“Fine,” she muttered in the same resigned tone as I had.
Thirty minutes later we sat in a booth on the second level of The Varsity. Whitney ripped into a hotdog slathered with chili, cheese, onions, and ketchup. She scarfed it down like she hadn’t eaten in weeks. She finished the first one in front of her then started in on the second.
“Where does it all go?” I gestured wildly over her lean frame then sighed exaggeratedly. “Some people get all the luck.”
When it came to Whitney the sentiment was true in more ways than one. The fact that she looked as good as she did made it clear that the world was cruel and unfair. With a deep mocha complexion, a thick mass of dark, shiny curls, hazel-almost-green eyes, and the long, lean legs of a runner, she looked like she belonged on somebody’s runway.
I dipped a fry into my chocolate milkshake, very much aware of the total lack of nutritional value of my meal. However, they were the only two items on The Varsity’s menu that I could digest.
Whitney’s eyes followed my movement. “Look who’s talking.”
“Yeah but I have to work for my figure. If my Society duties didn’t require that I train on a regular basis to stay in shape, I would not be able to eat whatever the hell I want and not look like I do too.”
“And I’m a runner remember. I burn a lot of calories during track practice,” she said over a mouth full of greasy hotdog.
“Speaking of which when is your next meet?”
“Saturday against Georgia State. You coming?”
“I can’t promise something won’t come up, but it’s my off day so I should be there. It starts at twelve right?”
“Yup. But come half an hour early during our warm-up if you can. There’s a hot guy on State’s team I want you to meet.”
“I’ll be there at twelve,” I respond dryly.
“Come, on Alex. Live a little. He’s six four with killer abs you could bounce a quarter off of. And you know the boy is fine because the first time I saw him at a meet last month the first thing that popped into my head is ‘I wonder how he fucks.’ You know I only think dirty thoughts about extremely hot guys.”
I snorted. “Really? Because I thought you think dirty thoughts about anything with two legs and a third appendage dangling between it.”
Whitney pressed her hand to her heart as if I’d wounded her. “That hurts. You know I only think nasty things about Grade A Fuckable guys. And believe me Alex, this one is Grade A with a capital A.”
“Whitney, like I tell you every time you try to set me up, the answer is NO.”
She eyed me over her orange cream soda. “Are you sure? Last chance. Because if you don’t want him, I’m sure as hell going to give him a go.”
“Be my guest.”
“Ooh, that reminds me,” she squealed like a thirteen year old at a Justin Bieber concert. “Beauty and the Beast is coming on T.V at six. I was thinking we can watch it before you go out on a patrol.”
“Did you seriously just go from talking about fuckable guys to a disney movie?!”
“What? You know it’s my favorite.”
“Sure Whitney, Let’s watch the movie about the girl who develops Stockholm syndrome for her captor.”
She glowered at me from across the table. “Says the person whose favorite is the movie about the girl with bitch tendencies that lets her stepmother take her shit and make her a servant in her own father’s house.”
And the gauntlet had been thrown.
“Don’t talk about Cinderella that way.”
“Don’t talk about Belle that way.”
We stared at each other for a full minute then dissolved into a fit of giggles exactly how we’d done as thirteen year olds when we’d had this argument for the first time. It never got old, it always ended the same and we would never stop having it.
My cell phone rang in the middle of our cackling. As hard as I tried to curb it, I was still laughing when I picked it up.
“I am glad that you are enjoying yourself so much Alexandria while I am waiting for my granddaughter to show up to a dress fitting appointment that she is thirty minutes late to.”
Shit. I’d forgotten about that. “I’m on my way. I will be there in fifteen minutes,” I told my grandmother then hurried off the phone before she could say any other words too loudly that I didn’t want Whitney to hear.
I didn’t usually keep things from her, but even though I was meeting my grandmother to be fitted for a dress to wear to her charity ball, I was still very much intending to come up with an excuse that would get me out of actually having to go to the damn thing.
“Dress fitting huh?” Whitney probed after I hung up.
I was about to tell her yes, but I did not intend to actually go when her phone vibrated on the table. I winced when I saw the caller ID knowing I was about to be harassed into it.
“Hello Mrs. Sinclair,” Whitney said into the phone confused as to why my grandmother would be calling her.
“I’m sorry… Oh yes, the
dress fitting…
Yes, Alex told me…I am actually with her… Our class ran late but
we
will be right there… Okay… Goodbye Mrs. Sinclair.”
And checkmate to my grandmother. I was going to the dress fitting
and
the party now. There was no way Whitney would let me make her pass up a designer dress and an opportunity to wear it.
“So you just weren’t going to tell me?” She asked after hanging up the phone.
“No.” And she knew why.
“Well, your dastardly plan just got foiled,” she smirked at me from across the table. “Move your butt Alex Sinclair. We have a dress fitting to get to. You will not make me miss out on an opportunity to pick out and wear a designer gown I will probably never be able to afford.”
I didn’t even bother to argue. Whitney did not care about rubbing elbows with Atlanta’s elite but she lived, breathed, and slept fashion. Designer labels and couture were a religion to her. My grandmother had just used her knowledge of that to make sure I attended her charity ball.
******
“Alexandria. Whitney.”
I gritted my teeth against my grandmother’s use of my full name. She knew I hated it and preferred to be called Alex. Like every other preference I had about every other thing in my life, she ignored it and did whatever the hell suited her instead. “Alex,” she told me when I was eight, “is a boy’s name. Alexandria is much more appropriate for a lady.”
“Grandmother,” I said simply to niggle her. If she insisted on calling me by a name other than the one I’d asked to be called by than I would insist on returning the favor. Besides calling her Madeleine was absurd.
My grandmother pursed her lips at me then pointed to two dressing rooms where sale woman waiting dutifully by the door of each of them. “I have already had a few appropriate selections pulled from the rack for you, Alexandria. And Miss Pearson, there is a red Valentino and black Yves Saint Laurent waiting for you in yours.”
Whitney emerged from her dressing room right after I walked out of mine. She’d chosen to try on the red Valentino first.
“That’s the dress,” I told her. “Don’t even bother with the other one.”
She twirled around in front of a mirror that covered the entire back wall of the boutique. The flowing layers of the gown danced around her legs in a whimsical swirl as she did so. The sweetheart neckline and capped sleeves hid way more skin than Whitney normally covered, but she was knockout sexy in it nonetheless. In fact, the modesty of the gown coupled with how its material fitted snugly against her tall, slender frame was what made it appear all the more gorgeous on her.
“I think you’re right,” she grinned at me. Then she remembered she wasn’t the one paying for the gown and couldn’t afford it even if she used up her entire college fund.
She turned sheepishly in my grandmother’s direction. “That is, if it is okay with your Mrs. Sinclair?”
My grandmother raised her hand, waving away her hesitation. “I wouldn’t have had the sales woman pull it if it were not.”
“How do you like yours?” Whitney asked.
I spared a glance at the emerald colored Oscar de la Renta in the mirror. I only knew the name of the designer because Bridgette, my sales lady, kept telling me how his gowns were “so in season this spring,” as she stuffed me into it.
“It’s cool.” I shrugged my shoulders apathetically. I liked nice clothes as much as the next girl, but designer labels and fancy dresses were more Whitney’s speed. It didn’t matter to me what I wore to an event I didn’t even want to attend in the first place.
Whitney sighed. “‘It’s cool’ just won’t do. We need to find you a dress that you feel like you want to be buried in.”
“If I were making arrangements for my funeral Whitney, I doubt a ball gown would be anywhere on my must-be-present-when-I-die list.”
“Alexander McQueen might do her justice,” she ignored me, turning to Bridgette instead. “Do you have something in a warm hue that will complement her complexion nicely?”
“I do!” Bridgette beamed. She walked to the opposite end of the store, disappearing behind a curtain of dresses, then reappeared with a champagne colored dress protected within a plastic garment bag. The expression on her face looked like there’d been a leprechaun holding a pot of gold behind the dresses. “This was featured on the runway in Paris at Fashion Week.”
I glimpsed the price tag as she unzipped the bag and removed it from around the dress. “Holy shit!” I couldn’t stop myself from sputtering out. “That dress costs 50 grand!” Who needed a silly leprechaun when you had my grandmother sitting on your store’s sofa with a checkbook in hand. “I am not trying that on. It’s too expensive.”
“I assure you money is of no consequence,” my grandmother smiled reassuringly at the sales woman. “Alexandria stop being dramatic and try the dress on.” Her tone is steeped in reproach.
I roll my eyes but take the dress from Bridgette. “As you wish, Grandmother.” It was her money she was wasting not mine.
“That’s the one,” Whitney shrieked when I walk out of the dressing room. “Look in the mirror.”
I turned toward the mirror sure I would be just as apathetic as before. My breath hitched in my chest when I saw my reflection. The dress was gorgeous on. It was like something straight out of a Disney fairytale but way more grown up than any gown a Disney character would ever wear. It was completely strapless, leaving my shoulders bare. The corseted top clung to my upper body like a glove before fading into a fishtail skirt that clung to my lower body just as snugly then cascaded out in sweeping layers as the material neared my feet. Its champagne color, embellished with a thousand tiny Swarovski crystals, complemented my honey colored complexion perfectly, adding a warm brilliance to it that gave off the impression that my skin glowed. “It’s beautiful,” I whispered to no one in particular.
“We will take it,” my grandmother said from behind me. I caught her reflection in the mirror. Something I couldn’t name shone within her eyes.
Grandmother wrote a check for the dresses and gave Bridgette our address to have them delivered to. She also told her to take care of the shoes and send over ones that would match appropriately. I was glad I wouldn’t have to suffer through shoe shopping too.
After suffering through Beauty and the Beast, I took the train to Downtown Atlanta to begin my shift. Bennett scheduled me to be on patrol in Five Points, the big one not the little one. The neighborhood was both a tourist attraction and local hangout spot during the day. World of Coke and Underground Station, the shopping district located there, drew daily crowds that were a mixture of locals and non-locals.
At night, after the tourists left and with them the cops, Five Points turned into a much darker beast. The illegal gambling houses and prostitution rings that operated out of the back rooms of many of the shops after they closed attracted a more unsavory crowd than what roamed Five Points during the day. Thugs, gangsters, human traffickers and addicts alike, all flocked to the downtown neighborhood once the sun went down.
The police knew what kind go shady shit went down in the area, but they chose to turn a blind eye. Most people thought that it was because as long as the tourists weren’t fucked with, and the enormous amount of money the city made off of them kept pouring in, the cops didn’t care. The real reason they pretended like Five Points shut down when the retail stores closed for business was because they were scared shitless, not apathetic.
Strange things happened to people in Five Points when the sun no longer hung in the sky. The running joke in the city was that it was kind of like the Bermuda Triangle. People who ventured in, a lot of the time never made it out alive. And it wasn’t because of the gangsters and thugs. Some of them, if they didn’t have the right connections, didn’t make it out either.
Daemons really ran the illegal gambling houses and prostitution rings set up in Five Points. For the past ten years, human trafficking in Atlanta had become more and more of a problem. Daemons were the ones behind it, just like they were behind the city’s influx of drug trafficking and homicides too. No one outside The Society knew this though, because no one knew daemons existed. City officials blamed it on the known kingpins of the city, but they were just humans being used by daemons to further corrupt other humans.
That was their sole purpose for being on Earth— to corrupt human souls. They tempted people into murder, suicide, drugs, addiction, violence and any other despicable thing imaginable.
They wreaked havoc among the human population, the more devastating the better, because the more humans that were tainted in the process the better.
“Watch where you goin’ bitch,” a teenaged boy who could be no older than sixteen smiled lecherously at me. His skinny jeans sagged low on his butt, flashing checkered patterned boxers underneath.
I’d never understood that particular fashion trend. What was the point of snug fitting jeans if you were just going to sag them anyway?