Sorority Girls With Guns (31 page)

I get off the treadmill, run back to my room and change into my bathing suit. The roach motel does have a tiny outdoor pool, but it's more of a urinal for little kids. Fortunately, the hot tub isn't a big attraction to the tots, and I have it all to myself right now. I make sure the jets are turned off (splashy bubbles make it hard to keep my phone dry) and sink into the warm water. If I can just keep up this rich act a little longer, I can go back to staying in expensive hotels and living the fabulous life.

See, I used to think that I'd have all this stuff one day, when I got rich. I'd have my Mercedes and my mansion with a jacuzzi and every piece of designer clothing I wanted (without having to dumpster-dive or buy on Feebay). But the more failed auditions I had, the more my internet videos failed to go viral (I swear, it's like they put out a fucking vaccine for my videos), the more times I got rejected and turned down and told I had no talent, the harder it was to believe that. So I came up with the idea that if I wasn't good enough to have money
and
all the stuff that comes with it, maybe I could find a way to bypass the limitless supply of cash and just get the stuff. After all, ninety percent of the great things about being rich are the result of how people treat the rich, not the actual money.

I know what you're thinking: Money isn't everything. Money can't buy love. Money can't make you happy. You think I've never heard any of that shit before? Of course I have.

Remember what I said at the beginning of this story? Money is like oxygen – it might not make you happy all by itself, but lack of it can sure stop you from getting whatever would make
you
happy. If it was just about the Mercedes' and the Chanel bags and the latest smartphone, maybe it wouldn't matter so much. But being poor isn't just about lacking
those
things. It's spending your childhood listening to your parents scream at each other about whose fault it is that they're broke. It's being told not to be ashamed of being poor, but that you can't have friends over because your parents don't want anyone to see how run-down the house is. It's being told you can't go visit your best friend who moved away last year for summer vacation because your parents can't afford the plane ticket. It's losing the first guy you ever really fell for because his mom thought you were a gold-digging whore. It's the problem you encounter every time you get involved with someone financially better off than you – you will always look like a gold-digger to everyone else, no matter how you really feel about that person. And deep down inside, you will always feel like a gold-digger, regardless of how you really feel about the person.

Maybe there are people in the world you can say screw it, I don't care . Maybe I could be one of those people, but even if I could, I would always feel like I wasn't good enough. I know I shouldn't, I know it's shallow and materialistic and it shouldn't matter, but it just fucking
does
. I can't be with someone rich until I am rich myself.

And that's why Richard and I will never work, no matter how much mutual attraction we have.

Maybe this project will be the one that goes viral. It's hard to tell myself that, after so many failures, after trying again so many times I want to kill that little engine that could, but right now, I'm trying to convince myself that this could work. Fifty-thousand hits on ten videos, that's all I need to get my channel promoted on GluedToYou. And we just released all the vids this morning.

I pull up my GluedToYou account and scroll through the list: The top vid is the one of Dusty getting shit-slapped by Tiffany. It has 7,200 hits. I grit my teeth and try to concentrate on the relaxing, warm water. I shouldn't be jealous of Tiffany. She has the I.Q. of a cell phone voice. She spends hours studying just to scrape by with C's. She has lousy taste in men. And yet, she's also had everything handed to her in abundance that I've fought to get a taste of my whole life. Guys fall all over themselves for her. Money comes easily. Attention comes easily. Beauty comes easily.

I try to tell myself that her vid is bringing traffic to our channel and will boost views of my videos, and I keep scrolling. Most of last night's vids are clocking in at 1,000 or more hits, including the one where I calmly explained everything to the press. Of course, Bernie's speech has twice as many hits as mine. Tiffany's Nair episode is also ahead of everything with me in a starring role.

My best event appears to be dumpster diving, which has a little more than three thousand hits. It'll climb, I tell myself. Other people will want to learn how to help the environment and, more importantly, their bank accounts, by rooting through the trash of rich idiots.

I set my phone on a clean towel behind my head, close my eyes and try to relax.

And then my phone starts blowing up.

First, it's a few dings to tell me someone posted on one of my walls. Then come several more dings, rapid-fire. Then a few chirps. Ding-chirp-chirp-ding-ding-ding-ddd-ing-chirp!

I sit up, fumble for my towel, dry my hands and grab my phone. Maybe this is it! Maybe my vids are going viral and I'm actually going to get rich and famous this time! Take that, you fuckwads at
American Pop Tart
. Thought I didn't have any talent, did you?

The first thing that pops up when I thumb my phone on is an article Morgan posted on my wall, with the comment “Did you see this? Is it true?” I stab at the thumbnail, which looks like my picture and a headline about...

“
Rags to Fake Riches: One Sorority Girl Lives the High Life on Nothing”

By Angela Burns, South Padre's Gossip Blogger Extraordinaire

Seen the “B Green 2 Save Green” videos yet? If you're in South Padre Island, chances are you've seen them reposted on local social media profiles. A group of college students is taking a green vacation here, living on a budget that includes money made from dumpster-diving, making scenes in restaurants for free meals and digging under vending machines for coins.

The GluedToYou account was opened by Shade Stevenson, a soon-to-be senior at Southwest Texas State University and member of the Alpha Delta Tri sorority. With two sorority sisters, two frat boys and a rich friend, she embarked on a campaign to show people how they can save money and the environment at the same time. Outlined in the video series' premiere episode is their plan to submit the project to Green Day, a non-profit holding an internship competition to find fresh ideas about helping the environment. Members of the winning team will be awarded a paid internship to execute a project on their own college campus.

A few questions have been raised about the rich friend, Richard Walters, who doesn't like to be compared to his wealthy relatives and, in fact, refuses to talk about or even identify them (the prevailing theory is that he's heir to the Walters Condom Company fortune, but so far the media can't confirm this). But this blogger received an anonymous tip Shade Stevenson has a far more interesting past.

The tipster says Stevenson was broke before receiving an academic scholarship to Southwest Texas State. She then moved into the sorority house, where she pretended to be rich by using her wealthier friends. Her extracurricular activities included tricking drunk people into losing bets, selling free condoms from the student health center at parties for a dollar each and dumpster-diving in the sorority's dumpster, where she found dozens of slightly used designer handbags and clothing items that she sold on Feebay.

 
The truth is, Shade Stevenson is a wannabe celebrity who never had what it took to get rich and famous. She wasn't fortunate enough to have a trust fund and apparently, as attractive as she is, she can't land a rich guy. So she just decided to take what she wasn't good enough to get. It's a disgrace,” says the anonymous source in the tip letter.

This blogger never takes anyone's word for anything, so she investigated. And guess what I found out? Stevenson's social media personal profiles are closed to those who aren't her friends (how rude is that?), but some of her friends aren't so uptight. One of them posted a pic of the two of them in their hometown, before they left for college. Using my super-gossiper spidey-skills, I tracked down the friend and explained that I was writing a story about the B Green 2 Save Green project and she was totally willing to talk to me!

So, this friend wouldn't go on the record, but she admitted that Shade's upbringing was financially anemic, and that Shade always had an insatiable appetite for the green stuff. “Everyone I know grew up broke,” she said. “I don't know why Shade took it so personally, but she did. She got dollar signs in her eyes, you know? It's sad, but she couldn't see past it. She got all obsessed with getting rich and famous, auditioning for every dumb reality show out there. I think this Go Green project is really just another tactic for getting her own reality show, but if she can do some good with it at the same time, I guess it's okay.”

The friend also shared a few pictures of Stevenson's childhood home, shown below. The '93 Oldsmobile rusting on the lawn was Stevenson's car in high school.

Who do you think Shade Stevenson is? A philanthropist, trying to help the environment and those who
can
own up to their lack of money in a way that she can't? Or is she a rank opportunist, looking for her fifteen minutes of fame? Speak up, readers, this blog runs on your comments!

Chapter Thirty-Six

“
Holy fucking shit!” I yell, as I jump out of the hot tub and fling a scratchy towel around my shoulders with the hand that isn't holding the phone. Several of the mothers give me a filthy look. Like their kids are never going to hear profanity in their lives.

I grab my purse, not caring that I'm soaking wet (vinyl, as opposed to real leather, holds up fairly well to water) and run out the door, ignoring all signs to the contrary (I'm flexible; if I slip I'll just do the splits).

I arrive at my room, still dripping wet, bangs hanging limply in my eyes, and fumble with my keycard, but Morgan swings the door open for me.

“
Is it true?” she asks, and she's looking at me the way I never wanted any of my friends to look at me – with pity. This is the only thing worse than rich people looking at you with contempt. They can't look at you as an equal, because, well, they just can't, so there are only two options – pity and contempt. I can't stand either of those, so I had to solve the problem the only way I knew how.

“
Of course not,” I say, breezing past Morgan with as much dignity as I can manage. I toss my stuff on the table and grab an extra towel from the bathroom.

“
There are a few more articles popping up,” Morgan says, sitting down at the table where her laptop is open. “This one is an interview with your high school boyfriend, some guy named Cliff? He says your lack of money was the reason his mother made so much of an effort to end your relationship. He also says that you were the one who got away. Isn't that sweet?”

“
He said what?” I yell, shoving Morgan out of the way and staring at the laptop. “Holy fucking shit!” This time there's no one around to be offended.

This article is worse than the one by Angela nose-in-everyone-else's-business-because-she-probably-has-no-life-of-her-own Burns. That I could refute - claim that wasn't my house, that those are some other Stevensons. Maybe if I begged my parents they'd even go along with it. Probably not, but it'd be worth a shot.

But this thing with Cliff is a nightmare. The jerk couldn't stand up to his own mother. He never thought to call or email me, not once in five years, and all of a sudden, now that I'm getting some minor attention on social media, now he says I was the one who got away? He's full of shit, that opportunistic little bastard. And what's worse, he's destroying my only chance of leaving that shithole life in the rearview.

There are pictures of the two of us. One, horrifically, shows me smiling my hideous, uneven smile, like a badly carved jack-o-lantern. Its caption lists our ages at the time as 17. Sadly, I'd already started bleaching my hair at that point, and I've always taken good care of my skin, so aside from a different haircut, I look almost exactly the same. I'm wearing an Arizona Jean Company sweatshirt that my mom got off a clearance rack at JCPenney, which clearly marks me as middle-class or lower. The bad bleach job (I did it myself until I moved away to college and started making money on Feebay) makes me look like I just stepped out of Wal-Mart on the first of the month.

“
That could have been photoshopped,” I say.

“
But why would that Cliff guy lie?” Morgan asks. “He's rich, so it's not like he needs the couple hundred bucks or whatever that reporter had at her disposal for bribes.”

“
Maybe his rich parents cut him off too,” I suggest, a good possibility forming in my mind. “That would explain why he's trying to get a piece of what little notoriety I've achieved in the past few days.”

Morgan shakes her head. “Shade, you don't have to lie to me,” she says quietly. “It all makes sense. You eat cheap food, which you claim is because you're a vegetarian. You've been obsessed with recycling as long as I've known you, and you always volunteer to take other people's bottles and cans and crap to the recycler. You knew way more about the ins and outs of  Feebay than someone who sold three things from an ex would. You can keep lying and denying, and you might even convince some strangers, but I know it's true. Look, I'm your friend no matter what. You know that, right?”