Band of Sisters

A night at the Phi Delt house, featuring a television star and the great composite heist.

ONE OF THE ONLY THINGS I REMEMBER doing to prepare for Dartmouth—be-sides buying those extra-long bed sheets—was repeatedly telling myself I would never go Greek. After all, the system—or, at least, what I knew of it from hysterical media coverage—seemed so pedestrian, even sinister: the herd mentality, the hazing, The exclusion of kids who weren't cool enough. I was too much of a liberal bohemian for that kind of thing. But then I arrived on campus and, after careful consideration and cautious experimentation, I eventually decided socializing in frat basements wasn't so bad. (Okay, fine, so it was the middle of freshman week.) Most of the brothers I encountered weren't a bunch of beer-bloated jocks: They were far cuter than I could have hoped for. And enough of them—mostly the Phi Delts—had hair as long as mine. Bonus.

So frat-hopping quickly became my single favorite thing to do. And believe it or not, Safety & Security aided and abetted my carousing. After discovering in the fine print of some pamphlet that the "campus po'" happily provided students with nighttime rides, I frequently called them in the wee hours from Phi Delt or Alpha Delt (AD)—my purlieus—asking for a ride back to my River dorm. I was tightest with an officer named Don, a soft-spoken 40-something who would tell me about his small kids as we drove through the dark campus. Doing my best not to seem as drunk as a scoundrel, I'd tell him stories in turn about my father—an Irish immigrant and construction worker who'd never finished high school.

During my sophomore fall, however, I saw less of Don because I got closer to the action. My official residence was a room in South Fayer, fantastically close to AD. And I had a pied-a-terre: Kappa Delta Epsilon (KDE), the local sorority that 49 other party-loving women and I founded that September, had a house right on frat row—just two doors down from Phi—where I would frequently crash.

I was at a party at AD one night that term when four other KDEs and I found ourselves alone in the living room of a double on the second floor. We bolted the door, forming our own VIP room. To protect the guilty, I'll refer to my cohorts as the Southern Belle, the City Babe, the Lax Player and the Worrier. We were drinking beers, smoking cigarettes and blaring something on the stereo—maybe the soundtrack to Singles, which had just come out—when Southie leapt out of her seat.

"Andrew Shue is in this composite!" she shouted, pointing to the huge picture full of headshots hanging above the couch. Shue was the devastatingly cute star of Melrose Place, then a brand-new TV show. We all squealed and ran over for a better look.

"He was an '89!" she screamed. "And a brother here!"

"We've got to take it," said City, one of my closest friends. "It would be so funny if we hung it in our basement," said Southie. "It's not that heavy," City said, lifting it away from the wall a bit to gauge its weight. "We could lift it."

"Wouldn't it be hard to sneak the thing past the entire party?" the Worrier asked. "We'll throw it out the window into the bushes," said City, her dark eyes wide with excitement.

"Won't it break?" said Lax.

"The glass is so thick we probably couldn't smash it with a hammer," Southie said, crossing the room to knock on the picture and prove her point.

"And the shrubbery will break the fall," City added.

I loved the idea: This was just the kind of quintessential college memory I wanted—pulling off a caper with some friends who were, to me, more exciting and beautiful than movie stars.

"And after we toss it?" I said, though I was purely interested in strategy—not protest.

City jumped back in. "We bolt out-side, grab it, and..."

"...bring it back to my room!" I said.

"Yes!" City said, pointing an index finger at me. "Then maybe get a car to take it to KDE."

"I'm in," said Lax. "The AD brothers will go crazy when they realize that it's missing."

"I'm not doing this," the Worrier said, and with that she walked out. Her defection gave us pause, so we bolstered our courage by shot-gunning warm cans of Milwaukees. (As usual, I got more of it on my shirt than in my mouth.) Then the four of us pulled the thing off the wall, headed for the open window and defenestrated our booty. Crowded together around the ledge, we saw it crash through the brush: Bang! We all paused, not breathing, for a beat before dashing down the stairs, past the crowd assembled around some band, out the front door and around the corner of the house to grab the loot.

As we hefted the heavy frame off the grass, I was sure the AD boys were going to come tearing out after us any minute. But then we had the picture lifted and there was no time for panic; we were running as fast as we could.

"Almost there!" Southie cheered as we reached the short expanse of grass behind the Fayers.

Suddenly, a male voice shouted at us from stage left: "Drop it!"

Damn! The ADs had us! We all shrieked and, rattled by fear, tried to take off in four different directions, like a horse being quartered.

"Campus police!" the voice shouted again, identifying itself. "Halt!" Like deer caught in headlights, we froze as three men in olive green jackets descended upon us. I realized one of the men I was staring at was my pal Don.

"What's going on here, Maura?" he said, not sounding a bit like his usual friendly self.

"It's an AD composite," I told him. "Andrew Shue is in it, and....lt's just a prank, Don. That's all."

"Andrew who?" Don said.

"Do you realize you stole that piece of property?" another of the officers, No. 2, said sternly. "That's a felony in the eyes of the law."

Huh? That sounded serious. Stealing? That actually hadn't occurred to me.

Would the po' turn us over to the police?

"It was just a joke," City said.

"We were planning to give it back," I said. "Eventually."

"We'll have to report you to the dean for this one," said Officer 3. "But first we will escort you back to the fraternity so you can return the picture." All four of us were still holding it as if it were a security blanket, though it was anything but protection.

"Really, Don, we were just fooling around," I said. "And it would be so bad for us if the dean hears."

"Not the kind of thing your pop would be too impressed by, huh, Maura?" Don said.

I hung my head. My dad wouldn't be surprised—I'd caused him far more than my fair share of trouble in high school-but he would be very disappointed. The line from that Violent Femmes song-"This will go down on your permanent record"—flashed through my head.

Lax ran to Don and, grabbing his hand, knelt in front of him.

"You gotta let us go!" she begged. "Please, Don! Haven't you ever heard of a prank?" Something about the way she appropriated his name and completely ignored the officers' grave attitude made all of us burst out laughing—even the three men.

"Whaddya say we let them off easy?" Don said, turning to his buddies. Lax kissed his hand. Officer 3 nodded his head in agreement, and gave us a wry smile. But No. 2 wasn't sure. He gave each one of us a long look. "Are you ever going to pull a stunt like this again?" he finally said.

"Never ever," I said, and my friends chorused in agreement.

"All right then," Don said. "We'll let it go this time." While we gurgled thanks, Don continued: "And now we'll walk you over to AD."

"What?" I shouted, unable to control my outburst. I'd assumed all of our punishments had been rescinded.

Lax started tugging Don's hand again. "Facing the brothers will be worse than going to the dean," she said, voicing what we were all thinking. "Please don't make us."

"They'll probably never let us in the house again," I said. "At least not till we're juniors."

"Who's going to return it if you don't?" asked No. 2. But after a minute or two of further pleading, they agreed to take the picture back to AD—and even swore not to tell anyone who the culprits were.

Did I learn my lesson? Well, I never stole anything again. But through the years I bragged plenty about the Great Composite Heist. The rush of being young, wild (okay, goofy) and doing things I wasn't supposed to with new friends whom I thought were the coolest people around was something I wanted to re-live again and again.

Yet there are times—usually when I am frustrated because I haven't written a novel yet or my career isn't as spectacular as it should be—when I think that, if I had a second chance, I wouldn't be so quick to lay down my lot with the Greeks. I wonder if my years at school wouldn't have been better spent hitting the books and figuring out my real passions in life, rather than studying the bonding rituals of Phi Delts and devoting my energy to going out more nights in any given week than any other person I knew.

Except then I think about how much City and her husband—a Beta in our class she eloped with during sophomore summer—have encouraged me to stick with my dreams. It occurs to me that a Sigma Delt poet, another classmate, has been an invaluable guide to me as I try to figure out the writerly life. I remember that I first started thinking about becoming a writer shortly after I graduated because I was half in love with an AD who was obsessed with Salinger. I remind myself that one of my favorite people in the world, an Alpha Chi who passed away a few years ago, said he believed I had things to say no one else had said before. It hits me that the best editor I will ever have is a Phi who reads anything I send his way. All these people—who have helped to make me me, and whom I count among the blessings in my life—come into my head. And finally I realize that what I did at Dartmouth-building friendships, making memories and telling stories—might not have been such a bad way to spend my time after all.

Like deer caught in headlights, we froze as men in olive green jackets descended.

MAURA KELLY has written for Glamour, Rolling Stone and The New York Times. She lives in southern Virginia, where she iscurrently working on a novel.