The Undergrad Years: Always And Forever Vive Part 4

Something about the way she said 'fabulous' came out of her mouth sounding rather ironic, very Vanity Fair-ish, and I knew that whatever this woman was up to was nothing but a mockery of everything I'd strived for.

"I oughta c.u.n.t-punt you."

"Viveca! Don't overreact." My boyfriend scolded me.

My thumb and pointer finger played with the locket around my neck for a minute as I tried to collect my thoughts. Hard as it may have been for me to remain calm, I wanted to beat her up. However, that would surely get my gorgeous a.s.s suspended, so I stepped back and sneered, "They don't know anything about what went on at Avon Porter. You'd just be wasting your time."

She fixed the collar on her s.h.i.+rt, which had gotten fussed up when I'd near body-slammed her against the wall, and hissed, "My book isn't just about your boarding school days."

Not liking the sound of that, I sized her up and down. "What's it about then?"

"The book is t.i.tled Karma: The Curse of the Spoiled Rich." Pus.h.i.+ng her long black hair out of her face, she rounded her shoulders and tried to act as if she wasn't afraid of me.

Which was total bulls.h.i.+t, because even I was scared of myself right about then. h.e.l.lo!

"Karma?" I repeated.

"Yes. It's on the curse that you, Lex, Taddy and Blake seem to be under."

I laughed sarcastically, putting my hands on my hips as I tilted my jaw up a bit for her to continue.

"My theory goes back to what the book of Luke says in the Bible. Basically, 'blessed are the poor, cursed are the rich'."

"The Bible does not say that!"

"You read the Bible?" Jay Austin asked as if finally getting into the conversation.

I shot him a glare to zip it.

"Listen, Viveca. The book isn't just on you, but also on how people like you-with lots of money-are just naturally cursed. I've got the Johnson & Johnson dynasty and the Kennedys in the ma.n.u.script, too."

Rolling my eyes, I realized we'd been dammed ever since the death of my beloved Sanderloo.

"My parents and I would like to see the ma.n.u.script when it's ready." Acting as if it was all just beneath me, I collected myself, perhaps a bit embarra.s.sed I'd lost my s.h.i.+t. I was certainly p.i.s.sed I'd forfeited my o.r.g.a.s.m. That was for sure.

"Sure. I'll have it done in a few days." The harsh glow on Poppy's face seemed to settle.

I walked back into Jay Austin's office and grabbed my purse and books.

When I came back out into the hall, Poppy was talking to Jay Austin about what karma was and Dr. Henry had come out of his office, joining in the conversation.

Great, now everyone is going to know.

"Listen, don't you go speaking to anyone on campus about me. If you want to do this sneaky-snaky-s.k.a.n.ky type of journalism, you do it off-campus."

"Vive!" Jay Austin tried to put his arm around me, possibly to smooth out the situation, but I sidestepped, dodging the embrace. I was too livid to act as the happy couple.

"I mean it. You want my blessing on this book? Don't talk to my boyfriends on campus." I forced a smile to Dr. Henry and gave him a nod. The last thing I needed was to have to change my major out of the journalism program.

His focus remained on Poppy. Of course it did. The woman was a people magnet.

She shook her head. "I can talk to whomever I please, Vive. It's a free country. But if you want me to take Jay Austin away from here, perhaps back to his place, so we can talk, that's your call."

That's it. Totally losing my cool, I stepped up to her so fast I thought she'd pee herself. "Funny how the t.i.tle and theme of your book are all about karma and yet you're not working with me here."

"So...what." Poppy shrugged.

Just as the hallway filled with an odd silence, Taddy came in from another cla.s.s and asked, "What's going on?"

Thankful to see a true friend, I grabbed her arm. Feeling some strength inside me, I muttered in my frenemy's direction, "I'd hate to see something bad happen to you, Poppy, is all. It would just break my heart."

"Are you threatening me?" she asked, getting all huffy.

"No, honey. Come to think of it, you may write whatever the frick pleases you. Just don't expect me to have your back."

"Stop threatening me!"

I laughed. "Go ahead, talk to Jay here, too. Other than the fact that I have the tightest, sweetest 'lil p.u.s.s.y his fat c.o.c.k has ever f.u.c.ked, he won't tell you much."

Suddenly, Dr. Henry burst out into the oddest high-pitched laugh I'd ever heard.

Jay Austin's cute adorable mouth hung open, utterly speechless.

Poppy exhaled loudly through her pointy honker of a nose, while I turned on my Manolo Blahniks with Taddy at my side and sa.s.sed, "Buh-bye."

Poppy White Goes M.I.A.

"Why is it that every time something horrific happens in this town, we're to blame? It's utterly ridiculous. I ask you this: when in the heck are we gonna get a frickin' break? We should just change our names and move to Canada. For the record, the Manhattanites and I may not be perfect. However, we did not, I repeat, did not abduct TV host and fellow student, Poppy White."-Lex Easton, rock-n-roll royalty, women's studies major.

A Dateless Weekend Sherry Netherland Monday Night Screw midterms!

"How in the heck is it that I have not one, but two-yes, two-frickin' boyfriends and still didn't score a date this past weekend?" I whined aloud to my besties, who were sprawled out on the sectional sofa in the penthouse's front living room.

Looking up from reading the latest copy of Curvy Girls magazine, Lex replied, "It's kinda nice not having them around. Just family. No boys." She wiggled her freshly pedicured toes in my direction.

"Thanks, Lex." Appearing well rested from the weekend at his parents' house, Blake rolled his bright blue eyes in her direction.

"Oh...you know what I mean. You're one of us girls. Plus, I like it when they're not here."

With their own bedrooms at the end of the hall, Lex and Taddy had been living with me ever since we'd started college the previous semester. Blake was the only one of us who lived in the dorms. He rather enjoyed campus life. Personally, I think he just liked seeing all those naked jocks running around in the halls.

Sometimes when we were between cla.s.ses, Taddy and I would sit outside Blake's room with his roommate and gay best friend (GBF), Thor Edwards.

When the boys, wrapped in their towels (or sometimes nothing at all), strutted from the showers to their sleeping quarters, we'd hold up scorecards, as if we were judges on some reality show where you had to dance for us.

Usually, the boys would entertain us and do a spin or a shake of their hips and we'd be gracious, giving them an eight. If they were hung like Donkey Kong, a ten. If they weren't, a two.

Low scores were often followed by Thor booing and hissing at them. Yes, he'd go there. He always went there. Take Blake and make him ten times sa.s.sier and a millionaire. Basically me with b.o.o.bs. That was Thor Edwards. I just loved that man.

There was this one student from Russia, named Anton Shayk, who played on our college basketball team. Anyway...he strutted around the dorm twenty-four-seven, night and day, with his ginormous d.i.c.k out. I swear he could knock someone unconscious if a strong breeze came by and caused his p.e.n.i.s to upswing.

"Sweet Freaky d.i.c.k Jesus. I've never seen anything like that before," Taddy had muttered the first time we'd laid eyes on Anton, aka Donkey Kong. "How does he run down the basketball court without tripping over...it?"

"That's why they wear those jockstraps, to keep it up and in place," I'd replied, as if I had some clue as to what I was talking about. I didn't play sports. Heck, I didn't believe in exercise.

"Oh, darling, a jockstrap would cause his d.i.c.k to point up toward the sun."

"So..." I didn't follow.

"If that happened, he'd be able to rest his chin on his c.o.c.k." Taddy clarified.

"Ha!" Taddy laughed so hard at Lex wanting the penthouse all to herself, her snort dragged me out of my Donkey Kong memory. "Darling, you're just saying that because the last time Jay Austin and Seneca came over, they ate all of your jellybeans."

"What. Ever. That seasonal candy just happens to be my favorite, and for good reason. It's not as if I can just go to the grocery store anytime of the year and purchase fresh jellybeans. Shoot, I wait months for them to be stocked on the shelves. Months, I tell 'ya." Contentment flashed in Lex's eyes as she popped a candy in her mouth and chewed slowly.

For as long as I'd known her, Lex's vice had been candy. Over the years, she'd tried to modify and sometimes even quit her sugar. The previous semester, after Lex had broken up with her boyfriend, Ford she'd sworn off men and doubled her sugar intake. I tried not to worry about her health, because in a way-for Lex, at least-it was her Xanax.

Poor thing.

"You and your sugar. Birdie has her cocaine, and you have candy," Taddy sa.s.sed. "You know, studies show it releases the same 'feeling' in the brain."

"What does?" Lex asked, wiping her lips as she sat up from the sofa.

"Cocaine and sugar."

"Oh, shut your pie-hole. They do not." Lex threw a jellybean at her.

Blake snapped his long fingers and shook his head at Taddy to stop it.

Feeling annoyed, I put down the letter I'd been working on to Sanderloo's parents. I was on my third draft, which wasn't going to sell. "Stop picking on her."

If anyone could sympathize with addiction, it was me.

Our senior year at Avon Porter, after we were released from juvie and I'd given up my baby, Rose-that was the name I picked for her-I'd gotten hooked on Oxycodone for a few months. Anything to numb the pain of having to give my baby up for adoption, I shoved down my throat. That drug got a hold of me in a way I never thought possible.

For the first time in my life, I couldn't feel anything.

No more pain in my mind.

No more sadness in my heart.

No more loss in my spirit.

Nothing. Only numbness.

When I came off those pills, it was holy h.e.l.l on Earth. I wanted to die more than I wanted to live. So I tried to kill myself with a bottle of sleeping pills. In reality, I was truly tired. Tired of living. Tired of failing. Tired of everything, including being myself. I just wanted to sleep... forever.

Shortly after Taddy and Lex had found me unconscious in my bed at Avon Porter, my folks had sent me to detox. They never took responsibility for me after I had to give my baby away. As if it was perfectly normal for a healthy, wealthy young woman, such as myself, to give birth to a beautiful baby girl and just give her away so she could graduate from boarding school and not shame the family.

It wasn't normal. It wasn't the 1950's, for Christ's sake. There was no reason I couldn't keep Baby Rose. However, my parents had threated to disown me and leave me penniless.

Looking back, I should've taken my baby, dropped out of high school, and tried to make it on my own.

Mama had argued, "Viveca, you killed the baby's father. How are you going to explain that as she gets older and asks 'where's Daddy'?"

She was right. I couldn't explain it. I'd killed Sanderloo to protect Blake but nonetheless, I took a life. Ashamed, perhaps manipulated, I'd agreed to give up Baby Rose. However, if I could do it all over again, I would've kept her. I would've found a way to help her understand that I loved her father. He was messed-up that night, and I'd tried to make it right. It just didn't go as I'd intended.

Nothing in my life had ever gone the way I intended. Ever.

Medically speaking, according to some doctors (not the one on Madison Avenue), I wasn't supposed to drink alcohol or smoke pot because it could trigger my addictions, my need to be numb. Regardless, at this point, I couldn't care less. One or two vodka tonics a day wasn't going to kill me. It sure as h.e.l.l didn't numb me.

But the letter I'd been trying to write to Sanderloo's parents might help all that.

Lex threw back a handful of jellybeans in her mouth and winked in my direction.

The four of us always bickered, but we loved each other. Lex, Taddy, Blake, and I were family. But we'd been cooped up all weekend, studying our a.s.ses off for midterms and trying to do as Charmaine had suggested and keep a low profile. That basically meant no clubs, parties, or our usual hangouts.

Just then, the phone rang.

"Don't answer it. We can't look like we're home. That'll make us desperate, and no one wants to date a desperate girl," Taddy informed the room, as if the recent fame of her modeling gigs had clearly gone to her head.

The semester before, she had a long-distance relations.h.i.+p with this guy named Leon in Paris. Over the holidays, after he'd proposed and she'd accepted, they'd broken up. Don't ask me why.

"Good point." I handed the phone to Lex and demanded, "You answer it."

"h.e.l.lo," she said after taking the phone off the hook. "Ah-huh...Yup. Vive's right here, Thor. One sec."

"Heyyy, Thorlicious. Wa.s.ssup?"

"Vive. When was the last time you saw Poppy White?"

I sat back on the sofa and huffed, "Thursday. She and Jay Austin had an interview for that new tell-all trashy book she's writing on us. Why?"

"Because she's missing," he replied with a thread of hysteria in his voice.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, no one has seen or heard from her. She didn't show up for her Thursday afternoon cla.s.s, and she missed the Friday morning taping of her talk show. She's never missed an episode. You know that girl lives to work."

s.h.i.+t! "I have no idea, Thor. But I'm sure she's okay. She's probably off doing research somewhere and lost track of time."

"Vive, Dr. Henry says you threatened her life the other day. Is that true?"

Hearing the question caused a tinge of heat to sear up the back of my spine. My scalp suddenly felt itchy, too. "I don't like what you're implying, Thor, so you can just stop right there."

"Well, where in the h.e.l.l is Poppy White?"

"How the h.e.l.l should I know?" p.i.s.sed off, I jumped to my feet. Deep down inside, I knew in my heart of hearts that, with the s.h.i.+tty-a.s.s bad luck my besties and I had experienced over the years, this wasn't going to end well. It never did for us. Like ever. "Hold on a second, Thor." I m.u.f.fled my hand over the receiver. "He says Poppy has gone missing. No one has seen or heard from her since Thursday."