Sorority Girls With Guns

by Cat Caruthers

  That part could still be true, but I know now that Richard has real feelings for Morgan.

  My vlog is going to get really interesting now!

  “How about this?” Richard says. “If I win, I want all of you to pool your money and donate ten grand to the Student Loan Payoff fund I've been trying to start. I have enough signatures from college board members, and I got twenty thousand in funding already. It's a fund to help people who still can't pay off their loans even after graduating. All I need is another ten grand and the school will match the rest.”

  “That's about two-and-a-half grand each,” I say.

  “Sounds okay to me,” Morgan says. “Besides, we're not going to lose.”

  ***

  Richard and I, through the years, have flirted a lot. I'm not going to tell you that I don't find him attractive, with the Ryan Seacrest hair and the dimples when he smiles and the fact that he doesn't look bad with his shirt off. But every time we start to flirt, and maybe go out once or twice, he reminds me what a pig-headed idiot he is about money and how other people spend it, and I lose interest.

  Here's another interesting fact about Richard: He's the only guy I've ever met on this campus who actually rufies women so he can talk to them. Apparently, he's had some lying, cheating girlfriends in the past and just can't trust anyone. I'd like to say that's annoying, but I've been lied to a lot myself. I can't really fault him for that, and in no way is that the dealbreaker that keeps derailing us as a couple.

  But it does mean that we have a lot of conversations like this one: It'll be late, after some party, and I'll be wandering the halls of the sorority house getting into my usual mischief. I'll find Richard downstairs with a drink in his hand, which is interesting because he usually never shows up when the party is in full swing. He's not really a people person any more than I am.

  But he'll appear when everyone else is leaving and help himself to a few drinks. So I'll come across him having his drinks, and he'll offer me one, and we'll get to talking. By this time he's usually a little drunk himself, which is fine. And he'll eventually get drunk enough to tell me how he really feels. He'll tell me that he's wanted me for years, since the day we met, that he thinks I'm the only girl who could ever really understand and appreciate him.

  And then I lean over on the hideous paisley couch, and I muss up his hair, and I tell him that I have a thing for him too, but it will never work in the long run. I see the world of idiots around us as people to be manipulated and bent to my will; he sees them as pathetic losers to criticize and feel morally superior to. We would never make it as a couple.

  Then Richard tries to convince me that I'm wrong, that I should give us a chance, but I keep saying no, that the most we'll ever be is a flirtation, maybe a few fun nights together on spring break.

  “You'll find someone else,” I say. “Someone who wants to key BMW's and intentionally spill wine on $7,000 white couches and rail against the rich every chance she gets. That someone isn't me.”

  “But you get me,” Richard says. “I can tell, because...”

  “Because you rufied me? And you think I don't know?” And he looks shocked and I just roll my eyes. “I live in a sorority house, Richard, you think I don't know I've been rufied right away?”

  “So....why are you still here?”

  I shrug. “Because I know you're harmless. I've seen you do this before, to other girls, you know. The first time, I thought you were going to take advantage of Tiffany. I was going to flip the lights and start screaming at you to leave her alone until I woke up the whole house, but then I saw that you were just trying to use those pills as a truth serum.”

  “I know that's not really what they're for...”

  I roll a shoulder languidly. “They don't exactly stop you from lying. They just slow the brain processes that make it possible to lie convincingly.”

  “Exactly.” He looks at me carefully. “But they don't have much effect on you, do they?”

  “You have to understand, I come from a family of liars, thieves and backstabbers,” I say, calm and cool. “I'm pretty sure anyone who didn't have a high tolerance for drugs and poisons wouldn't have lasted long. Darwinism and all that.”

  Richard nods. “Pills never do much for me either.”

  “It's weird, right? You know, Tiffany loves pain pills, like she had after her last almost-skin cancer was removed.” Tiffany's been tanning since she was two, and it's catching up to her. “She says they make her deliriously happy, just sitting around doing nothing. I took some of those things when I had a toothache, and all they did was make me feel slow and stupid. It was a fair trade for not being in pain, but it wasn't something I'd do for fun.”

  Richard looks down at his drink. “I just never know if people are telling me the truth or not. And I never know what girls want from me. Are they just having a good time, do they like me, are they using me to make some guy jealous, am I their charity case, what?”

  I nod. “I understand, Richard, I do. And I wish that we didn't have such different values. But we've had this conversation before, you know.”

  He looks at me in surprise. “We have? No, no, we haven't.”

  “Yes, we have. This is the seventh time.” I reach over and find the inner pocket of his school jacket. “And every time, I tell you that despite my feelings for you, we can never be together. And every time-” I pull the tiny, unmarked pill bottle from his pocket. “-you take one of these, so you can forget, too. Because having this conversation might ruin our friendship, and you know it. That's why you rufie me first – so you have this option if things don't go well. And if they did, well, I guess you'd tell me how you feel again tomorrow. But unfortunately, my answer is always the same, sober or slightly drugged. So every time, you take one of these pills, so we can go back to being friends, just like before.”

  I hand him the bottle of pills. “So go ahead and take one of these, and put us both out of your misery.”

  Chapter Three

  When I eat chocolate, I feel fan-fucking-tastic. When I drink alcohol, I feel nothing. As a result, I don’t drink much, but I do eat a lot of chocolate.

  So I was up at the crack of ten this morning, just like usual, and went for a three mile run at the school gym, also just like usual. While I was on the treadmill, I received about thirty text messages confirming that, although my friends got a lot drunker than I did at the party last night, they all vaguely remembered making some bet with Richard about slumming for a while. We all agreed to meet at the campus Tenbucks’ Coffee Shop at noon to thrash out the details.

  Here’s what we settled on: None of us four-percenters (a vast exaggeration for most of us, but no one wants to admit they’re not really that rich, so no one corrected Richard) are allowed to use trust funds, parents’ credit cards or monthly allowances during the week-long bet period. Googling and finding the calculator app on my cell phone estimated that the average person making minimum wage in the state of Texas would earn about $290 a week, before taxes.

  We were going to go with that, but then Matt, who’s a lot smarter when he’s sober (not that that’s saying much), pointed out that $15,000 a year was below the poverty line and would qualify you for food stamps, which would have to be figured into the budget somehow. Then Tiffany said that you could make a hell of a lot more than 15K a year and still count as poor. Charlie asked if food stamps covered beer.

  “I think the purpose of this exercise is to live like the average person, not the poorest person in the state, right?” I ask, loudly, because I know it'll irritate those who are still hungover – which would be everyone except Richard, who refuses to drink rich people beer, and Matt, who just has a really high tolerance for booze, apparently.

  “Shhhh…” Tiffany mumbles into her coffee cup.

  “So what you’re saying is we don’t have to use minimum wage as our starting point?” Matt asks.

  I consult with Google and the calculator app again. “What if we used the average income for the state of
Texas? That’s $25,000 a year, or about $480 a week, approximately.”

  “Let’s round it up to five hundred and call it good,” Charlie says. He’s slouched down in the corner opposite Tiffany.

  “Is that okay with you?” I ask Richard. He’s staring over my shoulder at the coffee shop’s menu board, shaking his head at the prices. “$500 seems like more than enough hardship to me. I mean, Tiffany here spent more than that on her last pair of shoes, even after I told her they were hideous.”

  Tiffany glowers at me over the rims of her Ray-Bans. “And how much money did you spend on Miss Me skinny jeans on your last trip to the mall? I’ve seen five different butt-flap designs in the last five days.”

  “It’s pocket-flap bling, and you know it, and how much I spend on jeans is entirely beside the point.” I slam my palm down on the table in what always comes off as an authoritative demand to get down to business on corporate-tycoon TV shows. In the campus Tenbucks’ coffee, it just elicits a lot of glares from hungover students – and a few professors.

  “Now do we have a deal or not?” I ask Richard.

  He tears his eyes away from the menu board. “I agree to the monetary amount. Now let’s get back to the terms of your new lifestyle.”

  "We can't use our credit cards, debit cards or prepaid cards, so we have to pay cash for everything?" Charlie asks. "What if we go somewhere that doesn't take cash?"

  "Like where?" I never carry cash, so I have no idea.

  "I can't think of any place that wouldn't cost more than $500," Charlie admits after pondering it for a moment.

  "Sounds fair to me," I say. "Do we just all go to the ATM together to make sure no one cheats?"

  "That sounds okay." Matt scrunches up his face like a drunk trying to remember his own name and coming up with Jack Daniels. "What about the cash we already have in our pockets?"

  He's right - the ATM isn't going to give random amounts of change. The only fair thing to do is empty our pockets, purses, wallets and Dior money clips onto the table. And now we've arrived at the awkward part:

  "So do we surrender all our cash, checks and credit cards to you for a week?" Morgan asks Richard with her usual tact and delicacy. "How do we know you won't just take our money and run?"

  "What's a check?" Tiffany asks.

  "They're like legally binding paper IOUs. I remember seeing my mom write them in stores when I was really little." I whip out my cell phone. "We'll record him taking the money, including exact amounts from each person and post it on our vlog."

  "So three people besides us will know about it?" Tiffany starts to roll her eyes, winces and winds up giving me a sort of cross-eyed glare.

  "We all have online access to our accounts, so we'd get a text immediately if he started charging on them, " I point out. "And there isn't enough cash here for anyone to run away on. You couldn't even buy enough gas to make the Mexican border with this." I wave a hand at the pitiful pile of crumpled tens, twenties and ones. Judging by the way Charlie's ones are individually rolled, I'm guessing we're staring at his stripper stash. "The worst that can happen is we report our cards stolen, give the cops the video and the card companies reverse the charges."

  Richard is staring at all of us, his disarming dimples MIA, his nose crinkled up like he just stuffed his feet into loafers someone puked in at the last party (I've seen that happen - always look before you stuff your feet into shoes. Or put on a hat.)

  "I can't believe you all just assume I'm going to steal from you because I'm of a lower socioeconomic status than you, " he says, pulling out his Tommy Hilfiger wallet and slapping it on the table. "Tell you what, you can each hold onto one of my cards. I know you won't charge anything on them because they're all maxed out. Now we're all equal, right?"

  I’m pretty sure giving us his maxed-out plastic doesn’t make us equal, but that’s not what’s pissing me off right now. “You know, not every fucking thing is about you or your financial status,” I tell him. “For your information, rich people steal from each other all the time. Look at Bernie Madoff. Hell, some of the people he stole from were closer to your income bracket. And the rest of his victims were other rich people.”

  “She’s right,” Matt says, scooping up one of Richard’s worthless cards. “People, both rich and poor, are always trying to steal from you when you have money. It’s not personal.”

  “Your attitude toward us, on the other hand, is personal,” I say, pulling Richard’s ID from his wallet. Squinting at the birthdate, I see that he’s a fellow Aquarius, born less than a week before me – but, judging by his constant whining, in very different circumstances.

  He snatches his ID back and stuffs it in his wallet, obviously sensing that I’m about to make fun of his DMV picture hairdo (I am). “We haven’t discussed your vacation plans.”

  “Well, you're going to have a hard time buying a plane ticket to the Caribbean on your new income,” Richard says. “And don't think you're going to drive your expensive cars to our new destination.”

  “We can't take our own cars?” Matt asks warily. His silver Beamer is honestly nothing to be proud of – his dad wanted to teach him a lesson after his second driving-too-fast-in-the-vicinity-of-a-parking-meter accident, so he told Matt he’d have to pay for the repairs himself. Consequently, Matt’s grille and hood were replaced with parts from a black Beamer and all the scratches are still there. Matt just can’t bring himself to take the money out of his beer budget to really fix the thing.

  “Well, most people who make twenty-five grand a year aren’t driving around in Mercedes' and BMWs,” Richard says, leaning back and folding his arms over his chest with a smug little grin on his face. “But I’m willing to let that slide. You do have to pay for your own gas and oil changes though. And any necessary repairs,” he adds, shooting a look at Matt.

  “I can handle that.” Matt does that nostril-scrunching thing guys do when they’re trying to look tough.

  “Now, where are we going on vacation?” Richard asks.

  “Now this isn’t fair.” Tiffany pouts, and I’m not doing it justice. She’s had a lot of collagen injected into her lips, so when she pouts, it looks like JLo wearing pink spandex pants and sticking her ass out a window sideways. “We shouldn't have to tank our whole summer.”

  “No, we shouldn't,” Charlie says. “You girls clearly have the advantage, though. You can all go out and get a rich boyfriend anywhere you go on vacation.”

  I’d like to say that money is the only thing once again keeping Charlie from getting that thing that would make him happy for at least three minutes, but honestly, this time it’s his big, stupid mouth.

  “I can’t believe you just said that, you pig!” Tiffany yells, and a hungover student at the other end of the coffee shop shoots us a glare that probably hurts him a lot more than it hurts us.

  “What’s to stop them from getting a rich girlfriend?” Richard asks. The corners of his mouth are twitching like they’re trying to leap up into a grin but he just won’t let them.

  “The publicity from everyone watching this video – which is streaming live on the GluedtoYou channel I created for it – should slow everyone down on picking up rich dates,” I say, waving my phone around.

  “But it’s easier for women to take advantage of men,” Charlie says. I swear, the guy has no idea how much his mouth is keeping another part of his anatomy very lonely.

  “Why?” I figure I might as well make Charlie’s grave-digging an assisted suicide. “Because men have such one-track minds that they can only think about sex, and don’t have enough brain cells left over to wonder if they’re getting screwed in more than one way?”

  At this point, Matt finally decides to give his buddy an assist. “Charlie, man, you should just quit while you’re ahead.”

  “I just googled “vacation spots” within a hundred miles of here,” I say. “That's driving distance – even in a crummy rental car. The best one looks like South Padre Island – eighty-eight miles away. From the reviews
, it gets tons of college students from all over the state each summer, so we'll have a lot of opportunities to socialize.” And by socialize I mean party.

  Richard shrugs. “Sounds okay to me. You can probably afford the gas to get there.” Matt, Charlie and Morgan nod assent.

  Tiffany sighs. “All right, we’ll downgrade to South Padre for the first month of our vacation. But after the bet is over, we're still doing the Caribbean. Does that cover everything?”

  “No loans, unless you have to pay them back during the bet period,” Richard says. “So do we have a deal?”

  “Richard, I assume you're coming with us so you can make sure we don't cheat,” I say. “What if we made the bet even better?”

  “What do you mean?” Richard asks.

  I shove the pile of credit cards in his direction. “Well, the bet isn’t really fair because you don’t have to do anything. What if you used one of these cards to buy yourself a ticket, then used them to live like a rich person while we live like poor people?”

  “So I can experience the hardship you all go through every day?” Richard asks. I hate it when he gets sarcastic – that’s my job.

  “So you can see how people treat you when you have money,” Matt says.

  “Yes, I’m sure the rich are really looked down upon,” Richard shoots back.

  “No, think about it,” Tiffany says. The coffee is starting to wake her up. “People treat you like a walking ATM. At least on the rare occasion that someone’s nice to you, you know it’s because they like you and not your money.”

  “Is that supposed to be a compliment?” Richard asks.

  Tiffany opens her mouth to answer, then looks confused, then shuts her mouth and turns her attention back to her coffee. I don’t think she’s actually sure of the answer herself.

  “Well, if we’re going to live on $500 a week while we’re on spring break, I think you should have to put up with us constantly begging you for money,” Charlie says. “You can still say no, but you’ll get a taste of what our lives are like.”