“I nominate Cindy as our new house president!” cried Lindsay as she raised her cocktail glass. I turned beet red back at Alpha Beta Delta when Lindsay offered this cheer. Everyone was gathered at the house for cocktails, and you should have heard the shrieks of joy when we got a phone call from Dean Pointer telling us that all charges are being dropped against Keith. Keith held me close.
“You rock,” he said sweetly, kissing my cheek.
“Oh my God, she so rocks,” squealed Shanna-Francine.
“Posttraumatic Stress Disorder,” observed Patty. “It’s the next stage for our Meri.”
“I completely disagree,” said Shanna-Francine, who suddenly became alarmingly lucid. “Her demeanor will never significantly change. More than likely, it will harden with age. I believe it was Jack the Ripper who said, ‘I need to repeat the acts which bring me pleasure as soon as possible.’ In this light, we can see the choice that Meri has made, and indeed must have made, perhaps unconsciously, from her very earliest days. Erich Fromm tells us, ‘The ultimate choice for a man is to create or to destroy, to love or to hate,’ and I think we can safely say which side of the fence Meri falls on in that somewhat empirical equation. Don’t you agree?”
My jaw dropped. I was flabbergasted. I was stunned. I was way, way beyond shocked. Shanna-Francine is not a dim bulb!
“No, but I play it well, don’tcha think?” she drily asked.
It all became clear. Ever since joining Alpha Beta Delta and learning of Meri’s true nature, Shanna-Francine decided to protect herself by playing stupid—really stupid—while also desperately looking for a way to bring her down. She credited me with giving her the opportunity. “Oh God, I really shouldn’t be telling you this,” was, in fact, Shanna-Francine’s way of keeping me informed every step of the way—letting me know right from the start, for instance, about Meri’s surveillance, to cite just one example. Now I know why she told me to take Meri her breakfast that very first day (“You needed to get the lay of the lair,” she informed me), and why she commanded me to retrieve my notebook from my room after Mamacita arrived to clean Meri’s room (“You didn’t know her room had separate locks and keys”), and guess who placed that anonymous call to Dean Pointer the other morning (“He still didn’t realize Meri had nothing on him anymore; someone had to tell him”)? But perhaps her riskiest gambit was her “big oopsie,” when she gave DJ Mo Ghee the DAT tapes instead of the 8-track tapes, a plan that had long been in the works from the moment she’d convinced Meri to let Alpha Beta Delta take over the Oktoberfest Dance. I couldn’t help myself. I nearly screamed, “I nominate Shanna-Francine as our new house president!”
Happily, everyone agreed. Shanna-Francine also agreed to help Randy with valuable background information about Meri for his school newspaper article, “Meri: The Sociopath Among Us,” as well as details regarding her juvenile court records, including her most embarrassing crime: her junior high school arrest for stealing Jaclyn Smith matchables at Kmart. Everyone wants to help. Patty’s going to be interviewed for a psychological sidebar, and Keith and Pigboy and Bud and I will be interviewed too. But what about all those pictures Nester took at the dance?
“For the yearbook,” he proudly announced. “In the corner there’ll be a flip book. Flip the pages and you’ll see Meri brought down. Pretty cool, huh?”
As for Mamacita, Patty and Pigboy had given her the ledger and let her go once DJ Mo Ghee was given the DAT tapes by Shanna-Francine. She had seemed indifferent to the fact that Meri was about to be brought down, though she wished them well. Obviously, Mamacita has bigger fish to fry.
It was past midnight when the party finally broke up.
“I’ll miss sleeping with you, Cyn,” said Bud with a leer. Then he cleared his throat and suddenly became very serious and pulled me aside. I braced myself. Would he try to kiss me? Didn’t he know to wear a cup by now? He spoke, his voice barely above a whisper.
“I guess I gotta come clean with you, Cyn. And, you know, kinda ‘come out,’ so to speak.”
No! Please God, say it isn’t so. Bud Finger is gay? I suddenly got an image of Bud in a very tight-fitting Abercombie & Fitch T-shirt and matching earth-tone capri pants. No, no, it just didn’t compute! Bud can’t be gay. And yet, I realized, he does love-love Kylie Minogue. Oh my God. And he loves “Lissa,” too—and so does Tony Spinoza, aka “Tony Pepperoni.” Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. Poor Bud. His life was now guaranteed to be complete hell. Given that he’s had such difficulty navigating the straight world (to put it charitably), he was sure to need my friendship now. I mean, there’s no way the gay world will very easily welcome the likes of Bud Finger, if at all. I was about to tell him that I was happy for him, and that I’d be there for him through this difficult time (even if it meant hanging out with him and listening to Kylie, though I would draw the line at “Lissa”), when he smiled goofily.
“I mean, we were just pretending at first—you know, like it was me and you making out in my room—but after a while, we really hit it off. And now that everything is over, we’re not going to be kissing in the shadows anymore. Are we, punkin?”
What? Did he mean . . . Was he saying . . . Lindsay demurely stepped forth, put her arm around his waist, and kissed him sweetly on the cheek. Whoa. This. Was. Too. Much. Bud Finger and Lindsay? Together? All this time I had been worried about Lindsay and felt bad that I was leaving her in Bud’s clutches in his dorm room in order to help our cause, but there they were right in front of me, arm in arm, gazing into each other’s eyes.
“But you two are so different,” I sputtered.
“Oh, c’mon. Don’t you listen to Paula Abdul?” said Bud with a lopsided grin. “Opposites attract.”
Then they chuckled and strode out, but not before thanking me profusely for bringing them together. I numbly said, “You’re welcome,” but I’d actually prefer not to take credit for this one.
Patty and Pigboy were off too, though Patty did have some parting advice. I forgot, but I had once told her about my nightmare—you know, the one about Dad and the strip club and the cigar? She was concerned about Keith and me.
“I’m happy for you,” she said. “But you know, you really do need to get past your Elektra Complex. And remember, sometimes a cigar is much more . . .”
I laughed, grabbed a Grand Torpedo Magnum from Keith, and happily puffed away.
“Patty, stop worrying. Sometimes a cigar is just a really good smoke. Okay?”
I’m in my old room now at Alpha Beta Delta. Keith is next to me in bed. He’s sleeping (he doesn’t snore). Rags is curled at the foot of the bed (he does snore). Tonight I’ll sleep without fear or worry. Maybe I’ll even have nice dreams.
Think Meri will go quietly into the night? Get real!
Meri returns with a vengeance in:
“Hazing Meri Sugarman 2: Meri Strikes Back”
and
“Hazing Meri Sugarman 3: Dark Cindy”
Hazing Meri Sugarman Page 26