Card Sharks by Liz Maverick

Maybe . . . maybe he has a brother and we just picked the wrong week, that’s all. The normal game is obviously at somebody else’s house this week.”
    â€œThen maybe we should go to that house! I mean, before, we were just being pathetically cliché by taking this ‘meet men’ thing to such great lengths. Now, we’ve added mind-numbingly embarrassing!”
    â€œStop yelling me! You wanted to meet someone too!”
    â€œYou don’t tell someone to stop yelling by yelling!”
    The girls simultaneously took a big deep breath and let it out. “We are losing our shit, here,” Marianne said in a much calmer voice.
    â€œYeah. I know. You okay?” Bijoux asked.
    â€œI’m okay. You okay?”
    â€œI’m okay.”
    â€œOkay. So. What do you want to do?”
    â€œI don’t know. I mean, we could stay and learn and then we’d be more impressive for the second game. You know, we’d be more realistic poker players.”
    Marianne leaned against the sink. “You know, when I was about that age, I remember the boys in my peer group making fun of my lack of breasts. I was a slow developer. And I remember crying, and my mother said, ‘One day, they’ll grow up, and you’ll be even more beautiful than you are now, and you won’t want to give them the time of day.’ As usual, my mother was right.”
    â€œSo, you’re saying you want to go.”
    Cocking her head to one side, Marianne thought about it. “No, no actually I’m saying that karma is a bitch and since we’re here, let’s have them teach us how to play . . . and then we can rob the horny little suckers blind.”
    Bijoux’s mouth dropped open. “Mare, that’s evil .”
    But Marianne’s mind was made up. She flung open the bathroom door, accidentally slamming the knob into the nuts of an overeager eavesdropper. He fell backward to the floor, his mouth open wide in a silent scream as he cupped his groin with both hands.
    Marianne and Bijoux looked at each other in horror. “Maybe we should go,” Marianne whispered. “I don’t remember them being so delicate.”
    She felt a tap on her shoulder, and a small, earnest boy with Coke-bottle glasses asked, “Would you like something to drink?”
    This was not the kind of small boy she wanted to rob. The poor thing probably wasn’t in the position to make fun of anybody’s anything at school, much less some girl’s breast size. This didn’t look like the sort of kid who’d even ever seen a breast. In fact, he didn’t look like the sort of kid who’d ever see an actual breast before the age of seventeen. But if there was such a thing as karma, he’d be the next Bill Gates. A fewdecades too late for Bijoux to consider as a marriage prospect, though.
    The lad looked so nervous. So unstable. Marianne didn’t have the heart to bail out this soon. “A drink would be nice. Do you have the stuff for a mai tai?” Marianne asked.
    â€œMarianne!” Bijoux yelped.
    The kid blinked uncertainly.
    â€œOh. Okay, just a screwdriver. That’s fine.”
    â€œUm, what’s in a screwdriver?” he asked.
    Bijoux dropped her head in her hand. “I don’t know if this is even legal.”
    â€œOrange juice and vodka,” Marianne explained, patting him on the head.
    After more nervous blinking and some pretty florid blushing, he found his voice (just barely) and said, “Um, there’s some orange juice and some water. And some, um, berry juice boxes.”
    â€œJust the orange juice, then.”
    The host kid disappeared into the kitchen and Marianne and Bijoux faced the living room. The injured eavesdropper huddled against the armrest of the couch moaning, but the rest of the boys were setting up the game.
    â€œHere, close that top up a bit more,” Bijoux said, rearranging her own