Material Girl

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psQ5F39rduU

Your resources are underutilized.

Edie gave her reflection the stink-eye. Her fingers tapped, restless, against the sink. A viscous, black material crept up from her dark-hued blouse, soaking into the fine bones of her neck. Little white pustules sprouted across its fibrous surface, then dissipated just as quickly. This was Biter’s way of saying hello. Carefully, Edie tipped a small sliver of coke onto her fingertip and raised it to her nose, then inhaled sharply. The world shuddered into focus.

“Rock and roll,” she told her reflection.

There is little to be gained from slouching about.

“Shut up,” Edie told Biter, trying for stern and failing completely. Her voice quivered as the coke settled into her system. “This is the last time I’m talking to you tonight. God, you sound like Dad.” As if on cue, Max hammered on the door. Edie lurched to meet her. She felt Biter recede and hoped that she looked normal.

Max led her out into the corridor. Most of the people at this party were freshmen, awkwardly nursing half-full Solo cups and pretending to know each other. As a parade of unfamiliar faces lined up to pay tribute, Edie slapped on a patently false smile and looped one long arm around Max’s shoulders. “Thanks,” she hollered, making a token attempt to drown out her throbbing hi-fi system. “Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Have fun. Yeah. Good to see you.”

The life of a status-conscious teenager was a lot like being a real estate agent. It was all about location, location, location. Edie’s pile wasn’t too far from Frat Row, which made it the ideal place to be for failed pledges. Her father had bought the building from one of his business partners, whose son no longer had a use for the place. (He’d graduated and moved to LA. Edie envied him.) It was a simple enough scheme, best explained by Faith and her penchant for physics analogies: gather enough bright young freshies in one place, and they’d reach a sort of critical mass of coolness. Even though they were, individually, really rather pathetic, together they just might be able to get a real party going.

But for what it was worth, now that the “party” was in full swing, Edie wasn’t feeling it at all.

Minnie had theorized that there’d be frat boys and sorority sisters dropping by to scout for potential pledges after their existing candidates had dropped out, but none of the usual suspects had shown up. She and Max did a long, slow circuit across the first floor to confirm. Nothing. They were on the edge of the action, collecting spillovers from Frat Row. Edie felt the overwhelming need for a cigarette.

Max left her standing there, smoking. As the shorter girl retreated indoors, Edie thought of the others, whom she’d encountered on her way out onto the porch. Minnie was holding court somewhere in the kitchen. Hailey was trapped in a conversation with a nerdy guy who looked like he smelled, staring at him like she was trying to will his head to explode like in Scanners. (Was wallflowerdom contagious?) Faith was trying to hype up a bunch of freshies into dancing. Probably none of them had expected things to go this way.

“You know they call this the chink house, right?”

Edie’s head snapped around as she homed in on whoever’d spoken. It was a blonde girl, white (of course), leaning against one of the pillars like she owned it. “I’m sorry?”

“This building,” the girl repeated. Was she a freshie? Edie had never seen her around campus. There was a small, superior smile on her face, but she wasn’t even that pretty. “Because it’s owned by a bunch of Asian girls. Chink house. Right?”

“I’m Korean,” Edie said numbly. Somewhere in the back of her brain, Biter was unfurling, its tendrils tickling the edges of her vision. Her cigarette crumbled away to nothing in her hand, its dying embers prickling at her fingers. She barely noticed. “Uh, Max is Vietnamese.”

The girl shrugged. “Hey, just telling it like I’ve heard it. You know how Brockton Bay is. You’re all chinks to –”

There was a scream from Frat Row. Biter wrapped across Edie’s face for a split second, black blooming upwards all the way to the roots of her hair before she forced it back down. Fortunately, no one noticed; all eyes were on the ongoing trainwreck a few hundred yards away. “Fuck me,” someone else said. “Is that Alpha Delta Phi?”

The sliding door behind her squeaked. Hailey appeared in her peripheral vision. “You should’ve saved me from that guy,” she muttered, and Edie nudged her shoulder in response. “I feel like I spent hours listening to him go on about Dungeons and Dragons.”

Edie’s eyes didn’t budge from the altercation. It looked like one of the walls had just caved in. “We only started letting people in an hour ago,” she said.

“Felt like forever, anyway.”

“Yeah.”

Now Frat Row was starting to empty out. People jogged past, some of them – a lot of them – glancing over their shoulders. A sizable infusion of Greeks slipped through the gates, taking cover from the unfolding parahuman dust-up. The sliding door squeaked again. Edie shifted to the side to allow Minnie to receive the new arrivals. “We should probably start earlier next time,” she added.

“Yeah.”

“Shit, those are Protectorate, aren’t they?” Max this time, an empty shot glass in her hand. “That was fast. Who’s the bad guy this time?”

“Butcher,” someone piped up. A frazzled sorority sister, still in Daisy Dukes and slippers. Another fucking blonde. “Butcher the Second? Do they do that now? Number themselves?”

“Fuck if I know,” someone else said. It was a regular play-by-play. Edie squinted, itching for a pair of binoculars. She could just barely make out one huge dude and two smaller figures, the three of them facing off against a lone cape. That was probably Butcher. (Dumb name.) Wait, was there a fourth one? There was. And now one of them had lost his (her?) head. Shit. Cold sweat broke out on the back of Edie’s neck. Or maybe Biter was coming out to play. Should they run? Should they fight?

Beside her, Hailey flexed her fingers. “I could probably nail them from here,” she murmured contemplatively.

Suddenly, there was a tinny scream from Alpha Delta Phi. Another one of the Protectorate goons collapsed, his (or her) leg giving out underneath him (or her). There was a long pause, and then it was like the whole world had suddenly exhaled. The tension was gone. The action was over. It was time to start cleaning up.

Gradually, people started to uncurl. Sure, they’d been watching the action, but they’d also been aware that they might have to make a run for it at any moment. This was no longer the case. The tidal wave of fleeing students began to reverse as some pivoted mid-step, jogging back to Frat Row to gawk at the damage or go hunting for their friends. The party was deader than dead.

“We don’t have enough space in the cellar to store all the booze,” Faith gasped, skidding to a halt behind them. Edie considered the situation even as Max raised her voice. The Greeks who’d momentarily taken refuge at her house trickled back to their respective houses, the frat boys especially toting six-pack carriers on their shoulders. A few of them even thanked her as they left. Which was a first.

Ambulances arrived at Alpha Delta Phi. A PRT van arrived to clean up the wounded, and one of the independent heroes – Phosphorus or something – limped past, his partner leaning against him. One of the freshies started to hoot and clap. It spread. Edie bowed to the peer pressure and added her voice to the chorus, even though she didn’t really care. Only when the pair had limped out of sight did the applause die down.

Minnie turned, making a face. “Party’s over?”

“Party’s over.”

“At least we can blame it on the villain attack,” Max wisecracked.