Sorority Girls With Guns

by Cat Caruthers

  “Actually, I've been doing some reading on the internet,” Tiffany says. I hear her scrambling on the sand as she leaps over me so she can talk to my face again. Or my hand, depending on how I feel about the message. “And I discovered that it's so much cheaper to do your own cooking than to eat out for all your meals. Who knew?”

  I flop over on my back, defeated, and open my eyes. “Not me. You know my motto, Tiffany: I don't cook, I don't clean and I don't care.”

  “Yeah, and that last part is why you haven't had a boyfriend in three whole weeks!” Tiffany pushes her knock-off Ray-Bans up onto her forehead. “But that's okay, I'll help you. We can learn to cook together! Doesn't that sound like fun?”

  “Sounds as fun as a root canal.”

  Tiffany purses her lips. “My dentist gave me some really nice pain pills for my root canal. I felt like I could just lie there in the chair and be totally happy while he drilled into my tooth.”

  It becomes clear to me that I am done sleeping for the day. “Okay, Tiffany,” I say, sitting up and collecting my crap from under the umbrella. Cell phone, sunglasses, lip balm, hairbrush. Well, hell, a girl has to be prepared. “Where are we going shopping?”

  “At this place I heard about called an outlet mall,” Tiff says, and she actually claps her hands with excitement like a little girl. “Supposedly they have real designer clothes for cheap prices! I read about it on Thrifty Trudy's blog today.Then we're going to a mart store for food, which should be super cheap, so we don't need to hold back on our clothes spending!”

  “I see Tiffany's told you about this cockamaimie cooking plan,” Morgan says, walking up to us. She couldn't have gotten any more sleep than I did, but she's back to looking perfect. She's even painted her nails the exact sane shade of pale pink as her tennis dress and her lipstick.

  “Where are we even going to cook crap?” I ask, feeling a sudden burst of hope. “There's no stove in our cheap crap hotel room, Tiffany.”

  “Thrifty Trudy has thirty cheap recipes that you can make in a microwave!” Tiffany says. “Now let's hurry up and get to the mall. I want to buy something really sensational. Matt says he and Charlie have a huge surprise for Richard tonight.”

  “Did he say what it is?” Morgan asks as we walk back to our rented Toyota.

  “No, just that this was bound to be a viral video and we'd all want to be there if we wanted to be in it,” Tiffany says.

  Well, why didn't she just lead with that?

  “I'm so grateful for this wonderful opportunity,” Tiffany says, and I wonder how grateful she'll be if I smack her in the mouth the next time she says that.

  ***

  “Well...these are real designer clothes, as far as I can tell,” Morgan admits, fingering a Tory Burch jacket. “Or else they're the best fakes I've ever seen.”

  “Label looks real,” I say, scrutinizing a t-shirt from the same line, the logo stamped across the front in gold glitter. “This would look great on my boobs...if only they had it in my size.”

  “Yeah...I think that may be a problem,” Tiffany says, fingers flying over shirts on a rack. “Everything they have is either a size 0 or a size 18, with nothing in between. What are you supposed to do if you're a size 4?”

  “Shop in a real store, I'm guessing,” Morgan mumbles.

  “Wait, here's something in a 4.” I snag a pair of Rock Revival jeans in my size and flip over the tag. Did I really just score the perfect pair of jeans for only $39.99? “Ooh, look at the bling on the butt pockets. Hey, what does IR mean?”

  “Um...” Tiffany fishes her phone out of her purse and consults whatever blog recommended this place. “It means it may not fit like a size 4. It might be too big or too small, or something is wrong with the cut.”

  “Guess it won't hurt to try it on and see.” I look around the store until I see someone wearing a nametag. “Excuse me, where are your dressing rooms?”

  The salesperson, who is about my age and has more pimples than Bill Gates has dollars, looks at me like I just asked a stupid question. “We don't have dressing rooms. This is an outlet store. Take it or leave it.”

  Tiffany blinks at the sales clerk, her mouth forming an “O”, then she quickly mumbles something about being grateful. Morgan puts back the size 0 skirt she was holding. “Guess there's no point in trying to see if I can suck it in and squeeze myself into that.”

  “Hey, um, what's your return policy?” I ask the salesperson.

  “All sales final.” She points to a sign over the register.

  “What if the item is defective or something?” Tiffany asks, poking at a rack of Tory Burch flip-flops. “Like, what if I got home and the crystal fell off one of these?”

  “This is an outlet store,” the clerk says, louder this time since she apparently thinks we're hard of hearing. “If we just let people return stuff, all the Feebayers would return everything that didn't sell. We're not in the rental business. You want a warm and fuzzy return policy, go shop at Target.”

  “You know, that's a good idea,” I say to Morgan and Tiffany. “Since it doesn't look like this place is going to work out, let's just go buy our food for the week, and then see how much money we have left over. Then maybe we can just go to a real store and buy something for tonight.”

  “Can you give us directions to Target?” Tiffany asks the clerk.

  ***

  “Is three-fifty a pound a good price for ground beef?” Morgan asks me.

  I give her my best how-long-have-you-been-taking-stupid-lessons look. “You're asking a vegetarian? I've never bought ground beef in my life.”

  “We could drive over to Wal-Mart and see how much it is there,” Tiffany suggests.

  “Why don't you ask your phone how far the nearest Wal-Mart is,” I suggest, heading for the frozen foods section.

  “The nearest Wal-Mart is ten miles away,” Morgan says, consulting her phone.

  “That's not bad. It won't take us long to get there and back,” Tiffany says.

  “Yeah, but how much gas will we use?” I ask. “Especially if we sit in traffic for a while? Just buy the ground beef here. Now, where are you going to keep it? In that ice bucket in our room?”

  Morgan shakes her head. “No, we brought a cooler with us, remember? It's the one we usually keep the beer – I mean, soda – in.”

  “Oh, yeah.” I stop in front of the veggie burgers, which I've been eating for years, mostly because the slop they serve up in the cafeteria and call “vegetarian” always oozes the noxious smell of onions. “Hey, I can get four veggie burgers for two dollars with this coupon I found online. Is there one for your ground beef?”

  “Um...no.” Tiffany frowns at her phone. “How many burgers will a pound of ground beef make?”

  Apparently, Target keeps crickets in their store, because I can hear them chirping right now.

  “You know, maybe we should try the veggie burgers like Shade, here,” Morgan says, tapping something into the calculator app on her phone. “I mean, messing with raw hamburger in a motel room just sounds like a bad idea. There's no space to use as a cutting board, so we'd probably just spread e.coli all over the place. And we'd have to buy a meat thermometer to make sure the beef was cooked well enough to kill it. And that'd take another chunk out of our shoe-buying budget. Besides, veggie burgers are better for your cholesterol, even if they do taste like crap.”

  Up until that last part, I was starting to think all that studying had really helped Morgan.

  “Yeah, be grateful to the universe for helping you stave off a heart attack twenty years from now.” I swing open the freezer door and grab two boxes of veggie burgers, handing one to Morgan. “Not only are the veggie burgers cheaper, they're much better for the environment. Why don't you guys split that one? That way if you don't like them, you'll only be out a dollar each.”

  . “Well, that does save us money for our shoe budget,” Tiffany says, although her crinkled nose suggests her taste buds are somewhat less concerned with the shoe budget.r />
  “I'm just bummed that we didn't get any good deals on clothes,” Morgan says as we go off in search of the hamburger buns. “That outlet mall sounded so good on Thrifty Trudie's blog.”

  “I looked at that blog,” I tell her. “Did you see the picture of Thrifty Trudie? She's a perfect size 18. Of course that stuff's a good deal for her.”

  “Yeah.” Tiffany rolls her eyes. “She probably pays a penny a piece for Ding-Dongs buying them by the case.”

  We reach the bread aisle, and I start looking for the buns I usually buy. “Hey, these are only $1.29!” Tiffany exclaims triumphantly, holding up a bag of the house brand buns. “And there's eight in a pack. We could split them.”

  “Yeah, but these are better for you,” I say, grabbing a bag of my favorite brand.

  “Those are almost $3!” Morgan yelps.

  “They're whole grain, and they're not full of chemical preservatives,” I point out. “Read the ingredients on the dollar-twenty-nine crap.”

  Tiffany turns over the package and squints at it. “Enriched white flour, thiamin mononitrate, high fructose corn syrup, mono-and di-glycerides, sugar, calcium sulfate-”

  “I've heard enough.” Morgan sighs. “Okay, let's get the three dollar ones. Oh, no!” She smacks her forehead.

  “What?” I ask her.

  “We have to buy ketchup, too,” she whines.

  I roll my eyes. “You've been reading thrifty blogs, but you guys haven't been thinking outside the box, have you?”

  “What do you mean?” Tiffany asks, as I start for the checkout line.

  “It means, we might need ketchup, but we don't have to buy it.” I point at the junk-food slophouse at the front of the store. “They have all kinds of tiny ketchup packets, and I bet they won't even notice if we all just take two.”

  “Isn't that stealing?” Tiffany asks.

  “Not really,” I say. “There's no sign up that says those condiments are for customers only. I looked on the way in.”

  “Yeah, I don't think they'd care unless we were taking, like, ten a piece,” Morgan says. “Besides, we've eaten there before, so technically, we are customers.”

  “That's right – I had a hot dog at the one back home just last week!” Tiffany says.

  Morgan sighs as we reach the checkout line. “I just wish we didn't have to eat veggie burgers so we could get nice clothes. This really sucks.”

  “No, I'm grateful to the universe that we're getting such a good deal on food, even if it does taste like crap,” Tiffany says. “Besides, I think our trip to the outlet mall was actually a success.”

  “Are you high?” Morgan asks. “We couldn't find anything in our size that wasn't defective.”

  “No, but did you hear what the clerk said?” Tiffany asks, showing the cashier her phone so he can scan the coupon. “About Feebayers? Maybe that's the universe's way of telling us how to solve our problem. Richard did say we could earn money, as long as we didn't use our family connections to get a job. How about buying some of that outlet crap and selling it on Feebay?”

  “Well, the clerk said people are always returning stuff they bought on Feebay,” I say, handing Tiffany my three dollars so she can pay the cashier. “So it doesn't sound like they're too successful.”

  “But some people make a lot of money selling on Feebay,” Morgan says, as we make a beeline for the cafeteria. She snags three ketchup packets and walks off quickly.

  I follow suit, with Tiffany trailing behind me. “Yeah, I had to do a report about it for Econ last year.”

  “Your professor made everyone do an Econ report for the class? I had Dr. Haynes and he made it an optional thing for extra credit,” Morgan says.

  Tiffany and I stare her down. “Oh, right,” she says, stuffing her hands in her pockets. “Well, let's go home and cook this crap.”

  ***

  “This veggie burger tastes like something food eats, and we still don't have that much money left to spend on clothes,” Morgan complains, rolling up her second ketchup packet so she can squeeze the last drop out of it.

  “I'm grateful that we have food to eat,” Tiffany says, although she's wrinkling her nose at her half-eaten veggie burger, too. “There are so many starving people in the world.”

  “Yeah, and back before we went on this budget,” I say, pointedly, since we can't mention the bet in our video. “We had a lot more money to donate to those people. We used to collect canned food for the homeless shelter every week, remember?”

  “You're right,” Morgan says around a mouthful of veggie burger. “We'd all buy at least two cans a week for the sorority house collection, and if no one else brought any, we'd go get a few more.”

  “And I always put some in your collection box when I came over,” I say.

  “But now that we're on a budget, we can't afford it,” Morgan finishes. “So the world was actually a better place before we were...on a green budget.”

  Tiffany sighs. “You know, we could still take all that money we were going to spend on clothes and use it to buy food for the homeless.”

  Morgan and I stare at her for a moment. I break the silence. “You want to spend your clothing fund on donations, Tiffany? Go ahead.” I point to my cell phone. “We're recording here.”

  Tiffany sighs. “Well, I've donated a lot in the past, and I will again in the future. I'm sure missing a week or two won't hurt anything.”

  “Yeah, that last box of food we brought over ought to last them a while,” Morgan says. “Besides, I'm thinking about donating the rest of these veggie burgers.”

  “I saw a coupon earlier for two dollars off two cans of soup,” I say. “It's a brand that's only a dollar a can anyway. We'll get some and donate them on our next trip to the store, and we'll be going green by using coupons scanned from our phone.”

  “Meanwhile, why don't we go back to the Feebay idea?” Tiffany asks. “If we could make money doing that, we could afford to buy clothes and donate to the less fortunate.”

  “Maybe, depending on how much we make,” I say. “Not everyone gets rich selling online, you know. I remember from that report I had to do for that boring Econ class – not everything sells well on Feebay, at least not anymore. You have to find items that are in high demand and are hard for people to find, at least in some areas of the country.”

  “And we wouldn't get our money immediately, right?” Morgan asks. “How does that work, anyway? They send us a check?”

  “No, they use something called Payout. The money goes into your account as soon as the buyer clicks pay.” I finish off my veggie burger and dig through my suitcase for my Oreo stash. “These were on sale for $2.50 the day we left for our trip,” I explain to Morgan's raised eyebrows. “Want one?”

  She and Tiffany both grab one. Or four.

  “So if we bought something and sold it today, we'd get the money today?” Tiffany asks.

  I sigh. “It's not that simple. Most things don't sell the first day. Especially at a profitable price. And if you don't already have an account set up, it can take several days just to get your checking account and credit card verified...”

  “You have an account though, right?” Tiffany scrunches up her face. “You bought something for your Halloween costume on there, right? The hairpiece?”

  “Yeah, that's right.” I went as Dolly Parton. “And I actually sold some stuff on there last year, after Brad dumped me. You know how he used to always give me dumb gifts that clearly displayed how little he understood me? I sold every one of those stupid things on there just to annoy him.”

  “Even the ice cream maker?” Morgan asks.

  I roll my eyes. “That was the first thing I sold. I can't believe he expected me to make him ice cream. What an idiot. I only got ten bucks plus shipping for the damn thing.”

  “And that corset thing he expected you to wear?” Tiff asks.

  “I know.” I shove the Oreos back in my suitcase before my friends can clean me out. “Seriously, do I look like the type of wom
an who wants to squeeze herself in a corset just so some guy can spend twenty minutes getting me out of it? What about that sounds like a turn-on?”

  “Nothing.” Morgan looks plaintively at the suitcase as I zip it closed. “How much did you get for it?”

  “Actually, almost twenty-five.” I take a sip of water, from a plastic cup provided by the oh-so-generous management of Motel One. I've refilled it three times today, every time on camera to demonstrate how green-friendly I am. “Apparently, someone out there thinks it's a turn-on.”

  “So you have an account set up and you can sell stuff.” Tiffany pulls out her cell phone. “I have pics of everything we saw at the outlet mall. Let's see what we can get for it.”

  “Clothing is one of the hardest categories,” I say, but I pick up my own phone and open the Feebay app. “It has to be the right brand, in the right size, and sometimes only certain styles and colors do well.”

  “See how much Rock Revival jeans are going for,” Tiffany says, her good mood refusing to surrender.

  “Okay, women's size four?” I pull up an advanced search, which will show me what items actually sold for, if they sold at all. “Hmm...let's see....$45, $46.50, $67.00, $52.03, $49.99, $54.70, $48.00...”

  “Hang on.” Morgan's fingers fly over her phone, and I assume she's pushing the calculator app to its limits. “That's an average sale price of $57.89.”

  Tiffany's eyebrows disappear under her bangs, which is probably a good thing, since she hasn't had them plucked in almost a week. “That's like, an eighteen dollar profit! Let's go back to that mall right now!”

  “Whoa, wait a second.” I toss my phone on the bed. “Most of those sellers had a higher feedback number than me. Some people will pay more for a seller with a longer, better track record. Also, you're not figuring profit right. First, you have to add tax.”

  “That's almost ten percent.” Morgan shrugs. “Say $44.00 for our cost then. That's still an almost fourteen dollar profit margin. Wait – do we pay shipping or does the buyer do that?”