Fiction | April 2025
Recruitment
Madelyn Parker
But us? We aren’t like them. We like everyone. It’s like a form of worship rolls through the meeting house for every headshot that our Recruitment Head clicks through. There’s not a girl we don’t like. Unless she very obviously talked about how much she loved talking with the Lambda Rho girls. We heard from Ellen’s roommate that they’ve been talking shit on us, telling girls we’re the weird sorority because we got our charter just last year, that the girls here are a little less elevated. Honestly, fuck them. At least we all have something nice to say about every girl we’ve talked to.
She did a lot of youth camps—she’d be great on the exec committee! She was so sweet, she’s majoring in Nursing, and I think we should get her and Emily together tomorrow night! Oh! That’s my rush crush! She makes her own essential oils and we talked about the Barbie movie the whole time. I think she really wanted to be here with us! Her little brother was in hospice care for nine years she’d totally crush it on philanthropy.
We create space for any type of girl and pair them with just the right sister to make her feel at home without her ever knowing it was orchestrated. We rehearse it, plan every conversational beat she’ll have with each of us in advance. At the end of each one, your sister will come around from behind a table to cue you that she’s here to tag you out. You feign surprise—Oh! Emily! Glad I caught you, I was just talking to Samantha about rescue pets. Samantha, Emily LOVES animal shelters, you two HAVE to talk, this is so perfect that I caught you Emily, I know you two would get along so well. Emily used to volunteer in high school at the Humane Society.
We work really hard to make them feel wanted. It’s an art. A choreography. We look our best, every one of us adhering to the pre-decided color scheme just as well as any other established house would be expected to do.
You “excuse yourself” to let Emily and Samantha talk, glide over to the next PNM on your circuit, checking her cards in the Potential New Member box in the back on the way, little index cards with things she’s never told you that you know. She likes yoga. She reads One Direction fanfic. Her dad left when she was fifteen. She has an eating disorder. She’s really insecure about it. It’s got everything we know about what this girl likes, everything she lives for.
When all the PNMs go home, we cram together on the floor of the meeting house, snapping for the girls we want to keep, some members standing and pumping their fists furiously to advocate for the quiet ones, the ones who didn’t necessarily have the energy to dazzle everyone immediately. I don’t know, she felt off when I talked with her. Yeah, she didn’t seem like she would click, you know, or feel really comfortable here.
We’ve gone through slides of hundreds of girls in the last few days, and we’ll have to decide tonight who to extend bids to. There’s only so many PNMs we can take. We have to be as one on this. Search your hearts. Think Pi Nu True. Open arms and open hearts will guide you in choosing the right kind girl for our organization.
Madelyn Parker (they/she) is a creative writing MFA candidate at New Mexico State University. Their few print and online publications include Pedestal Magazine, Barren Magazine, Elevation Review. Most recently she received the 2025 The Academy of American Poets’ Ruth Scott Poetry Award.
See Madelyn’s Substack.
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