Chapter Sixteen

Levi loped towards the colonnade, trying to keep his head down.

His COM210 Media Writing class started at nine and he could probably grab a breakfast burrito from one of the hot food vendors on the way if he hurried. Levi was famished and dealing with a serious protein craving after a weekend of wild calorie-burning fornication and sugar-laden sweets.

He gave the plinth bearing the bronze of Abraham Lincoln a wide berth, along with the usual group of loud punk rock and tobacco enthusiasts lounging in the statesman’s long shadow. The clamorous noise and obnoxious smell of smoke battered at his senses more than usual as Levi beelined for the marble fountain and, beyond it, the modern glass-fronted school buildings where calming tranquility and higher learning resided.

The skies were clear and the morning sun was bright, already beginning to bake the fresh-faced crowds of students streaming in every direction on their own personal quests for tertiary education and, presumably, a caffeine hit that cost less than three bucks.

They were dressed for the spring weather too. The young women as much as, if not more so, than their menfolk contemporaries. A fact that Levi was growing stiffly aware of… achingly so.

Form-fitting shorts hugged young butts that were trim or otherwise but always eye-catchingly round. Bared midriffs rode the range from the flat planes of smooth tummies to soft, grabbable muffin tops. Denim was popular in every color and style. Blue daisy dukes cut high with the bottom curve of barely-legal ass-cheeks peeking out from behind, while black skinny jeans were slung low on narrow hips bones and clung to slender thighs. Stretchy boob tubes, paper-thin singlet tops, frippy summer dresses and little strapless numbers all conformed to burgeoning breasts in a lip-smacking smorgasbord of various sizes and shapes.

…and they all parted before Levi like the water before Moses, often shooting him shy glances or outright staring at long-striding young man as he hurried to class.

The extra attention was as unwelcome as it was embarrassing.

"Well, look at you Mill-tard. Traded in mommy's skirts for a pair of big boy panties today, did we?"

Britney stood squarely in his path with hands on hips, wearing her UIS cheerleader uniform and that trademark bitchy grin Levi was so unfortunately familiar with.

“Britney, please… I’ll have your course notes ready by lunchtime as usual.” He said, trying to reason with the all-american blonde as he went to step around her. “We don’t have to keep doing this.”

For all her many faults, the junior star of the UIS Prairie Stars Cheer Squad was an undeniable smoke-show. She was tall with a lean body honed by years of gymnastics into a flipping, kicking and spinning wet dream on the sidelines of every college football match. As many fans went to watch the teen beauty queen shake her firm upturned tits, pert little ass and–incidentally–pom poms as they did to support the home team.

“Are you trying to say you’re not pleased to see me?” Britney pouted beautifully, everything she did came across as effortlessly beautiful, as she set herself in front of Levi again. “I’m not thrilled about wasting my precious time on pasty trash like you either, Mill-tard. I’m only here to clue you in on our new arrangement.”

“New arrangement?” He was only half listening to his long-time tormentor as the cigarette smoke and blaring music from under the Lincoln statue continued its **** on his sensitive nose and ears. They had to be over thirty feet away, didn’t anyone realize how obnoxious they were all being? “What are you talking about?”

“Pay attention when I’m talking, wimp.” Britney jabbed him in the chest with a painted fingernail. Levi shied away on instinct before realizing the poking didn’t hurt like it used to. “I’m telling you how things are going to be from here on out. These are my good friends and squad-mates Tessa and Farah…”

She indicated two lithe stunners in matching little blue and white cheer skirts and sports bra tops standing a ways back behind her. Levi didn’t catch who was who–the latest punk hit encouraging listeners to kindly fuck the establishment was distracting him–but guessed the athletic brunette with the long legs and toned belly was probably Tessa, making the mocha-skinned knock-out sporting some fun looking handfuls on her chest and sculpted hips Farah by process of elimination.

The alluring pair of barely legal coeds who kept glancing nervously between him and Britney. Levi’s cock remained steadfastly at half-mast, shoved part way down one pant leg and pulsing its approval of their anxious expressions. Like two frightened gazelles sensing the apex predator was nearby.

But where was Kimmy? He knew how Carmen was presently occupied–as complicated as that whole situation might be–but the aloof Asian ice-queen never skipped attendance of his daily ego-crushing ****.

“Hey! Eyes on me, perv.” Britney snapped, trying to get up in his face then scowled when she noticed he had a few new inches on her. “Have you started wearing wearing insoles or something–”

“What is it that you want, Britney?” Levi groaned in frustration, pinching the bridge of his nose. His head was beginning to hurt from the noxious reek of nicotine and his manhood was stubbornly hogging the blood flow his brain gravely needed for dealing with the mouthy shrew. “It’s hot out and I have places to be.”

“Whatever.” She harrumphed, crossing her slender arms under her perky chest and turning her nose up at him. “These lovely young ladies have promised to back my run for cheer captain next year and in return I have graciously decided that you can do some of their homework too. It’s a whole quid pro quo thing, I doubt you’d understand.”

Levi badly wanted to explain, in no uncertain terms, that he did indeed understand Latin terminology and exercise some acta, non verba in telling the buxom bitch to go mulgere hircum at her earliest convenience.

…but some deeply rooted timidity stayed his tongue in the face of her glaring feminine superiority and brazen entitlement. So he just shook with impotent rage as she turned with a dismissive flick of her long golden hair and glided away with her two latest flunkies in tow. Three perfect derrieres swaying enticingly beneath short swishing skirts as they went.

“For fucks sake…” Levi growled through gritted teeth once they were safely out of sight and spun to stomp back towards the disorderly crowd sheltering under mounted bronze of the sixteenth US president. “It’s like common fucking courtesy doesn't exist anymore.”

They spotted him approaching. A dozen guys and girls dressed in ripped jeans, faded ska band t-shirts, wearing enough studded leather cuffs and shiny wallet chains to supply a Hot Topic factory outlet gave him worried looks.

“Oh, hey man.” A gangly youth with a quaffed up brohawk and a hand rolled dart hanging from his bottom lip climbed to his feet and extended his bony hand to Levi in greeting. “How’s it hanging?”

His torn black shirt was poached from something called “The Porkers ‘99 Grand Tour." Levi snorted in derision, this pallid whelp wouldn’t have been a twinkle in his fathers eye back then.

“What’s that?” Levi asked gruffly, indicating the small portable speaker that was the source of all his auditory woes.

“Ummm, that’s ‘Rise to the Challenge’ by The Sagebrush Proclamation. It’s the hottest new sound coming out of–”

“It’s shit is what it is.” He snarled, baring his teeth at the rock star wannabe who went white at his angry expression. “Turn it off and extinguish that smoking dick you’re sucking on, before I do it for you.”

The small group gawped up at him like a flock of frightened sheep discovering a rabid wolf in their midst. Cigarettes were hurriedly stubbed out and the speaker shut down with one last chiming beep. The guys all studiously examining their toes and waffling apologetic sounds while a few of the young women stared in mute wonder back at Levi.

One in particular, a petite little thing with short black hair and white bangs framing her cute face, shot to her feet and gave him a shy grin. Her winter gray eyes wide sparkling with mischief and excitement as Levi gave her a brief once over.

Chunky combat boots led up to skinny legs in torn fishnets emerging from a fashionably tattered red tartan skirt. Her itty-bitty titties fit well into a tiny black leather bustier that tightly hugged her willowy torso and a choker of midnight lace adorned her swanlike neck.

“Hi guy, sorry for all the bother.” She said with a hopeful lilt to her voice and too much purple eyeshadow. “I’m Madison, if you wanna hang out sometime–”

“I’ve got classes to attend.” Levi said, shaking his head and mentally trying to calm his rage boner. “So should the rest of you. Now fuck off. I don’t want to mess up my nice new duds dealing with you lot.”

With that, he spun on his heel and stalked away leaving a mixture of relieved and disappointed faces behind him.

How was everybody so goddamn stupid?

Kimmy looked down from an empty study room on the second floor as Levi “Mill-tard” Millard marched out of the colonnade with people scattering to get out of his way.

Something was very different about the usually stooped and spineless nerd.

She had cottoned onto that fact the moment he stepped through the front gates that morning. He looked like a changed man. A totally different person with his jaw squared, back straight and gaze challenging anyone who met his eye. There was no possible way that Britney’s whipping boy had been hiding an extra few inches in height and shoulder breadth–not to mention that thick head of flowing russet hair–under his geeky facade only to surprise everyone with it now like some trashy Hollywood make-over show.

No. Something was going on there and Kimmy’s fine-tuned social spidey-sense had clamored like the bells of Notre Dame the instant she spotted him.

So the delicately attractive Korean honors student did what any true academic would do; maintain a clinical distance and observe the anomalous subject from afar with intellectual detachment.

She didn’t actually care about Millard.

His utter insignificance in her dark almond eyes would have been his best protection from her icy scrutiny except for two unfortunate twists of fate in the first semester. He had outperformed her in their COM 236 Introduction to Digital Media class around the same time that Britney was searching for a pliable brainiac to browbeat into scholastic slavery.

The former was an unforgivable offense, the latter a convenient coincidence. Sometimes when a mortal was as heaven-blessed with beauty, brains and a cut-throat competitive spirit as Kimmy Choi, the stars simply aligned like that.

It was the only reason she had deigned to spend her limited free time with the likes of Britney and Carmen. They were birds of a feather and whatever the two athletes lacked in cerebral prowess they more than compensated for in animal cunning, ruthless ambition and their own personal brands of peerless womanly charms.

…And branding was everything, as Kimmy well knew as a double business analytics and advertising major.

She knew her svelte size-zero figure coupled with supple well-formed breasts, impeccably styled hair and her modelesque features made her the object of hormonal attraction to all the k-pop obsessed weebus of the university. She accepted it as both her due and burden to bear.

But today that doormat Millard was going so far off brand for himself that a group of tracking bloodhounds wouldn’t be able to follow his usually sweaty scent. That made Kimmy all kinds of wary yet curious, as though discovering a new breed of snake and not knowing if its bite contained venom.

How had nobody else noticed, were they all that goddamn stupid?

Which was why she hadn’t warned Britney off her morning dose of sniveling subjugation. All the better to quantify how much backbone Mill-tard had grown over the short course of a single weekend. Carmen was mysteriously absent and not responding to messages on any of her usual social apps, but Kimmy had heard some disturbing scuttlebutt about the vicious soccer starlet’s game performance on Sunday which mattered not a whit to her studious sensibilities.

Then Levi had endured, if not precisely rebuffed, the self-important blonde’s verbal attacks and demands. The physical signals of anxious apprehension were still there but lacked something intangible… the usual fawning maybe? The satisfying cringes of shameful fear? But the worthless wretch hadn’t bent or broken like he normally did and when he turned on those layabout punks with their imbecilic rock music…

“Oh hey, is this the nine o’clock ‘Alternatives to Incarceration’ study lab?” A young man with a rash of acne scars across his sallow cheeks asked, poking his head through the study room door.

Kimmy didn’t say a word as she pushed past him into the bustling college halls to further pursue the subject of her examination.

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