Page 47 of Beautiful Defiance

18

LEIGH

Ilay in bed and think about my afternoon with Rue and Red. After I slurped up my pho, I filled out the paperwork Mason gave me.

When all of us were done eating and we paid, we headed back to the auto parts store, and I dropped off the paperwork. Then we did the fun stuff. Talking. Laughing. Window shopping. Red didn’t want to be caught dead going into a clothing store with us girls, so we indulged him and stared at the well-dressed mannequins in the window.

I might have stared too longingly at the sapphire princess dress with the plunging neckline. Rue clasps her hands behind her back and rocks on her heels, looking from me to the dress.

“Size six, right?”

“How’d you guess?” I smirk.

She and I could be twins, except her eyes are deep pools of ink and mine are a light shade of brown. She gives me a cheeky smile.

“Homecoming is in a month. You have time to save up.”

“Mason will be more than willing to give you hours,” Red chimes in.

“We’ll see.” A lot can happen. And who would ask me to homecoming anyway? The students at Cambridge High hate me for talking back to their king.

Done with admiring a dress I could never afford, and even if I could, it isn’t high enough on my list of priority purchases, I rush to the next window and make a mental list of the desserts I’d buy from Sweet Creations Two, a pun on too.

“Is there a Sweet Creations One?” I ask.

“In McMillan, a half hour from here. Same owner. He thought it’d be cool to have a one and a two.”

“Are both things like the other or is one not like the other?” I ask, putting my spin on the lyrics from a Taylor Swift song.

From the way Red is looking at me, like I’m off my rocker, he doesn’t get my dumb attempt to be funny. Rue? Rue laughs in her hands.

“You are definitely my sister from another mother,” she said. “Do you have sisters or brothers?”

“None. You?”

“My sister, Riley. She’s a senior at DU.”

“Does she like it there?”

“Not really. She’s mainly there for the degree and her friends. They call themselves the Sass Squad. It’s a play on Sasquatch.”

“Like Big Foot?”

“Yep.” She pulls out her phone from her back pocket and shows me a picture of her sister and the girls on the Sass Squad. “The one with light-brown hair is Gwen Bliss. Gwen’s family owns a lavender farm in McMillan. Then there’s Ever Moretti. Isn’t she pretty? Her brown hair is borderline black, it’s so dark. Her brother owns a tattoo shop. Next to her is Syn Winters. Is that not a sick name or what? And look at her piercings. Cool, right?”

I nod. I love the white-blonde girl with the pixie face’s face piercings. Her bottom lip, nose, and right brow are pierced. I point to the last girls in the lineup.

“Is this your sister?”

“How’d you guess?” She smiles and crosses her eyes.

“Because you two could be twins.” High cheekbones. Aristocratic nose. Small chin. Plump lips. What my dad would call kissable. He teased my mom all the time about her full lips.

“Next to her is Arie Kim. Arie has three siblings, and they and her all have different fathers.”

Wow. “Why do they call themselves Sass Squad?”

Rue puts her phone away. “Freshman year, Gwen threw a Sasquatch party at her family’s farm. She’s superstitious and thought paying homage to the big guy in a place where there’s been sightings would bring luck to her family, but no one came except for her roommates, Ever and Arie, and Riley and Syn who roomed together. That’s how they all became friends. They’re all sassy too.”

---