Very LeFreak Read Online Free Page B

variety, had organized the furniture in their room to maximize its socializing potential. They crammed their beds side by side in the far corner of the room to leave open the rest of the space for cheap throw pillows and beanbags tossed on the floor for visitors. Very kept the Chewy Chips Ahoy! cookies in stock at all times, despite Lavinia’s responsible concern that SnackWell’s was a healthier option (true—but also not so tasty), and Very kept her laptop’s tunes set to Shuffle for listeners to enjoy the manic mixes that grooved from soul to punk to funk to space opera to honky-tonk twang. Lavinia took care of keeping the room stocked with napkins and drinks for guests, and Clorox wipes for spills, to keep their room as tidy as it could possibly be for a near way station.
    The Halloween party the girls had thrown for the boys was a surprise party, though not in the sense of people jumping out from behind closet doors and from underneath beds to yell “Surprise!” Their dorm room was too small for such surprising, although Very, who often fantasized about transmogrifying herself into a feral jungle cat who lunged in surprise attack on her prey and then smothered her victims in tender, lickful kisses as compensation for peeling off parts of their flesh, wouldn’t have minded such a dramatic surprise-party option for greeting Bryan and Jean-Wayne when they arrived at their b-day extravaganza.
    Instead, the boys’ surprise had been the roommate clique’s first flash mob, of sorts.
    Very had organized the campaign online to include many of the residents at Jay. The plan was that at exactly 11 p.m. on the night of the party, participants should return to their rooms, and those who had the forbidden microwaves should turn them on, and those who didn’t should turn on their highest-voltage electrical appliances—hair dryers, TVs, etc. Just before 11 p.m., Lavinia went downstairs to do her part, while Very led Bryan and Jean-Wayne to the window of her room, which overlooked West 114th Street. Then, at exactly 11 p.m., the lights in the dorm room—no, in the whole building—flickered off and on, then went off entirely, as did all the other appliances in the building. Total building power outage.
    “What the hell?” Bryan said. His kinky brown hair appeared kinkier still in the glow from the outside streetlamps. That hair, so ungoopy on such a goop, was one of the more endearing features on his boyish face.
    “Look out there,” Very said, pointing out the window. She didn’t bother to check out Jean-Wayne’s hair. That boy knew his way around some serious product and always looked good. Nothing goopy about him, despite the gelled goop often spiking up some of the short black pieces of hair at the front of his head.
    A row of fellow students stood on the sidewalk on West 114th Street (their hair difficult to discern at such a distance). As the power went out, everyone assembled on the street suddenly flicked on a lighter and waved it in the air, concert-style. At Lavinia’s cue, the group yelled from the street, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BRYAN AND JEAN-WAYNE!” Because it was Halloween, the assembled crowd included several superheroes, some movie stars, some cartoon characters, some monsters and zombies, a vampire here and there, a few princesses and French maids, a couple gangsta boys, and several “commuter” people chained together as if they were holding on to an overhead rail on the 1 train. The view from the dorm room was that of a complete freak show—just the way Very liked it.
    The power turned back on in the building soon enough, and the party moved down the hall from Very and Lavinia’s room to the student lounge, which could accommodate more people, but already folks were buzzing about the success of the endeavor, wanting more. Very, dressed up as Lara Croft, had a dance with anyone of any species who’d have one with her, while Lavinia, dressed up as a sexy tennis champion, obligingly kept folks’ cups