Page 15 of Virgin Sacrifice

“Oh, oh, I know, I’ve got it,” Jade said eagerly with a snap of her fingers, tossing her glossy long hair over her shoulder with a smirk. “Weren’t you the maid that everyone caught Donald Haverford fucking at his engagement party last year?” she squealed victoriously.

“No, Jade!” Hester waved off her friend, “She’s too young to have been the maid. Maybe it was her mother. She did look just like her. It’s so hard to tell the help apart . . .”

I let an expression of pure confusion sweep across my face as I looked at the two with deliberate, wide-eyed ignorance. “I’m sorry, I’m not sure what you mean.” I kept my voice free of shame and full of innocent bewilderment.

Hester and Jade paused their smug giggling for a moment as their noses wrinkled with uncertainty at my lack of understanding.

“We’re saying you fucked Douglas Haverford at his engagement party,” Hester repeated slowly as if I hadn’t heard her the first time.

“But I don’t know a Douglas Haverford,” I said guilelessly as I screwed my face up in further confusion while turning my palms up to plead ignorance.

“No, we know that you idiot.” Jade was unable to maintain the charade of civility any longer in the face of my artless innocence.

“But then why would—‍”

Hester cut off me. “She’s calling you a poor slut, do you not get that?” she sneered incredulously.

“But what would this maid who slept with your friend have to do with me being a poor slut?” I said quizzically, looking around the room as if searching for the answer. By now, several different partygoers had slipped their phones out of their pockets and were recording the ordeal.

“Because you all look alike! Ugh, stupid fucking Mexicans!” Hester bitched, stomping her foot and drawing increasing attention to her antics.

“Oh, I’m half Puerto Rican,” I replied with a cheery, candid shrug.

“Like I give a fuck what backwater country your mother crawled out of,” said Hester, her voice raising with irritation.

“Karen alert,” someone whooped out from behind, setting off a round of laughter at Hester’s expense.

“She’s the fucking border-hopping trash.” Jade scoffed as she turned around to face the increasingly invested crowd. “Wait, are you recording this?” she screeched at the spectators when she saw the cameras.

That was my cue to wrap it up.

“Sorry, Heckle and Jeckle,” I said with a shrug and an aw-shucks smile. “It was nice to meet you, but we’ve got some mingling to do,” I said before blowing them a kiss. “Besos, besos!” I called out as I swung around and disappeared into the crowd, dragging a dazed Autumn along behind me.

Making our way toward the back of the house, I zeroed in on one of the drink stations the hosts had set up around the party, a full selection of alcohol and mixers available for guests to choose from.

“What just happened?” Autumn asked, her eyes glazed in confusion with a touch of awe.

“Your so-called friends are a pair of racist, stuck-up dickholes,” I said without missing a beat as I perused the options, my eyes snagging on the sealed bottles of water I had been looking for.

Snatching up two, I passed one to Autumn and then stepped back from the table to meet her mystified gaze.

“Dickholes?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Everyone throws around pussy or asshole as an insult, but I personally think dicks have a whole lot more to answer for.”

Autumn blinked, shaking her head at my logic.

See, this was the risk of opening up to people.

“Hester and Jade are going to lose their shit if someone posts that video.”

“Probably,” I replied. “But no one can say that I provoked them or that they don’t deserve for the world to know how awful they are.”

“You know, I uh, I don’t agree with any of the horrible things they were saying . . .” she said awkwardly. “I’m sorry they said those things to you.”

I shrugged, turning back around to face the party.

I wanted to press her on why she would ever consider those two vile humans to be her friends, but that wasn’t a conversation for now. I understood that connections were everything for someone like Autumn, and I didn’t want to put my only potential friend in the position of having to choose between me and fake friendships she felt obligated to maintain. I wouldn’t continue to hang out with Autumn if she expected me to sit quietly and take that kind of abuse, but I still wasn’t one hundred percent sure about her as a friend, so why ask for a commitment I wasn’t willing to give her myself yet?

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