Reunion Girls Read Online Free

graduation gift. All she got was the baggage of a dysfunctional childhood.
    By the time Babe left college, she was buried eighty thousand dollars deep in student loans. But Brown University had been her first choice. She'd wanted a free educational environment, and the school's New Curriculum concept appealed to her. There were no tedious core courses to sludge through. You created your own interdisciplinary concentration. Babe majored in art history, punching up her studies with photography classes at the Rhode Island School of Design.
    The same freedoms that attracted Babe to Brown pulled her perceived foes there like magnets, too. Snots from old money, brats from new money, dubiously talented children of celebrities, six degrees of European royalty—they all flocked to the school, longing for unchained fun after years of lockup in rigid boarding schools.
    From day one, Babe had struggled to find her place. She could never hang with the money crowd. Their gluttony sickened her. While she watched every penny and fretted about her mounting debt, they were booking houses in Newport or Block Island to host weekend-long parties.
    She fared no better with the rest of the students. Too uptight to lope around with the Doc Martens stoner types. Not brainy enough for the cerebral semioticians who debated ancient philosophers on the College Green. As for seeking out the theater crowd or preppy/jock scene, Babe would have rather thrown herself in front of a moving bus.
    In the beginning, it was high school all over again. Starring Babe Mancini in the edgy role of the cynical loner. But this time it didn't stay that way. Her budding photography skills were constantly pushing her into the mix, mainly because she harbored no interest in taking pictures of landscapes, still-lifes, or architecture. To her developing eye, people were the most fascinating subjects. So in no time, she was a fixture on the busy Brown party scene.
    Babe did Underground, the campus bar. Every Thursday was Funk Night. She never missed it. Ditto for the caravans to Viva, the nightclub in Providence that was a favorite of the Euro students. And then there were the wild theme events like the annual Naked Party and Campus Dance.
    Her visual documentation style caused a stir. The images got people talking. She crafted mixed-media collages of her lens targets for art classes, earning raves from professors and approval from her peers. Babe didn't do smile-and-say-cheese good-time candids. Her images were disoriented, drunk in appearance, always operating on the edge—-just like her subjects. A daring cleavage shot. Porn star-worthy scarlet lips on a beer bottle. A guy's manicured hand riding up a girl's naked thigh. Her flair for beheaded bodies and unorthodox angles quickly became campus legend. Soon it was a mark of social status to be a violently cropped partygoer in a Babe Mancini original.
    But she didn't limit herself to the avant-garde. To enhance her portfolio, Babe decided to produce a series of more traditional fashion shots. That's how she met Lara. The tall, dazzling blonde with the elegant shoulders was polished, slick, and exuded amazing style. Though aloof at first, she had eventually warmed to Babe and agreed to be photographed on the steps of the John Carter Brown Library. By the end of the shoot, they had become instant friends, a rare feat for Babe, who had always struggled to form bonds with other girls.
    With one girlfriend in Lara, Babe actually got a second in the form of Gabrielle, a stunning black girl, one of Lara's fellow dwellers in "the cave" and an on-air talent for WBRU, the school's 50,000-watt commercial radio station operated by students. For a too brief stretch of time, they had been an impressive triumvirate. It was, in fact, one of the happier times in Babe's life. From grade school on, she had steered herself away from female cliques, hating the social policing, the pressure to dress, think, and sound alike. But for Babe, Lara, and