Page 71 of Beautiful Defiance

23

LEIGH

Rue doesn’t pick me up until after nine.

“It’s better to be late than on time,” she says as soon as I get inside her car.

“I’m not a partier, so whatever works.” I buckle. “I thought Red would be riding with us.”

“He’ll meet us there.” She pulls away from the fence and gets back on the road.

“And these guys you want me to meet?”

“They won’t show up until closer to ten.”

“The party runs that late on a school night?”

“Yep. There’s no rest for the wicked or the rich. By the way, I love your outfit. You’re rocking the badass look.”

“Thanks.”

That was my intention, to come off as don’t mess with me or I’ll mess with you, in case one or both of the pervy brothers go after Hannah. Except now that I’m sitting, I am having second thoughts on my choice of clothes, a short spaghetti-strap leopard print dress pulled over a long-sleeved black shirt paired with black combat boots.

It doesn’t take long to get to the party house. By the looks of it, the party is in full swing. There are cars lined up and down both sides of the road.

Rue parks at the bottom of the street—one of the few spots left—and we walk up the road to the house at the top of the hill. The music is loud, a rap song. There’s whooping and hollering from a bunch of guys, followed by girls laughing and shouting their encouragement.

“Drink, drink, drink!”

“Is there underage drinking going on?” I ask.

“You betcha.”

“I take it there are no adults around?”

“None.” She clucks her tongue. “Get used to it. The parents out here are either helicopter parents or they parent from a distance from wherever they’re making their money from.”

“Which category do you fall into?”

Silence. Then it hits me.

“I’m sorry, Rue. It was insensitive of me to ask. I mean, I don’t know anything about your life.” Are her parents together? Divorced? Is one of them dead and the other alive? Remarried?

“Don’t be sorry. If I don’t want you to know, I’ll tell, okay?”

“Thanks, Rue.”

She’s a good person. My first real friend who’s a girl.

“I have no clue where my mom is.”

She crosses her arms over her chest, and we walk up the street side by side, her in her wedge heels and me in my combat boots.

“I never knew my father. He left before I was born. Good news? Me and Riley have the same father.”

Unlike Riley’s friend Arie, whose siblings have different fathers.

Thankful she shared, I reciprocate. “I didn’t find out the man who raised me, who I thought was my father, wasn’t until the day he died. He told me I wasn’t his biological daughter. My mom never said a word.”

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