Sorority Girls With Guns (34 page)

“
Look, I told you, we're your friends no matter what,” Morgan says, forcing me to endure another hug as we move to one of the back bedrooms to talk. “We don't care if you're poor.”

“
That's a lie,” I say. “Just because you enjoy making a profit doesn't mean you're poor. Some poor people I used to know in my old hometown are just trying to make a buck off me.”

“
Right.” Tiffany and Morgan both nod, and I can tell they don't believe me. That's okay, I'll deal with this mess later.

“
Tell me about this lady who called from GluedToYou,” I say instead.

Tiffany's eyebrows pop up. “It's so exciting, Shade! She loves us – all of us, you, me, Morgan, Richard, Matt, Charlie – and she loves the B Green 2 Make Green idea. She wants us to stream doing the same thing back at school in the fall – even if Green Day doesn't hire us as interns. She doesn't even care that we haven't hit our twenty-thousand on each vid yet – she says when they see the numbers climbing rapidly, sometimes they skip that step and make an offer. She's overnighting us some paperwork – it's a contract, a real contract! We have to get a lawyer to look at it and sign it by next week!”

“
Did you hear back on your Green Day submission yet?” Morgan asks. “You sent it in last night, right? After the...trial period?”

“
Yeah, I got an auto-answer saying they're considering all applications.” This doesn't interest me too much; it is, after all, an unpaid internship. The only reason I was interested was in the hopes of getting a better job after graduation. But my real goal has always been fame and fortune, and it looks like that might happen with GluedToYou now.

“
Can you do the show without me?” Richard asks, and we all look at him. He shrugs. “I'm not really into being in the spotlight.”

“
I guess so,” Tiffany says. “We can always blur your face if you're in our scenes. Mostly Ms. Haines, from GluedToYou, wanted to give me and Shade a contract, since B Green 2 Make Green was our thing. And she says we don't have to stick to a budget when we get back, we just have to keep saving and making money by recycling and reusing. So we can all go back to our trust funds now that the bet is over!”

“
Hey, that reminds me,” Richard says. “I lasted just as long as you guys did. Does that mean we all won the bet?”

We all look at each other. “He did go around living like a rich person,” Morgan admits. “And we all managed to solve our problems without throwing money at them – we even dealt with Biff without paying him off!”

“
I think we should win just for that,” Tiffany adds, as a new idea starts forming in the back of my mind.

“
But I had to deal with the whole hooker scandal, and I managed to get through it without telling anyone the truth about my financial situation,” Richard argues, shooting me a look. “I deserve to win.”

“
You got through it with my help,” I say. “Not all rich people have a smart friend hanging around to bail them out. Look how many celebrities and rich heirs get arrested every day, despite having money for bribes.”

“
Those people are actually guilty,” Richard says. “I got caught in a mess thanks to my
othe
r friends.” He looks pointedly at Matt and Charlie.

“
But that's a problem rich people have to face,” Matt says. “Your friends convince you to throw a big party, they bring hookers, or worse, drugs, and you get blamed because you bankrolled the party. Don't you think that's ever happened to our friends at the fraternity? It has, several times.”

“
And sometimes bribery-ry backfires on rich people,” Charlie adds, still slurring his words a little.

He's not wrong though. “Yeah, that's how some of them get arrested. They meet a cop who'd rather make a statement than collect a payday,” Morgan says.

“
I guess we did all hold up our end of the bet,” Tiffany says. “Why don't we compromise? We fund the student loan payoff nonprofit, and Richard stops making fun of the rich?”

Richard sighs. “I can't change how I feel. There are still a lot of entitled rich people, and I'm not going to stop making fun of them. But I promise not to lump you guys in with them in the future, okay? I will only criticize rich people who actually deserve it. And I really won't see you guys the same way again. I used to think you were just like all the other entitled rich people, but you're not.” He looks around the room, at each of us, his eyes lingering on me a little longer than anyone else. “Entitled rich brats would have caved, and you guys didn't. So from now on, you all have my respect and I won't criticize you or your lifestyle again. I also won't assume any other rich person is a jerk unless I know him or her personally.”

“
So we have a deal?” I ask.

“
Sounds fair to me!” Matt says. “Now let's all go celebrate that Shade and Tiffany are getting their own show together! And we all get to appear on it, unless we want our faces blurred! This is fan-fucking-tastic!”

Me and Tiffany, doing a show together, sharing the billing and the spotlight and, oh yeah, the money we earned thanks to my idea. Oh yeah, this is fan-fucking-tastic all right.

“
Right behind you,” I call after my friends as they rejoin the party. “I just have to send a quick text message.”

Chapter Forty

It doesn't take long for Tiffany to notice her phone's missing. If we weren't partying, she'd probably have noticed in three minutes or less; since she's busy toasting to our newfound success, she doesn't notice for a full ten minutes, when she goes to post about our epic party.

I make a pretense of helping her search the hotel suite. “I don't see it under here,” I say, upturning the couch cushions and even dropping to my knees to look under the couch. I do this in one seamless move that screams, “I'm so in shape I can bend like a rule in a sorority house”.

“
Do you think one of those people stole it?” Tiffy asks in a stage whisper as I stand up. “I mean, no offense, but...these are
your
people, right? Don't some of them steal from the rich?”

I fix her with a glare that would grow icicles on a calender of Playgirl models. Probably over the best parts of the pictures, too. “I thought we all learned something here, Tiffany. Or was Richard the only one who learned anything? You think stealing is limited to the poor? Who, by the way, aren't
my people
any more than the intellectually gifted are
your
people? Why don't you ask Bernie Madoff's victims if rich people ever steal?”

“
Just help me find my phone,
please
,” Tiffany whines. I think the “intellectually gifted” stab went right over her head. “What if we get another call from Ms. Haines? She couldn't get
you
earlier.”

I scrunch my face up as if I'm thinking. “I don't think I've seen you with it in here, Tiff. Could you have left it in the car or parking lot?”

She frowns. “I could have sworn I had it when I came in.”

“
I'm calling it right now, but I don't hear it,” Morgan says, staring down at her own phone. “Is it on silent?”

Tiffany rolls her eyes. “When do I ever put my phone on silent?”

“
Good point,” I say. “It must be in the car, or maybe you dropped it in the parking lot. Come on, I'll help you look.” Of course I put it on silent myself.

“
I'll go with you,” Charlie says.

“
No, you guys stay here and keep looking, in case someone of
any
financial background did steal it, we shouldn't all leave the suite,” I add in a lower voice as I hustle Tiff out the door. Charlie and Matt nod agreeably, and Morgan goes back to looking around the bar. Well, that's her pretense anyway. I think she's looking inside a gin bottle, if you ask me.

When we reach the car, I bend down to look underneath and casually slide the phone out of my sleeve and onto the ground. Then I grab it and wave it in the air for Tiffany to see. “Look! I found it!”

Tiffany's ass is sticking out of the backseat, where she's digging through our piles of clothes and other crap we didn't feel like hauling into the motel. “That's great,” she says, sliding out ass-backwards, her zebra-striped butt popping out, followed by her a second later. She turns around and reaches for the phone, but I bounce back a step and tap the envelope icon.

“
What are you doing?” She lunges for the phone again, and I dodge her again, ducking behind a rust-stained Mitsubishi from the eighties.

“
I just turned on your phone to see if the battery was still good and I accidentally hit your emails,” I say, scrolling down to the offending message. “You're the anonymous tipster. You sent that letter to Angela Burns, didn't you?”

“
Of course not!” Tiffany comes around the Mitsubishi and I allow her to catch up with me and snatch back the phone. “I was framed. Someone got my phone while it was out here and-”

“
And instead of making long distance calls to every friend and distant relative in the solar system, they sent an email time-stamped last night?” I ask. “Tiffany, stop lying. And don't bother deleting that thing, I already forwarded it to myself.”

“
Well, so what?” Tiffany says, tossing her head. I have to hand it to her hairspray brand (Stiff As a Corpse): Her hair does not move, even when she tosses her head like a rock star about to smash her guitar into the stage. “Look at all the free publicity it got you! It probably contributed to Ms. Haines' interest in our project!”

“
No, I think the rapidly rising hits on our vids did that, and I know that would have happened anyway,” I say. “Your tip only got published because our vids were so popular in the first place.”

“
Whatever. You're the one who's always saying 'No publicity is bad publicity'.”

“
In this case, I'm willing to make an exception to that rule,” I snap. “I want you to post a vid saying you made up the anonymous tip and that I really am rich. Say you made up the story for publicity, or because you were jealous, or whatever.”

Tiffany sneers at me. “I'm not going to lie. It's true and we both know it.”

“
And how would you know that? Because I sold some condoms at a party? Or borrowed a few outfits? That proves nothing.”

Tiffany smiles, and there's something eerie about it in the flickering neon motel lights. “You think all I have is a hunch? I don't. I did at first, but that's all it was – a hunch. So I went looking for proof. At first I couldn't find any, so I started waiting for the mail delivery every day. I had to wait two months, but right before the semester ended I finally saw a letter to you from the financial aid office. So maybe I intercepted it.”

I grit my teeth. Our stupid financial aid office is still stuck in the nineties, sending out paper notifications even to people who have signed up for email notices. “You read my mail? That's a federal offense.”

 
Tiffany's still smiling the smile of someone with perfect teeth. “I didn't open it. The post office did a number on the envelope, and the letter fell out as I was taking it up to your room. I just happened to see what it said as I picked it up.”

I hadn't even thought about not getting a paper notice for last semester's financial aid statement, since I'd gotten it by email. Actually, I vaguely remember thinking that maybe the office's dinosaurs had finally gotten over the need to clear a rainforest every semester. I definitely remember the email, in which my parents' annual income was reiterated (in case I should notice any mistakes) and the amount of my academic scholarship was subtracted from my financial aid award for next semester. “So then you don't still have that letter?” I ask Tiffany.

She shakes her head. “I left it in your room, for you.”

“
Tiffany, why did you do this?” I ask. “You've known for almost a month now. I've always been a good friend to you. I help you study for finals every semester. I did all of our group project for Intro to PR so you could get a B. I helped you through that mess with Dusty.  Why would you screw me over like this?”

“
Because I wanted to get my own show!” Tiffany yells. “Because I'm tired of school, tired of having to work so hard for grades in classes I don't care about, tired of my parents threatening to cut me off every time I do something they don't like. I always knew I wasn't smart enough to graduate and get a real job and actually be good enough to keep it. Not like you are. And I don't want to spend the rest of my life letting my parents control me for money.” She gnaws at a ragged, three-weeks-without-a-manicure fingernail. “Even rich people have to work for their money, you know.”

“
What about taking the advice you gave me and finding a rich husband?”

She sighs. “Because you were right about that, Shade – I'd just be going from jumping through hoops for my parents' money to jumping through hoops for some guy's money. I wanted to make my
own
money, and I thought that at the very least, I could get twenty vids with fifty-thousand hits and get in on the profit sharing. Then I thought that maybe I could get my own show and really cash in – Dusty was an ass, but he had a point about that. But I didn't want to be part of some dumb show with
him
– it would just be him making fun of me for not being a hillbilly. So I started thinking that maybe I could just star in my own show. And I couldn't think of a way to outdo you, because you're always hogging the spotlight, and you're so smart that people actually
want
to listen to you all the time. So I thought that outing you as a fraud might get rid of you.”