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The float bobs under me as the crowd cheers on both sides of the street, and I jump down off the step, stopping at the edge as I hold my hand to my ear.
“Ah!” little girls scream.
“Hi, Clay!” tiny, six-year-old Manda Cabot squeals. “Hi!”
She waves at me as her twin sister, Stella, holds up her hands, ready to catch.
A comfortable breeze blows through the palms lining Augustine Avenue, grazing my bare legs in my jean shorts as the potted pink lantanas hang on the street lamps lining the road and fill their air with their scent.
Just your typical balmy, Florida winter evening.
“We want a shirt!” Stella cries.
I shoot my arm up in the air, my white T-shirt with the word BIG shining in bold silver letters.
I smile. “You wanna be a Little?” I tease.
“Yeah!” they cry out.
“Then I need to hear it!” I move my feet, doing a little dance move. “Omega Chi Kappa! Come on!”
“Omega Chi Kappa!” they shout. “Omega Chi Kappa!”
“I can’t hear you!”
“Omega Chi Kappa!” they scream so loud their baby teeth damn near shake.
Oh, my God. So adorbs.
I throw them both an underhand toss and resume dancing to the music as the truck pulls us at a crawl, our float in the middle of a long line of floats, all celebrating the annual Founder’s Day.
“See you in a few years!” I tell them. “Be good and study!”
“Yeah, we only take the best!” Amy Chandler shouts next me.
Followed by Krysten’s chirp at my other side, “Be best!”
I snort, turning around to grab some more shirts. Balloons dance in the air along the sidewalks, and I toss some more bundles, the tingles in my head helping me play my part as I dance our choreographed little number in sync with Krysten to Swish, Swish.
The rest of our girls walk in front of or alongside the float, dancing along with us in the street, and every eye on us makes the hair on my arms rise. The attention always feels good. Rolling my hips, arching my back, and shaking my body, I know one thing for sure.
I’m good at this.
Our sorority is the biggest in any high school in the state, and while it’s service and academic-based, because that’s what gets us into college, we’re popular for other reasons.
We know how to look good doing what we do.
Whether it’s washing cars to raise money for cat saliva research, hosting the football team’s annual pancake breakfast, or helping clean Angelica Hearst’s house and do her laundry because she just had baby number four from daddy number four and she’s overwhelmed—bless her heart—we get it done, Instagram-style.
Krysten and I falter in our steps, laughing as we grab some more shirts and toss them to our future little sisters out there in the crowd.
“You see how fucking drunk they are?” Krysten says under her breath. “Again?”
I follow her gaze, seeing her boyfriend, Milo Price, smiling and sweaty in his backwards baseball cap. His flushed cheeks were his tell that he’d had beer tonight.
Callum Ames stands next to him, grinning with his arms folded over his chest, watching me like I’m already his.
Maybe. We’d make a decent picture at prom, in any case. That alone will make it worth it.
