Kimberly Faith Johnson’s Sweet Sixteen Party is a meat market, and that, Sparrow decides is the real reason her father insisted they attend.
Kimberly’s girlfriends dance beside the pool in their strapless pastel dresses while Mr. Johnson’s fellow lawyers and clients survey them from the shade of a large covered balcony. The overflowing table of professionally wrapped gifts, and the DJ can’t sugarcoat the fact that Sparrow and the rest of the girls are on display.
Did Dad really think she wouldn’t figure this out?
Sparrow’s father hangs on the fringes of the circle of men surrounding Mr. Johnson. When a waiter hands Mr. Johnson a drink, the men move back just enough for Sparrow to get a peek at Kimberly’s new step-mom on Johnson’s arm: the prettiest blond money can buy.
Sparrow winces, imagining Dad marrying a girl just two years old than her, the perky dance team member bouncing out his bedroom. Luckily, Dad can’t afford a new wife, not when the going price for a socially acceptable bride is $3 million plus.
Up on the balcony, Dad beams and puffs up his chest as a tall man with slicked back hair asks him a question. She tenses, as Dad guides him over to the railing and scans the party below, his finger like a pointer ready to land on her.
Sparrow turns her head, determined not to play Dad’s game, and locks eyes with an Asian man leaning against one of the Italianate columns. He has his tablet out, and Sparrow has the overwhelming feeling he’s comparing her to whatever he’s reading.
She glares up at him. I’m not for sale.
There are plenty of girls at this party who’d love to get married at sixteen or seventeen, who’d welcome all the attention and glamor of getting Signed, but she isn’t one of them.
Below the balcony where the men mingle, caterers have set up a refreshment table. Tall vases of flawless pink roses, and conical towers of lemon, lime and raspberry macarons stand alongside glass columns of pale yellow lemonade and ice tea.
“I’m getting a drink,” Sparrow tells her bodyguard.
“Would you like me to do it?” Damon says.
“No, I’ll go.” Sparrow smiles, pretending she’s on her best behavior.
She steps back into the colonnade that shades this wing of Johnson’s mansion, no, sorry, his palazzo, so the fuschia bougainvillea overhanging the arches screen her from the balcony.
As she heads to the refreshment table, her eyes roll at the thought of Johnson naming his house Palazzo Ducale. Seriously, this is LA.
Up ahead she spies Dayla Singer, the only girl here who really is one of her classmates at Masterson Academy, not like these sophomores she barely recognizes. Dayla darts past Sparrow and slips into one of the rooms along the colonnade, her bodyguard Seth right behind her. Sparrow glances around, but no one by the pool or on the lawn seems to be looking in this direction.
They have to stop doing this, Sparrow thinks. Someday Dayla and Seth are going to get caught, and their sneaking around will land Seth in prison. Neither one of them is smart enough to pull this off. Every time they look at each other it’s like they’re passing a secret message. Anyone paying even the tiniest bit of attention could guess they’re in love.
Sparrow feels for the phone in her pocket, fighting the urge to call Imran. There probably isn’t a single room in Johnson’s house that isn’t monitored, and she can’t risk being caught and losing their connection.
She has almost reached the end of the hall when she hears recorded voices and machine gun fire. Quietly cracking open a nearby door, she sees a boy sitting on the floor in front of a huge couch, his fingers banging a controller. She recognizes the game even though she can’t see the screen, because she’s played it with her brothers for months.
The boy is alone, or so it looks from the one soda can on the coffee table. Cheese puffs, her favorite brand, spill out of a torn foil bag.
This is so much better than the party.
Readers: The character of Sparrow first appeared in my novel, A GIRL CALLED FEARLESS which is being developed for television. If you were going to cast the tv series who do you think should play Sparrow?
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Sparrow's Story - A Girl Defiant
Teen FictionBoston, Harvard, but most of all, Imran. That’s what Sparrow wants. Imran is physics and poetry, deep brown eyes and a smile that makes her heart race. And he’s the only guy she’s ever met who loves her brilliant mind as much as her beauty. They’ve...
