~BBW (Multiple), ~~WG, Romance - Three Freshmen pledge a new sorority on campus
Caroline Morgan was bound and determined that things were going to be different now. High school had been good and she’d had some fun there, but Caroline wanted to start a new chapter in her life now that she was starting college. For starters, nobody was going to call her Caroline anymore. She had started to dislike the name in ninth grade, but by that point everybody had called her Caroline for so many years that it was futile to try and get people to call her anything else. Now, for the first time in her life, Caroline was going to be introducing herself to 7,000 people who had never met her before and that meant she could call herself whatever she wanted. Accordingly, from now on she was going to be Carly Morgan.
That wasn’t the only thing that was going to be different. Carly was going to use this new beginning to change who she was too. At her private academy, Caroline had been a bit of a wallflower. She had been smart—part of the reason she’d gotten into Hayes University, an exclusive Ohio private college—and she’d had a circle of good friends but Caroline had never had a boyfriend. In fact, she had barely even been asked out. Sure, she’d gone to prom with a boy, but that was only because they had been set up together so they each had a date. That wasn’t a real date.
That might have been what happened to Caroline, but it wasn’t what was going to happen to Carly. She knew exactly what she was going to do to make sure that her college experience was everything she wanted it to be. Carly had grown up listening to her mother’s stories about all the fun that she’d had in Kappa Kappa Kappa, the sorority she’d pledged her very first semester as a freshman. From everything that her Mom had said, a sorority was a surefire way to have a good time in college (and Carly suspected that she hadn’t even heard the really good stories too).
That was why Carly had thrown herself wholeheartedly into Fall Recruitment at Hayes and had been hitting up every event so she could get to know all the different sororities and pick the right one. After all, she was literally picking her closest group of friends for the next four years. She needed to make sure that she made the right choice. In fact, class was kind of an afterthought for Carly during Rush Week. She’d have time to study her textbooks later. She needed to study sororities now.
Though it took a lot of effort, Carly winnowed down her choices. A few frontrunners had emerged pretty quickly. Carly gave Kappa Kappa Kappa a fair shake since she would be a legacy there, but the sorority just didn’t feel right for her. Theta Iota Nu was universally considered a good house, but after some hard consideration Carly decided that it just wasn’t for her. In fact, after due reflection, there was only one house for her.
Epsilon Alpha Tau was the newest sorority at Hayes University. In fact, they had only been officially founded just this year, but they were a class act. The house itself was gorgeous, built with rich wood and stained glass in an arts and crafts style, evocative of Frank Lloyd Wright and Julia Morgan. The rooms were generous and spacious; every one of them wired with T1 internet connections. The furnishings were just as beautiful as the house itself, all of it done in deep, beautiful wood. When Carly took a tour of the house with some of the other potential new members, her jaw almost dropped at the sheer beauty of it all. The Epsilon house made her dorm look like a tenement. Being the newest house, it was at the end of Greek Row and closest to the campus of all the sororities, which wasn’t something to sneeze at if you had 8 AM classes and wanted to have a few extra minutes of quality time with your pillow.
Beyond the physical house itself, Carly found that the girls of Epsilon Alpha Tau were the best that she’d met at Hayes. The older girls who had come together to be the founding sisters of the sorority were absolute sweethearts. Some of the other sororities, like those at Beta Iota Chi seemed nice, but Carly could tell that underneath they were as mean and catty as an ambush of tigers. By contrast, every one of the Epsilon sisters was nothing but honest, caring, and warm. At rush events they were always encouraging the potential new members to have something to eat, like one of the delicious brownies that Carly had been given upon arriving for the first time at Epislon. The sisters even all dressed impeccably. Unlike other houses that printed up tacky recruitment t-shirts in gaudy neon colors, the Epsilon girls chose slightly dressier attire like dresses and smart slacks or jeans with shirts and tops that were smart and stylish. Their sense of style and refinement was something that Carly liked about them and exactly the sort of thing she wanted to cultivate in herself at Hayes. She knew her high school style had been a bit drab and wanted to make some changes. Surrounding herself with girls who knew how to dress well was definitely going to help her upgrade her own wardrobe.
Most importantly, Carly found that she got along with the rushees she met at Epislon a lot better than those she met at other houses during Recruitment Week. The freshmen who said they really wanted to pledge Epsilon were all bright, beautiful, and extremely nice. The girls who would be in Carly’s pledge class would be her closest sorority sisters, making it imperative that they were girls that Carly wanted to be friends with. When she sat down to think about it, it was almost no decision at all for her. Epsilon Alpha Tau was her first choice among all the sororities.
The real question was whether or not she was going to get in. At the start of Rush Week, everybody thought that Epsilon would have to take whatever they could get. After all, this was their first year as a house and at Hayes tradition mattered. A new sorority house would need a few years to get established before they could pull down top notch recruits. However, it actually turned out that something at Epsilon had attracted some of the most sought-after freshmen at Hayes. The word on Greek Row was that Epsilon wasn’t going to get the dregs of the other houses—they were going to get their pick of the Freshmen. Every other sorority was worried that their “rush crushes”—the girls they really wanted to join their house—were going to get poached by Epsilon.
Carly heard the rumors and was nervous about her chances when Bid Day arrived. She wasn’t like these other girls who had probably been popular all their lives. She was just a shy girl trying to be cool. Could she really expect to beat out some of these other girls?
The doe-eyed freshman arrived at the campus quad on Bid Day to find out from her recruitment counselor if she had gotten a bid somewhere. The evening was supposed to be a night of fun for the pledges and their new sisters, so everyone was dressed kind of casually. Even so, everyone had made sure that they were looking pretty so they could make a good first impression on their new sorority sisters.
Carly was no exception. She had brushed her blonde hair out for the event so it had a nice sheen. Makeup had been perfectly applied so as to bring out her green eyes to their fullest extent. Carly had also made judicious wardrobe choices to bring out her best features. At 5’1” and a mere 103 pounds, there wasn’t much at all on her which meant she had to do the best she could. For example, tonight she was wearing her favorite pair of jeans, which served to show off her small but shapely butt. Her legs were like beanpoles, which was admittedly not a bad aspect to being a waif. In fact, Carly was so svelte that her stomach was evenly flat. She was lucky enough to have boobs that were respectable, albeit not too large. Though Carly was actually a very good looking girl, in high school she had been pigeonholed early on as smart and therefore mousy, which meant that nobody really had ever noticed her good looks. Never having really been told how attractive she was by anyone whose opinion she actually thought would be objective (like a boy, for example), Carly didn’t believe she was that pretty. The girls that she’d seen on Preference Night at Epsilon when she had an in-depth one-on-one chat with one of the sisters had all been so much better looking than her. How could she even hope to get in when she was competing with girls like them?
Carly was getting so preoccupied with the thought of being rejected from the only sorority she really wanted to be in that she probably would have started crying had she not been hailed at that moment by Madeline Carver. The tall, vivacious brunette had run into Carly on Unity Day (the first day of Rush Week when all the rushees went to every single sorority and talked to a billion people) at the Theta Iota Nu house and the pair had immediately become friends after only a few minutes of talking. Madeline was everything that Carly wanted to be—cool, popular, and pretty. Like Carly, Madeline was one smart cookie. She’d admitted to the short blonde that she’d gotten into “Hahvahd” but had decided she didn’t want to go to school with a bunch of uber-smart kids who probably didn’t have any social lives. Besides, Hayes had given her some generous grants and Madeline was not about to say no to free money. In high school, Madeline had been a lacrosse star and just shy of being good enough to get a scholarship to play at the collegiate level.
For whatever reason, Madeline made Carly feel comfortable. Within half an hour of their first meeting, Carly had unburdened all of her worries about wanting to change her image and be a new person to Madeline. These were things she hadn’t told another human being—not even her mother—and yet for some reason she was pouring her soul out to this girl she’d known for less than an hour. However, Carly couldn’t have chosen a better person than Madeline to open herself up to.
“Don’t worry—we’re going to find you a sorority and get you turned into the woman you’ve always wanted to be. Isn’t that what college is for? Finding yourself and making a fresh start?” Madeline said, broadly grinning.
“So do you need to find yourself too?” Carly asked.
“No, I just need to have a good time!” Madeline said with a laugh.
There was something about Madeline that said she was a good time girl too. Tonight, she had on some smart dark blue jeans and simple but trendy sneakers in anticipation of the fun of Bid Day. Her button up shirt with three quarter sleeves was perfect for the waning Midwestern summer night that was still warm and sticky. The fact that the top few buttons were undone, giving the barest hint of tan cleavage, gave the outfit enough of an edge to take it from normal to sexy. Madeline’s shoulder length brown hair had a perfect curl at the bottom to give her a classy, timeless look. The brunette’s above average height meant that she was built a little more broadly than Carly, though certainly far from fat. Madeline’s high school athleticism was still alive in kicking in her lithe limbs and fit form. It was only muscle tone that gave her any additional bulk on Carly.
“Carly!” Madeline cried out as she moved her way through the press of hopeful rushees to the diminutive blonde, “So, are you excited?”
“More like on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I so want to get into Epsilon,” Carly said, “I just don’t know what I’ll do if I don’t get in!”
“The only sensible thing to do in college—get wasted!” Madeline said with a laugh, “Seriously though, you are going to get in. I know it. And if they want to take me and not you I’ll make them take us both or neither of us is going.”
“Oh Madeline!” Carly said as she gave her new best friend a hug, “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said they’d do for me!”
“Man, your friends in high school must have sucked then,” Madeline said, before adding, “No offense, of course.”
“No, I just had much different friends, you know?” Carly said, “I’m still a bundle of nerves. Everybody else looks so confident! I feel like I’m the only one who’s so nervous.”
“No you’re not,” said a distinctly Australian sounding voice.
Carly and Madeline turned to find an averaged sized girl of golden tan complexion and the most curious face, largely thanks to her strong cheekbones and thin nose. Her features and skin tone made it hard to place her in one ethnicity. Like many of the other girls milling about the quad, she too was slim and slender, her body like a single fluid motion. Unlike Carly and Madeline, this girl wasn’t well endowed in the bust at all, but was uniformly flat all over. She too was dressed nicely, but had chosen a skirt over jeans.
“My name’s Priya and I’ll bet you I’m a lot more nervous than you,” the girl said, “I’ve only been in America for less than two weeks and I don’t know anybody and I keep getting reminded of the fact that I’m different because people keep asking me if I have a kangaroo for a pet or if I can throw a shrimp on the barbie for them which is really annoying because they’re actually called prawns in Australia. And when I try to tell people I’m from Wollongong, people don’t believe it’s an actual place. And now I’ve just realized that I have no idea what I should have worn to this thing because everybody else is in jeans and I’m the only one in a skirt. To cap it all off all my friends are ten time zones away, so…yeah. I think I’m a lot more nervous than you, but I can at least guarantee that you’re not the only one.”
Carly blinked a couple times at this sudden explosion of words from Priya, who seemed so lonely that the thin girl almost seemed like she would fade into nothingness. Without even hesitating Carly said, “For the record, I think you look great in a skirt Priya. I’m Carly and this is Madeline and I guess we’re your first friends in America.”
“Really? Don’t we have to like get to know each other first before we can be friends?” Priya asked with a bit of confusion.
“Sure, that might be how some people do it,” Madeline said, “But we can recognize quality off the bat. Besides, I’ve never had an Australian friend before and I think you’d be an awesome friend even if you weren’t Australian.”
Priya laughed. “That makes me feel a little better…I think,” she said.
“Which sorority is your first choice?” Carly asked.
“Oh Epsilon Alpha Tau, absolutely,” Priya said without hesitation, “I just love their house and all the girls were so awesome. It’s the only place I’ve really felt at home since I got here.”
“That’s where we want to get in too!” Carly exclaimed, “Maybe we could all be pledge sisters!”
“Do you think we will?” Priya said, glancing around the room, “It seems like everybody wants to get into that place. It’s all I hear people talking about.”
“I don’t know why you two seem so bent on the thought of not getting into Epsilon. You’d think you two didn’t want to get in!” Madeline said with a roll of her eyes, “I mean come on, just look at us: smart, hot, awesome. We’re totally getting in.”
Carly opened her mouth to reply, but at that moment there was a general call for attention. The recruitment counselor had arrived with the bids and there was a near stampede by the assembled girls to try and find out where they’d gotten in.
Over the next few moments a complete range of emotion was displayed in the campus quad. There was utter jubilation as girls got their first choice, tears as some girls didn’t even get a bid, resignation as a third or fourth choice came in, and shock and surprise as girls found they’d been taken by a top choice despite the odds.
There was a flood of relief for Carly when she found that she had gotten a bid. However, she was hesitant to open up the envelop that contained the name of her sorority. She was still scared of what it was going to say in there and somehow wanted to defer the moment as long as possible. She found Priya and Madeline once they had their bids.
“Well, did you guys get in?” Madeline asked.
“I don’t know! I haven’t been able to bring myself to open mine yet,” Carly said nervously.
“Me too,” Priya said, holding up her still sealed envelope.
“Well I got into Epsilon so I want to know right now if we’re going to be sisters!” Madeline said impatiently, “Open them up will ya?”
Priya and Carly looked at each other nervously before they each took a nail and slit open the envelopes. They gingerly reached inside and…
“I GOT IN!”
Carly and Priya screamed the sentiment at almost exactly the same moment and the trio jumped up and down and hugged each other for the first time as pledge sisters.
***
“Ladies, my name is Bryce Clark,” a redhead with lush curls and fair skin said as she stood at the front of the large living room of the Epsilon house, “and I’m the President of Epsilon Alpha Tau. When I signed up to be the first President of this sorority, I knew it was going to be a lot of work. What I didn’t know was how awesome our first pledge class was going to be. More rushees put down Epsilon as their first choice preference than any other sorority on campus so not only can Beta Iota Chi suck it—” this set off a chorus of cheers and hollering, “—but you girls can also know that you are truly the best of the best here at Hayes University. You have no idea how proud I am to have the first pledge class of Epsilon Alpha Tau be so awesome. You girls are going to go down in history which is why we’re going to kick things off right tonight! Let’s party!”
All the girls of Epsilon Alpha Tau cheered and the socializing began. All of the existing sisters welcomed the new pledges, often with hugs. Introductions were made easier by nametags for everyone that proudly proclaimed their names. Each pledge was given a small basket of chocolate to welcome them to the house as well as their very own Epsilon Alpha Tau t-shirt. The sea of bright green shirts was a little overwhelming for the pledges, but they were all so happy to have gotten into their first choice sorority that they didn’t care.
Carly was no exception. She was absolutely on cloud nine. She was an Epsilon and her new best friends were too. Furthermore, for Bid Day Epislon had the most delectable spread of desserts to welcome their pledges. There were chocolate covered strawberries, lemon bars, and chocolate chip cookies were just some of the many offerings there—and they were all delicious.
“Oh my God, this is so good!” Carly exclaimed when she had her first lemon bar, “Is all the food this good here?”
“You bet!” Bryce said coming up to the pledge, “We pride ourselves on actually serving good meals around here. You wouldn’t believe what passes for food at some of the other sororities. It makes me gag.” She shuddered and then caught a look at Carly’s name tag. “Oh you’re Carly! It’s so wonderful to meet you in person! I’m sorry we didn’t get to talk during rush. We’re very excited that you’re an Epsilon.”
“Really?” Carly said, brightening significantly at that, “I was just about giddy when I got in! You guys are just so awesome that I didn’t really want to go anywhere else.”
“That’s just how we felt about you Carly,” Bryce said with a broad smile, “We were so happy when we saw you listed Epsilon as your first choice.”
Carly couldn’t help but blush a little bit. “And here I didn’t know if Priya, Madeline, and I even stood a shot!”
“So you’ve already met Madeline Carver and Priya Tibor tonight?” Bryce asked with interest.
“Actually, we met before we found out we were all Epsilon pledges,” Carly said.
“How interesting…” Bryce said with a bemused expression. She tapped her chin thoughtfully. “You know…that makes perfect sense. After all, you three were our biggest rush crushes.”
Carly’s heart swelled with pride. She’d never been picked first for anything—except maybe lab partner because she was always so good in science class. To hear that she had been a rush crush…
If only everybody back home could see Caroline Morgan now.
***
Across the street, sophomore Charles Worthing and junior Lee Ballard were sitting on the rooftop of the Phi Alpha frat house, to which they belonged, having a couple beers as they watched the insanity that was Bid Day. If there was a hunting season for hot chicks, right now would be its height.
“Man, this is going to be an awesome year, I can just feel it,” Charles said.
“Damn straight it is,” Lee said as he kicked his feet up on the railing to enjoy the warm evening.
It was at that moment that they were joined by one of their fellow frat brothers, Corey Hearn, who was also taking advantage of the lull early in the semester to enjoy a beer during a nice evening. “Hey, what are you two doing?”
“Just soaking in the wonder that is Bid Day,” Lee said.
“God, isn’t it a thing of beauty?” Corey said, “Too bad we’re stuck across from Epsilon.”
“What do you mean by that?” Charles asked with interest.
“Well, have you seen them?” Corey asked.
“Yeah, they got some of the best pledges this year. They’re smoking hot,” Charles replied.
“But have you seen the rest of them? They’re a bunch of chubby girls. Some of them are even downright fat,” Corey said disdainfully.
“That’s being a bit harsh,” Lee said, “Plump maybe, but fat? No way.”
“I just don’t understand how a bunch of fatties like them pulled down all those hot pledges. You’d think they would have steered clear of them like the plague,” Corey continued, not even listening to Lee, “Too bad we don’t have Beta across the street from us. Then there’d be something worth seeing.”
Corey retreated back into the frat house. Charles and Lee sat silent for a moment until the door shut behind their fellow frat brother.
“You know, I wonder if he remembers that we’re doing exchanges this semester with Epsilon,” Charles remarked casually.
Lee just laughed at the irony before taking another swig of beer.
***
Corey was correct in his observation—the founding sisters of Epsilon Alpha Tau were indeed thicker than the average coed at Hayes University. Curiously, this was a fact that none of their pledges even seemed to realize until well after they had been accepted into the sorority. The primary reason was because the Epsilons all dressed so impeccably that one didn’t even notice their weight. In fact, most of the pledges didn’t even realize it at all during their first semester. Carly was one of the few perceptive members of the Alpha pledge class that did notice. By the time she had taken note of the fact, Carly was such good friends with all of her sorority sisters that it didn’t even matter what they weighed. They were her friends and their weight didn’t change that.
Of course, Lee had been correct in pointing out that most of the Epsilons weren’t really that fat. Only a couple of them were real tubby girls, and even then they weren’t more than 170 pounds. The majority of them hovered in a range of about 130 to 150 pounds, chubby but not overly so. Anyone but the harshest of critics would have simply observed that their figures were a little curvier and rounder than those of their peers at Hayes.
Carly made her discovery when she had popped over to the house in the middle of the day to visit with her big sister. Like many other sororities, Epsilon Alpha Tau didn’t reveal what members were paired with pledges as big and little sister for about a month. During that time of mystery, the big sisters left gifts and treats for their little sisters, often somehow involving chocolate, much to the delight of the pledges. Carly’s big sis turned out to be Bryce. Carly was sure it was quite an honor that she had been given the sorority President as her big sister, but any enjoyment she derived from that was purely secondary to the delight that Carly had in paling around with the vivacious redhead.
After letting herself into the house, Carly walked up to the third floor where Bryce’s room was located. As President, Bryce had the most spacious in the entire house. It even featured a small private balcony where plenty of chats had occurred, including a couple with the help of a few not-so virgin cosmopolitans in contradiction of the rules of sororities at Hayes (that nobody followed anyways). Carly knocked on Bryce’s door and was immediately admitted.
“Carly! Didn’t know you were going to come by today! Sorry I look like a mess, come in!” Bryce said warmly as she gave her little sis a hug.
Bryce was far from looking like a mess. Only in the Epsilon house would being so less than perfect as to wear a t-shirt and sweatpants classify one as “a mess”. It was true that Bryce was looking more casual with her red hair pulled back in a ponytail rather than falling in their perfect, shimmering copper locks.
More than that, she was also definitely looking wider than Carly remembered. Bryce’s dark blue t-shirt had Hayes printed across it in white block letters that were stretched by her ample bosom. Carly wasn’t sure if she had truly appreciated how well endowed Bryce was until now, despite the fact that plenty of her outfits featured more than a hint of inviting cleavage. The t-shirt was also tight in other places too—namely around the middle. Bryce’s belly curved outwards into a pretty not-so-little jelly roll that jiggled as she moved about the spacious room.
The redhead’s sweatpants were gray and read “Hayes Athletic Department” down one leg. However, the smooth, wide hips that filled out those sweats clearly hadn’t undertaken much athletic activity in quite some time. For the first time Carly saw how Bryce’s thick, luscious thighs brushed against one another as she walked. She was utterly baffled at how she had never noticed how heavy Bryce was before. Granted, she probably was only about 155 pounds at worst. With a height of 5’5” that meant that she was curvy in all the right places with a little extra in the middle for good measure. Still, there was no denying that Bryce was a plump girl.
This revelation didn’t change a thing in their relationship, but it did make Carly stop and think if perhaps she hadn’t noticed because Bryce had put on a little weight over the course of the semester. Just as Carly thought that had probably been the case, she realized that, like Bryce, she had been eating a lot of her meals at the Epsilon house due to the incredible caliber of cooking. And if Carly had been eating the same stuff Bryce had…
At the earliest possible opportunity in their conversation, Carly excused herself on the pretense that she had to go do some homework. In reality, Carly rushed back to her dorm room, threw off her clothing and put on a robe before stepping barefoot onto the scale to see what it said. Her heart was beating a little faster than normal as the electronic readout swirled. She couldn’t really have gotten that fat, right? She would have noticed. She wasn’t anywhere near—
The final number popped up. 108 pounds. That was 5 pounds heavier than her weight when she’d left home. Carly stepped off the scale with a frown and a furrow in her brow. Was this the beginning of the infamous Freshman 15? She hadn’t even been at Hayes for three months and she’d put on 5 pounds—and Thanksgiving was approaching quickly.
“I’ll just have to watch myself at dinner,” Carly said to herself, “and start going to the gym a little more frequently.”
Bryce was a wonderful role model for the freshman, but there was one area in which Carly didn’t want to emulate her big sis: actually getting bigger. However, it was only 5 pounds. She’d caught things before they’d gotten out of hand, which was lucky for her.
Carly was sure that she didn’t really have anything to worry about.
***
The Epsilon Experience 1: Rush
By Id
By Id
Caroline Morgan was bound and determined that things were going to be different now. High school had been good and she’d had some fun there, but Caroline wanted to start a new chapter in her life now that she was starting college. For starters, nobody was going to call her Caroline anymore. She had started to dislike the name in ninth grade, but by that point everybody had called her Caroline for so many years that it was futile to try and get people to call her anything else. Now, for the first time in her life, Caroline was going to be introducing herself to 7,000 people who had never met her before and that meant she could call herself whatever she wanted. Accordingly, from now on she was going to be Carly Morgan.
That wasn’t the only thing that was going to be different. Carly was going to use this new beginning to change who she was too. At her private academy, Caroline had been a bit of a wallflower. She had been smart—part of the reason she’d gotten into Hayes University, an exclusive Ohio private college—and she’d had a circle of good friends but Caroline had never had a boyfriend. In fact, she had barely even been asked out. Sure, she’d gone to prom with a boy, but that was only because they had been set up together so they each had a date. That wasn’t a real date.
That might have been what happened to Caroline, but it wasn’t what was going to happen to Carly. She knew exactly what she was going to do to make sure that her college experience was everything she wanted it to be. Carly had grown up listening to her mother’s stories about all the fun that she’d had in Kappa Kappa Kappa, the sorority she’d pledged her very first semester as a freshman. From everything that her Mom had said, a sorority was a surefire way to have a good time in college (and Carly suspected that she hadn’t even heard the really good stories too).
That was why Carly had thrown herself wholeheartedly into Fall Recruitment at Hayes and had been hitting up every event so she could get to know all the different sororities and pick the right one. After all, she was literally picking her closest group of friends for the next four years. She needed to make sure that she made the right choice. In fact, class was kind of an afterthought for Carly during Rush Week. She’d have time to study her textbooks later. She needed to study sororities now.
Though it took a lot of effort, Carly winnowed down her choices. A few frontrunners had emerged pretty quickly. Carly gave Kappa Kappa Kappa a fair shake since she would be a legacy there, but the sorority just didn’t feel right for her. Theta Iota Nu was universally considered a good house, but after some hard consideration Carly decided that it just wasn’t for her. In fact, after due reflection, there was only one house for her.
Epsilon Alpha Tau was the newest sorority at Hayes University. In fact, they had only been officially founded just this year, but they were a class act. The house itself was gorgeous, built with rich wood and stained glass in an arts and crafts style, evocative of Frank Lloyd Wright and Julia Morgan. The rooms were generous and spacious; every one of them wired with T1 internet connections. The furnishings were just as beautiful as the house itself, all of it done in deep, beautiful wood. When Carly took a tour of the house with some of the other potential new members, her jaw almost dropped at the sheer beauty of it all. The Epsilon house made her dorm look like a tenement. Being the newest house, it was at the end of Greek Row and closest to the campus of all the sororities, which wasn’t something to sneeze at if you had 8 AM classes and wanted to have a few extra minutes of quality time with your pillow.
Beyond the physical house itself, Carly found that the girls of Epsilon Alpha Tau were the best that she’d met at Hayes. The older girls who had come together to be the founding sisters of the sorority were absolute sweethearts. Some of the other sororities, like those at Beta Iota Chi seemed nice, but Carly could tell that underneath they were as mean and catty as an ambush of tigers. By contrast, every one of the Epsilon sisters was nothing but honest, caring, and warm. At rush events they were always encouraging the potential new members to have something to eat, like one of the delicious brownies that Carly had been given upon arriving for the first time at Epislon. The sisters even all dressed impeccably. Unlike other houses that printed up tacky recruitment t-shirts in gaudy neon colors, the Epsilon girls chose slightly dressier attire like dresses and smart slacks or jeans with shirts and tops that were smart and stylish. Their sense of style and refinement was something that Carly liked about them and exactly the sort of thing she wanted to cultivate in herself at Hayes. She knew her high school style had been a bit drab and wanted to make some changes. Surrounding herself with girls who knew how to dress well was definitely going to help her upgrade her own wardrobe.
Most importantly, Carly found that she got along with the rushees she met at Epislon a lot better than those she met at other houses during Recruitment Week. The freshmen who said they really wanted to pledge Epsilon were all bright, beautiful, and extremely nice. The girls who would be in Carly’s pledge class would be her closest sorority sisters, making it imperative that they were girls that Carly wanted to be friends with. When she sat down to think about it, it was almost no decision at all for her. Epsilon Alpha Tau was her first choice among all the sororities.
The real question was whether or not she was going to get in. At the start of Rush Week, everybody thought that Epsilon would have to take whatever they could get. After all, this was their first year as a house and at Hayes tradition mattered. A new sorority house would need a few years to get established before they could pull down top notch recruits. However, it actually turned out that something at Epsilon had attracted some of the most sought-after freshmen at Hayes. The word on Greek Row was that Epsilon wasn’t going to get the dregs of the other houses—they were going to get their pick of the Freshmen. Every other sorority was worried that their “rush crushes”—the girls they really wanted to join their house—were going to get poached by Epsilon.
Carly heard the rumors and was nervous about her chances when Bid Day arrived. She wasn’t like these other girls who had probably been popular all their lives. She was just a shy girl trying to be cool. Could she really expect to beat out some of these other girls?
The doe-eyed freshman arrived at the campus quad on Bid Day to find out from her recruitment counselor if she had gotten a bid somewhere. The evening was supposed to be a night of fun for the pledges and their new sisters, so everyone was dressed kind of casually. Even so, everyone had made sure that they were looking pretty so they could make a good first impression on their new sorority sisters.
Carly was no exception. She had brushed her blonde hair out for the event so it had a nice sheen. Makeup had been perfectly applied so as to bring out her green eyes to their fullest extent. Carly had also made judicious wardrobe choices to bring out her best features. At 5’1” and a mere 103 pounds, there wasn’t much at all on her which meant she had to do the best she could. For example, tonight she was wearing her favorite pair of jeans, which served to show off her small but shapely butt. Her legs were like beanpoles, which was admittedly not a bad aspect to being a waif. In fact, Carly was so svelte that her stomach was evenly flat. She was lucky enough to have boobs that were respectable, albeit not too large. Though Carly was actually a very good looking girl, in high school she had been pigeonholed early on as smart and therefore mousy, which meant that nobody really had ever noticed her good looks. Never having really been told how attractive she was by anyone whose opinion she actually thought would be objective (like a boy, for example), Carly didn’t believe she was that pretty. The girls that she’d seen on Preference Night at Epsilon when she had an in-depth one-on-one chat with one of the sisters had all been so much better looking than her. How could she even hope to get in when she was competing with girls like them?
Carly was getting so preoccupied with the thought of being rejected from the only sorority she really wanted to be in that she probably would have started crying had she not been hailed at that moment by Madeline Carver. The tall, vivacious brunette had run into Carly on Unity Day (the first day of Rush Week when all the rushees went to every single sorority and talked to a billion people) at the Theta Iota Nu house and the pair had immediately become friends after only a few minutes of talking. Madeline was everything that Carly wanted to be—cool, popular, and pretty. Like Carly, Madeline was one smart cookie. She’d admitted to the short blonde that she’d gotten into “Hahvahd” but had decided she didn’t want to go to school with a bunch of uber-smart kids who probably didn’t have any social lives. Besides, Hayes had given her some generous grants and Madeline was not about to say no to free money. In high school, Madeline had been a lacrosse star and just shy of being good enough to get a scholarship to play at the collegiate level.
For whatever reason, Madeline made Carly feel comfortable. Within half an hour of their first meeting, Carly had unburdened all of her worries about wanting to change her image and be a new person to Madeline. These were things she hadn’t told another human being—not even her mother—and yet for some reason she was pouring her soul out to this girl she’d known for less than an hour. However, Carly couldn’t have chosen a better person than Madeline to open herself up to.
“Don’t worry—we’re going to find you a sorority and get you turned into the woman you’ve always wanted to be. Isn’t that what college is for? Finding yourself and making a fresh start?” Madeline said, broadly grinning.
“So do you need to find yourself too?” Carly asked.
“No, I just need to have a good time!” Madeline said with a laugh.
There was something about Madeline that said she was a good time girl too. Tonight, she had on some smart dark blue jeans and simple but trendy sneakers in anticipation of the fun of Bid Day. Her button up shirt with three quarter sleeves was perfect for the waning Midwestern summer night that was still warm and sticky. The fact that the top few buttons were undone, giving the barest hint of tan cleavage, gave the outfit enough of an edge to take it from normal to sexy. Madeline’s shoulder length brown hair had a perfect curl at the bottom to give her a classy, timeless look. The brunette’s above average height meant that she was built a little more broadly than Carly, though certainly far from fat. Madeline’s high school athleticism was still alive in kicking in her lithe limbs and fit form. It was only muscle tone that gave her any additional bulk on Carly.
“Carly!” Madeline cried out as she moved her way through the press of hopeful rushees to the diminutive blonde, “So, are you excited?”
“More like on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I so want to get into Epsilon,” Carly said, “I just don’t know what I’ll do if I don’t get in!”
“The only sensible thing to do in college—get wasted!” Madeline said with a laugh, “Seriously though, you are going to get in. I know it. And if they want to take me and not you I’ll make them take us both or neither of us is going.”
“Oh Madeline!” Carly said as she gave her new best friend a hug, “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said they’d do for me!”
“Man, your friends in high school must have sucked then,” Madeline said, before adding, “No offense, of course.”
“No, I just had much different friends, you know?” Carly said, “I’m still a bundle of nerves. Everybody else looks so confident! I feel like I’m the only one who’s so nervous.”
“No you’re not,” said a distinctly Australian sounding voice.
Carly and Madeline turned to find an averaged sized girl of golden tan complexion and the most curious face, largely thanks to her strong cheekbones and thin nose. Her features and skin tone made it hard to place her in one ethnicity. Like many of the other girls milling about the quad, she too was slim and slender, her body like a single fluid motion. Unlike Carly and Madeline, this girl wasn’t well endowed in the bust at all, but was uniformly flat all over. She too was dressed nicely, but had chosen a skirt over jeans.
“My name’s Priya and I’ll bet you I’m a lot more nervous than you,” the girl said, “I’ve only been in America for less than two weeks and I don’t know anybody and I keep getting reminded of the fact that I’m different because people keep asking me if I have a kangaroo for a pet or if I can throw a shrimp on the barbie for them which is really annoying because they’re actually called prawns in Australia. And when I try to tell people I’m from Wollongong, people don’t believe it’s an actual place. And now I’ve just realized that I have no idea what I should have worn to this thing because everybody else is in jeans and I’m the only one in a skirt. To cap it all off all my friends are ten time zones away, so…yeah. I think I’m a lot more nervous than you, but I can at least guarantee that you’re not the only one.”
Carly blinked a couple times at this sudden explosion of words from Priya, who seemed so lonely that the thin girl almost seemed like she would fade into nothingness. Without even hesitating Carly said, “For the record, I think you look great in a skirt Priya. I’m Carly and this is Madeline and I guess we’re your first friends in America.”
“Really? Don’t we have to like get to know each other first before we can be friends?” Priya asked with a bit of confusion.
“Sure, that might be how some people do it,” Madeline said, “But we can recognize quality off the bat. Besides, I’ve never had an Australian friend before and I think you’d be an awesome friend even if you weren’t Australian.”
Priya laughed. “That makes me feel a little better…I think,” she said.
“Which sorority is your first choice?” Carly asked.
“Oh Epsilon Alpha Tau, absolutely,” Priya said without hesitation, “I just love their house and all the girls were so awesome. It’s the only place I’ve really felt at home since I got here.”
“That’s where we want to get in too!” Carly exclaimed, “Maybe we could all be pledge sisters!”
“Do you think we will?” Priya said, glancing around the room, “It seems like everybody wants to get into that place. It’s all I hear people talking about.”
“I don’t know why you two seem so bent on the thought of not getting into Epsilon. You’d think you two didn’t want to get in!” Madeline said with a roll of her eyes, “I mean come on, just look at us: smart, hot, awesome. We’re totally getting in.”
Carly opened her mouth to reply, but at that moment there was a general call for attention. The recruitment counselor had arrived with the bids and there was a near stampede by the assembled girls to try and find out where they’d gotten in.
Over the next few moments a complete range of emotion was displayed in the campus quad. There was utter jubilation as girls got their first choice, tears as some girls didn’t even get a bid, resignation as a third or fourth choice came in, and shock and surprise as girls found they’d been taken by a top choice despite the odds.
There was a flood of relief for Carly when she found that she had gotten a bid. However, she was hesitant to open up the envelop that contained the name of her sorority. She was still scared of what it was going to say in there and somehow wanted to defer the moment as long as possible. She found Priya and Madeline once they had their bids.
“Well, did you guys get in?” Madeline asked.
“I don’t know! I haven’t been able to bring myself to open mine yet,” Carly said nervously.
“Me too,” Priya said, holding up her still sealed envelope.
“Well I got into Epsilon so I want to know right now if we’re going to be sisters!” Madeline said impatiently, “Open them up will ya?”
Priya and Carly looked at each other nervously before they each took a nail and slit open the envelopes. They gingerly reached inside and…
“I GOT IN!”
Carly and Priya screamed the sentiment at almost exactly the same moment and the trio jumped up and down and hugged each other for the first time as pledge sisters.
***
“Ladies, my name is Bryce Clark,” a redhead with lush curls and fair skin said as she stood at the front of the large living room of the Epsilon house, “and I’m the President of Epsilon Alpha Tau. When I signed up to be the first President of this sorority, I knew it was going to be a lot of work. What I didn’t know was how awesome our first pledge class was going to be. More rushees put down Epsilon as their first choice preference than any other sorority on campus so not only can Beta Iota Chi suck it—” this set off a chorus of cheers and hollering, “—but you girls can also know that you are truly the best of the best here at Hayes University. You have no idea how proud I am to have the first pledge class of Epsilon Alpha Tau be so awesome. You girls are going to go down in history which is why we’re going to kick things off right tonight! Let’s party!”
All the girls of Epsilon Alpha Tau cheered and the socializing began. All of the existing sisters welcomed the new pledges, often with hugs. Introductions were made easier by nametags for everyone that proudly proclaimed their names. Each pledge was given a small basket of chocolate to welcome them to the house as well as their very own Epsilon Alpha Tau t-shirt. The sea of bright green shirts was a little overwhelming for the pledges, but they were all so happy to have gotten into their first choice sorority that they didn’t care.
Carly was no exception. She was absolutely on cloud nine. She was an Epsilon and her new best friends were too. Furthermore, for Bid Day Epislon had the most delectable spread of desserts to welcome their pledges. There were chocolate covered strawberries, lemon bars, and chocolate chip cookies were just some of the many offerings there—and they were all delicious.
“Oh my God, this is so good!” Carly exclaimed when she had her first lemon bar, “Is all the food this good here?”
“You bet!” Bryce said coming up to the pledge, “We pride ourselves on actually serving good meals around here. You wouldn’t believe what passes for food at some of the other sororities. It makes me gag.” She shuddered and then caught a look at Carly’s name tag. “Oh you’re Carly! It’s so wonderful to meet you in person! I’m sorry we didn’t get to talk during rush. We’re very excited that you’re an Epsilon.”
“Really?” Carly said, brightening significantly at that, “I was just about giddy when I got in! You guys are just so awesome that I didn’t really want to go anywhere else.”
“That’s just how we felt about you Carly,” Bryce said with a broad smile, “We were so happy when we saw you listed Epsilon as your first choice.”
Carly couldn’t help but blush a little bit. “And here I didn’t know if Priya, Madeline, and I even stood a shot!”
“So you’ve already met Madeline Carver and Priya Tibor tonight?” Bryce asked with interest.
“Actually, we met before we found out we were all Epsilon pledges,” Carly said.
“How interesting…” Bryce said with a bemused expression. She tapped her chin thoughtfully. “You know…that makes perfect sense. After all, you three were our biggest rush crushes.”
Carly’s heart swelled with pride. She’d never been picked first for anything—except maybe lab partner because she was always so good in science class. To hear that she had been a rush crush…
If only everybody back home could see Caroline Morgan now.
***
Across the street, sophomore Charles Worthing and junior Lee Ballard were sitting on the rooftop of the Phi Alpha frat house, to which they belonged, having a couple beers as they watched the insanity that was Bid Day. If there was a hunting season for hot chicks, right now would be its height.
“Man, this is going to be an awesome year, I can just feel it,” Charles said.
“Damn straight it is,” Lee said as he kicked his feet up on the railing to enjoy the warm evening.
It was at that moment that they were joined by one of their fellow frat brothers, Corey Hearn, who was also taking advantage of the lull early in the semester to enjoy a beer during a nice evening. “Hey, what are you two doing?”
“Just soaking in the wonder that is Bid Day,” Lee said.
“God, isn’t it a thing of beauty?” Corey said, “Too bad we’re stuck across from Epsilon.”
“What do you mean by that?” Charles asked with interest.
“Well, have you seen them?” Corey asked.
“Yeah, they got some of the best pledges this year. They’re smoking hot,” Charles replied.
“But have you seen the rest of them? They’re a bunch of chubby girls. Some of them are even downright fat,” Corey said disdainfully.
“That’s being a bit harsh,” Lee said, “Plump maybe, but fat? No way.”
“I just don’t understand how a bunch of fatties like them pulled down all those hot pledges. You’d think they would have steered clear of them like the plague,” Corey continued, not even listening to Lee, “Too bad we don’t have Beta across the street from us. Then there’d be something worth seeing.”
Corey retreated back into the frat house. Charles and Lee sat silent for a moment until the door shut behind their fellow frat brother.
“You know, I wonder if he remembers that we’re doing exchanges this semester with Epsilon,” Charles remarked casually.
Lee just laughed at the irony before taking another swig of beer.
***
Corey was correct in his observation—the founding sisters of Epsilon Alpha Tau were indeed thicker than the average coed at Hayes University. Curiously, this was a fact that none of their pledges even seemed to realize until well after they had been accepted into the sorority. The primary reason was because the Epsilons all dressed so impeccably that one didn’t even notice their weight. In fact, most of the pledges didn’t even realize it at all during their first semester. Carly was one of the few perceptive members of the Alpha pledge class that did notice. By the time she had taken note of the fact, Carly was such good friends with all of her sorority sisters that it didn’t even matter what they weighed. They were her friends and their weight didn’t change that.
Of course, Lee had been correct in pointing out that most of the Epsilons weren’t really that fat. Only a couple of them were real tubby girls, and even then they weren’t more than 170 pounds. The majority of them hovered in a range of about 130 to 150 pounds, chubby but not overly so. Anyone but the harshest of critics would have simply observed that their figures were a little curvier and rounder than those of their peers at Hayes.
Carly made her discovery when she had popped over to the house in the middle of the day to visit with her big sister. Like many other sororities, Epsilon Alpha Tau didn’t reveal what members were paired with pledges as big and little sister for about a month. During that time of mystery, the big sisters left gifts and treats for their little sisters, often somehow involving chocolate, much to the delight of the pledges. Carly’s big sis turned out to be Bryce. Carly was sure it was quite an honor that she had been given the sorority President as her big sister, but any enjoyment she derived from that was purely secondary to the delight that Carly had in paling around with the vivacious redhead.
After letting herself into the house, Carly walked up to the third floor where Bryce’s room was located. As President, Bryce had the most spacious in the entire house. It even featured a small private balcony where plenty of chats had occurred, including a couple with the help of a few not-so virgin cosmopolitans in contradiction of the rules of sororities at Hayes (that nobody followed anyways). Carly knocked on Bryce’s door and was immediately admitted.
“Carly! Didn’t know you were going to come by today! Sorry I look like a mess, come in!” Bryce said warmly as she gave her little sis a hug.
Bryce was far from looking like a mess. Only in the Epsilon house would being so less than perfect as to wear a t-shirt and sweatpants classify one as “a mess”. It was true that Bryce was looking more casual with her red hair pulled back in a ponytail rather than falling in their perfect, shimmering copper locks.
More than that, she was also definitely looking wider than Carly remembered. Bryce’s dark blue t-shirt had Hayes printed across it in white block letters that were stretched by her ample bosom. Carly wasn’t sure if she had truly appreciated how well endowed Bryce was until now, despite the fact that plenty of her outfits featured more than a hint of inviting cleavage. The t-shirt was also tight in other places too—namely around the middle. Bryce’s belly curved outwards into a pretty not-so-little jelly roll that jiggled as she moved about the spacious room.
The redhead’s sweatpants were gray and read “Hayes Athletic Department” down one leg. However, the smooth, wide hips that filled out those sweats clearly hadn’t undertaken much athletic activity in quite some time. For the first time Carly saw how Bryce’s thick, luscious thighs brushed against one another as she walked. She was utterly baffled at how she had never noticed how heavy Bryce was before. Granted, she probably was only about 155 pounds at worst. With a height of 5’5” that meant that she was curvy in all the right places with a little extra in the middle for good measure. Still, there was no denying that Bryce was a plump girl.
This revelation didn’t change a thing in their relationship, but it did make Carly stop and think if perhaps she hadn’t noticed because Bryce had put on a little weight over the course of the semester. Just as Carly thought that had probably been the case, she realized that, like Bryce, she had been eating a lot of her meals at the Epsilon house due to the incredible caliber of cooking. And if Carly had been eating the same stuff Bryce had…
At the earliest possible opportunity in their conversation, Carly excused herself on the pretense that she had to go do some homework. In reality, Carly rushed back to her dorm room, threw off her clothing and put on a robe before stepping barefoot onto the scale to see what it said. Her heart was beating a little faster than normal as the electronic readout swirled. She couldn’t really have gotten that fat, right? She would have noticed. She wasn’t anywhere near—
The final number popped up. 108 pounds. That was 5 pounds heavier than her weight when she’d left home. Carly stepped off the scale with a frown and a furrow in her brow. Was this the beginning of the infamous Freshman 15? She hadn’t even been at Hayes for three months and she’d put on 5 pounds—and Thanksgiving was approaching quickly.
“I’ll just have to watch myself at dinner,” Carly said to herself, “and start going to the gym a little more frequently.”
Bryce was a wonderful role model for the freshman, but there was one area in which Carly didn’t want to emulate her big sis: actually getting bigger. However, it was only 5 pounds. She’d caught things before they’d gotten out of hand, which was lucky for her.
Carly was sure that she didn’t really have anything to worry about.
***
