Week 13: Storytelling - The Party Girls on the Twelfth Floor

The RA on the twelfth floor of the freshman residence dorm had had it! She knew, she knew that her girls were regularly breaking the dorm's strict week-day curfew, but she didn't have any solid proof. She had spent hours watching their door and she had people watching their windows, but no one had ever seen one of the girls leave her room after curfew. But come on, it was completely obvious that the girls were spending every night out partying.  Every morning, every single girl on the hall emerged from her room donning a giant pair of sunglasses and reeking of frat party -  the smell of cheap beer mixed with vomit and sweat couldn't be mistaken for anything else.  The RA was determined to figure out how these party girls were getting past her every night.

Eventually, everyone in the building wanted so badly to know the secret of the Twelfth Floor Party Girls that it became a contest as to who could discover the truth. If someone could just manage to get into one of the girls' room before curfew, he could witness how they were able to get out of the building undetected. However, these attempts to infiltrate the twelfth floor were ultimately unsuccessful. Many a frat boy had been invited in secret to pregame on the twelfth floor but every boy came back with the same story - he had passed out too early in the night to see where the girls went. Each boy who accepted an invitation to the twelfth floor in hopes of discovering for himself the mystery of the party girls suffered a fate worse than death - facing a walk of shame down to the lower floors knowing that everyone knew that he had been outwitted.

One day, a new boy moved into the building. He had just transferred from a rival college where even its student body was buzzing with gossip about the Twelfth Floor Party Girls. This new boy had it in his mind to discover the secret which eluded everyone else. As a member of a top frat on campus (he had been in the frat at his previous school), he quickly received an invite to one of the infamous twelfth floor pregames. However, as he did not drink (no matter how much the girls pressed him) he did not blackout before the time of curfew. He pretended to consent to a drink, which he feigned drinking, until he'd had enough for it to seem reasonable that he was rather drunk and ready to pass out.  Once he had pretended to do so, the girls in the room pushed a button hidden on the frame of a lofted bed. Suddenly, a  door popped open revealing a stairwell. Each room, the frat boy observed through his half shut eyes, appeared to have its own door to the stairwell and the girls from the other rooms began to come through. Once all the girls were gone, the frat boy decided that he should follow the party girls to discover where it was they went at night. However, the boy did not want anyone to see him. He took of his Polo shirt which was embroidered with his frat's letters. There. Now he was practically invisible.

He slipped through the door and down the stairs behind the girls making sure to stay a few paces behind so they wouldn't detect him. The stairs went so far down that when they finally reached the bottom, the frat boy was sure they were underground. Now they were walking through a narrow tunnel, the girls talking and giggling about which house had the cutest guys and which would have the best punch. Finally, the group had reached the end of the tunnel and began to climb up a ladder to reach the surface through a hole overhead. When the frat boy himself came through the hole, he found himself on a street in the middle of Greek Row. The girls were already hurrying to the first house. The frat boy decided he may as well join them as he was invisible without his letters and could finally see what happened at other frat parties. He hurried after them.

All night the Twelfth Floor Party Girls bounced from house to house. The frat boy was thoroughly enjoying himself but he remembered to collect evidence from every frat they went to - Solo cups and empty Keystone cans, and he even managed to grab a few paddles. The girls didn't decide to head back to their dorm until at least four in the morning and by then, the frat boy was more than ready to pass out for real. He hurried ahead of the girls so they would see him still passed out on the floor of the girls with whom he had pregamed. They walked back in and snickered at his apparent snoring thinking that they had bested yet another dumb guy and soon they were snoring themselves.

The frat boy pretended to sleep until the whole hall had left for their morning classes, giant sunglasses and all, then crept out of the room to get the RA. He showed her the secret button on the bed frame and how it opened the door to the secret stairwell and then supplied his evidence from the party. The RA was delighted and wasted no time in calling the dean of the college as well as the girls' parents. The girls returned from their classes for the day to find their parents waiting for them, having lost permission to leave in the student dorms, to take them home. The frat boy became widely famous as having discovered the secret of the Twelfth Floor Party Girls and essentially became king of the campus. Every now and then, when he felt like being anonymous, he would take off his letters and hop the frats just as he had that night with the Party Girls.

Author's Note: this story is a retelling of The Twelve Dancing Princesses from The Brothers Grimm (LibriVox) Unit. I wanted to retell the story in a modern context so I decided to use the idea of twelve girls sneaking out of their dorm after hours to go frat hopping. In the original, the princes who are recruited to discover where the twelve princesses go at night are killed when they fail to discover the secret, but this was a little too grim (no pun intended) for the purposes of my story so I decided to make the punishment for failure be to do the walk of shame - a fate worse than death. The prince that does end up discovering the secret of the twelve dancing princesses is given an invisibility cloak so that he can follow the princesses without being seen. I wanted to keep the story somewhat realistic so I came up with a way for the frat boy to become "invisible."

Bibliography: "The Twelve Dancing Princesses." Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm. Translated by Edgar Taylor and Marian Edwardes, illustrated by R. Anning Bell. 1912


Image information:
Dorm Hallway (source: The Prospect )
Frat Party (source: The Stanford Flipside )