Essentially, it went something like this: The first day, the pledges are locked in a room and not let out until they finish several cases of warm beer. They get black-out drunk, and the active brothers wake them at four the next morning. Somehow they’ve managed to strip the pledges down to their boxers and move them outside, so they are thoroughly confused when they get their bearings. It’s still dark, so the members of the fraternity’s executive board are holding torches. “Ladies,” they say, “welcome to hell.” Then they explain the rules of hell week. Rule number one is that pledges must hand in their cell phones. There will be no video or photographic evidence that any of this happened. No contact with friends or parents, anyone who might talk sense into the pledges or complain to the university. Rule number two is that pledges speak only when spoken to and must talk about themselves in the third person. Basically, they lose their right to speak and to the word “I.” Rule number three is that they will wear a coat and tie to class all week, which—combined with rule number four (no showers)—I assume is meant to humiliate them. Rule number five is that pledges eat one meal a day: canned tuna the first, canned Spam the next, and so on. And rule number six is that the pledges must sleep when they’re told and where they’re told. They’re given no explanation what this means, but they know it’s not going to be good. After listening to the rules, the pledges follow the active brothers back into the house and watch them eat a full breakfast of waffles and eggs. All while being told they won’t get their canned tuna until noon, but the thought of canned tuna itself is so repulsive to the hungover brothers that by the time noon rolls around, half don’t eat it. Days three to five comprise hours of cleaning, getting ketchup and hot sauce smeared on their bodies, sober driving, drunken push-ups, eating onions and Alka-Seltzer tablets, throwing up on each other, and getting beer cans pelted at their heads—and remember, no showers. Each night they receive sleeping assignments based on how well they answered questions about the fraternity’s history and founding principles: the best get to sleep in the study, the worst in the first-floor bathroom. At the end of day five, they think they’ve made it. The active brothers take them out for a nice dinner. They eat like they’ve never tasted bread before. They get drunk.

And then they wake up in the basement.

This is where the stories diverge, and I get the feeling none of them are telling the whole truth.

I don’t see Truman leave, but suddenly the door to the investigation room opens, and he’s there, eyes boring into Teddy and Oliver.