color blind - h.s. au

one

"This place is gorgeous, I almost forgot how pretty it is. You were so lucky to get in here," her mother exclaimed, placing her hands on Ellie's shoulders. Deda Watson was a legacy of the Pi Beta Phi chapter of the University of Kansas. Her mother had gone here and joined the sorority, and her mother before her. It was only right that Ellie join as well. It was tradition, after all.

Ellie had waited. She didn't want to have to deal with sorority activities until she had enough time to handle them. Now, in her senior year, she thought she'd be able to handle the energy of the girls in the house. It wasn't like sorority life would be awful, it was just time consuming. Plus the house was further away from her classes than she wanted it to be. After all her mother had done for her, though, joining a sorority for her last year in school was the least she could do. She was just lucky that they let her right in since she was a legacy. They usually required a mountain of extra curricular activities, but organized groups weren't exactly Ellie's thing.

"So you'll be fine here?" Ellie's father asked. He placed his roughly calloused hand on her shoulder, doing his best to be gentle, but it never worked with a hand as heavy as his.

"Of course I will be. You guys don't need to worry about me at all. All of the sisters will take care of me," she said, giving her dad the most confident smile she could force her cheeks into. He'd worked all his life to get her here and got a second job just to afford her education, after her mother insisted that she go here to get her degree. Being a legacy really did help for scholarships, but her dad was still working as a teacher in the day and a waiter at night just to make ends meet. She'd give up all of her education to help them if they would ever let her.

When her parents left, Ellie finally took the time to look around the already occupied side of the room. She had connected with the girl through Instagram and she seemed to be cool enough. Maybe a little more sarcastic and cynical than she expected from your average sorority girl, but she wasn't your average sorority girl either, so she wasn't one to judge. Gina, or Bev as she'd been asked to be called had the most band posters Ellie had ever seen on one wall. She was glad to know that at least within their own rooms, the sisters in the house were allowed to express themselves. She wouldn't feel bad putting up all of her pictures later.

Her neck almost snapped with how quickly she turned it when the door to her room opened. In popped not one, but two heads of blonde hair. She didn't recognize them, but they smiled at her as if they'd known her all her life.

"You're Eloise!" one of the girls exclaimed, stepping into the room in a pure white dress. It almost burned Ellie's eyes with how spotless it was.

"Please just call me Ellie," she said softly, giving them both a smile. The other girl, who looked like she could be the other's twin, stepped out as well in another white dress. Did they always match around here?

"Ellie," the second girl said, clasping her hands excitedly in front of her chest. "I'm Anna, this is Katy. We're your welcoming sisters!"

"Oh," Ellie said quietly, furrowing her eyebrows. She was still trying to decipher the pair. "That's wonderful. I was actually just wondering where the bathroom is."

"Oh, it's that door right there," Katy told her, pointing to a door on the opposite wall. "You share with the girls next door, the bathroom is in the middle. You can keep all of your stuff in there, though. It's not like a dorm, you don't have to carry it back and forth."

"Great," Ellie said, an actual smile on her face. Maybe she wouldn't mind being here after all.

"You're Deda Watson's daughter, right?" Anna asked, glancing around at the boxes on the ground. "My mom was in this sorority with your mom."

"Oh, that's so cool," Ellie responded, pulling her hair back into a ponytail.

"Well, we have an event going on right now to welcome all of the new sisters. You can come, if you want to, but you are the oldest pledge we have and I don't know if that'd really be your thing," Katy told her.

"Thank you, for the invite, but I think I'm just going to unpack instead and get settled."

"Okay," Anna said with a wide smile. "If you need anything, just let us know. We're right down the hall. You can also ask Bev anything. She's nice, just don't take anything she says too seriously."

"Noted."

After the supposed twins left, Ellie started to unpack her things. She really didn't have much other than a few books, some pictures, and a few knick knacks, so it didn't take her too long. After she'd successfully made it look like someone actually lived on that side of the room, she decided to head to whatever event was taking place.

When she got downstairs and out to the backyard, where the noise was coming from, she was overwhelmed by the amount of pink balloons and white dresses. The new pledges were the people dressed in regular clothes, she assumed.

The event was a whirlwind. She met so many people just after she stepped outside that she definitely wouldn't remember all of their names. She was practically scooped up by Anna and Katy and was pushed through the crowd to meet everyone in the house. The headache she'd accumulated kept with her throughout the night, even when she was finally back in her dorm. She had met Bev, who wouldn't be here for the majority of the year, because she apparently was living with her boyfriend, but needed to keep her spot in the sorority for the scholarship. Ellie wasn't a snitch, so she promised she'd keep quiet about it.

When Ellie woke in the morning, she was flustered. Her cheeks were bright red and hot. In the few short weeks since the end of a summer fling, she found herself waking this way over and over. It was frustrating, to say the least, because she was absolutely positive that said fling never even thought about her anymore. She shouldn't be thinking of him either. And yet, he continued to reappear when she'd gone to sleep, telling her all about how much time he wanted to spend together. Every once in a while, he'd act on his words. Those were only dreams, of course.

Her friend Ashley would tell her that she just needed to get another boyfriend. She needed to move the hell on and get with someone else. However, with only two semesters left and her course load, a boyfriend was definitely out of the question. Once again, just like she did after every one of those dreams, she wrote it all down in the journal she'd purchased specifically to have a place to keep all of them. She kept it hidden in all of her things. If anything, she definitely did not need Bev finding her most intimate thoughts.

She decided to explore the house a bit that morning. She'd gotten dressed and brushed her hair, thankful that whoever she was sharing the bathroom with were not in there that morning. She was looking a mess.

Her sock clad feet padded gently across the wood floors of the house as she left her room to roam around. She thought it was odd that no one was up and walking around, but maybe they were even later sleepers than she was. She looked around at the other girls' rooms, seeing that their doors were typically decorated with their names. Ellie could tell that a sense of community and sisterhood really was important to these girls. When she made it downstairs, she was half tempted to spin through the ballroom they had just off of the main entryway. Apparently they held charity events here quite often and that was one of the main things she'd need to dedicate her time to as a sister here. She passed through the living room, heading toward the kitchen. Just as she was passing the dining room when the doors swung open, revealing every single girl in the house around the table. They were talking, laughing, and eating the mountains of food that were on the table.

"Ellie!" She heard Katy's voice from the opposite end of the table, making absolutely every head turn toward the tired girl standing outside.

"Hey there, sleepy head," one of the girls said, standing up from her spot at the table. "You almost missed breakfast. You can come on in, we saved a seat for you!"