Part One
I
Suzie sat erect on the sofa, trying to stay serious.
She squeezed her knees with her hands, and tried not to grimace with laughter, a laughter partly meant to conceal her nervousness.
It had all started out as a joke, really.
All those wagers and bets Jessica liked to make.
Over the stupidest things.
But Suzie would agree.
After all, what difference would it make?
Small change here, a few dollars there.
Five hundred dollars to see who'd make the better grade in Marketing.
The sofa, placed in front of the window, faced the kitchen and the small eating room on the left where the door to outside was.
Just a normal kitchen, granite topped counter separating the kitchen from the living room. Two armchairs, modular, modern, and light blue, were positioned across from the long coffee table in front of the sofa. The chairs pointed slightly towards each other and the sofa.
Jessica sat in the chair on the right.
Candles burned on the shelves lining the wall on the right side of the apartment living room. The blinds to the large window set in the opposite wall were pulled down, and dark blue, almost navy drapes shut out most of the daylight.
The dark blue drapes behind the sofa were also drawn close.
Jessica turned out all the lights.
She had arranged crystals in a loose Fibonacci spiral on the coffee table, and the crystals glittered in different colors.
Red. Green. Blue. Pink. Yellow.
When the Spring semester ended, and Jessica walked away with an A over Suzie's unexpectedly low B minus, she immediately held out her hand and said, "Pay up, girl."
Suzie fumbled in her purse for some loose and crumpled bills.
She found two twenties and a ten.
All these bets were making her broke.
At first she'd win, and win easily, but over time the wagers got bigger, and the bets started going against her.
A few loose bills here.
A couple of twenties there.
Nothing big, but they added up.
When Jessica wagered the five hundred dollars on their Marketing grade, she jumped at the chance to recover some of her losses.
Suzie, at eighteen a Freshman with a 4.0, had nothing to worry about going against Jessica, a Junior who partied all the time and never studied. Suzie knew her stuff, and she'd been working all semester on her Intro to Marketing project. Everyone on her team ground their noses and worked hard to make the project best in class.
It was free money, and free money is the best money.
Then her project started going to shit.
Pete, a small, delicate young man who usually got all his work in before everyone else, got further and further behind, until Suzie actually began to panic. Allison, a serious, sober-minded Freshman, started drifting off during their Zoom meetings, and once while sharing her screen, a bunch of lesbian porn websites showed up in the tabs of her browser.
"Sorry about that," she said, taking a sip of some pink liquid in what looked like a normal water bottle. "I forgot all that was still up."
Suzie didn't say anything, but she did scrunch her eyes.
She could have sworn that Allison had a boyfriend.
She used to mention him all the time in the beginning of the semester.
Had she turned queer?
Was Allison a dyke now?
It really wasn't her concern, but she supposed a lot of girls experimented with that sort of thing in college. She knew a lot of girls fooled around with each other in high school, so doing it in college was no big deal.
Even if it wasn't her thing.
Suzie might have rolled her eyes, but she smiled against her better judgment, and tried to lead the conversation back to the subject at hand.
But Suzie had kept her cool, scrambled everything together, cajoled, begged, and cried for her teammates to do their part for the project, did it herself when they didn't get their pieces together on time, and finally, finally, she had something to show the professor, Margot Katt, MBA.
It might not have been the best project.
But it should have netted at least an A.
But then her peer reviews came in.
Argumentative and uncooperative.
Incommunicative.
Insensitive to diversity.
It was enough to bring her grade down to a B minus.
"Attitude is important," Margot Katt, MBA, had told her during an office meeting. "Attitude makes up a big part of your participation and teamwork grade. You're going to have to work with all kinds of people. You can't be so. So intolerant."
Suzie wanted to scream.
Intolerant?
"Everybody else on the team was so supportive of Pete's transition, but you just badgered him about the project."
Transition?
What transition?
What the hell was Margot Katt, MBA talking about anyway?
Ms. Katt sighed.
"This is a good lesson for you. I know you're a good person, Suzie. You're just going to have to work on your bigotries and prejudices. A lot of women are gay. I'm surprised you held that against Allison."
Suzie opened her mouth to protest, but nothing came out.
She suddenly realized Margot was probably a lesbian herself.
She tossed her long and wavy dirty blond hair behind her shoulders.
Stuck out her chest a little more, nice plump pears ready to be nibbled hiding behind her tight blue pullover.
Tried to catch Ms. Katt's eyes with her pale blues.
She needed to watch her next words carefully.
"So if that's it, Miss Miller, I'm afraid I need to get back to my papers. I feel so awfully behind."
That was that.
Dismissed.
Her obvious, clumsy efforts at flirting smacked down in an instant.
But all the way home she fumed.
She'd sue, that what she'd do.
She'd sue the hell out all of them.
Then she met Jessica at the door with her hand out.
"Pay up, girl," Jessica said.
How did you flirt with a girl, Suzie wondered, remembering her failure with Margot Katt, MBA. Remembering Allison's change. Or seeming change. Was she bi? Had she always been bi? But how do bi girls flirt with other girls?
She supposed it didn't matter.
"I have fifty," she said, handing the crumpled bills over to her roommate. "I can get the rest later."
