Chapter Twenty Nine

Britney adjusted the rear vision mirror to check her makeup as she pulled into her personal parking space directly beside the University of Illinois-Springfield Athletics Center.

Was it unusual for a freshman student to have allocated parking on a college campus where most of the underpaid teaching staff had to squabble over the limited availability?

Certainly.

Were any of those dead-end faculty members up-and-coming cheers squad starlets with looks so killer they were practically genocidal and a horde of online devotees rabid enough to make the school board sweat?

Certainly not.

Her parking space was in the cool shade of a stately oak tree and was only a few feet from the side entrance to the building. It even had her name on a tin sign stuck in the adjacent lawn onto which one of Britney’s many, many admirers had doodled little love hearts in red marker.

But that was how it went for someone so beautifully young, achingly pretty and conspicuously superior to everyone else. Life just gave Britney whatever she wanted. It wasn’t entitlement… it was simply the natural way of the world.

Take her car for example.

It was a sporty little Audi coupe with a custom leather interior and a fold back soft top. Britney hadn’t asked for it per se, all she did was post a single instagram selfie posed beside the luxury vehicle (#socute #dreamcar #instagood) looking phenomenal in a sexy scarlet wrap-around club dress and racy sling-back heels, right there in the car yard.

How was Britney to know her army of fanatical TikTok followers and dedicated simps would immediately launch, then nearly crash, a GoFundMe page to deliver the five-figure purchase–gift wrapped in a giant blue ribbon–to her uptown address practically overnight? These things just happened all on their own.

The lighting hadn’t even been that good in the picture and Britney had hardly done anything with her hair…

Besides, the spectacularly stunning eighteen year-old cheerleader was already thinking about trading up for a newer model in a different color.

Honestly, sky magenta and gold rims were so five months ago.

On the other hand, it wasn’t like she discouraged the attention either. It felt good to be adored. To know through a numerically tangible system of ‘likes’ and ‘subscribes’ that she was quantifiably better than those around her, in both her local reality and the wider digital world.

With a minimum of effort and the latest release of high-res smartphone photo technology–paid for by someone other than herself–Britney had launched a skyrocketing social media profile that the yokels of this provincial Midwestern town couldn’t compete with or fully comprehend.

Like, how was any restaurant going to dare charge her for a meal when the threat of having their google rating sunk like the Bismark into the cold waters of one-star obscurity was only a few keystrokes away? Countless blue collar fanboys would review-bomb a local Springfield eatery they couldn’t ever hope to visit on their factory drone incomes, praying that she might grace their collective working-class asses with a throwaway wink.

Britney hadn't paid to eat out in months

Not that she would eat half the carb-loaded crap most of the food joints in Springfield served anyway. Her viciously honed, ultra-fit body was a temple. An idol for everyone to worship at, though sometimes she still liked to order a banquet for four then stroll away under the impotent stares of the gawping servers once the food was brought out.

Just for kicks. A little bit of sport to remind everyone of their place below her on the ladder rungs of society.

Slipping out of the car, Britney donned her oversized Gucci couture sunglasses, tossed her wavy honey-blonde hair over a shoulder and took a moment to admire herself one more time in the driver's side mirror. She was gorgeous, naturally, but her brilliance lay in knowing how to present her world-stage beauty to best nail-biting effect.

Today she had gone for preppy college coed.

A slim-fitting ruched blouse of purest white hugged her trim torso, cinched in about her lean waist and toned stomach but unbuttoned at the throat enough to hint at the firm swell of her perky young breasts. Her latest miniskirt–and Britney had quite the collection–was a cashmere wonder of scarlet plaid pleats that swished around the tops of her sculpted thighs and left her long high-kicking legs out to soak in the warm springtime sun.

The three-inch heels of her black buckle-up ankle boots–Britney loved ankle boots, knee high boots were for fashion-blind clods who didn’t have perfectly shaped calves and tight rears–clicked on the pavement as she paused a moment to let the world drink in her youthful magnificence then looked about in confusion…

The campus was quiet. Far too quiet for the midmorning hour.

She had been called in for a last minute exhibition of the UIS Prairie Stars by Coach Meadows. The refreshingly cut-throat championship-winning trainer had sounded unusually relaxed when she spoke to Britney over an hour earlier, waffling on about the importance of making it to the nationals and being oddly vague on any details concerning today's impromptu meet-up.

…and that was after Britney had been puzzling over the weird staticy audio message Kimmy had sent her the day before which sounded like a poorly recorded porno followed by beautiful, if badly muffled, singing.

Though at least two of the dirty-talking voices did sound faintly familiar. Even if she couldn’t put her proverbial finger on where she recognized them from. Kimmy had been no help there either. All Britney’s responding texts went unanswered and her calls went straight to voicemail.

Whatever, she could lecture the prissy Korean prude later on proper Bad Bitch phone etiquette after finding out where the fuck everyone had gone.

Peering over the designer rims of her shades, Britney frowned and looked around.

It was after nine in the morning and the college grounds should have been abustle with students going to class, loafing off or generally doing whatever it was plebs did when they weren’t sending longing glances in her direction.

Instead, the stone sitting benches were vacant, the communal outdoor spaces were empty and there was nary a sign of a hacky sack circle to be seen anywhere. A cool breeze sent a tumble of dry leaves and several littered pamphlets down the cement sidewalk to swirl about Britney’s booted feet.

Tisking in irritation she stooped to pull away a scrap of yellow paper that clung to her shin and hesitated as the print attracted her attention. The font was bold, almost physically so, and the bordering was a swirling pattern of cross-hatched lines that seemed to loop constantly into themselves like an optical illusion.

At the head of the text was an intricate spiral motif that drew Britney’s eye like a bee to honey. It was shadowed in such a way that made it appear to sit just above the paper itself, twisting as her vision blurred in and out of focus trying to make it out in detail.

The springtime sun almost felt too hot all of a sudden and the breeze too chilly. The blonde freshman cheerleader shivered as she tore her watering gaze away from the spiral to read the inky lines of capitalized text below it:

UIS SCHOOL SPIRIT RALLY

09:30AM TODAY

IN THE RECREATION AND ATHLETICS CENTER

SPECIAL EVENT FEATURING THE UIS PRAIRIE STARS AND SPECIAL GUESTS

YOU DON’T WANT TO MISS IT!!

Those last six printed words seemed to leap out at Britney with far more gravitas than the default Times New Roman font should have ever been able to convey. Like a front page headline after a state of national emergency was declared or the **** of one of her favorite Hollywood A-listers.

You don’t want to miss it…

Prairie Stars, that meant her! The “and special guests” part was mysterious and unhelpful. But with less than thirty minutes until showtime Britney needed to hustle and get her game face on.

People would be filling the stands already and it wouldn’t do her bid for cheer captain next year any favors to be seen arriving late.

With that in mind Britney started to briskly walk, then broke into a jog to reach the back entrance to the women’s locker room.

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