Sorority Girls With Guns (32 page)

I don't know what to say to her. How can I explain that our friendship is permanently altered now? That even though she's still my friend, and it might be the same for her, it will
never
be the same for me? That she will always be looking at me with pity, she'll always offer to pay for things, and I will never, ever feel like her equal again? How do you explain that to someone who has no fucking clue what it feels like and never will?

“
Thanks,” I say. “But if you'll excuse me, I have to go kill someone, okay?”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

I find Richard in his hotel room, soaking in the jacuzzi. Yeah, his hotel has a jacuzzi
in
the room, not next to some pool full of screaming, pee-leaking, tiny humans. Matt lets me in as he rushes out the door, saying something about meeting Delilah for drinks. I don't ask.

“
You son of a bitch!” I scream at Richard after the door closes behind Matt. I stalk over to the jacuzzi and grab his ostentatious, $3,000 bottle of champagne and the accompanying glass. “Getting to like money again, huh?”

“
Matt ordered that.” Richard rolls his eyes. “He and Charlie drank half of it. And I'm in the jacuzzi because you're making me stay in this hotel and act rich. Now why are you suddenly pissed off at me?”

“
Oh, you're going to play it like that?” I pour the champagne into the jacuzzi with him, then toss in the bottle and glass. They float in small circles, like a grownup's version of a rubber ducky and toy boat.

“
What is your problem?” Richard asks, with the most genuine look of fake confusion I've ever seen.

I'm not buying it. “You can act like you don't know, but I'm not stupid!” I yell. “Is that it? Do you think poor people are all dumb or something? Well, of course you do. Look at how long you got away with your lie. I was the one who figured it out, but hey, just count me with the idiots too!”

“
I still have no fucking clue what you're talking about,” Richard says. “But it looks like you seriously need to relax. Wanna join me? Swimsuit's optional.” He winks at me.

“
You have no fucking clue what I'm talking about?” I grab his cell phone from the stand where he has the champagne and pull up Angela's article. “This is what I'm talking about! Did you really think I'd never figure out
you
were the anonymous source?”

Richard grabs the phone and squints at it, his eyes flying over the article. I watch the contortions of his face, going through what has to be fake surprise, then twitching at the corners of his mouth with what is, apparently, amusement. “You think I'm the anonymous source?” he asks finally, looking at me with a great facsimile of confusion. If I didn't know better, I might consider the remote possibility that he's telling the truth.

“
Richard, it
can't
be anyone else,” I snarl. “You're the only one who knows.”

“
What about your friend from back home? The one in the article? Think it's a coincidence that this reporter happened to find someone who confirmed the anonymous tip she got?”

I pause to consider. “But why would she do that? She doesn't have a grudge against me, and I doubt that reporter could afford to pay her much for the story.”

Richard shrugs. “I don't know, maybe she thinks the story will get national attention, or you'll get your GluedToYou reality show, and she can get real money from a tabloid later. If it's not her, it could always be another friend from your hometown. Surely one of those people would sell you out for a payday, right?”

“
Sure,” I say. “But how would they know the rest of the story? That stuff about me selling condoms at parties to drunk people and dumpster-diving in the sorority's trash is pretty specific. Based on the GluedToYou video, someone I knew back home would have no idea that I was living like a rich person
before
the Green Day project. And they sure wouldn't know about my activities on campus. This was
you
, Richard.”

Richard shakes his head. “I can't believe you don't trust me.”

“
You can't believe I don't trust a guy who extorted me for personal gain?”

Richard rolls his eyes. “I was just trying to protect myself and my money from all the grifters who chase the rich. And I wanted to preserve the image all my friends at school have of me. I like that guy a hell of a lot more than the guy I left behind in California. But you did what I asked, Shade – my past never saw the light of day. Why would I screw you over?”

“
Because you hate what I stand for,” I say. “The same reason I keep telling you that we'd never work as a couple – because I love money, I love the things it buys, I love the way even the illusion of being rich makes other people look at me. I love how it makes me feel powerful. I will never stop feeling that way, and you will never stop seeing money as this awful, shameful thing that you have to hide.”

“
What do you mean, you keeping telling me we'd never work as a couple because of that?” Richard asks, and I realize I've forgotten my own rule about our rufied, late-night conversations: Richard can never know they happened.

I shrug. “I've told you that before, when you asked me out.”

He stares me down, his eyes like laser beams. “No, you said something vague about how I wasn't your type. And I only asked you out that one time.”

I struggle to change the subject. “Well, I thought it was more than once, but it doesn't matter, Richard. You did this because you hate money and you hate me for loving money.”

“
No, I didn't!” Richard yells. I guess $3,000 a bottle champagne and a jacuzzi can only relax you
so
much. He jumps out of the hot tub, sloshing water onto the tiled floor. “I can't believe you don't trust me, Shade. I have always wanted you in spite of how you feel about the money. I wanted to hate you, but I couldn't, because for some reason you fascinate me, and I don't care about your hangup with the green paper, I really don't. I wouldn't even care if you wanted me for my money, and you're the only girl I've ever said that about.”

I stand there, gawking at him in his Tommy Hilfiger bathing trunks. He has never said anything like this to me sober before. He's definitely never said anything like it without making sure I
wasn't
sober first.

For a split second, I consider that maybe he's telling the truth, that maybe someone from home found out about my lifestyle at school, maybe they saw some pictures on my profile or friended Tiffany or Morgan and chatted with them about me, maybe it was even someone from school who figured out what I was up to. Could it be that Richard's telling the truth?

And then it hits me. I know exactly what he's doing.

“
You really do think I'm stupid,” I say, hoping my voice is cold enough to make him glad he opted for the swimsuit.

“
No, that's what you think about all your sorority friends. You think they're idiots and you can use them all you want.” Richard steps back, folds his arms over his chest. He realizes now that the I-really-care-about-you crap isn't going to work on me, and he's going into self-protection mode. “And I can see now that you think the same thing about me, too.”

I shake my head. “You're lying because you think I'm going to out you. You were hoping that declaration of love would fool me, and I'd change my mind about doing to you what you did to me. Well, it's not going to work.”

Richard's dimples are MIA, his face a mask of horror. “I'd be offended by that,” he says, quietly. “But the truth is, I get it. I know what it's like to not trust anyone. You think poor people are the only ones whose relatives screw them over for money? They're not, Shade. I have cousins I can't talk to anymore, even though we were best friends as kids, because my dad's brother embezzled money from my mom's company. After she gave him a job when no one else would.

  “
So I get it. I understand why you don't trust anyone, me included.” He shakes his head, his eyes turning into blue storm clouds again. “All I can do is ask you to make sure I'm guilty before you pull the trigger on your revenge plan. After all, you wouldn't want to make the mistake of
not
getting even with the person who
really
screwed you over, would you?”

I glare at him silently, trying to formulate a response.

He shrugs. “I know, you're thinking that I'm saying this to protect myself. That doesn't mean I'm lying, Shade. In fact, I
know
I'm telling the truth. I can't stop you from outing me, but If you find out you're wrong, you'll have lost the one person who really knew you and liked you anyway. And you'll have let the guilty party get away with no repercussions. So you better be very sure before you blast something you can't unblast.”

“
I'll take that under advisement,” I say, and turn around to head for the door.

“
This isn't really that big of a deal, you know,” Richard yells from behind me. “Who cares if people know the truth? You can still keep right on doing what you've been doing, dumpster-diving and using the money to buy expensive clothes, driving that Mercedes someone owed you for writing his papers.”

I whirl around. “Then why don't you tell everyone the truth about
your
financial background? You can still live like a pauper, just the way you've been doing. You know why you don't, Richard? The same reason my life will never be the same: Everyone knows, and they're all going to look at me differently now. And I will feel differently around  everyone else. And you just better hope I find out someone else is the reason why.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

I can't go back to my room and deal with Morgan right now, so I go downstairs to the pool in Richard's hotel, using his extra keycard (I might have swiped it on my way out the door) to let myself in. I need to think, and I do that a lot better with the help of a hot tub or sauna.

Five star hotels have really awesome pool lounges. This one actually has a coffee/smoothie bar, where I buy a five-dollar soy white mocha, paying with my vending-machine coin collection. Then I slip on my shades (even though it's an indoor pool) and sink into the nearest hot tub (yes, there's more than one here – did I mention expensive shit really is better?).

I take a few quick sips of my mocha, hoping the caffeine will jog some brilliant idea in my brain cells. Like, how can I figure out if Richard really is telling the truth? Honestly, I never took him for an excellent liar before now; he was never a truly lousy one, like Morgan, but he wasn't at the master skill level like me, either.

So, Richard is a mediocre liar who really, really faked surprise well when presented with the news. His expression of surprise didn't last longer than a second or two (I learned from some badly written crime show that the longer the look of surprise lasts, the more likely the person is lying).

On the other hand, Richard is in the best position to have tipped off Angela Burns. He's the only one that I know for a fact knows the whole story.

Or does he? I pick up my phone and open the article again, scrolling through to the section about my activities at school:

Her extracurricular activities included tricking drunk people into losing bets, borrowing and replacing clothes from girls who had so much stuff they never noticed, 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.

Hmmm...how did Richard know about all those things? He figured out most of the Feebay part, and I told him about dumpster-diving behind the sorority house everyone else was passed out drunk. I didn't tell him about the clothes-borrowing, though. It was just something I'd do, after my dumpster-dives. I never stole anything – I only sold or permanently kept stuff that was already in a dumpster. But some of my sorority sisters had sooooo many clothes, that if I borrowed something while they were passed out on the bathroom floor, they never noticed it was missing the next day. I'd wear it, and occasionally someone would say, “I have that exact same blouse, isn't it the cutest?” When I was done, I'd just throw it back into the right person's hamper the next night. Any of the girls would have let me borrow an outfit if I'd asked, but if I did that someone might notice that I wore a borrowed outfit more days than not.

How did anyone know about that? And what about the condom-selling? Or winning bets with drunk people? Richard didn't party, and when he had to walk through a bash to visit Morgan he'd always dash through the main room as fast as possible. Can't say I blame him – it's harder for a drunken idiot to puke on a moving target. Did he ever dash through when I was making a bet with someone clearly indisposed? Our own bet didn't get finalized until the next day (not that it was a losing bet for him, so far).

Still, word could have gotten back to him. I understand better than anyone that not everyone gets amnesia from drinking. Or even rufies. Odds are, at least a few people remembered my exploits, and anyone could have repeated them to Richard.

Or to anyone else on campus who might have seen my vids on GluedToYou. Well, crap, this isn't helping me rule out anyone.