by Dacy Alex
Sofi wiggled her nose, which Giselle found impossibly cute, and announced, "Nice to meetcha Just Me!"
"But I'm a really super popular streamer," Giselle forced out another lie.
"I can tell," Sofi replied warmly. "You're super cute."
Giselle's heart-shaped lips formed a sheepish smile, her blue eyes going downcast.
Later Giselle would be shocked she didn't notice him right away, but with Sofi sat a red-mohawked man, hard chest in a green polo shirt, blind-folded owl tattoo on his face, feet in Yeezys and a neck boasting a diamond chain of the Irish flag.
"SeaSeaSea!" Giselle shrieked, yet got no response from the Irish rapper.
Giselle had grown used to celebrities ignoring her. She stood front and center for Taylor Swift one time at a concert and Taylor touched everyone's hand but someway skipped right over hers.
Krisdane pointed to a middle-aged broadly built black man, nodding off next to SeaSeaSea. Nodding off so much he fell face first into his eggs Florentine. He pulled himself back up, his messy face reminding Giselle of her abstract art phase. There was no hint of embarrassment on his food-caked face. There was no hint of anything.
"This passes for American gallantry?" Krisdane asked, lips turned into a sneer. "Sofi, if he has offended you then he must meet my fist in beautiful harmony."
"If it makes it any diff," Sofi began. "I got stood up by Pavel Zykov for this little powwow. He's like Siberian, or Brazilian, or Congolese."
None of those countries are even remotely alike!
"Wherever he hails from, he shall return to tell the tale of the Golden Land's lust for honor and capacity for revenge," Krisdane stated, arm crooked, fist clenched in solemn resolve.
Giselle hadn't been so jealous and frustrated since her eighth-grade boyfriend left her for her seventh-grade boyfriend, and they got a school-sponsored party for coming out. And Giselle had to paint them a mural because she was the best artist in the class.
"Wait, Prince Krisdane, Tristabelle wants us to save them from Sofi."
"Save them? From me?" Sofi picked a tater tot off Seamus' plate and casually slid it into her mouth. "Seamus and Mr. Tyrone Elder asked me here on their own. Then Tyrone sort of, I dunno what he did, maybe he had some Xans? But anyway I was gonna let them read a few pages of my autobiography."
"Aren't you too young to have an autobiography?" Giselle pointed out.
Sofi's wide lips formed a huge smile and there was a dancing sparkle in her green eyes.
"Oh no, oh no. Talent, ability, quality of work, none of that matters, Giselle. What matters is that people like you, and they get to see carefully planned and staged glimpses of your life on social media that you trick them into thinking are authentic. Then they feel connected to you. Then you get their money!"
Giselle felt a bout of indigestion coming over her. Mostly because the clever social media manipulation Sofi espoused had been working Giselle out of her parents' money for a decade.
"How much have you written?" Giselle questioned.
The redhead waved her hand at Giselle. It was a petite hand with long elegant fingers.
"Oh, honey, I'm not writing it. One of my IG followers paid me four thousand dollars to do it for me."
More indigestion.
Seamus spoke to Sofi, "Ay girl, ay girl, fuck with me, girl. Me, girl."
Those were the familiar lyrics to his song "Ay," Lyrics which he repeated twenty times in a one minute-thirty second song over shimmery and moody beats.
But now his voice sounded like it was coming from a man drowning in a tub of hummus. Green eyes were floating towards the back of his head. And even for a man under the New York sun, his sweating was alarming.
Tyrone again face planted into what remained of his twenty dollar breakfast.
SeaSeaSea rapped, "My dick creeps in ya, goes deep in ya. Fucks you to sleep in ya. Put you to bed without a peep in ya." Though it wasn't quite rapping. His flow was what Giselle would term "garbage juice." It wasn't much a flow of words at all, more like a drawn-out death rattle.
"Oh!" Sofi exclaimed. "Say it for my Live."
Sofi held her IG live broadcasting phone in front of the sweat marked Seamus.
"My creeps dick ya, sleep in ya fuck you. Sleep you. You sleep. Ay, ay, ay," he crooned, as eyelids fluttered over now bloodshot eyes.
Giselle felt a sudden urge to search for mentions of SeaSeaSea on Twitter. And she found social media was already on this, "At KimberAnn4Prez4Life says 'SeaSeaSea is a dyslexia hero.' DonkeyWhoreMax says 'SeaSeaSea fucked up off that good shit. Dude is all the way gone.'"
Never had someone named DonkeyWhoreMax proffered such sage wisdom.
"These guys are all the way gone. Are they on something?" Giselle pondered to a shake of the head from Sofi.
"Tristabelle will not be pleased," Krisdane noted, hints of fear in his voice.
"Don't worry," Sofi assured him, elegant fingers finding his arm. "I'm a theatre major I can sell a good lie to her. How should I say they died? The more creative the better!"
Extraordinary in Sofi's case seemed to mean extraordinarily insane, Giselle thought. Thus Giselle took control of the situation and squatted down next to Tyrone. Even covered in food he was handsome with a square jaw and defined features.
"Hey, are you okay?" she asked him.
Tyrone was far from okay though he didn't say it. Or make a sound. Instead, he fell face first into Giselle's chest. Eggs, mushroom, cream cheese, and everything were smeared across her chest as though a three-year-old launched food at her.
With long eyes mostly focused on her phone, Sofi said cheerfully, "Oh, honey, it's not a big deal. That shirt wasn't all that nice anyway."
The only reason Giselle wasn't totally offended was that Sofi sounded like Karen from Will & Grace.
"Perhaps there is a local healer we can carry these men to?" Krisdane offered.
Giselle was too upset about the eggs smeared on her chest to notice he said healer and not hospital.
"No need," Sofi said, her long pink lips forming a chipper smile that stretched all across her triangular face. "We can get Dusty to fix them."
"Dusty?" Giselle asked as she wiped herself down.
"Dusty Blackwood. Our roommate. She got kicked out of volleyball practice, so she's free," Sofi answered
Anika had said in an ominous tone, "Dusty Blackwood." Anika shuddered, "The Tiny Terror of Nashville."
Giselle swallowed. Hard.
Chapter Three: Laying the SmackDown
The second Giselle stepped into the rainbow-flavored room Dusty kicked her right in the shins.
Giselle should have seen that coming.
***
A few hours earlier. Giselle left the appalling wasteland of the James Grey residence hall and stepped into the Midtown Manhattan August day revitalized. She saved Stuart after all. His load was unburdened as was his soul. Better still, she was extraordinary. She belonged at Hemera! It was time to start living her best life!
Her best life consisted of running into a bouncy something or other.
Floating basketballs? Giselle wondered, amazed by the size of whatever she hit.
"Hey what's the big idea, punk?!" A country accent fumed from the ground.
That something or other was a person! And the bouncy things were her giant jugs!
Giselle squeaked, "I am so sorry. I didn't see you there."
The young woman jumped off the ground just in time to avoid a mauling by an errant skateboarder. Not that the gal had very far to go, since she stood just under five feet tall.
"You making a short joke or something?" the girl hissed through an otherwise cute circular mouth.
The sting in her voice and the clenched fists had Giselle shaking her head almost fast enough to get whiplash.
How Giselle rammed this babe could only be explained by a several volume series on Giselle's klutziness. Explaining how this girl's height wasn't at fault was nearly impossible.
"Yer lucky I gotta go to voll
eyball practice. But next time we meet it’s your ass, pal!"
Ringlets of golden hair bounced behind the country gal as she took off towards practice. Well away from Giselle, who thought it a nugatory threat.
****
That threat had teeth, as Giselle's aching shin could attest to. The California babe hopped about a room that looked like Jackson Pollock vomited an entire bag of skittles. The room was a collage of colors, from a red office table sitting in front of a neon orange office chair, to the bedspread of pink and yellow polka dots on black. The drawers were white with a splattering of every color in the rainbow.
The one thing that stood out above all else was a life-sized cut-out of a phenomenally chiseled man with six-pack abs wearing glittering cowboy chaps and a glittering cowboy hat. Signed across a pair of too small and too tight briefs was the name, "Brady Blackwood, The All American Prick."
Given how specific everyone's room seemed to be, Giselle wondered if the girls got to request certain décor.
Pained, Giselle staggered into Seamus and Elder, thinking that chivalry would prevail and they would catch the flailing damsel. Instead, the supreme klutz performed an inadvertent body check and they toppled as though a bullet fire cut down all of them.
"I told ya I was gonna lay the smackdown on ya," Dusty announced, hands on healthy hips. "But I sure didn't think that li'l ol' kick would make all that happen. You got some kinda rash on there or something?
If Giselle had known the morning's promise would bear bruised fruit she would have been more conciliatory after running into the dynamo outside student services.
Sofi sat on pink and yellow polka dot stool, tweeting away, oblivious to Giselle's misery. She only looked up long enough to say, "Giselle, this is—"
"I'm Dusty Blackwood. That's D-u-s-t-y Blackwood with the double D's, ain't they great!" Dusty crooned and then performed a sassy strut ending with shaking what Giselle would term as her jiggling jumbos.
Giselle took a wild guess that many a person had forgiven Dusty for her daily trespasses. The southern belle's face was as cute as a button. Huge baby doll eyes, adorable upturned nose, a circular mouth that sometimes showed her two front teeth and chipmunk-like cheeks when she smiled. One need make no mention of the mammoth flotation devices under a shirt decorated by rainbow-colored fairies.
It was a mystery to Giselle how Dusty found her way to the vaunted Hemera volleyball team. A slender, much taller woman was the volleyball player image Giselle thought of. This young woman was shorter than Giselle by nearly a foot, had strong thick thighs she could snap someone's neck with, and an ass Hercules would struggle to lift. All that stood encased in what Giselle guessed must be the tinest shorts in New York City.
Perhaps Dusty's tenacity shattered the limits of her body, Giselle guessed.
What Giselle really wanted to ask was who Brady Blackwood was. Was he a stripper or professional wrestler?
"Now that we're square, yer needin' me to fix these yahoos?" Dusty said, nodding to Tyrone and Seamus.
Luck was on everyone's side with The Tiny Terror of Nashville having been kicked out of volleyball practice for spiking the ball. On the team captain's head. Twice.
Holistic remedies were something Giselle was totally cool with. Though her mother laughed at the idea of "a nut with a yoga mat and a bowl of seaweed" curing anything. Giselle may have been more liberal than her mother, but she had suggested a call to 911 upon returning to the penthouse. Krisdane started literally calling out "911." Giselle gave some consideration to slicing off her tongue so she could never shame Prince Charming with her stupidity.
Giselle had been surprised to find that Tristabelle and Fleur were quick to accept Dusty as these men's savior. The two gave but quick words of approval and went back to arguing, first about Fleur going deeper into debt over a talisman she ordered, then about Fleur needing the talisman to pay back debts she already owed, then about who was the better oil wrestler, then about whose mother could beat whom, then to Fleur asking for a loan to cover the cost of the talisman.
Krisdane was too enamored with the Amazon Echo to trouble himself with Dusty's health care.
"I could spend the night chatting with a woman of your magical genius," He told Alexa after she gave him the weather report.
So it fell on Giselle, Sofi, and Dusty to do something, anything to help these men.
"If word gets back to mama I been doing this here sort of stuff, she could dock two bucks off my allowance," Dusty complained, kicking a rainbow patterned thong beneath her bed.
"If you help I'll buy you a doughnut," Sofi purred.
"With sprinkles?"
"Extra sprinkles," Sofi traced her tongue along her long pink lips.
Dusty's huge baby doll eyes grew even bigger with delight, " I ain't even allowed one sprinkle back home. Hot dog! You got a yerself a deal, Sofi Poe."
Dusty's eyes traveled to a tall blue shelf that was layered with an absurd amount of glitter. Giselle thought there was more glitter than blue. Even more glitter was stashed in jars at the top of the shelf, which Dusty jumped up and down trying to reach.
"I can't reach 'em! Hey, new girl, gimme a boost."
"How'd they get up there anyway?" Sofi questioned.
"Queen Tristabelle placed them there."
She's not a queen, or even near the throne. But she's still amazing.
The tiny babe didn't wait for Giselle. Instead she leaped onto Giselle's back with agility Giselle wouldn't have guessed she owned.
Giselle, however, was about to be the owner of crippling back pain.
"Gah! What are you doing?" Giselle panted, barely able to maintain the balance needed not to careen into Sofi.
"I said gimmie a boost, dummy. You hard of hearing or something?"
Surely, Giselle thought, in a penthouse condo someone would have thought to leave them a ladder or step stool. But they didn't, or at least Dusty didn't care to look. All Giselle could think is those squats that helped her ass quite a bit did not help her carry the weight of an additional human.
In what felt like an excruciatingly long time, Dusty rummaged past jars of glitter on the top shelf to find just what she needed. More glitter.
"Lemme down," Dusty boomed.
Being rid of the micro-babe was all Giselle wanted. She helped Dusty onto the ground where she saw the other freshman had a vial of blue glitter. Or something better than glitter. Something that shimmered so proudly it moved as though serpents were buried inside.
"Can you get that at Taget?" Giselle asked, eager to use it for her next art project.
Dusty shook her head and then looked at Giselle like she was the stupidest person infesting the whole state of New York.
"Giselle," Sofi chimed in. "Didn't you say you saw other people like SeaSeaSea and Tyrone?"
Giselle had realized the others from the lobby may have ingested the same drug Seamus and Tyrone did. A near asthma attack greeted Giselle when she tried marijuana. Looking at these men, Giselle felt lucky her bad experience was limited to her cousin taking a video and sending it to all her friends.
"There were several. One with a pretty fine mustache. It looked like something from the thirties."
Sofi perked up, her body leaned forward, her head quickly nodded. This made her extra perky, rather than just the regular perky Giselle had pegged as her main character trait.
"Arthur Gatez," she informed the other two. " I think he helped build this condo complex or something."
"There was an African-American man who was like this also."
"Hey!" Sofi yelled. "You don't know if he's from America. He could be African-Jamaican or African-Canadian or just plain African. Think about that, Giselle."
"I will for sure," Giselle hurried to state. "Another person I saw was super pale."
"Oh that must be my Pavel," Sofi swooned. "I missed him at lunch. He subscribes to my premium Snapchat. Like the Platinum Tier, not the Onyx Tier. Ooh, maybe he can take on my Fox Hole Challenge."
S
ofi started explaining the challenge, something about sticking your head in places, and wagging your butt.
The real challenge, Giselle thought, was getting these men out of the hands of extraordinary young women and into the care of proper medical professionals.
Unfortunately, the girl who went to medical school at Hobby Lobby was positioning Tyrone in front of her.
"We need to get this done today," Dusty informed them. "I wanna to go to that carnival they're having on campus to welcome all us freshmen."
"That's not for a few days, Dusty," Sofi corrected her.
"Fine then. But you gotta buy me a toy when we go," Dusty determined. "And funnel cakes and a balloon animal!"
"You're pretty sure this will work? This crazy stuff you have here?" Giselle questioned as her blue eyes shifted to Sofi for help. Of course Sofi ignored this.
"Yer darn tootin' it'll work!" Dusty chirped in her musical voice.
I wanna ask if everyone from Nashville talks like that. But I also don't want to get attacked again. Quandary, I have found you.
"Open wide, pal," Dusty ordered Tyrone.
He did so immediately. Mouth opening so high and so wide it twisted his pleasant features to make him look like he might engulf the entire rainbow-themed room.
A dash of glitter or whatever it is was sprinkled onto his tongue. Then, instead of him swallowing the room into his gaping maw, his mouth, his entire body, seemed to exhale an invisible something.
"I'm back," he moaned. Not in a painful way, but in a way that he would if were he having the best sex of his life.
"Told ya so!" Dusty sang. "Wait till I tell my stupid sister, Eleanor, what I did. And I get me a doughnut. With sprinkles!"
Dusty started wiggling her fingers together, much the same way a cartoon villain does but no human besides Dusty would ever do.
The best lay of Tyrone's life may have yielded the end of his life. He toppled backward, eyes vacant, onto the unicorn-themed comforter on Dusty's bed, landing right on its rainbow mane.
There was no expression on his face, his mouth made no movement, his eyes did not search for help. The end may have been wrapping itself around him, but his face showed it came long ago.