Page 1 of Daddy's Treat

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Penny

How didI get myself into this? What is this, you ask? Well, this is me sitting in the cramped backseat of Lucy’s fancy sports car while her and our sorority sister gossip about who’s hooking up with who, how trashed they are going to get at the Halloween party later tonight, and how pitiful their new housemates are.

Me being one of those new housemates. I must make some kind of noise because they both look back at me. Lucy rolls her eyes at me in the rearview mirror. “Not you,obviously,” she says saccharine sweet.

Lucy is the only reason I got talked into going tonight. Somehow word got out that I hate Halloween. Don’t get me wrong, the candy is awesome. I can’t get enough candy corn. That stuff is like crack to me. But the scary movies, scary costumes, haunted houses, and well, anything scary is totally not for me. I hate being scared. One of my friends back home talked me into watching her favorite scary movie, IT… I didn’t sleep for a week. I’ll just say this once. Clowns are evil. All clowns. I will never, ever look at them the same way again.

All Chelsea managed to do is reaffirm my hatred for all things scary.

Somehow, Lucy got this bright idea for everyone in the house to dress up as our favorite cartoon characters from childhood and go to a corn maze. She’s determined to convince me not everything Halloween is bad. She’s right. Noteverythingis bad. Candy corn is awesome.

Anyway, that’s how I ended up in the backseat of her car, dressed like Strawberry Shortcake, pink wig and all while being dragged kicking and screaming—okay more like pouting and whining—to a freaking corn maze. I’ve been assured corn mazes are great fun, and as a bonus, it will be a good team-building experience. It’ll help us bond or something. Call me skeptical, but I doubt a corn maze is going to bring on some magical moment of sisterhood.

Especially where I’m concerned.

Never in a million years would I have been accepted into Zeta Tau on my own merit. It is only the fact that both my mother and grandmother are alumni that I managed to land a spot. Ra-ra, go me. Yes, that is total and complete sarcasm. I never would’ve chosen this for myself. I’m not a joiner. I’d rather spend my time in the library studying, or in my room reading. But no, it was expected of me from the moment I got the acceptance letter to my mom’s alma mater that I would pledge Zeta Tau.

I’m too much of a people pleaser to purposefully disappoint my mother, let alone my grandmother, who is basically my best friend. I get my bookwormness from her. She was sneaking me her bodice ripper books when I was way too young to read about heaving bosoms and turgid lengths. I read anything and everything I can get my hands on.

My bookshelf is an eclectic collection of everything from the classics to romance that’ll make your panties melt right off. Most of the sexier books are on my e-reader. I prefer to keep my smut reading on the down-low. It’s not that I’m ashamed. It’s more that people are judgmental jerks, and it’s just easier not to give them any extra fodder to tease me with. I do like to take the path of least resistance whenever possible.

I can’t change the fact that I wear glasses. I tried contacts freshman year in high school, it was a disaster. My eyes were red for a week after my failed attempt to ditch the ‘four-eyes’ moniker. It’s fine, though. I’ve come to terms with the nickname. It’s not just the glasses that make me a bully target. I have brown hair and a swampy shade of green eyes. Not to mention the fact that I’m covered in freckles. So many freckles that I should’ve been born a redhead. Oh, and the cherry on top is I’m a whopping five feet tall.

I’m a walking talking joke to every mean girl on the planet. Which is why I like books better than people. And cats. Cats are great. I never got to have one growing up because dad is allergic, but the moment I have my own place, I’m getting a cat. Maybe two. Heck, I might just go full-on crazy cat lady and fill my house with them.

Lucy pulls off the main street and onto a gravel road of some kind. It doesn’t stop her from driving like a crazy person who has very little care for the safety of her passengers. I cringe every time I hear rocks pinging off the sides of the car. She has zero regard for the damage she’s doing to her car. I guess when daddy owns a car lot, you don’t have to care about those kinds of things.

We bump along the sorry excuse for a road for another ten minutes or so before it turns to grass. I won’t even lie, there is some small part of me that wonders if Lucy and Tricia are driving me out here to chop me into little pieces. We aren’t enemies per se, but we are definitely not friends. And the level of enthusiasm she expressed in making sure my invitation to this little outing includes her being my personal chauffeur is slightly sketchy.

I only have a minute or two to ponder my imminent demise when Lucy whips her car into a make-shift parking spot between two oversized pickup trucks. We have arrived at what is sure to be a torturous experience. At least I’m no longer worried about being chopped to pieces. The night is still young, though.

Lucy and Tricia squeal in excitement when they realize half the football team is here. One of the hot topics of conversation on this lovely ride out into Nowheresville, USA, was how Lucy has been laying the groundwork for a ‘relationship’ with the star quarterback. I’m not even sure if she likes the guy. For her, it’s all about status. Of course, the self-pronounced queen of the school belongs with the most popular guy on campus. Duh.

Both of them are so excited that they completely forget I exist. I fight to reach the lever on the seat and then the door handle so I can crawl out of the back of the car. My foot manages to get tangled in the seatbelt, and I barely escape faceplanting. By the time I untangle myself, Lucy and Tricia are prancing back to the car, unbuttoning their coats as they do. It’s like forty-two degrees outside. Coat weather. Heck, scarf weather too, I think, as a burrow down into my favorite fuzzy scarf.

“Lose the coat, Penny-pie,” Lucy says in a sing-song voice. Of all the things I’ve been called over the years, that one has to be my least favorite. My third day in the sorority house, I broke a cardinal rule—that I would like to note I had zero clue existed—I broughtsugar—gasp!—into the house in the form of a single slice of apple pie.

That one faux pas earned me the nickname Penny-pie. One that basically insinuates I’m a heifer, or maybe a pig, whatever it is they—they being mean girls—call “fat” people these days. Funnily enough, I’m far from overweight. One of the few blessings I got was a great metabolism. I can eat whatever I want and never gain an ounce. I mean, it has its downsides too. I have tiny little boobs and like zero hips. Some of the insults that have been thrown my way are ‘flat as a board,’ ‘you look like a boy,’ and one of my favorites, “you must be president of the itty-bitty-titty committee.’”

My response is always the same;but can you go braless whenever you want?My little boobies mean I don’tneedto wear the torture device known to the greater population as a bra. I do wear one some of the time, but that’s only because walking around with hard nipples poking out isn’t always appropriate. Jokes on them, I like the fact that my body is proportionate. If I had big boobs, I would probably topple over.

I almost forgot to mention all the offers I’ve gotten for referrals to get implants. No, thank you. It’s ridiculous how much emphasis people put on physical beauty. Maybe I don’t because I’m not a beauty queen, but I like to think that even if I were a hottie, I would still be the same down-to-earth girl I am now.

“Are you nuts?” I ask Lucy. “It’s barely forty degrees out here. I’ll freeze!”

Her response is one of her patented eyerolls.

It’s Tricia that tells me not to be such a baby and then asks me what the point of wearing a costume would be if we were just going to keep them covered up all night. Ugh. I hate that she has a point. Then I remember I didn’t even want to dress up and feel like arguing that point, but I follow my usual course of action: take the path of least resistance. Go with the flow.

Goosebumps break out on my skin the moment my coat is off. I’m considering leaving the scarf on, but the choice is taken from me when Tricia snatches it off my neck and tosses it in the car. I almost protest that it’s pink and could totally be a part of my costume, but it’s that very moment that I notice what she’s wearing. And it isnota loveable cartoon character from her childhood.

She’s dressed in what I assume is meant to be a nurse’s outfit. However, the skirt of the dress is so short one wrong move will have her lady garden on full display. Not to mention the top is so low cut her decidedly fake boobs are practically falling out. She’s got a satisfied smirk on her face as she pins a little nurse’s hat on her head.

Lucy strips off her coat, and it’s more of the same, except she’s sporting a cheerleader uniform. Well, if cheer uniforms looked like streetwalker clothes. She’s showing almost as much skin as the cadaver in my human anatomy class. Hell, I think Mr. Pfeiffer is more conservative, and all he wears is a white sheet.

Three other girls from the sorority walk up—Mandi, Candi, and Sandi, all with an ‘I,’ I can’t even make this crap up. They are also dressed in the same variation of slut wear. A witch, a devil, and… a nun. There is a sluttynuncostume? I half expect a lightning bolt to crash down and smite us all from the earth for such a thing. I’m not Catholic or anything, but there have to be rules against that kind of blasphemy.

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