Flashmob Story
Matthew Ryan Fischer
Melinda
stood near the window, pouring a bottle of vanilla vodka out on the floor of
Reggie’s dorm room. Why? Because it was vanilla flavored and Melinda
thought artificial flavors tasted cheap and made the alcohol taste like crap. Why pour it on the floor? Because she was young and drunk and just
didn’t care. Why in Reggie’s dorm
room? Because that was where the party
was. And where was Reggie at the
time? Down the hall trying to stop the
flow of people coming to the party. It
was not his party. It was not his
idea. In fact he was the man who was
supposed to stop such things from happening.
Little good did his school appointed authority do him in that particular
moment.
The
B&B girl had thrown the party without Reggie’s permission. The B&B girls were well known around
campus for their flash mob parties. They
were big and brash and only grew in popularity and notoriety. The word went out and the people showed up
because it was an event and everybody wanted to be part of an event. Part of the draw was that no one knew they
would even be invited to participate until mere minutes beforehand. The B&B girls somehow got a list of every
cellphone number on campus and selected their flash mob partiers using
different methods each time. Texts went
out revealing where and when and how the party was going to happen. Not every student had been invited firsthand
to one of the parties. Some students had
gone to multiple events. But that was
just the way things went in school as in life.
Some are luck and some just aren’t.
No one other than the B&B girls knew for sure how and why it worked
out this way for the participants. And
they weren’t about to reveal their system.
This
wasn’t a particularly extraordinary flash mob party, a party in an R.A’s room,
and it certainly wasn’t their most daring party to date. Some people thought the party was part of a
vendetta against Reggie who was a stickler for the rules. Others thought it was because one of the
B&B girls had a secret crush on him.
Whatever the case, the signal had been sent, and the campus kids were
always ready. Reggie was taken
completely by surprise when nearly one hundred students arrived at his door
ready for festivities. More arrived by
the minute and soon most of the quad was being taken over. The party would shut down within minutes as
none of the flash mob parties ever lasted very long. Length was not the point. The point was the excitement that they
generated. The point was creating a
moment, a memory, and a campus buzz. The
B&B girls were good at that.
Still,
none of that helped Reggie in the moment and none of that was going to save his
bottle of vodka.
Reggie
got back to his room and saw the mess created by twenty kids crammed into one
small dorm room, and was able to bear witness to the very last of his vanilla vodka
get made into a vanilla scented puddle on his floor.
“Why?”
he asked Melinda.
“Because
it smelled fake.”
That
was not a satisfying answer.
“I
need you to apologize.”
“Yeah,
yeah, yeah. I could say things. Maybe some of them would be true. But what’s the point?”
“That
was not an apology.”
Melinda
leaned in and kissed him. For a moment
Reggie forgot that he was an R.A. and forgot the party and forgot the pool of
his vodka on the floor. For a moment he
forgot all of that and his only thought was wondering if he was going to get in
trouble for all this underage drinking going on in his doom room, and if he got
in trouble, if he would get kicked out of school, and if he got kicked out of
school if he’d ever have the opportunity to kiss this girl again. So he took a deep breath and let himself
momentarily get lost in the moment for just a moment.
“How
was that?”
“Better. But you still owe me a bottle of vodka.”
No comments:
Post a Comment