“You know it,” I say.
“You little twat.”
“You are. Jealous,” I tack on.
She snorts. “I don’t need that money.”
True. Lora’s dad is a lumber tycoon, and on the school’s board of trustees.
“You wish you were buying yourself Louboutins for Christmas like I am.”
“I’ll steal my mom’s.” She giggles.
“Or steal mine.”
When Lora and I have washed our hands with the school’s citrus-scented soap and I’ve got her money added to the growing wad in the inside pocket of my bag, we latch arms and walk back out to cakewalk central.
“Win a cake for me,” I tell her.
“Good luck with your shit, girlie.”
I watch blonde-haired, pixie-small Lora walk across the crowded room toward Harrison—a tall, dark-haired hottie who plays soccer for our school and has a complete, pervert obsession with taking pics of Lora’s ass and putting them on Tumblr.
Harrison and I are still cool, I think, but I’ve noticed he doesn’t talk to me much since Brennan and I split, and when Lora hangs out with him, I’m never invited. I guess it makes sense, since I’d be a third wheel without Brennan... but it’s still kind of sad.
I spot Megan by a window that overlooks the quad, chatting in a group of junior and senior Sig Alphas. I walk up behind her, smack her butt, and hiss into her ear: “Room one-A in five.”
She giggles as she walks through the door seven minutes later. “I feel like I’m on a covert mission!”
I smile. “You are.”
She gets her weed, I get my money, and then I have to talk down her nerves for a full two minutes.
“There’re so many people here! Next time I want you to drop it off at my room again like last time....”
I slip out a minute after her and repeat my covert message to Katy, who wraps her arm around my waist and tells me I look hot in my jeans.
“I’m not waiting five. I’ll go with you now, sistah.”
So she does, and takes her Mason jar without a lot of fuss, probably owing to her status as the provost’s daughter. Also, Katy’s older sister, Belle, was expelled from school last spring semester for trying to bribe a professor with a blow job, so I think Katy figures nothing she does could top that.
The last person I have to slip away with is Foster. I forgot her earlier, but I always bring an extra Mason jar for that very reason. I text Foster to meet me in conference room 1B. I slip into the small room, filled with faux wood tables, and sink down into one of the plastic chairs surrounding them. I pull open the ‘notes’ feature on my iPhone and confirm that I’ve gotten everyone but Amber, Hannah, and Lindsey, all of whom I can catch on the walk back to the house.
The bit with Foster is... not fast. She hangs around forever telling me about how much weight she’s gained since she started smoking pot again. She pulls a can of Sprite out of her purse and holds it out to me like it’s a poisonous snake.
“It’s my weakness. Take it! It’ll go straight to my thighs.”
I laugh, but take it. “Foster, it’s a beverage.”
“One with corn syrup!”
I shrug and pop the top as she elbows her way out the door. In the quiet of the little room, I take a minute for myself: to sip the Sprite and thumb through my overnight bag.
One minute, I’m peering into one of my remaining Mason jars, wondering if I over-measured. The next, I’m blinking into the dark.
“Ummm... huh?”
When the room remains pitch-black, I slide my arm into the straps of my bag and stand up slowly. Must be a power-outage. “Shit.”