Big Vamp on Campus - Molly Harper Page 0,21
a conversation starter.”
Meagan gaped at me, while the other two giggled. “You made a joke, Ophelia!”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think you’ve ever made a joke around me before!” she cried, her eyes getting a little misty.
“It’s my original British wit. Sometimes it’s so dry you can’t tell when I’m being downright hilarious.”
“Oh, you’re from England!” Keagan exclaimed. “What’s that like? Why don’t you have an accent? Have you just been here so long that you forgot it? If I was a vampire, would I stop sounding like I’m from Monkeys Eyebrow, or would it take a couple of hundred years?”
“That cannot be a real place,” I said as we dropped our bags near a circle of cozy armchairs.
“Oh, believe me.” She sighed. “It is.”
“Show her the lighting scheme thingy,” Morgan demanded, brimming with so much puppy-like excitement I couldn’t even get irritated with her tone.
“I thought Galadriel was supposed to be helping you with all this,” Meagan asked, as I opened the various vendors’ e-mails on my iPad.
I winced, wondering if my roommate had managed to get out of her improvised prison yet. “Yeah, she’s been, uh, held up,” I said, as Keagan cooed over the florist’s blue, white, and silver color scheme I’d selected as a nod to the school colors.
Morgan eyed me carefully. “Held up as in ‘in class’ or held up as in ‘indefinitely’?”
“Do you really want to know?”
Morgan shook her head. “No, I don’t.”
I beamed at her. “Smart girl.”
* * *
* * *
To my profound surprise, Meagan, Keagan, and Morgan had very helpful suggestions about the food and the décor, and they promised to send me suggested “steady dancing but no obnoxious Europop” playlists to pass along to the DJ. I wasn’t strictly following Tina’s requirement that I plan the soiree in cooperation with Brianna. But I was reaching out to the humans in my dorm, which I considered a compromise between the two evils.
They were good-natured girls, without Brianna’s malice or arrogance. Morgan was clever and quick and could turn just about anything into a highly inappropriate joke, which I enjoyed. Keagan was sweeter and tried to keep us on task by reminding us of how many people would enjoy the party once we had our work done. And when that didn’t work, she threatened in a very gentle manner to smack us with a stick, “like a couple of piñatas full of sass and impure thoughts.” Which led to a debate over what sorts of prizes would fall out of a sassy, impure piñata.
It was far past the girls’ bedtime and getting close to my own when I finished the last of my bloodychino. I found, to my surprise, that I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to leave this circle of women with their wit and giggles and life. Not because I didn’t want to give them the opportunity to plot against me when I was absent but because I didn’t want to miss out on anything.
It was one of the most enjoyable evenings I could remember in years. And that included the time I watched Andy Warhol spend a whole evening crying over his silly haircut. These girls didn’t want anything from me. They weren’t trying to curry favor with me or find blackmail material to use against me. They seemed to genuinely want to know more about me. If nothing else, the novelty was enough to make me want to repeat the experience.
“You should definitely come hang out with us on our floor sometime. We can watch a movie or try a new style with your hair or something,” Meagan said, as I disposed of my paper coffee cup.
“Not that there’s anything wrong with your hair,” Keagan added quickly. “We just think you would be adorable with bangs.”
“Bangs?”
Just a few months before, my first instinct would have been to flash my fangs and sneer. The pre-Gigi Ophelia was beyond this group of silly children. I hadn’t needed their insipid offer of friendship. I hadn’t needed them to entertain me or include me or take me on as some sort of makeover project. And then there was the annoying drive to tell them that I needed to check with Jamie’s schedule first. I wouldn’t want to miss out on a potential Friday-night date because I was hanging out with the girls. But I held that back. This was a bad habit I needed to break, on several levels.
I didn’t need their friendship. But it wouldn’t hurt me to have it. It was never