Very LeFreak by Rachel Cohn Page B

okay?”
    “Agreed,” Lavinia said.
    So unfair. Very had been counting on a shopping expedition. She’d spent all night after Lavinia fell into her snore-sleep searching online for the cutest pair of Target pj’s. If she went to the store instead of purchasing them online, she could avoid shipping charges. Also, Very really wanted to eat those meatballs at IKEA. Now she would have to be quelled by the several jumbo bags of M&M’s residing in her Hello Kitty backpack (purchased online through SuperCuteHandbagsOrSomething.com, free shipping, and free Dora the Explorer fanny pack with any purchase over fifty dollars).
    Jean-Wayne, who like Very could not bear the silence in the car, spoke up. “Your aunt gives good Passover. She made me a fabulous sweater, too.” Very turned around to inspect the sweater Jean-Wayne displayed beneath his unbuttoned jacket. It had the words “Tutti Frutti” sewn across the chest.
    Very informed Jean-Wayne, “She must like you. She gave you one of her Collector’s Edition catch-phrase sweaters. Usually Aunt Esther emblazons Yiddish expressions like Bupkes or Oy Vey! on her sweaters.”
    “Oy, let us get home and out of this car already,” Bryan muttered.
    Talk about ungrateful.
    Amazingly, Lavinia’s silence continued through the duration of the return journey back to Columbia, and even after Lavinia had brought her parents’ car back to New Jersey and returned to their dorm room. But by that time, Very had a plan in motion to counteract Lavinia’s silence. It was called “Songs to Alienate Your Roommate By,” a playlist she’d made during Lavinia’s New Jersey run, consisting of songs that Lavinia would hate—but that would also make her speak up.
    Lavinia had to wake up early for crew practice. She always fell asleep by ten. At eleven, Very unplugged her headphones for the music to blast forth.
So, tell me what you want, what you really really want
    “Turn it off, Very!” Lavinia screeched.
    The Spice Girls had never, ever let Very down.
    “Let’s talk,” Very said.
    “I have to get up at five tomorrow morning for crew practice. Let’s not!”
    She left Very no choice but to queue the next song. The angelic voice of Karen Carpenter sang out: Johnny Angel, Johnny Angel . Lavinia placed her pillow over her ears.
    No choice left but to play dirty. Chiquita, tell me what’s wrong , ABBA crooned. Lavinia tossed her pillow at Very.
    The two roommates looked at each other, smiling.
    “You make it difficult to turn you off, Very.”
    “Thank you. Love you too. So we’re over this?”
    Lavinia sat up in bed. She said, “I’m not trying to be mean to you. But I need to back off for a while. You have a million friends. You won’t miss anything by not hanging out with me for a while.”
    “B-but,” Very stammered, “I mostly like hanging out with you, Lavinia.”
    “Jennifer . J-e-n-n-i-f-e-r.” L/J lay back down in bed and rolled onto her side again, so as not to look at Very. “And it’s not me you need to apologize to. It’s Bryan.”
    Very still didn’t understand. The B/J had been her apology to Bryan.

CHAPTER 9
    April Fool’s Day:
Joke’s on Your Wallet, Fool
    Very suspected that the rapidly worsening cost-benefit ratio would catch up with her soon enough. How could it not?
    Consider: Her undergraduate education, assuming she completed it, would cost her a minimum of fifty thousand dollars in school loans. (How the hell would she ever earn that much money to pay it back? Really. How?) Already, in her freshman year, she’d rung up five thousand dollars on her first credit card—an amount expended on school necessities like electronic “research” paraphernalia, Chinese food delivery (so easy to treat everybody and be a good tipper when signing instead of handing over cashola), cultural-awareness expeditions (late-night music shows downtown), Thai food delivery, cabs, Mexican food delivery, frequently rotating but extremely important hair-care products