The Silver Knot

Someone held my hand, and suddenly, I felt the prick in my finger. I never liked the way the cold metal found its way inside my skin. I'd fainted, vomited, and cried way too many times in my life during blood tests to know what was about to happen next, and it wasn't pretty. I stumbled and grabbed someone on my way down while the needle kept dangling during my fall. I heard the cries of a couple of people around me, someone yelling, "Grab her!" and then, there was nothing.

I was out for a couple of minutes — that's what someone told me later — although I wasn't sure if it had started before or after I hit the concrete floor.

"Are you there?" I heard, and then suddenly, someone slapped me, and my ear started to ring.

"Why did you do that?" someone else asked.

I was still blindfolded, but as I caressed my ear, I managed to remove the silky piece of fabric despite not being supposed to. When I was taken to the van with the other women, they told us not to touch our blindfolds, and until that moment, I hadn't had a reason not to comply. Still, one thing was to agree to a secret meeting in the middle of nowhere, and another was to let a bunch of people I'd just met ruin my night.

I looked around and saw five people standing with blindfolds similar to the one I was holding, along with a group of others, discussing among themselves.

"I told you the blood stuff was too much," said a tall, skinny guy to another one, twice his size.

"They do it in the other houses, man; no one had ever seen something like this," replied the other one as he rubbed his face.

"Well, I guess that if anything like this happened, they would not have told you. You believe everything just because you want to!" said another guy in his twenties, holding a beer bottle and fighting his own system to keep himself straight on his feet.

"What are you trying to say? That I cannot think for myself?" said the big guy.

The other two looked at him like I had done so many times in the dressing room with my girlfriends whenever they asked me if something looked good...

"I'm sorry," I said, and everyone turned and looked at me. "Can anyone explain to me what is happening here?"

One of the blindfolded girls laughed, and the one by her side elbowed her.

"What do you mean?" replied the skinny. "This is the introduction night, and you are supposed to keep your blindfold on."

"Did anyone else take this thing off?" said another girl, removing the fabric from her face.

"Hey! You cannot do that!" yelled the big guy, who seemed about to cry.

"She took it out!" the girl replied, pointing at me. I shrugged my shoulders as I looked at the men, who seemed way more confused than someone allegedly in control.

"Can we take it out, then?" said another of the girls, a blond one, and before anyone could reply, everyone was free to see whatever they wanted. It was a funny scene, with the women trying to figure out where we'd been taken and the men realizing all their dramatic plans had failed miserably.

"Sit down!" said one of the other guys, who had remained silent until that moment. He had dark hair and green eyes and was wearing clothes that seemed to have been stolen from his father's closet, as they looked way too big on him and were not flattering at all.

"There are no chairs for everyone in here!" replied the blond girl, looking at me, sitting on the concrete. "There's no way I'm sitting in there; this dress is new! she continued.

The room seemed to be a basement because the horizontal windows were narrow and very high on the wall. The space was ample, with a stone fireplace as the centerpiece, and the decoration looked more old-fashioned than antique. There were large pictures framed on the walls, depicting groups of men dressed in similar attire, and everyone wore an insignia I thought I recognized because of stories my daughter had told me about her first year of university.

I looked around and realized she was not in that room. I remembered she had told me she needed to go to the bathroom a couple of minutes before the men before us asked us to follow them to continue the night. We were in a bar with some of her friends, whom I knew from my previous visits to Campus, and they had told me that it was an important night because of some event they were waiting to be invited to. That's why, when they told me I should follow them, I thought they knew each other and assumed my daughter would follow. Clearly, the two cocktails I'd drunk before going into the van did not help me think much about the situation. While I tried to understand where I was and why we'd been taken there, I couldn't stop feeling that everyone around me seemed rather uncomfortable and angry.

"This was not the place, guys! You should have taken us to a nicer one!" said a brunette, with her arms crossed before her and clearly annoyed by the situation. "The ceremony was much nicer the previous year; you did it in a park, close to the lake!"

"The park was full of mosquitoes, and no one wanted to go back there, sorry. Plus, these are the headquarters!" said the skinny guy.

"Iuuuu..." I heard from the group of girls, and I couldn't help but giggle.

Then, everyone looked at me.

"What is she doing here?" asked the blonde.

"The university asked us to include women in the association. We needed diversity to keep using the building on the Campus..."

"You should have a better building!" said the brunette.

"Sure, we know, but why her?" said the blonde, pointing at me, which would have made me feel terrible if I was twenty years younger and had nothing else to worry about.

"I wouldn't mind knowing, either," I said while everyone looked at me, and I started to wonder if I had something weird in my clothes or my face...

The green-eyed guy walked to me and, in a calm tone, said, "This is the Silver knot introduction night. Today, you all became part of this secret society."

Most of the girls giggled, but the blonde kept looking at me like I had done something to her.

"I'm sorry, I'm where?" I replied. No matter what that man was saying, I could not understand it, as if he was using all his words in the wrong way.

"The silver knot, the most prestigious group in the whole campus," he replied, rolling up his eyes the same way my daughter did whenever I annoyed her.

"Ok, cool, but why?"

"Yes, why?" asked the blonde, too.

"What do you mean? You are surrounded by the most attractive bodies and minds in this university. You were blessed with our decision."

"Right now, I'm more confused than blessed," I replied, and when I looked around once more, I realized there had been a tremendous mistake. "Who do you think you are?"

"Rachel, of course. You study business management and have been appointed as the best in your class... aren't you, Rachel?"

The blonde slapped her forehead, and I laughed for a solid minute before I was able to reply.

"That's my name, but I'm not the one you're looking for. You confused me with my daughter."