“We never rufied you. Anything that happened to you when you were drunk is not our responsibility. If we happened to find a tape of you, in which two girls tried unsuccessfully to have intercourse with you, we would use that to embarrass you, should you cause us any embarrassment. Especially if the only face visible in the video was yours, and you had no way of proving that you were rufied or that the video was made without your knowledge or consent. Because I'm guessing that no girl who appeared in such a video with you would want to do you any favors. Am I making myself clear?”
Biff is mumbling either “Mm-hmmm” or “motherfucker” again when I hear footsteps approaching. I whirl around to see a security guard rounding the corner.
“Oh, crap!” Tiffany hisses as Morgan lets go of Biff's hair.
“Relax and follow my lead,” I say. “Everybody just stay where you are.”
A flashlight plays over us. “What's going on here?” the guard yells.
“Help me,” Biff yells from the pavement. “These girls are trying to kill me!”
“Officer,” I say, putting on my best innocent face. “This guy was threatening my friend here.” I point at Morgan. “She was just trying to take his keys so he couldn't drive drunk, and he got rough about trying to take them back. We were trying to help, because we were afraid he'd hurt her. He gets really aggressive when he drinks too much.” I pull my foot off his back and step back.
Morgan follows my lead, grabbing Biff's keys off the ground with the non-bleeding hand. The bleeding one is pulled up into her sleeve. “I'm sorry we had to go to such extremes, but he is obviously too drunk to drive.” She affects a panicked look, which probably doesn't require a whole hell of a lot of acting right now. “Please don't make a big deal out of this. He's a good guy, he just isn't used to drinking so much, and if he gets in trouble he could lose his football scholarship.” That one usually works pretty well on the university cops at home. Plus, football players are notoriously good bribers, at least at our school.
The security guard, a short, squat guy with messy hair and food stains on his white uniform shirt, pulls Biff to his feet. “Is that what happened here, pal? Are you even old enough to be drinking? You smell like a brewery.”
Biff stares at the ground. “Yeah, I guess you're right. I should go back to my room and sleep it off.”
The guard turns around to look at us. “I'm going to assume none of you are underage.” He looks back at Biff, and I think I see dollar signs flashing in his eyes. “I expect you to sleep it off, and never try to drive drunk again. And you'd better not lay a hand on your girlfriend, drunk or not, or I will call the cops and have you hauled off to jail for abuse.”
Biff nods. “I understand. I would never hurt her. I just...had too much to drink and things got away from me, you know? And, I am twenty-one. I'll show you my ID.” He pulls out his waller, removes his ID and slides a folded-up fifty behind it and hands it to the security guard. The guard, like every cop at our school, nods approvingly and hands the ID back, the bill disappearing up his sleeve.
“All right...I guess I can keep this out of my report. .after I put you in a cab,” he says. He then leads Biff away, never noticing the bullet hole in the truck's ostentatious antlers.
Chapter Twenty
“So you know some secret about Morgan and neither of you told me?” Tiffany asks, looking at me. The three of us are sitting in our room. Morgan and Tiffany are sitting on her bed, on the horrible, cigarette-holed comforter. I'm under the covers, since I once read a magazine article that said motel room comforters were rarely washed and frequently tested positive for things like feces and semen.
“No!” Morgan yells. She opens her purse and pulls out a nail file. When I'm stressed, I eat chocolate; when Tiffany's stressed, she buys shoes; when Morgan is stressed, she starts carving up her fingernails. “Biff was just bluffing that he knew some secret about me, and Shade knew it, because she's good at telling when people are lying, and so she bluffed him back. Didn't you?”
I take a few seconds to consider this stream of verbal diarrhea. Telling Tiffany what I've figured out might help smooth over our relationship, but it would put me on the outs with Morgan. Then again, it's not like Morgan confided in me. On the other hand, if she's asking me to go along with this lie, then she's sort of asking me to help her, isn't she?
I sigh. “I don't honestly know what Biff meant when he said that, Morgan,” I say, studying the rust stains on the lamp. “But I'm guessing you do, judging by how you reacted. I mean, if he didn't know anything, why'd you threaten him with a gun? Why do that when you knew the video couldn't be held against us? That's the only other thing he had to threaten us with, so he must have had something else for you to react that way.”
Tiffany looks at Morgan. “That makes sense, Morgan.” She reaches over and takes Morgan's hand. “Just tell us what it is. You know you can trust us.”
“Yeah, after that scene in the parking lot, you'd better trust us,” I say. “We had your back, Morgan. Do you know how much trouble you could have been in for threatening someone with a gun? Do you know how much trouble we both could have been in for it accidentally going off in my hand?”
“Of course I know,” Morgan says. She files harder, sawing away at an already-perfect nail.
“So tell us why you panicked like that,” I say. “You're one of the calmest, most together people I know. It's not like you to go flying off the handle like that.”
“I know.” Morgan stops filing and presses her lips together, and I hope she's not going to cry. Because then I'd feel obligated to go hug her, and she's sitting on that nasty motel comforter that's probably crawling with e.coli and who knows what else.
“I have a theory,” I say, since it doesn't look like Morgan's going to be able to talk about this any time this millenium. “Why don't I tell you what I think Biff figured out, and you can just nod if I'm right?”
“Please,” Tiffany says, putting an arm around Morgan. “We're your best friends. We need to know so we can help you.”
Morgan nods. “Okay,” she mumbles, picking up the nail file again.
“Okay.” I look at Morgan, in the middle of falling apart, her perfect hair all messed up, her makeup smeared, and I know I'm right. “I think Biff finally started using the upstairs brain and he figured out something I've suspected for a while, almost since this thing started. I think he figured out that there was no sex tape.”
“The one you blackmailed him with? Of course there was, wasn't there?” Tiffany asks.
“I don't mean that one,” I say, looking at Morgan. Her head is down and she's staring at her hands as if they have next week's winning lotto numbers written on them. “I mean the one Morgan claimed Biff made.”
Morgan makes a sort of mewling noise like a kitten. Ignoring her, I continue. “Morgan, this whole thing has seemed off to me for a while, and I finally figured out why: It's not like you. Yes, I believed what you said about how you're always studying and you wanted to kick back and relax and have a good time on summer break.
“But let's me honest, you didn't have a personality change when you came here. You are all about the planner and sticking to the schedule and throwing yourself into every project as if your life depends on it. If you were going to get trashed, you'd have that evening planned to each second too. You'd have an itinerary of which bars you were going to hit, you'd schedule your cab ride in advance, you'd make a list of which drinks you were going to have at which time and probably you'd estimate what your blood alcohol level would be after each one. And you'd probably set a timer on your phone to go off and remind you not to spend the night with a loser like Biff.
“I just don't see this thing happening. I've seen you at the sorority parties – after two or three drinks, you announce you've had too much already and go back up to your room. This whole thing - getting trashed with Biff, going back to his hotel, not noticing the camera phone, sleeping with a guy you'd instantly regret passing the time of day with – none of
that makes sense for you, Morgan.”
Morgan looks up at me, with a half-horrified, half-hopeful look, and I realize she wants me to continue. Sort of.
“But why would she lie about something like that?” Tiffany asks me. “Are you saying she has something else against Biff?”
“No.” I shake my head. “It wasn't about him at all. He was just convenient.”
Tiffany's eyes widen with understanding. “So she did this just to get attention for our vlog!”
“That's what I thought at first, but not quite,” I say. “Obviously, most of what happened with Biff will never make it onto the vlog for legal reasons.”
“So why did you do it?” Tiff asks Morgan.
“Part of her story was true,” I say. “She was tired of being the good girl, the one who was always studying and getting good grades and having no social life. What's more, she was tired of that rep. And you know what? When she says she and Richard are just studying, she's actually serious.”
Morgan groans and buries her head in her hands.
“At some point, Morgan realized that people weren't gossiping about her enough,” I continue. “And when they were, it was only to say that she was boring, a bookworm, a teacher's pet, etc. So she started a rumor about herself. She figured you and I would spread it when we got back to school.”
“So...she wanted us to start a rumor that she had to squash a sex tape?” Tiffany looks from me to Morgan. “Is that true?”
“Yes.” Morgan looks up, her chin trembling. “I'm sorry, but yes, it is true. I was getting this rep as being boring and, worse than that, not getting any. So I wanted to save my street cred. And I figured I might as well have a good time doing it.”
“So you slept with Biff just so you could make a sex tape and accuse him of making one?” Tiffany recoils, looking a little disgusted.
“No.” I can't help but laugh. “There never was a sex tape because there never was any sex! That's what Biff figured out – he must have looked at his phone before he handed it over to us. He didn't tamper with anything, he just looked at it - and he couldn't find anything. At some point he realized that if he was that drunk, he wouldn't have been able to hide the camera phone very well. So there must not have been one. And then he probably started thinking about why Morgan would have concocted this whole scheme.”
“He must have thought she wanted to blackmail him all along, just like he accused her of,” Tiffany says.
Morgan shakes her head. “No, I didn't ask for any money, remember?”
“He probably sort of guessed the truth, that she wanted to start a rumor about the vid,” I say. “And then he guessed why. He figured out her most embarrassing secret, and that's what he was threatening her with when we got to the parking lot.”
“What could be more embarrassing than inventing a sex tape?” Tiffany asks with her usual tact and delicacy.
“She did it for two reasons,” I say, watching Morgan. She's pressing her lips together, always a sign that she's terrified. “One was to gain street cred with the sorority girls. The second reason was to hide her biggest secret: Not only did she not make a sex tape, she's never had sex.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“What?” Tiffany yells, once again displaying her great sense of tact. “Since when? I thought you did Brian Jeffries in the first pew of his father's church?”
“My guess is she started that salacious rumor herself,” I say. “Probably also the one about her and Mark Chambers on the lawn of the Tri Delt house. Let me guess, you left your polka-dot panties on the lawn as proof of your made-up tryst, and Mark was way too drunk at that party to remember anything, so he just figured he scored big when he heard all the rumors?”
Morgan twists her mouth to the side, as if to squash what she's about to say. “Yeah...yeah, I did.”
“Is it a religious thing?” Tiffany asks, scratching her head. I should explain here that ninety-eight percent of students at our school identify themselves as Christians, but I've never met one who believed that outdated nonsense about staying a virgin until marriage.
“No,” Morgan says, shaking her head vehemently. “Since we're telling the truth here, I'm not really any more religious than Shade. I just didn't want to admit that either, with so many aggressively religious people hanging around campus.”
“But you were more embarrassed by the lack of sex?” I ask.
Morgan nods miserably. “It wasn't like it was by choice. I know a lot of girls who decide to wait because they're not ready, or they want to wait for Mr. Right, or whatever, but it wasn't like that for me. I'm a virgin because...well, because I never had the opportunity not to be.” The last part she mumbles so quietly I can barely hear her, and I'm not sure I heard her right.
“Morgan, that can't be right,” Tiffany says. “Seriously, no guy has ever wanted to have sex with you? But...you're very attractive. And most of the guys on campus would sleep with anything in a Victoria's Secret thong.”
“That's why this is so embarrassing!” Morgan yells. “And why no one can ever know,” she adds, in a much lower voice, looking around at the walls as if she thinks she can see whoever's on the other side. “Don't you get it? I'm pretty, I'm smart, I'm rich, I have everything going for me, and I can't get a guy. Wouldn't you do anything to keep that a secret?”
“Sure, but...but you go out on dates all the time, right?” Tiffany says. “I mean, maybe you made up some of them, but I remember seeing Will pick you up twice last year.”
Morgan shrugs. “It didn't work out with Will. We had no chemistry. We went out a couple times and talked, but he never even tried to get to first base. And then he fell for this other girl in our Honors Biology class – this chubby girl with acne and no personality who wore the same gray sweater every single day, I don't even think she washed it, ever – and that was that.”
“What about Richard?” I ask. I'd like to say I don't have an ulterior motive here, but, well, I do.
“I've been telling you the truth about Richard, since I figured no one would believe we weren't an item anyway.” Morgan flaps her hand like she's swatting away a fly. “We really do just study together. He said he needed help with his Algebra so he can keep his scholarship. Apparently he's smart, but he's not a genius at every subject.”
“But you are,” I say. “And you make no effort to conceal it, which is fine. But you have to understand that a lot of guys find that really intimidating. I mean, most of them are idiots who like to think they're geniuses. So they find girls like you off-putting.”
Morgan looks at me as if she was suddenly starting to see through a cloudy window. “Do you think that's why guys never want to make a move on me?”
I realize that as smart at she is, Morgan hasn't actually figured this out herself. It's the one thing I was wrong about. “I do,” I say. “I think most guys are insecure idiots, and would rather go out with a female version of themselves than a super-smart, super-confident, super-together girl like you. I mean, you know a lot of girls hate you because you're so perfect, right? Well, the guys don't exactly hate you, but they'd be embarrassed to be around you and show that they're not as smart, so they just try to avoid you.”
“I am not perfect!” Morgan screams. “I am a fucking twenty-two-year-old virgin who hasn't been kissed since freshman year!”
“Well, technically-” I start, and Morgan bursts out laughing, which is what I hoped would happen. I was kind of worried she'd start crying instead.
“No one thinks you are perfect,” Tiffany says. “But you can seem that way to other people, both guys and girls. I mean, you get all A's, you usually finish first in every class-”
“That's because I study all the time, and most people don't!”
“Yeah, and we're probably all a little jealous that you get to spend so much time reading those exciting textbooks,” I say.
Morgan rolls her eyes.
“And you're the best tennis player in the school, and your hair always looks perfect and your outf
its always match precisely....” Tiffany continues.
Morgan nods. “I get it, I get it. But I don't like the idea of acting stupid just so a guy will like me.”
“You're right, you shouldn't do that.” I push back the covers, get up and go sit beside her and Tiffany. “What you should do is find a guy who isn't intimidated by you. And I bet when you get to med school and you're surrounded by other geniuses, it'll be a lot easier.”
“Maybe you're right.” Morgan sighs. “But it's still really important to me that no one ever finds out I'm a virgin, okay?”
“We won't tell anyone,” Tiffany says. “And if you need us to start a fake rumor about your sex tape, you know I'm all over that!”
Morgan looks at me. “Can I count on your support?”
“Of course,” I say. “No one will hear the real scandalous story about you from me.”
And I intend to keep that promise – well, at least until I need leverage with Morgan. Then, well, we'll see.
***
By the time Morgan went back to her room, the sun was peeking through the thin, gray curtains and it was far too late to go back to sleep, so I'm trying to catch a nap on the beach, under my sun umbrella. The empty beer cans and condom wrappers don't look as ugly when I have my eyes closed.
“Shade, Shade, guess what?” That would be the dulcet tones of Tiffany I hear.
“What?” I growl.
“Richard's throwing another party tonight! And it starts at nine, so we need to go shopping!”
Reluctantly, I open my eyes. “He just had a party last night, and we don't have any money to go shopping with, remember?”
Tiffany is wearing her two-for-one-sale Aero bikini and a smile that could light up a black hole. “That's not true! We have money, we just only have a few hundred in cash instead of our credit cards.”
“That money has to last the rest of the week, Tiff, and it's only Monday. And even when we eat that crap at Denny's it costs five bucks a meal.” I roll over and snuggle back into my beach towel, which I sort of lifted from Richard's hotel. Fortunately, they're not quite swanky enough to brand their name on their towels.
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