0.5 Scooped Read online

  LACEY LUZZI: SCOOPED

  Copyright: Gina LaManna

  ISBN: XXXX

  Published: February 20th, 2015

  Kindle Edition

  The right of Gina LaManna to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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  Find out more about the author and upcoming books online at www.ginalamanna.com or at https://www.facebook.com/GinaLaMannaAuthor

  If you’d like to read this novella for FREE – sign up for my newsletter and you will get a code to read on my website! It can be read before or after Lacey Luzzi: Sprinkled –Book 1.

  Acknowledgements:

  To Mom and Dad – Thank you for always being supportive. P.S. Don’t believe everything you read – I don’t use bad words in real life.

  To My Bolshaya Kartorshka –I appreciate all you do for me. You are so, so special. Thank you for making me laugh and smile every day. Also, I promise to buy a fire extinguisher before lighting anymore fires inside the house. я тебя люблю!

  To Katie: I’d be lost without you. No, literally. I’d be wandering downtown Los Angeles still looking for a way home. And also, thanks for bringing me pants.

  To Emily: For making sure I know exactly how important it is to wash my hands for more than 15 seconds.

  To Nicole (and Cindy): Thank you for helping me out of ruts in my grandma’s truck. I also don’t know where I’d be without you. Stuck on Randolph Avenue, maybe? And for all the Rice Krispie bars with only the Lucky Charms marshmallows on top.

  To Michelle: Thanks for Highland Happy Hour – and for encouraging me to follow my dreams and my heart.

  To Nikki: For taking a roller coaster ride with me. In many ways. And for being my friend for ages.

  To Kristi and Megan: Thanks for your help, laughs, shoulders to cry on, and all sorts of crazy shenanigans. I love you!

  To Megan and Dianne W.: Thank you both for your kind words and eagle eyes – without you I couldn’t have whipped this manuscript into shape!

  And to my beaches, Kelly & Stacie & Sue – you are just… I don’t have words to say how much I appreciate your support! I owe you ladies lots of salted caramel gelato and tequila.

  To my friends, family, and, of course, all my readers – thanks for tagging along on this Lacey journey with me!

  Lacey Luzzi: Scooped

  A Prequel

  My heart thudded against my ribs. More than a little bit of sweat lined my forehead. My hand shook as I lifted a dainty purple cocktail to my lips. Nobody could make me go up there.

  “I choose death,” I said, my voice lacking conviction. “Seriously, I choose death.”

  Thankfully, nobody could hear me in the dark, sweaty room packed full of people. Staring at the glitterized stage set at the front of the dimly lit bar – the type of bar with poles protruding from the ceiling – I drew a deep breath. I looked to my friend, a busty redhead who called herself Luscious, for a word of support.

  I got none. Instead, she grinned, her curls bouncing gaily. Giving me a firm slap on the bum, she hollered, “Yooooou’re up!”

  I jolted forward. “No, thank you. I’d uh… yeah. I’d rather not.” I backpedaled away.

  The platform shimmered with body glitter. I was all for sparkles, but this was nuts. Astronauts could probably see us from Mars. Maybe if I shut my eyes, everything would go away…

  After a long blink, I peeked through my lashes.

  With supreme disappointment, I noted that exactly nothing had changed. Well, except for Greasy Gary’s choice of seat – he’d sneakily migrated one seat closer to stage, probably trying to improve his view.

  Otherwise, TANGO, the bar at which my mother had chosen to work, remained a shade less than classy and two notches below clean. Between the swirling clouds of bluish smoke and the cocktails strong enough to tranquilize an elephant, I lost about five minutes of my life every time I stepped inside the joint.

  The sketchy-but-sometimes-sweet clientele only added to the eclectic ambiance. The tables themselves were covered with a layer of sequins that had been shed from all sizes of leotards, all shapes of butts, and all sorts of see-through heels that glowed in the dark and stomped to the best dancin’ songs available in the U.S. of A.

  Luscious put on her best pouty face and leaned forward. It was a major invasion of my personal space bubble, but I didn’t say anything. I was too afraid I’d puke from an onslaught of nerves.

  “Go on, chickadee,” she said with a wink.

  “Make your mama proud,” Meg, my best friend, shouted over the music. “I didn’t abandon my hot date tonight to watch you sip a Shirley Temple.”

  “Your hot date was nothing more than a bottle of wine and a poster of Jimmy Fallon.” I faux-glared in her direction.

  Meg and I had been buds since we were children. My mom had been a stripper, her mom hadn’t been around. We’d spent a lot of nights sharing the same bed, whispering the night away and cuddling during the snowy Minnesota winters while my mother closed down TANGO. The place was located next to a nail salon and a grimy taco place, with an alley leading to a sign that shouted “GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS!“

  “For my mother,” I said, downing a cocktail that was anything but virgin.

  Meg clapped. “Hang on, this is the song! I know it! Get up there, Sugar. Show em’ what you’re made of.”

  And thus, my stage name was born. I became Sugar. It was a sweet tribute to my mother, Honey, who’d passed away a few months before. Neither of us had seen the brutal, fast-moving form of rare cancer coming, and I was still in shock.

  I’d spent the past few months alternating between lying comatose on my couch and coming up with harebrained distractions that were meant to push away the pain of missing her. However, last week, it had been rather bluntly brought to my attention that I needed to find a ‘distraction’ that paid me money – money that could then be paid directly to my landlord, whose patience was waning.

  Which is how I’d landed in these shoes – the ones with heels as tall as an unsharpened pencil and just as skinny. I took one step forward, wobbling like a tightrope walker above the Golden Gate Bridge. I spread my arms out wide and took one baby step after another while my stilettos lit up like disco balls.

  “I can’t see anything! My shoes are too bright.” I shielded my eyes, careful not to touch any part of my face – a difficult task, considering the six pounds of powder on my cheeks and the inch-long fake lashes glued to my eyeballs.

  “Don’t look down!” Luscious shouted between chants of Go, Lacey!

  “No, no. This is a terrible idea.” I took another step, wishing I’d downed three more of those purple, sugar-rimmed cocktails. My confidence needed a multi-drink booster, stat.

  Taking infant-sized shuffles forward, I silently cursed my mother’s choice of profession.

  She’d been a young mom and a wonderful one, despite her not-so-standard career aspirations. Though it had been hard to bring her in for show-and-tell or job-fair-day, I wouldn’t have traded her for the world
.

  Her hair had been long and beautiful and fell in soft curls around her shoulders – nothing like my own, which was kind of limp despite too much money spent on volumizing shampoos. My legs were currently clad in thigh-high stockings fastened to a thong with what felt like death-row chains. It was especially uncomfortable because these legs of mine were normally clad in yoga pants on a good day, old running shorts most other days.

  Another issue, in addition to the chains, had arisen earlier this evening. My breasts, which were typically just less than a handful, had been touched and prodded and propped into place by my girlfriends. I was wearing the waterbed of bras, which not only bounced my chest up to epic proportions, but it caused a whole bunch of jiggle that offset my balance and made me extra tippy on my feet. Not to mention, I couldn’t see over them. Which actually made me pretty happy, since that meant my stomach wasn’t sticking out too far.

  Chest – 1, Lacey – 0.

  The only thing keeping me going was the fact that I’d bought an ice cream cake at Dairy Queen, and it was waiting for me at home with open arms. Or rather, I’d saved it as a reward for finishing my first stripper routine… and by “saved,” I meant Meg had padlocked it in the freezer and refused to tell me the code until I completed my dance.

  I neared the stage, each step of the way a grueling one. I ran one hand over my leg, but the sweat from my palm mixed with a slew of body glitter from my thigh in one giant, colorful slip-and-slide that did nothing to dry my perspiration.

  Dilemma numero dos.

  Stairs.

  With no idea of how to successfully walk up stairs in these shoes, I needed to invent a slick move that’d allow me to avoid them completely. And I needed to think fast. Maybe I could create a trick that would show off my sexual prowess. Or whatever it was that people wanted from me. Greasy Gary was starting to stare in my direction, and it made me uncomfortable. I kind of wanted to poke him in the eyeballs.

  Aha! I had an idea. Or so I hoped.

  I reached out to hoist myself onto the stage. The plan was to slide up the edge of the platform using my arms, plop down on my butt, and maybe toss in a fancy little leg kick to show off the chains.

  It didn’t take all of five seconds before things went south – all too literally.

  Tripping straight into the stage, my arms shot out as stiff as a corpse. My shoes, however, remained stuck to the floor by the sheer weight of the heels. I’d become a make-shift ramp wedged against the stage.

  “Oh, God,” I said. “Stuck. I’m stuck. I can’t move my feet. If I let go, my nose will crack on the stage. Help!”

  I stood there planking for a solid thirty seconds before anyone realized my position was not one made by choice.

  “She timbered!” Meg called. “Haul her up!”

  Two sets of hands reached under my armpits and yanked me up. Someone’s wig fell off, and a piece of hair extension landed on my face. I scrunched my eyes shut and blew, but the fake hair stuck to the perspiration on my upper lip.

  “Gross. Hewwwwp,” I gurgled.

  “Look at this cutie,” Meg said. “She’s got a hipster mustache.”

  “That’s my weave,” Luscious said. “I want that braid back when you’re done with your mustache routine.”

  “No. Mustache. Routiwne. Bleehh.” I spit out the hair. “Help me on stage.”

  I wasn’t going to give up now. If I gave up at this point, I’d embarrass myself as well as the memory of my mother. TANGO might not have been the most elegant place on the face of the earth, but we were family here. Luscious, Meg, Cinnamon, Autumn – the girls cared for one another. In fact, they’d been the only ones who’d showed up at my mother’s funeral.

  My mom had no other family that I knew of. In fact, she’d made a point of ensuring that I understood I had no family. It had been just the two of us, since always.

  I couldn’t tarnish my mother’s stellar reputation by giving up before the tip of my glitterized shoe hit the stage. Even if crapola hit the fan up there, at least I would’ve tried. Sure, my track record with success was kind of a bumpy line on the bottom of the X-Y graph, but it wasn’t for lack of effort.

  “Heave this ho,” Meg shouted, giving me a huge push onto the stage, her fingers much closer to my private places than I would’ve liked.

  “That’s not the saying,” I mumbled as I clattered to the floor, a bright spotlight swinging around and landing straight on my hiney, which waved shamelessly in the air, my nose pressed into the ground.

  I inhaled a breath-full of glitter. Pulling myself to my feet amid a giant cheer from the audience, I smiled and waved, thinking that maybe I wasn’t doing so badly.

  But then my nose itched, and I let out the gigantist of gigantor sneezes. A plume of sequins shot straight out of my nostrils, and I felt like a rather flamboyant dragon.

  More cheers!

  “They love you, girl!” Meg said from the ground.

  She did a shimmy-shake, and even though she didn’t work at the strip club, she was dressed kind of how I’d imagined a cross-dressing bear would. She had a smattering of tattoos on her arms, while studs littered her ears, nose, and belly button. Her halter top made her ladies look like pumpkins in the state fair competition. She had shaggy hair and some extra weight around her middle – to keep her warm in the cold Minnesotan winters, she said.

  I smiled down at her and winked at Luscious, who was dancing with such passion it dazzled me for a moment. I was transfixed by her moves for a minute before I remembered it was me in the spotlight this time.

  Inspired by the crowd’s enthusiasm, my friends’ support, and the memory of my mother, I took the energy from the fans and used it to fuel my dance.

  The song hit. My song. I belted out the lyrics and twisted one hip to walk out onto the edge of the stage.

  Pour some sugarrr-

  Crack.

  Black.

  Stage – 1, Lacey – 0.

  ** **

  “Am I alive?”

  I blinked a few times to clear the grogginess from my head, but it wasn’t until I cleared my throat that I saw movement in the shiny mass of…something that crinkled before me. With a pounding head, it took a long moment for me to realize that the shimmering air was not air, but instead a huge bundle of silver balloons. The bouquet of plastic sparkled, and a head popped through.

  “Hey, Sugar! You made it.” I heard some more squishy noises, and my best friend’s head receded back into the pile of balloons.

  “What happened?”

  Meg poked her head through the pile of air and plastic once more. She gave me a huge, cheesy grin and shook her head. “You don’t remember anything?”

  Batting around the bouquet of airborne animals, I discovered that I was in my own room, which was a disappointing finding. It wasn’t a particularly cozy place. I still had boxes stacked in most of the corners, I didn’t own a single plate or drinking glass that wasn’t plastic and the heater worked only on days of the week that didn’t end in “Y.”

  “I’ve got a blank slate up here.” I tapped my head, instantly regretting my decision. The pounding killed. Wincing with one eye open, I glanced through the inscriptions on the balloons, trying to find clues for how I’d ended up in bed with a severely injured noggin. “Why does this say Over the Hill?”

  The word Hill had been scratched out with permanent marker and replaced with Stage.

  “Well,” Meg looked a little uneasy. “I debated getting some FEEL BETTER SOON shit, but it didn’t really seem fitting. This was the next best option. They don’t carry stripping-injury memos, which is pretty discriminatory if you ask me.”

  I looked at her skeptically, but then I noticed a small orange tag that read Clearance face up in my trash can. It wasn’t like Meg was Ms. Moneybags over here. In fact, she’d recently been ‘laid off’ from the police force and was out of work. She’d been ‘let go’ after she’d punched out a suspect for making comments about her extra weight.

  Now, however, it a
ppeared I was in a very similar boat – the ‘also out of work’ boat. It was pretty obvious that I wasn’t up to filling my mother’s very huge, very shiny shoes. At least that’s what I assumed, judging by my aching skull.

  “That’s so sweet of you,” I said. “Thank you for being such a great friend. What happened?”

  Meg’s face crinkled into a pleasant smile. “Girl, you started out so sexy, and then you just let the sexiness get ahold of you and carry you right off that stage. You cracked your head pretty hard on what I hope was a table and not a boner, since Greasy Gary was sitting in the front row.”

  I felt the lump on my head. It definitely had to be a table. Even Greasy Gary with his hairy pits and shoe-polished head couldn’t do that much damage with a ding dong. I hoped.

  “How long have I been out?”

  “Not too long. The paramedics came ‘cause you didn’t wake up right away. But then they gave you some sleeping pills since you went a little nutso when you started coming to. I took care of you and brought you back here. Carried you up myself.”

  Meg looked so proud.

  “Thanks again, I owe you one.”

  “I’ll take a steak, an order of tater tots, and a gun. Not in that order.”

  “A gun?” I asked.

  “I lost my last one,” Meg said. “It was left over from the evidence locker and I can’t seem to find it these days.”

  “Guns aren’t like keys. You can’t just misplace them. That’s how people die.” I shook my head. “No wonder you’re out of the force.”

  “That has nothing to do with it,” Meg harrumphed. “What’d you expect me to do, let the asshole call me fat? I ain’t no fatty. I work out. My repertoire of sex positions ain’t easy to maintain-”

  “I get it, I get it,” I interrupted, shifting slightly to try and sit up. I groaned involuntarily. “How did I get a bruise on my shin?”

  Meg looked away, twiddling her thumbs.

  “Meg…”

  “Your door frame is very narrow,” she said cryptically.

  I leaned my head back against the pillow. “What do I do now?”