Charmed Thirds_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [107]
Except me. I looked him in the eyes and told him what I thought of his sob story.
“I still win.”
the fifth
To avoid a negative bank balance, I tried picking up a few hours at I SCREAM! But there's little demand for frozen nourishment in the dead of winter, even less when 90 percent of the university population is still on break. This includes my adviser for the Storytelling Project, which is why it's on hiatus until the start of the spring semester. So I've got lots of time, but no money for spending it. This is one-half of the typical conundrum for a New Yorker, who usually has neither time nor money, which, in my opinion, is really not much of a problem at all.
Since it's too cold and wet to wander aimlessly around the streets, I've been spending a lot of time with my fellow refugees.
“You know what sucks?” I asked the group assembled in the lounge.
No one responded because they were all in iPod isolation. I'm fascinated by group iPoding. It's social, yet solipsistic at the same time.
I wildly waved my arms to get their attention. Kieran kept his plugs in place and didn't look up from his paperback copy of Empire. Tanu, Kazuko, and ALF pulled theirs out at the same time.
“I didn't hear you,” they all said.
“You know what sucks?” I asked again.
“A toothless hooker,” suggested ALF without missing a beat.
“Good guess,” I said. “But the correct answer is sperm banks.”
Tanu, Kazuko, and ALF all said, “Ooooooooooooooh.” As if it were obvious.
Then I went on to tell them how I'm so poor that I've seriously considered selling my ova for cash, but that it's a really painful, time-consuming proposition.
“Men can just jack off at a sperm bank and make easy money,” I said.
“Biology is destiny,” opined Kazuko, a Women's Studies major.
Kieran sighed heavily to signal for attention. “It's not the bank itself that you have a problem with, but the method for donation.” His plugs were still in his ears.
“I thought you were plugged in,” I said.
“I only appeared to be plugged in,” he said. “It's all part of the grand illusion we call reality.”
“Oh, shut up,” I said with my most withering glance.
“So,” ALF said, returning to the subject. “You hate cock.”
“I am not a cock hater,” I said. “I love cock. I looooooooooooove it.”
I was being intentionally crude, mostly to see how Kieran would react. He didn't. It's very difficult to get any kind of reaction out of someone so blunted.
ALF stood up and pantomimed unzipping his pants. “Well, there's only one way to prove that . . .”
The rest of his sentence was drowned out by the sound of screams.
Later that evening, when I was making a box of ghetto-brand rice and beans for dinner, I heard a knock at the door to the suite. I nearly jumped out of my Chucks, as I had been used to complete solitude on the sixth floor. I looked through the peephole and was surprised to see Kieran there, having come all the way up from the second floor. I don't know how I didn't hear him coming, because he always wears flip-flops (even in subfreezing temps) that smack the floor with each step. Standing face-to-face in the doorway, I noted that he's only an inch or so taller than I am, and thin enough that we could probably wear the same pair of jeans.
“What are you doing here?” I said, leading him to the tiny kitchen.
“I had to ask,” he said. “Is your family that bad off that you'd consider selling your eggs?”
“Oh no,” I said, stirring the mix into the boiling water. “My parents are firmly upper middle class. I'm the only one that's poor.”
And then I told him all about how they're teaching me a life lesson through poverty.
“Let me give you some money.”
I blinked at him. One. Two. Three times.
“You're kidding, right?”
“No.”
“I can't take your money,” I said. “I barely know you. And besides, that would be like prostitution or something.”
“Only if we sleep together,” he said.
“Which isn't going to happen.”
“Right,” he said. “Because you hate cock.”
“No, I loooooove it in general. Just not yours specifically.”
He laughed. Kieran has a high,