She furrowed her eyebrows and stuck her tongue out at me. “Watch me! Our podcast will live on even when we are old and gray!”

There was humor there, but also space to mourn for our future selves. Not being roommates–doing everything together–would eventually end. Everything came to an end at some point in time.

“Also,” she added, “when did you become such a nihilist? Is that jacket giving you bad vibes or something? You know what, that’s it. I’m going to burn sage across the house.”

“Isn’t sage for bad spirits? I’m not sure it will, you know,” I waved my hands in the air, “disperse bad vibes.”

She pointed a finger at me. “One more word about bad vibes and I’ll do it!”

We came into view of a few houses having rushing info sessions and I wanted to tour at least a few of them. Look at all my options and whatnot. I’m sure my mom would encourage me to try these things out like she did with everything else in my life.

...If I could handle that much pink. Kelly may have been onto something when she gave me pushback on the idea. The amount of pink I saw surely ran the paint company dry.

Hesitantly, I looked back to Kelly as we stepped out of the car. “Do you remember which houses we were supposed to avoid? The two that the one girl was talking about?”

She looked at me like I asked her an advanced calculus question. “Babe, they all sound the exact same to me. Alpha, beta, kappa, gamma, blah blah. I don’t think I could remember if you held a gun to my head.”

Hopefully we don’t run into any unfriendlies, then.

The first house we approached was pink, naturally. It had a Texas-looking theme about the party and probably some southern bombshells inside.

And a bombshell, I was not.

We entered anyway, deciding to make the best of the day we planned. A girl ran out. “Hi, y’all!” She had a really overdone southern accent. “Welcome to Kappa Phi Delta, we are here to help you scout out houses to rush! Oh, don’t you two look so cute.”

I mustered a small smile and a wave. It was awkward. “We’re just browsing today. I’m not completely sure if I’ll rush this year.”

“Oh, honey! You are welcome here in whatever year you are in.” She came a little closer and lowered her voice. “Just between you and me, avoid Beta Kappa Phi and Theta Nu. The former being worse than the latter.”

“I think another girl who invited us to rush week told us the same,” I whispered back.