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Circles that Caroline does her best to cram herself into. She only befriends those of higher status, class, and definitely have a trust fund. It’s how she managed to get herself invited to this party at a preppy boy’s house.
Callie and I don’t attend the same high school as the owner of this place—no surprise there. He’s from the other side of town—the Upper East Side—and goes to a private school whose tuition could send me to college.
I don’t know him personally. Being from Harlem’s ghetto, we don’t usually get to mingle with people like them.
Caroline does, though. People have dreams of becoming doctors, lawyers, and astronauts. She has dreams of dating and marrying rich.
It’s a legitimate goal for those of us who’ve lived on scraps all our lives, go home at night looking over our shoulders, and neverevergo out without pepper spray.
It’s the Cinderella complex of it all that doesn’t sit right with me. Why search for a man to give you a glass slipper when you could get it yourself?
Mom was completely and utterly into that fairy tale, and see where that got her.
“Look, Callie. I don’t have a costume, so if that’s a problem, I can just leave.” It’s an ego thing. I don’t like being belittled or mocked for who I am. That’s what’s landed me in trouble since I was little and often gets me a beating from my aunt or uncle.
They’re Mom’s brother and his wife who got custody of me after Dad was sent to prison.
But they might be worse than him.
However, I never lower my head, never let them make me feel small. I stare into their beady, vicious eyes, even as they hit me.
Which naturally makes them angrier and they beat me harder. Often with a belt or the nearest object.
“No, you’re my ride or die. You have to stay.” Callie rummages in her fur bag. “Besides, you’re beautiful as shit. It’ll be their loss if they don’t have you at their party.”
She pulls out a black feather mask, straps it on my head, and fixes my hair so it’s framing my face. Then she removes my denim jacket and throws it behind one of the decorated bushes.
“Hey! It’s cold.” And that’s actually the only good jacket I have.
“You can handle some cold for fashion. Also, that thing makes you look like a hillbilly.” She fusses in her wonder bag again and brings out some cheap red gloss, then takes extra care to apply it to my lips. After she’s done, she studies her creation with the critical eye of an amateur artist. “Perfect. You look like a bad bitch.”
“Really, Callie? Red?”
“It goes with the hair. If anyone asks, you’re a witch.”
Hell no.
But I don’t tell her that as she grabs me by the hand and drags me toward the house. She stops before the entrance and stares at me over her shoulder. “Remember, we’re sixteen or seventeen. Almost everyone here is a senior and we can’t be considered too young. Besides, we look the part anyway.”
That, we do. Caroline and I hit puberty two years ago, and ever since, we’ve been developing breasts and asses that earn us creepy looks from grown men—including our male teachers.
In school, she’s the blonde bombshell. I’m the hellion redhead.
She slips the strap of my dress off my shoulder so that it teases more of my cleavage, then interlinks her arm with mine. “Let’s snatch some rich boys.”
“You do realize they’ll throw us out the moment they find out we’re from Harlem, right?”
“Shhh.” She inspects our surroundings. “There’s no reason for them to know.”
“They will eventually.”
“Maybe by then, it’ll be too late.” She gives me a sly smirk and flips her hair.
I drop the subject, partly because we arrived at the entrance. But mainly because there’s no speaking logic to Caroline when it comes to her boy-hunting endeavors.
A sullen-faced doorman gives us a once-over before allowing us in.
Caroline is like a kid on Christmas morning, running from one place to another—with me in tow. She fawns over the black and orange decorated grand hall, the waiters in every corner, the upbeat music, the high-end costumes.
