Sorority Girls With Guns

Chapter One

Money is a lot like oxygen: Having enough of it probably won’t make you happy all by itself, but
not
having enough of it
will
stop you dead in your tracks on the way to whatever would make you happy. So saying that money isn’t important is like saying that oxygen isn’t important – of course it’s fucking important! And the only people who think otherwise are idiots, or people who have never had to do without.

Take my friend Charlie, for example. Right now, Charlie's date is explaining why there will never be a second date. She has to shout, because they're in the middle of a crowded sorority house during the annual finals-are-over party.

"How could you promise my father's company would provide the champagne for the Green Day Eco party this year? And recycle the bottles? Are you insane?" she shrieks, stepping sideways to avoid Charlie's friend Matt as he drunkenly stumbles back from a water-filled keg. He and a couple of Charlie's most intellectual friends are bobbing for beers. Hey, this is Texas.

"It's not in any way an official campus or Greek event, and obviously everyone attending will be over twenty-one." Charlie winks and flashes his best boyish grin at Tiffany. This is the press release version, obviously.

"That's not the problem," Tiffany yells.  She pauses to knock back the last of whatever potion she's mixed up in a cocktail shaker. She must be mad if she's not bothering with her rhinestone-studded glass. "The problem is that he'll never do it!"

"Surely Diamond Champagne comps its executives." Charlie looks over Tiffany's shoulder at Matt and company. "Hey man, if you come across something shiny and gold, grab it - it's probably the crown DA lost earlier." DA,  in this case, is short for dumbass.

"Look, he can call it promotional, since Diamond will be getting free publicity and all," he says, turning back to Tiffany.

"You don't understand," she says, stepping closer to Charlie and lowering her voice. She shoots a look my way and I feign intense interest in the couch's infinitely ugly paisley pattern. "My father won't do it because it would help me. He cut me off, Charlie."

"You mean, he's not speaking to you?"

"I mean he cancelled all my credit cards and froze me out of my trust fund until I'm twenty-five!" She heaves a sigh that makes her fake boobs jiggle like a tray of Jello shots. "Otherwise I'd just go buy twenty cases of Diamond and say he donated it!"

"Oh...um..." Charlie shuffles from foot to foot, scratching the back of his head and ducking Tiff's eyes. "Um, you didn't mention that."

"It's not something I want to advertise!" Tiffany snaps.

The obvious answer here is for Charlie to say he'll buy the Diamond, which costs more than a grand a case. The problem is that Charlie’s mom recently cut him off, too. After he told her he didn’t really want to take an internship at her investment firm, because he really wanted to be a writer, she told him he really didn’t need to be getting any more monthly checks for a while. Plus, she said he could pay for his own college tuition - a less immediate problem because she’d paid in full at the beginning of the semester - but still an upcoming financial drain.

I know this, because I’m a snoop and a championship eavesdropper. Tiffany does not know this, and Charlie is too embarrassed to tell anyone – even, apparently, his girlfriend.

  “Well, we could just tell the charity that, um, our donor backed out,” Charlie stammers.

“Yeah, that’ll make us look like great internship candidates,” Tiffany snaps.

“If you come up with a better donor, it won’t matter,” I say, standing up and sauntering over to them. Might as well give up the pretense that I’m not snooping; if things go as usual, they won’t remember anything that happened tonight anyway. “I, ah, couldn’t help but overhear…”

“Who asked you?” Tiffany asks, glaring at me as if I’m trying to steal her boyfriend. I’m really not. I dated Charlie briefly my freshman year, but found him to be as dull as an episode of
Keeping up with
The Kardashians
.

I do, however, have an interest in the public relations internship Tiffany is vying for with the charity Green Day (I know, right?), which is seeking college students to enter fresh, new ideas for saving the environment. They're also throwing an on-campus event to promote the internship contest, and that's the bash Tiffany needs to provide champagne for, thanks to Charlie.

  Our sorority requires each member to do twenty hours of community service a semester, and I’m a little behind. As far as I’m concerned, community service is for felons. Why should I have to pick up trash on the weekend when I never drove drunk and killed someone?

On the other hand, a PR internship with Green Day would count as my community service (I checked), plus I’d get course credit since I’m an Advertising/Public Relations major. And I’d get to rub elbows with celebrities  (or at the very least, old, boring but well-heeled donors) at the party and other fundraising events. Plus, it gives me the opportunity to work on my long-term goal of finally having a viral video (more about that plan later).

“I happen to know the owner of Close to Home Liquor personally,” I say, jumping backward to avoid a splash of water from the beer barrel. “And I know how much he values the business from twenty-one-and-older college students on this campus.”

“So you think he might donate the Diamond?” Tiff asks, looking slightly less suspicious of me.

I shrug nonchalantly. “I think if he was guaranteed to be the provider of beverages for our next dozen
non-
official events, he could be convinced.” We are, of course, attending a non-official event right now. Our sorority has a strict policy against underage drinking, or
any
drinking in the sorority house. It’s in our charter, which hangs on the wall in a glass frame that got cracked at the last party, because Matt bet Charlie he was too drunk to hit a punching target on the first try. (He was, actually, but that led to a subsequent bet that Matt couldn’t hit a punching target in ten tries. Which he couldn’t, but on one of those tries he missed the stuffed deer’s head and hit the charter instead.)

“Sounds like a good plan to me.” Charlie flashes a stupid grin at Tiffany. “See, babe, it all worked out!”

Tiffany slams the shaker down on the sideboard. “Yeah, it all works out for
her
.” She tosses her head in my direction, a few frizzy strands popping loose from her updo. That ulta-mega-super-hold hairspray is just no match for the sort of anger she feels towards me right now.

“Wait…why are you still mad at me? Now no one has to known your dad cut you off!” Charlie yells, just as Matt stumbles backward from the beer barrel, knocking Tiff’s Ipod off the stereo dock. The pounding beat cuts out just in time for everyone to hear the last sentence out of Charlie’s extremely loud mouth.

The look on Tiffany’s face right now sort of matches the glassy-eyed, horrified look on the face of that hideous deer’s head (which I hope is fake, but have always avoided asking about in case I’m wrong) over the mantel.

See how the lack of money just stopped Charlie dead in his tracks on the way to what would have made him happy for, from what I’ve heard, at least three minutes?

Amidst the sounds of crickets auditioning for Cricket Idol or whatever, I hear footsteps pounding down the stairs. “Hey, is something wrong? Why’d the music stop?”

I turn around and look at Richard, with his tousled hair and disarming dimples. “Nothing’s wrong. You’re just in time for the floor show.”

Chapter Two

Here’s the problem with Richard: Wait, I take that back. There are quite a few problems with Richard. What I mean is, here’s the most relevant problem with Richard at the moment: He’s not
exactly
one of those morons who thinks money doesn’t matter, but he
is
the type of moron who thinks being rich is something to feel guilty about.

My best frenemy Morgan (who comes with her own set of problems, more on that later) finds this terribly endearing, and has taken Richard on as sort of a combination boytoy/pet project. Twenty minutes ago I saw him following her up the stairs like a lovesick puppy dog, yammering about how all those BMWs and Mercedes’ on the front lawn disgust him. Morgan, misunderstanding him as usual, said she thought it was awful how many people puked on nice cars instead of the grass, which is what you’re
supposed
to do when drunk outside of a party.

And that was the last I heard from either of them until just now.

Richard stares around the room at all the conspicuous wealth: The beer-bobbing barrel, the hideous paisley couch that actually cost $8,000 when we renovated last year, the crystal chandeliers that Morgan’s father donated. (Yes, I realize that a deer’s head clashes horribly with all those things, and I’ve campaigned to get rid of it numerous times but, like I told you earlier, this
is
Texas and I keep getting shot down – much like the deer, apparently.)

“Do you know how much money you spent on this party?” he asks, waving a hand around the room. “The people who have to clean up this building tomorrow don’t make that much money in a month!”

“We were just discussing how bad the economy has been lately,” I say. “Did you know it’s been so bad that Tiffany’s father had to cut off her monthly stipend and she has to live solely on the pittance doled out automatically by her trust fund?” This pisses off both Tiffany and Richard at the same time – now that’s
my
idea of a party!

  Actually, I’ve done Tiffany a favor – everyone already heard Charlie yelling that she’d been cut off, and my explanation at least sounded better than “completely cut off, trust fund included”. Plus I’ve given Charlie the opportunity to redeem himself. All he has to do is say that he’s sure the economy will turn around soon, and promise to stick by Tiffany in the meantime.

But instead of grabbing onto the life preserver I’ve tossed him, he chooses to dive down deeper, until he’s further underwater than a foreclosed mansion. “Hey, maybe we can have a charity benefit for you, too,” he says, and I really hope this is just a poor attempt at humor on his part.

“You know, every time I let someone talk me into coming to one of these parties, it’s because I hope I’ll turn out to be wrong about you people,” Richard says, shaking his head in overacted disappointment as he stomps down the stairs. The dimples aren’t nearly as cute when he scowls like this. “But every time, I turn out to be right.”

“Who talked the scholarship kid into coming, anyway?” Matt mumbles in Tiffany’s general direction, probably because she was in charge of both official and unofficial invitations.

Since none of my videos have gone viral yet (apparently the GluedToYou-viewing masses have been inoculated against my talent or something), I’ve had to consider alternatives besides my own highly entertaining banter. One that I’ve frequently considered is a series of undercover, “top-secret” videos shot inside a sorority house. Unfortunately, I decided that I really don’t have a death wish, or a lawsuit wish. Not only would everyone in the house wind up hating me, we’d probably get shut down for underage drinking and who knows how many other violations. And who wants to watch an undercover sorority house video with blurred faces and changed voices? So I’ve let go of that idea, but there
are
times that I think how great it would be if I was secretly recording one of our parties and I was at liberty to post the video.

This is one of those times.

“You guys are so out of touch with reality,” Richard tells Tiffany and Charlie, as he storms toward the door. “You have no clue how bad the economy is out there. You think it’s bad when you have to live on your trust fund check? Try living on minimum wage!”

“We’re out of touch with reality?” Charlie rolls his eyes as he fishes a beer out of the keg. No one points out that he was supposed to bob for it. “I was
joking
about the charity. I may not know what minimum wage is, but I bet you don’t either. Last I heard, you got a full academic scholarship to go to school here, and you get paid a lot more than minimum wage to tutor football players.”

He has a point there. Everyone knows this school spares no expense to help athletes keep their scholarships – I mean, receive a terrific education. Actually, most of us just assume tutor means “take the exam for the quarterback while he’s out of town playing a game”. Richard is never going to get rich tutoring football players, but he’s hardly a charity case any more than Tiffany is.

“I wasn’t talking about
me
,” Richard says, shooting an accusatory glance at the chandelier. He actually shoots it two glances – the first one accusatory, the second quizzical as he double-checks to see if that’s
really
a rhinestone-encrusted, push-up demi bra dangling from the chandelier. And yes, it is.

“We spend a lot more money on philanthropy than we do on a few decorations,” Tiffany says, flapping her bright purple fingernails at the chandelier. “We have a charity event almost every month. For a
real
charity.”

“You throw a party and get drunk every weekend.” Richard snags a beer from the keg and pops it open. “Once a month you charge admission and proclaim that you’re partying for a cause. That doesn’t mean that any of you know
anything
about money, no matter how much you enjoy spending it. Even if you
are
studying economics or marketing.”  Tiffany and Matt are Marketing majors like me; Charlie, believe it or not, is studying economics.