The Pretend Girlfriend (2 page)

She told the constable what had happened, and the constable told her that they'd open an investigation into the matter. However, he also said that in cases like this, the suspect usually skipped town, and that all the missing belongings made a strong case that Janice had done exactly that. The constable said they might get lucky and find Janice within a few months, but it was probably going to take much longer than that.

Again, doing her best to keep her feelings in check, Gwen thanked him and hung up.

It was all too much. She felt overloaded, strained, cold, wet, tired, and angry all at the same time. A thousand different thoughts fought for control in her mind, most of them reminding her how there was no way she could get the money in time.

So she went to her room, nearly tripping over the messenger bag full of expensive school books. She stripped out of her wet clothes, throwing them over the radiator, pulled on a set of comforting wool pajamas (the little yellow duckies all over them usually made her smile) and climbed into bed, intent on letting sleep pull her away from the world for a bit.

It was right about now she wished she had a boyfriend she could curl up with. It would be so nice to have a strong pair of arms hug her close as she sobbed quietly, to have a deep, comforting voice to tell her it was all going to turn out fine.

But Gwen had only herself and her comforter. She wanted sleep so badly, even though she knew her problems would still be waiting for her when she woke up, and however many minutes or hours gone, taken from the time she'd been given to come up with the money.

T
he thoughts racing through her mind began growing distant. Her eyes stayed shut without her needing to clench them. Slowly, she started to doze.

But then her cell began to buzz. She'd put it on silent and left it on her desk, but she'd forgotten to disable the vibrate function.

At first, she tried to ignore it. But it didn't stop.

Grumbling about being left alone, Gwen climbed out of bed with a stormy look on her face. She snatched up the phone, meaning to just turn the thing off completely and get back to her very important nap.

But the screen lit up, showing her a slew of missed text messages with their little green icon, as well as several calls, all from the same person. All from Beatrice. The texts were all along the lines of, "Hey! What's up?" "Come on, let's do something!" "If you don't answer, I'll tell Steve Messner you think he's cute!"

The phone vibrated in her hand again. Beatrice's mug shot appeared on the screen, smiling at her. She had curly auburn hair and full cheeks. They'd been friends ever since meeting during orientation week back in first year.

Gwen bit her lip again, finger hovering over the power button. Beatrice was a bit of a... strong personality. People usually thought she was joking when she threatened them with something embarrassing. But she wasn't. Gwen had learned that early on. And she certainly didn't want Beatrice telling Steve Messner anything. He was a decrepit old Intro to Psych professor who liked to leer at all the girls in class and flirt with them in front of everyone.

Gwen did her best to stay away from any of his classes after first year.

So Gwen answered the phone. "Hey, B, what's up?"

"Not you, apparently? Jeez, Gwen, I was about to come over there and knock down your door. Anyway, you're lucky. I found Messner's phone number off his faculty page; I have it written down here and everything."

"You know, that wouldn't be the worst thing to happen to me today," Gwen said. She went over to the window and parted the blinds, peering down at the street as though she might see Janice coming in through the front entrance to tell her this was all just some misunderstanding.

But the only things down on the street were cars and vans and trucks, and none of the pedestrians looked like Janice.

"What's up?" Beatrice said. Despite her jokey nature, she really did care about her friends, and could be serious if the need arose.

For the third time that day, Gwen related her story. Every time she mentioned Janice's name, she stomped down on her messenger bag. It felt good to hit something, and the books had a nice give to them.

"Okay, here's what you're going to do: you're going to meet me down at that Starbucks on the corner in twenty minutes and we're going to figure this out..."

"I can't afford a latte..." Gwen started. It felt good to get some sympathy, but she needed more than a Janice-bashing session over espresso.

"My treat. Just meet me in twenty minutes..." Beatrice's voice grew mischievous, "Remember, I still have Messner's number written down."

"Okay, okay, fine. Just make it twenty five minutes; I have to fix myself up."

"Twenty," Beatrice said. Before Gwen could argue the point, Beatrice hung up, and the text Gwen sent received in reply an image of a notepad with a phone number scrawled across it and a little devil's face drawn beneath.

To Gwen's surprise, it actually felt good to do something. The urge to crawl back in under the covers receded as she threw socks and jeans and shirts out onto her bed looking for the right thing to wear.

Even though this wasn't going to magically make thousands of dollars suddenly appear in her bank account, it was a step towards some sort of solution. Even if it was just a solution to her burning need to unload on someone.

Just moping about in bed also felt good, but it usually led to just sitting around feeling sorry for yourself, and that definitely wasn't going to get her the money she needed.

So, just shy of twenty minutes later, Gwen stepped into the busy corner Starbucks and out of the only slightly lessened downpour outside. The brief walk kept her from getting soaked again, but the bottoms of her jeans did get wet, and she could already feel the quick drying and straightening she'd done on her hair turning to frizz.

Beatrice waved her over to a set of comfy chairs she'd somehow managed to commandeer. Gwen never got those chairs; they always seemed occupied by middle-aged men in business suits sipping at espressos, pretending to read the Wall Street Journal while they actually just watched the cute young baristas make drinks behind the counter.

Beatrice had them banished to the less comfortable chairs and tables farther back in the coffee shop, and they shot resentful glances her way that she ignored.

"How much did you say it was again?" Beatrice said, sipping from her grande mocha. She'd bought Gwen a grande vanilla latte, which sat steaming on the little table.

"Around $5000," Gwen answered, sitting down. It felt like someone had loaded about 5000 pounds worth of lead into her stomach, which currently tried to pull her through the tile floor.

Beatrice swallowed some of her mocha, then whistled at the number.

"Not helping," Gwen said.

"Yeah, sorry, sorry, I didn't mean to. It's just... wow. Man, that just makes me wish Janice was here, I'd..." Beatrice set her mocha down and wrung an imaginary Janice's neck. It was quite a thorough and realistic demonstration.

Gwen couldn't help smiling. "Yeah, me too. But something tells me she's already far away. And I bet she's already spent all the money, too."

"You know, I always thought she was a jerk. You really should've come and stayed at my apartment."

Gwen forestalled that argument. They'd tried to live together after first year, renting a basement apartment below a bungalow together. But they were just fundamentally incompatible as roommates. Gwen liked things tidy. Beatrice let the dishes pile up for a week. Gwen liked to get up and turn her alarm off right away. Beatrice liked to doze in bed for an extra half hour, her radio blaring. To cut the story short, they decided to save their friendship by agreeing to not live together any more.

Though, Gwen doubted that Beatrice would have tried to make off with the rent money on her.

"Maybe, but unfortunately they haven't invented time travel yet, B. What am I supposed to do in the here and now?" Gwen said.

"I wish I could loan you the money, but I just don't have it," Beatrice said. Gwen knew that she would have, but she also knew that Beatrice only did a little better in the financial department than she did. And Gwen wasn't about to put her best friend into a deep debt hole just to save herself.

"What about your mom and dad?" Beatrice said.

"The bank of mom and dad's been closed for a while," Gwen said. Her parents were nice enough to her, but they hated each other. She'd just started college when they started the divorce. Apparently, they’d just been holding it together for her. Any money they had went to lawyer fees. If she was lucky, one or the other might let her stay with them, but they both lived too far outside the city. She'd have to leave school to do that, and that wasn't an option to her. She told Beatrice as much.

"Lame," she answered. Then she perked up, slopping some mocha out onto her hand and licking it off. "But hey, if you can't fix it, you should try to forget it for a bit. I wanted to get in touch because I got a line on a big party going down tonight..."

"I don't have time to party, B. Besides, we're not freshmen anymore," Gwen said, finally taking a sip from her latte. She savored it, knowing that she wouldn't be able to afford another one for months.

"Oh, come on. It's perfect! You're not gonna get anything done today. So just come with me and get some of this stuff out of your system. Who knows, maybe there'll be some cute rich boy with too much of daddy's money and too little sense."

"B! I'm not about to..." Gwen started.

But Beatrice cut her off with a laugh. "Oh, Gwen, still so easy to bug. And take it from me, rich guys are all jerks. You're way better off figuring out a way to fix this on your own."

"I just had to make sure. Sometimes it's hard to tell if you're being serious or not," Gwen said.

This earned her an indignant look from her friend. "What?
Moi
, joke around too much? Why Gwendolyn Eveline..."

"That's not my middle name..."

Gwen's middle name was, in actuality, Gladys, which she had unfortunately inherited from her maternal grandmother. It was a secret she intended to take to her grave. Which just made Beatrice want to find out all the more. Beatrice always tried out a different middle name, hoping to hit the proverbial pay dirt.

"...Browning. How could you make such a claim?" Beatrice said, doing her best offended Southern belle impression. It was pretty funny, seeing as Beatrice was from Yonkers and sounded like it.

"Well now I know. And I really don't have time for a party."

"Okay, let me put it this way: you're coming, or I call Messner and give him your telephone number, your email, and a copy of that picture of you in a bikini from when we went to Daytona last summer, and I'll make sure it has a lipstick kiss on it and a note saying with love from Gwen to the handsomest pysch professor at school..." Beatrice said, letting her lips curl up in an evil smile to put cartoon villains to shame.

"You really are ruthless," Gwen said, unable to listen anymore to her diabolical scheme, smiling back. She thought that it probably was a dangerous waste of time to go so some party, but she really could use some way of getting her mind off things that wasn't sitting on her couch watching rom-coms while nursing a pint of Rocky Road.

T
he party was at some rich guy's condo in Manhattan. Beatrice and Gwen shared a cab into the city. And by shared, Gwen meant that she chipped in a $5 she found under her bed a few minutes before getting picked up.

Not really being a party girl, her selection of clothes had been, in a word, abysmal. She'd finally settled on the obligatory little black dress every woman kept in her closet and a pair of short heels. Beatrice whistled at her when she sat down, and Gwen tried to keep the hem of her dress pulled down while her cheeks burned.

She kept apologizing and telling Beatrice she would pay her back, but Beatrice just laughed it off. "You want to pay me back? Just be my wingman. I want at least five guys to ask for my number tonight."

"Five? That's... oddly specific," Gwen said.

"Hey, don't look at me like that! Get your head out of the gutter. And yes, five. It's a numbers game, you know. Say only one guy wants my number. He does that dumb three-day wait thing and asks me out for a coffee. It doesn't go anywhere. Now say two guys get my number. It doesn't pan out with the first? Maybe the second's more interesting! But probably not. Especially with these rich guys. They think having money makes them unforgettable. I figure five's a nice number. I mean, at least one has to work out, right?"

It was interesting logic, anyway.

"Whatever happened to rich guys are all jerks?" Gwen said.

"Momma needs a new watch," Beatrice said, watching the river flash by between the girders of the bridge as they crossed, "Besides, they usually drive cool cars."

Gwen snorted at this. Leave it to Beatrice to say what jerks rich guys were in one breath and then express her desire to speed around the city in a Lamborghini in the next.

"So how'd you know about this?" Gwen asked. This wasn't just some normal frat house party.

"I got connections. Look, stop worrying about all that. Let's just go, have some expensive champagne, flirt with some boys, and get me those digits I need. I promise, tomorrow you're going to feel better about everything. Hung over, maybe, but better. Okay?"

"Okay," Gwen replied. She still wasn't sure about this whole thing, but Beatrice's optimism and charm were infectious. Besides, Gwen couldn't shake that need she'd felt earlier, lying in bed all by herself, for comfort and company.

Though now, she knew, would be the absolute worst time to try and cultivate any sort of relationship that wasn't going to enlarge her bank account.

Another possibility crossed her mind, then. Suppose something did happen tonight? Suppose she did meet some rich boy desperate for attention? It wasn't unheard of. The term "sugar daddy" did exist after all, didn't it?

Gwen let herself entertain that fantasy only briefly. It would be an easy way out, she admitted, and a tempting one. But she wasn't that kind of girl. She intended on fixing this whole thing herself, even if it meant taking some time away from school and taking on a couple more part time jobs.