Fresh

by Margot Wood

The first club Lucy and I tried was the Breakfast Club. Joining would have granted us early access to the dining hall and we’d get to use the kitchen to cook our own breakfasts together. Sounds amazing, right? Well, we were just shit out of luck because it was shut down right after our first time attending when an overzealous freshman grabbed a hot waffle right from the griddle and slapped his friend in the face with it, leaving a grid-shaped burn mark on his cheek.

  The Bread Club

  We thought maybe the Bread Club would be a nice substitute for the Breakfast Club, especially since it conveniently met outside Lucy’s marketing classroom every Friday morning, but they only eat Wonder Bread. That’s it. I thought for sure there’d be at least pastries or doughnuts, but no. No jams, no butter, no nothing. Strictly white Wonder Bread.

  Boston Common Squirrel Club

  And then, finally! A club Lucy liked! Almost! We had fun feeding raggedy squirrels stale bread for about twenty minutes until a plague of rats showed up and ruined everything. I don’t know if you’ve ever met a Boston city rat, but these were not the country rats I’m used to in Ohio. Boston rats are organized, shameless, aggressive little motherfuckers. Those bastards emerged from a sewer grate and came at us so fast that one jumped—literally, JUMPED!—onto Lucy’s back.

  After the squirrel disaster, I decided to give up on my whole Joining a Club Will Cure You of The Sads! project. But then Micah came to my rescue.

  Me: Sadly no, Squirrel Club did not work. She’s still mopey. How can I help Lucy get over K?

  Micah: ...

  Micah: BY GETTING HER *UNDER* SOMEONE NEW!

  Me: lol that’s good

  Micah: im serious. sign her up for the dating auction

  Me: wut dating auction?

  Micah: the one that all those flyers are about? you’ve seen those, they’re all over campus

  Me: Nope, haven’t seen em.

  Micah: OMG. Just go check the announcement board in the common room.

  So Lucy is going to sell her body to the highest bidder.3

  “Dude, you should totally do this.” I hand the brightly colored flyer to Lucy, who is lying face down on her bed in the same clothes she’s worn for the past three days. She doesn’t take the flyer and it falls to the floor beside her bed. I hand her the flyer again. She looks at it for half a second.

  She shrugs and says, “I dunno.” I take a deep breath and resist the urge to shake her.

  “Come on,” I said, giving her a little nudge. “Look! It’s for a good cause! I volunteer you as tribute—and besides! Having a bunch of dudes compete for a date with you will be such a confidence boost!”

  “Doesn’t this seem a little, I dunno, sexist?”

  “Oh, don’t worry! Guys are auctioning themselves off too. This will be an equal-opportunity-sexploitation affair.” I give her a little wink and oooh, there it is! The beginnings of a smile! Lucy peels herself off the bed and sits up. Her right cheek is wrinkly and covered in drool and her hair looks like it’s several hours away from becoming habitable for lice.

  She rubs her eyes and asks, “What if no one bids on me and I’m standing up there in silence?”

  I am doing my damn best to be patient with her. I can put up with a lot, but what I can’t tolerate is my best friend being so hard on herself when it’s some asshole guy who’s to blame. It’s my fault she got with Kenton, and now it’s my job to get her over him. I want to slap some common sense back into her but that’s not what friends do. Friends don’t slap sense into friends, right? At least, not for this.

  I stand up in the middle of the room, straighten my back, look her straight in the eye, and use my most capable-sounding voice. “Lucine I-Don’t-Know-Your-Middle-Name Garabedian. You can continue to stay in our room until you are ready to come out, which is fine, no one will ever judge you for that. Or you have another choice. You can decide right here and right now that you are done. Done wasting your energy on someone who doesn’t deserve a second thought. Done crying over some loser who didn’t treat you with the respect you deserve. You can pick yourself up, put yourself out there, and let a room full of strangers confirm what you already know—that you are one badass babe who isn’t going to let some asshole keep her from living her best life. And if no one bids on you, I make a solemn vow to spend every last cent in my bank account to bid on you. And after I win, after we go on that date together, you can finally admit that you’re in love with me.”

  I stop pacing in front of her like a drill sergeant and give her a moment to respond. She doesn’t say anything, not at first. But then slowly, ever so slowly, the corners of her mouth tick up and she smiles.

  It’s small—more like the ghost of a smile—but goddammit I’ll take it.

  * * *

  1 Don’t tell Rose.

  2 Okay, so it wasn’t cookies, it was PopTarts, but the toaster in the common room is a little tabletop convection oven and I used the Bake setting instead of the Toast setting SO IT TOTALLY COUNTS AS BAKING.

  3 FOR CHARITY. God, get your mind out of the gutter. The dating auction is raising money for incarcerated LGBTQIA+ youth—a cause worthy enough for some light prostitution.

  CHAPTER 19

  So here we are, backstage at the Student Performance Center in the basement of the Little Building, preparing my darling roommate Lucy to go out onstage and prostitute herself.1 There are supposed to be ten people getting auctioned off tonight, and everyone seems to have rolled up with a glam squad, so the backstage is crammed as all hell. I didn’t think the auction was going to be a whole thing. I just thought it’d be a minor thing like speed dating or something, not a whole production. It’s like a fashion show with lights, a smog machine, and a freaking DJ.

  Sasha is putting the finishing touches on Lucy’s makeup while Micah engulfs her in a cloud of candy-scented hairspray.

  Lucy nervously reaches her hand out to me. “Do I look okay?”

  “NOBODY MOVE!” Sasha commands and we all stop in our tracks. “I need to very, very carefully put these lashes on—and if I make a mistake, we have to start all over.”

  We all hold our breath as Sasha surgically applies the glue-soaked lashes to Lucy’s lids and when she’s done, we take a step back and sigh in relief. Lucy looks perfect. I crouch in front of her and hold her hands.

  “You look marvelous, dahling, simply marvelous,” I tell her like a pageant mom. I grab a hand mirror and hold it up for Lucy to see. “Look at you! Now you go out there and show the world what a smart, successful, and talented young woman you are.”

  “Butt out and boobs to the sky!” Micah chimes in.

  “Ooooh!” I wave my arms to get Sasha’s attention. “Do you have any shimmery body powder?”

  “Of course!” Sasha says. She digs through her suitcase full of makeup and pulls out a big round box and a big fuzzy, pink pouf.

  “What’s that for?” Lucy asks.

  “Your taters. I want to make them sparkle.” Sasha and I start bedazzling Lucy’s killer rack, but she blushes and pushes us aside.

  “No, no, no. I don’t need any glitter,” Lucy says. “I just want to get this over with.”

  I look around for any sign of the stage manager and when I don’t see him, I pull out a tiny bottle of Kentucky bourbon from my leather fanny pack. “Do you want a little liquid courage?” I assume she’s going to say no, so I’m shocked when she grabs the bottle out of my hand, unscrews the cap, and tosses it all back in one go. “Damn, girl,” I exclaim. “Do you want another?” I take out a little bottle of vodka this time.

  “How many of those do you have?” Sasha asks.

  “Enough to go around,” I tell her and offer one to everyone. Micah and Sasha happily accept theirs, but Lucy shakes her head.

  “No, one was good. Thank you.” She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. And then, in extremely slow motion, Lucy transforms before our very eyes. She rolls her shoulders back, slowly stands up, and finally opens her eyes. “You guys should go get seats,” she says confident
ly. “I’ve got this.”

  Leaving Lucy backstage, Sasha, Micah, and I take our seats in the front row just as the doors open and a decent crowd rolls in. The theater continues to fill up with students and eventually there isn’t a single seat left in the audience. As the lights dim, Micah leans over and whispers in my ear.

  “So what’s the plan?”

  “What do you mean?” I whisper back.

  “For Lucy. You would never let her get up there and auction herself off like this without at least some kind of plan.” I roll my eyes, not because his suggestion is absurd, but because I hate how Micah always knows what I’m up to.

  “There’s no plan,” I lie.

  “Girl, please,” he says as heavy bass kicks on the speakers. I give him a wink and he shakes his head. The lights dim and the show begins.2

  A spotlight shines on the stage curtains. They slide back as the host comes out dressed like an erotic Cupid, but then the curtain moves again, and Rose walks out onstage dressed like Aphrodite. Picture the kind of toga a woman in ancient Greece would wear, two pieces of flowy white fabric draped over her shoulders that cascade down to the floor and cinched together at the waist. The only difference between that image and what Rose is wearing is that it is iridescent—and completely sheer. She’s wearing nude underwear but she’s completely bare breasted on top. The shimmery, gauzy fabric has a slight blurring effect as she glides across the stage—the effect is absolutely hypnotic. My breath catches in my throat. I haven’t seen Rose since that night in the stairwell a few weeks back and seeing her now, seeing her dressed like this . . . damn. She is talking into a microphone, something about thanking everyone for coming and something about the charity, but I honestly can’t hear anything because all I can focus on is how sexy she is.

  “Fuck,” I murmur.

  “Damn,” Micah mutters too, and I shoot him a look. He shrugs, “What can I say? She looks hot. Even I can admit that.”

  “I didn’t know Rose was hosting this,” I whisper to Micah.

  “Really? Her name was on the flyer, this is her club.”

  Rose exits stage left and I feel her absence acutely. Rose’s cohost takes the mic and introduces the first person up for bid. A cute boy with floppy hair and a big smile trots out on stage and introduces himself. “Good evening,” he says cheerily into the microphone. “I’m Dylan! I’m a junior, an advertising major, and a Taurus. I like candlelit Italian dinners and working out.”

  “Show us your abs!” Micah yells out. Dylan blushes innocently and then lifts his shirt to reveal a how-the-fuck-are-those-real set of abs. Micah whistles and leans over to whisper in my ear. “I think I just found my next boyfriend.” Others in the crowd cheer and whistle too, making Dylan grin so hard that dimples appear on his cute cheeks.

  “Let the bidding begin, ladies.” Dylan barely gets it out before girls all around the room start yelling out dollar amounts, including Sasha, who, to everyone’s surprise, wins a date with Dylan with a bid of one hundred dollars. The energy in this room is infectious as hell. A giddy Sasha runs up to the stage and hands Rose her cash. Dylan escorts her behind the curtain, and she disappears for the rest of the show. I look over at Micah, who is sulking in the chair next to me.

  “Don’t worry, little buddy,” I say to him. “You’ll get the next one!”

  Rose reemerges from behind the side curtain in a new costume. This time she is wearing a perfectly tailored, black satin tuxedo with no shirt beneath the buttoned jacket. Just cleavage. Somehow this more conservative outfit looks even hotter than the first one. She introduces the next person to be auctioned off and I’m so distracted by Rose that I almost miss her saying Lucy’s name. Rose struts off stage and Lucy takes her place and Micah and I jump to our feet and start cheering wildly for our girl. Lucy smiles shyly and waves for us to sit down as she steps up to the microphone. She looks so confident up there. I am so proud of her.

  “Hello,” Lucy says into the microphone and we all jump up again. She giggles and waves at us to keep it down. “Hello,” she starts again. “My name is Lucy Garabedian. I’m a freshman double major in PR and marketing. I’m from Watertown and—”

  Lucy is cut off when some guy in the audience yells out, “Fifty dollars!” I look around to see who was so quick on the draw and it is freaking Jesse, the guy I paid to bid on Lucy only if no one else bid on her. I silently pray to the gods for someone else to bid on Lucy, and at least one god must be home because someone else shouts, “Sixty dollars!” I look around trying to see who to thank later and it’s Brad. Interesting. Is this a platonic bid or a romantic bid? I’m still pondering this turn of events when I realize that Jesse is still bidding—with my money.

  “Seventy-five!” Jesse yells out.

  “Ahhhhhh, goddammit,” I say through gritted teeth.

  “Eighty!” Brad yells.

  The crowd whoops and hollers as Lucy stands up there looking positively radiant while these two dudes fight over her. I wave my arms at Jesse, trying to get his attention and stop him from hemorrhaging all my money but the idiot has completely forgotten my explicit instructions and keeps bidding higher and higher. “One hundred dollars!” He yells out again and I cringe.

  “Two hundred!” Brad counters and the crowd gasps at the price. Brad looks pretty damn pleased with himself right now. I grab my phone and text Jesse, DO NOT BID ON HER ANYMORE. But either Jesse ignores it or doesn’t have his phone on him because he stands up. I sink my face into my hands. Fuuuuuuuuck.

  “Three hundred dollars,” Jesse announces to the crowd. Everyone. Loses. Their. Damn. Mind.

  Rose reappears on the stage and says, “Three hundred going once!” I look at Brad and he can’t believe how much Jesse bid on Lucy. No one can. Brad looks genuinely disappointed and shakes his head no. “Three hundred going twice!” Rose says again. “Sold!” she shouts as her cohost appears from behind the curtain and explodes a confetti cannon into the ecstatic crowd. Lucy beams as Jesse bounds up to the stage. He hands Rose the cash, my motherfucking cash, and all three exit the stage. I sink back into my seat and try to remind myself that all my money just went to a good cause, even though losing it all stingggggs.

  The auction continues with Rose appearing every now and then in completely different looks. Micah bids on this guy, Simon, and actually wins, leaving me to go backstage to meet his betrothed. Everyone is having the time of their life, but I seem to have lost all interest now that I’m alone. As the seventh auction starts getting underway, I get up to leave when I hear someone calling my name from the side of the stage. It takes me a minute to realize that it’s Rose, trying to get my attention. I crouch-walk down the aisle and work my way over to her.

  “What’s up?” I ask. She takes my hand and pulls me behind the curtain. She’s halfway through changing into her next look, a riff on Cleopatra, and I try my best to not sneak a glance as she slips into another toga, this time a gold silk one that clings to every curve of her body.

  “I need you to go on next.” She’s not asking me. She’s telling me.

  “Excuse me?”

  She grabs gold stiletto gladiators and wraps the strands up and around her calves. “We’re supposed to be auctioning off ten people and a girl just canceled on me. Will you please fill in?”

  “Are you serious?” I ask in earnest. I wait for her to answer but she doesn’t say anything. “Ohmygod. You’re serious! Why me? Aren’t there a ton of people in your club that can do it instead?”

  “They’re all running this show with me!” she exclaims as she frantically puts on her wig. “Please, Elliot? You’d be doing me a huge favor.” I hesitate but Rose doesn’t give me long to consider it. “I need you to decide now, Elliot.”

  “Sure, yeah, okay, jeez,” I relent. She wraps her arms around me, completely catching me off guard, and then shuffles me to the side of the stage. Rose takes a quick inventory of herself, adjusts her wig, and then elegantly strides across the stage to introduce me. Oh shit, she meant now as in right fuc
king now. In a moment of panic, I realize that I’m not wearing anything remotely sexy like all the other participants. All I’m wearing are black jeans, a T-shirt, and a black leather jacket. I quickly take my jacket and shirt off and thank the gods that I am wearing a real bra and not one of my usual sports bras. I leave the T-shirt off and put the leather jacket back on over my black bra. My boobs aren’t my best asset but they’re all I have to work with, so fuck it. Let’s do this.

  When I hear Rose say my name over the mic, I give my hair a quick toss to one side and walk out on stage with my butt out and boobs to the sky. The lights are blinding and it takes a second for my eyes to adjust. I saunter up to the microphone and purr into it.

  “Well, hello there. My name is Elliot. I am a freshman, I’m undeclared, but if you bid on me, I’ll declare myself all yours.” It’s cheesy, I know, but it’s the only thing I could think of in the three seconds I had to prepare for this moment.

  My joke doesn’t quite have the effect I hoped for and there’s silence from the crowd. My heart starts to race. I squint out into the crowd. I can really only see the first two rows and the front row, the row I was in, is empty. Micah, Sasha, and Lucy are still somewhere backstage. That’s fine. I can still do this without their help.

  Fine. This is totally, absolutely, 100 percent fine.

  I roll my shoulders back which makes my jacket pop open a bit more, showing the audience my bra, a little tease if you will. I grab the mic and take it off the stand so I can strut around a little bit. “Ladies, gentlemen, don’t be shy.” My voice is low, smooth, honeyed. “Let’s start the bidding at twenty-five dollars and, please, keep in mind that right now, I am not wearing any underwear.” I bite my lower lip to really sell it.

  But no one is buying what I’m selling.

  The crowd is silent.

  No one is bidding on me.

  My initial anxiety, masquerading as worry, grows up, gets married to fear, and settles down as full-blown panic. I can feel liquid heat inching up my neck and I start to sweat, well, pretty much everywhere. Something must not be right—people have been bidding on everyone else all night long. I signal the DJ to play some fucking music and he obliges. I take the mic and strut to the front of the stage to get out of the blinding spotlight. After a moment my eyes adjust and the problem becomes instantly clear. Everyone left in the audience is either not interested or . . . someone I’ve already hooked up with.