me that something happened in a basement with some guy.”
I grimaced. “I know. Hell, if it wasn’t me, I would believe her over me too. But they haven’t heard from the pledges yet. They’re women, too. Maybe what they say will make more of an impact.”
I certainly hoped that was the case, but things were not looking great. Annie and I had gone over that flash drive multiple times trying to find anything else we could use, but there was nothing else that stood out. And there was no sign of that anonymous email. I was basically out of evidence.
I sat there trying to figure out what I could do - was there anything I was forgetting? Anything at all? Unfortunately, by the time that Sarah returned with the pledges, I still was drawing a blank. Maybe I could have Annie say something? No. No matter what she said, the others could dismiss it as being lies from the girlfriend of the accused.
Melissa’s voice brought me back to the moment. “Pledges, we’ve asked you to come here to answer a few important questions.” She looked at Violet, Laura, and Annalee in turn. “You are expected to answer truthfully and to the best of your knowledge. To that end, I want to make it absolutely clear that you will not be punished in any way for any answer you give in this meeting. You have my word as president and as a Delta Sigma sister.”
“Let’s start with you, Laura. Have you worked with Fred this semester?” Melissa asked.
“Yes,” Laura replied. “He’s tutored me.”
“During that time, were you subject to any punishments or disciplinary actions on Fred’s part?”
“Yes, I was. He made me strip in the library. Down to my underwear.”
“Was there anything else?”
“He was part of the reason I was wearing so little when I was serving drinks at the mid-semester party. I was being punished for not getting my assignments done on time.”
“I see,” Melissa said. “Did Fred ever touch you inappropriately, Laura?”
“No,” she said.
“Did he look at you in a way that made you uncomfortable when he had you undress?”
“Well, I mean, sure, but not like a ‘oh shit he’s a creeper who’s gonna grope me’ kind of way. He looked at me, and I was uncomfortable because it was embarrassing to be in my underwear in front of him in a public library.” Laura looked at me with a shrug. “He was doing his job, though. It isn’t like I was mad at him or anything.”
“So you never felt like he acted toward you in a manner that was outside the scope of your tutoring agreement?” Melissa asked this with an arched brow, as if she found the idea hard to believe.
“Can I be honest? I kind of wished he had been more interested early on in the semester,” Laura said. “It was a little hard to be half-dressed in front of a guy for an hour and feel like he wasn’t even slightly interested. But when I found out he was dating, I understood. He was loyal. I liked that.”
“And did you ever complain to Jenny about Fred?”
“No. But I tried not to complain to Jenny about anything,” Laura replied. “Jenny wasn’t big on complaints.” She looked over at Jenny, then down at the ground.
“Thank you, Laura,” Melissa said. “Violet? What was your experience with Fred as a tutor?”
Violet shrugged. “I really didn’t have a huge amount of time with him. My schedule is always packed, and I tried to meet with him as infrequently as I could.”
“But you did meet with him on occasion?” Melissa persisted.
“Yeah, a couple of times. And yes, he punished me. Twice. Both of them sucked big time.”
Sarah leaned in. “Can you be a little more specific?”
“Well, the first time, he made sure I had to go out for our team’s morning training run wearing clothes that he provided. He sent over little girl clothing - like a dress and ankle socks and hair ribbons, and a pair of cartoon underpants, and I had to run the entire practice wearing that stuff. They’re still calling me Care Bear on the team because of those underpants, although I guess I could have ended up with a worse nickname. Then there was the wedgie he had the other two pledges give me.”
“The other pledges? He didn’t do it himself?”
“No. But it still hurt like hell,” Violet said. “I was pretty pissed off, but then he apologized - he said that he should have done more, and that he probably shouldn’t have punished me for the missed work like that. He said he would do better if I wanted to stick it out with him, or he would resign as my tutor if that’s what I wanted. The others talked me into giving him another shot.”
“So you gave him another chance,” Melissa asked, “and how did that go?”
“Fine. He’s been a decent tutor. I’ve had to be more responsible about keeping up with my assignments. And before you ask, he hasn’t punished me since then. He hasn’t touched me inappropriately, made me do anything involving being naked, or made any kind of suggestive comment. No offense, Fred - but the guy is kind of boring more than anything else.”
I chuckled. “No offense taken, Violet.”
“Fine. Thank you, Violet. That leaves you, Annalee.” The president turned to face the redheaded pledge. “Annalee, of all three of you, is it fair to say that you’ve been the one who has been disciplined the most?”
Annalee rolled her eyes, clearly embarrassed. “Yes, I think that’s well-known to everyone in the sorority, given how often I’ve been paddled.”
“And has Fred ever been the one to spank you?”
She made a sour face. “Yes.”
Melissa sighed. “Could you be a little more specific, please?”
Clearly unhappy to be talking about this, Annalee answered. “Yes, he spanked me. Twice. Once on my pants, over in Collins, after I argued with him about his instructions. And then once in front of you and Jenny. With the hairbrush. I had to take my pants down for that.”
“I remember. You were very unhappy about that, weren’t you, Annalee?”
“Yes, I was. It was humiliating.”
“Did you feel,” Melissa asked carefully, “like Fred was treating you unfairly?”
There was a pause before Annalee answered. “At the time, yes. But at the time, I was being a complete ass, and that spanking was well-deserved.”
This response seemed to surprise Sarah, who apparently was more used to the uncooperative and self-righteous version of Annalee. “Well-deserved?”
“Yes. I came to Maxwell for a lot of reasons, but I brought a lot of baggage with me, too. I had to figure out some things before I realized all the ways I was being an idiot. When it happened, I would have gladly kicked Fred where it hurts most for what he did. But I figured out pretty soon after that where the real problem was, and it wasn’t with Fred.” The redhead looked at me and actually smiled! “If anything, he actually was the first one to teach me something since I was in middle school.”
Damn. Praise from Annalee? What was next? Winning the lottery?
Melissa continued her questions. “At any time, particularly when you were in a state of undress, did you feel that Fred was behaving inappropriately towards you? Did he ever touch you or speak to you in a manner that was sexually suggestive?”
“No,” Annalee said firmly. “He didn’t.”
“Thank you, Annalee. Are there any additional questions?” Melissa asked.
Jenny stood. “I have a question for the pledges. Are any of you claiming that you were either put into this tutoring program for inappropriate reasons or without cause?”
The pledges looked at one another, and all of them shook their heads. “I don’t believe any of us are saying that,” Laura said.
“And,” Jenny continued, “are any of you claiming that you have not committed violations of Delta Sigma policies or standards during your time as pledges that would result in punishment being given?”
“No,” Laura said again. “I’m not saying that.”
Violet nodded her assent. “I’ve broken policies.”
Annalee was the last to speak. “I have as well. I don’t think that any of us would argue that we’ve been punished without cause.”
Jenny smiled triumphantly. “Thank you.”
“I have one more question,” Sarah asked. She looked at the pledges. “Hypothetically, let’s assume that you are no longer Delta Sigma sisters next semester. Let’s also hypothetically assume that your grades once again slip for some reason, putting your place here at Maxwell University in jeopardy. Would you contact Fred for tutoring again, knowing what his methods may entail, and knowing that you have total freedom to choose whatever options you want to select for dealing with your situation, and not the one Delta Sigma selected for you?”
All three pledges paused for a moment. I took a deep breath. Their answers to this question were going to make or break this for me.
Laura spoke first. “Yes. I would hire Fred again to be my tutor. Obviously, I would prefer to use his traditional approach of working on the material from early in the semester, before I get way behind, as the way to succeed. But if you are asking me if I would, with my college future on the line, turn to Fred to do whatever it took to get me to the finish line, knowing that could involve significant discomfort? I absolutely would. He showed me that he understands how to get me to work, that he understands how to teach me what I don’t understand, and that he is willing to do either as needed in a professional and unthreatening way. He’s a good tutor, and a good guy.”
Laura turned to the other two pledges, offering them the floor. It was Violet who was next to answer. “Would I hire Fred as a tutor again? Probably not. It isn’t that I felt like he was ever out of line with me or that he was unfair in any way. It’s just that we never really meshed well. The fact is that my problems have almost nothing to do with academic issues. They have everything to do with trying to balance an athletic scholarship with required classes and membership in a sorority, along with the other things that come with being in college, like a desire for a social life. Fred never really tutored me - he was trying to help me with my time management and organization, and while his methods were more or less effective, I think I could have gotten similar results if I just had anyone holding me accountable.”
She looked over at me. “That’s really not meant as a knock on you personally, Fred. I think you probably are a very good tutor, but if I was on my own, I wouldn’t have chosen a tutor in the first place.”
I smiled and nodded to her gratefully to let her know I didn’t have any hard feelings. What she said was totally fair, and it was pretty accurate as well. She didn’t need me for classroom help, and she could get someone to help her with time management through the athletic department for free. There really was no reason for her to hire me again.
That left Annalee to answer. When she spoke, she looked directly at Sarah. “Would I hire Fred? Yes. And let me be clear about one other thing, too. Jenny asked if I had been punished without cause, and the answer to that is no. There was plenty of reason for me to be punished. That is not, however, the same thing as being punished appropriately. I learned this semester that when you are in a debate, you need to be able to think about things from both sides of the issue, if only to be able to understand how to better address the other side’s case. You are being asked to assume that having a reason to administer discipline means that ANY discipline is appropriate. Yes, I broke some rules this year, and I deserved to be punished. But did I deserve to be paddled every day for a week multiple times over the course of a single semester? Did I deserve to be publicly paddled at an open party for refusing to paddle a sister when instructed to? I don’t think that was right, and I don’t think that Delta Sigma should see that as appropriate either.”
She turned to Jenny. “You made it abundantly clear how you feel about me and that you don’t think I should be a sister in this sorority. Your email said it all. Now you want the people here in this room to believe that despite having shown yourself to be unfair and hostile to your own pledges, and despite having misled them about interactions between us and our tutor, that you are telling the truth about Fred hitting on you and using us? You want them to ignore our statements that nothing inappropriate happened, and just trust that you know better than we do what the relationship was like? And we should ignore that all of the emails that are in our accounts have suddenly vanished from your account? I wonder what else has vanished from that account, Jenny? Maybe an email to Fred’s girlfriend about how he was having sex with his clients?”
Jenny jumped to her feet. She was furious, her face turning red and contorting in rage as she shouted at Annalee. “You lying BITCH! You stuck-up wannabe little shit! You think that after all the arrogant crap you doled out this semester that anyone in this sorority thinks you have a shred of credibility? I don’t give a fuck WHO your mother is! You’re going to be out of this house so fast that you’ll be picking splinters from the door out of your ass!” She lunged for the redhead, fists swinging.
I was barely out of my seat when Jenny went down hard on her ass. Annie had hit her like a freight train, tackling her head on and knocking her backwards in a blur. She had the blond girl pinned down and was punching away as Jenny tried desperately to protect herself with her arms. Violet was the first to react, and she grabbed Annie and tried to pull her off the other girl, but it took her, Annalee, and I together to drag Annie back. Her braid was coming loose, and she had a red mark on one cheek where a stray blow from Jenny had caught her in the face, but as they say, you should see the other guy.
Jenny looked like she had what would be a hell of a black eye tomorrow. Her shirt was torn, her hair wild, and her face had a dazed look on it that suggested that, while Annie hadn’t knocked her out, she was definitely on a standing eight count. She wasn’t even trying to get up.
As you might imagine, that was the end of that meeting. I was told to get Annie out of the Delta Sigma house, and I did, not pausing to check on anyone else. Once we got her out of the room with Jenny, I was able to talk her into leaving with me without any more trouble. “It won’t do either of us any good if you end up getting arrested for assault,” I said, putting my arm around her and urging her out of the building.
“She deserved it!” Annie squawked. “Lying, posing sack of shit! I’ll kick her ass again if I see her!”
“If she’s smart, she’s never going to get near you again,” I said, pulling her along gently as I hurried us away from Delta Sigma and down the street. “Damn, Annie! You were on her before anyone else could even get up! You hit her like..”
“A hurricane?” She finished for me, smiling that dangerous smile.
“Yeah. Like a hurricane.” I squeezed her close to me. “Hurricane Annie one, Jenny zero.”
“I’m kind of a badass,” she agreed. “Now--we are two blocks from ice cream downtown, or three blocks from my dorm room and other tackle-based activities.”
“You’re the badass,” I said. “You’ve earned the biggest ice cream sundae you want, as far as I’m concerned.”
She looked up at me, then kissed me. “I think that this may be the first time in my life that I’m turning down ice cream.”
* * *
Things sorted themselves out from there fairly quickly. I heard from Melissa and Delta Sigma a couple days after the meeting. They had suspended Jenny from the sorority pending a full investigation into her handling of the pledges. Laura told me later that when they interviewed a few of Jenny’s ex-boyfriends, they discovered that one of them had broken it off with her after she did a whole dominatrix thing on him, which made my story about her come-on in the basement seem less unlikely. It was looking a lot like Jenny wasn’t going to be staying in Delta Sigma much longer, and Laura said word was she was already looking to transfer away from Maxwell.
Laura was staying in the sorority. She and the other two girls had been cleared from all restrictions, and had joined the other pledges who were just waiting for their formal ceremony to be made full sisters. “I’ve got a good social life, I have some good friends now, and I have reason to stay on top of my work,” she said to me over a cup of coffee. “And I have a tutor I can call if something starts going sideways. If it’s all right with his girlfriend.” She grinned at Annie, who raised her cup of coffee back in a mock salute.
“I approve,” Annie said, “since you clearly understand who to call first.” I knew she was kidding Laura, but I’m not gonna lie - it felt kind of good to feel like Annie was possessive about me. It was a new feeling, and one I could get used to - in moderation.
Violet was more of a surprise to me. She had also opted to stay in the sorority. I thought that she’d be out at the end of the year and focused on athletics, but apparently her scheduling became much more manageable without Jenny causing her problems. As it turned out, Violet was one of the few places that Jenny had been right about something - she turned out to be very much the sort of young woman Delta Sigma liked. So much so, in fact, that she was tapped to be the pledgemistress for the next incoming class. I saw her at the occasional party, though we never really became friends beyond the “hey, how’s it going?” stage.
Annalee Allgood? I guess it would have made for a better story if she had left Delta Sigma and went off to do things her way on her own, leaving behind her mother and her past and everything else. Then again, maybe it isn’t fair to think that doing that would be any more impressive than deciding to pursue her goals and show her family who she really was capable of being. Either way, Annalee remained in Delta Sigma, and she quickly made a name for herself in her academic department as well. The two of us got into good arguments regularly. She and Annie actually became good friends; I think that Annie jumping in and taking Jenny down and protecting Annalee had made quite the impression. And when Annalee got pompous about something, Annie would laugh and tell her to stop sounding like her mother, which was about as effective an intervention as you could have with Annalee Allgood.
So what about me and Annie?
It snowed about two weeks after that big night at Delta Sigma. It was a new snow, one that falls on ground that was previously dry, and so it had that beautiful white, clean look to it that a new snow has for the first few hours, before people track it up and cars drive through it and dirt and muck take the place of the pristine, smooth fields of the stuff. I had bought a huge thermos and filled it with the best hot cocoa that Buzzy Bean could provide, piping hot, and had talked Annie into walking with me in the snow. I had taken her for a good twenty minute walk away from most of campus, down past a few of the athletic buildings, and out to a place I had accidentally discovered. It was a secondary practice field--one that was used for the occasional club sport or for position practice for one of the larger sports—and it had only a few lights from a nearby building illuminating it. There were two sets of metal bleachers, the type that are maybe fifteen rows high, along one side of the field, facing out over the open space and towards a row of trees beyond. Behind them, houses sparkled with holiday lights in the distance.
I cleared off one of the bleachers with a brush and then put down a couple of seat cushions I brought with us, and the two of us sat there under a big warm blanket, drinking hot cocoa and leaning against one another and watching the snow fall. It was pretty damn perfect, at least as long as the cocoa held out and kept us warm.
“Like it?” I asked Annie.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, and kissed my cheek. “You know I want to run and make snow angels in the middle of it, right?”
“I know. And you’ll freeze to death on the way back to the dorm if you do.”
“I’m considering the risk,” she said teasingly.
“Listen, I wanted to tell you something important,” I said.
She looked at me as if she was expecting a joke, but then realized I was serious. “What is it, Fred?”
“I’ve been thinking. About us. And about this semester.”
She pulled back a little. “I swear to god, Fred, if you brought me all the way out here to break up with me I will kill you and they will never, ever find the body.” She laughed, then looked at me again. “You didn’t bring me out here to break up, did you?” Her voice was suddenly very quiet.
“No!” I said quickly. “That’s the LAST thing I want to do.” I grabbed her hand tightly in my own.
She breathed out. “Okay. Panic averted.”
“Jeez, Annie, why would you think I wanted to break up with you?”
She whacked me on the arm. “Shut up! I’m scared, okay? I nearly screwed this up once already!”
“You didn’t screw it up. Jenny screwed it up,” I said. “Anyway, that’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about. Not Jenny - but all of it. The whole mess. I’ve thought about it, and I made a decision. I’m going to quit tutoring for Delta Sigma.”
Annie looked at me like I was crazy. “But you just went through all that stuff to keep that job! And the salary is ridiculously good!”
“Yeah, it is. But it almost cost me this amazing woman I really like. And I don’t want anything to screw things up between me and her except me and her. If I stay on with Delta Sigma, Annie, I’m going to end up doing ‘emergency tutoring’ again at some point, and even I don’t, I’ll still be tutoring lots of good-looking women. That’s a recipe for trouble I don’t need. There are other jobs. I was getting by just fine with my old work, and I can go back to that.”
“Fred, I’m not going to get all jealous just because you’re tutoring a good looking girl,” Annie protested.
“I know that. But why take a chance? What happens if something else goes wrong? Look, I would rather focus my time and energy on the really great thing I have going on in my life. I’d rather spend my extra time with you than with some other person just to make money. I’ve got a lifetime to make money. I have YOU right now.”
“You really want to walk away from that much money? For me?” Annie asked. Her hands went to my cheeks and she pressed her forehead to mine. “You’re an idiot. A big sweet idiot, but an idiot.”
“You say the nicest things,” I said, and kissed her.
We started back towards the dorm a few minutes later, hand in hand. I had the bag with the cushions and the mugs and thermos over one shoulder. As we made our way down the quiet street, Annie squeezed my hand and looked at me sideways. “You know, you don’t have to give tutoring up completely.”
“I know. I can still do the tutoring center for some extra cash.”
“No. I mean SPECIAL tutoring.” She gave me a grin. “I might need some extra lessons now and then. I’ve been known to fall behind in classes. Maybe what I need is the occasional bit of extra incentive to do better. What do you think, Mr. Tutor? Are you up to the job?”
“I’m not sure anyone is up to that job, Annie,” I laughed. “But I’m willing to give it a try.”
* * *
Last edited by Fred Key on Wed Oct 28, 2026 6:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Fred Key
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Re: The Tutor, Volume II (COMPLETE)
I'd like to take a moment here at the end of Volume II to thank all of the people who left comments and feedback over the course of this story. There were a lot of you: cradulich, WingDing, Somebody, Mick Gesitt, rtnd26, HankHill33, JustHere10, colomale2, barelin, jojo12026, flyingmonk, PhilMarlowe, and many others who hung in here for the entire year as I slowly got this written. I can tell you that this never would have gotten finished if it hadn't been for your support and encouragement, over and over again, when I finally got a chapter out. I know that my stories aren't always what people want to read when they come to a board like this, and that's totally cool. I'm thrilled that so many people DID find something they enjoyed.
It would be absolutely unforgivable if I didn't mention two people who were of particular importance to this effort. One is EddieDavidson, who over the past few months has been a go-to person for advice and feedback, and for sharing the challenges of getting a story done. Thanks, Eddie - you got me through to the end of the story. The other is NeufAtora, who sent me an incredibly encouraging message that triggered the writing of Volume II, and who was also willing to give me some feedback at a couple of tough junctures. Neuf, I hope that if you get to read this story in complete form that it lives up to the encouragement you gave me for it.
Again, thanks for reading. I'm not sure what comes next for me, or when, but this has been a great ride.
FK
It would be absolutely unforgivable if I didn't mention two people who were of particular importance to this effort. One is EddieDavidson, who over the past few months has been a go-to person for advice and feedback, and for sharing the challenges of getting a story done. Thanks, Eddie - you got me through to the end of the story. The other is NeufAtora, who sent me an incredibly encouraging message that triggered the writing of Volume II, and who was also willing to give me some feedback at a couple of tough junctures. Neuf, I hope that if you get to read this story in complete form that it lives up to the encouragement you gave me for it.
Again, thanks for reading. I'm not sure what comes next for me, or when, but this has been a great ride.
FK
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