Sweet Like Revenge

26 - Worlds Collide

As it turns out, being a good, well-mannered, and well-behaved daughter for seventeen years straight has its perks.

For one, neither my mother nor Richie so much as batted an eyelid when I asked to have some friends over to celebrate my birthday. Nor did they seem at all suspicious by my generous gift of a weekend out of town. Nope. Because Ana was a good girl. Ana would never throw a wild party behind their backs, complete with crude house music and underage drinking.

But Elle would.

My parents left late on Friday night, giving me just under a day to prepare the house for my 18th. And boy, did I have a lot to do. I combed over the place carefully, hiding all traces of Ana and Mia lest either was recognized by one of my guests. I also stashed the hard copies of my revolution to-do lists under the backseat of Richie's car so that there was absolutely no chance of anyone stumbling across them when they went snooping through my things, as any nosey house guest would inevitably do.

All crumbs of Ana and her plans of revenge were gone by six o'clock on Saturday night. And luckily so, since Kat and Chontelle dropped in early to help me finish setting up.

"Elle!" Kat squealed, handing me her gift of champagne on the way in. "You look hot!"

A playful smirk danced on Chontelle's lips, and her hooded eyes sparkled as they fluttered from my head to my toes. "You're so lucky that I'm not a lesbian. I'd jump you like a spider monkey."

I felt a sense of relief wash over me at their words of approval. Initially, I hadn't even recognized the slinky cloth that I'd pulled out from the back corner of my closet. And, when I drew it out between my hands to evaluate it, I was even more perplexed. Because the piece of cloth was no piece of cloth at all but, rather, a little (I repeat, little) black bodycon dress, with dainty lace decorating the scandalously low-cut décolletage. There was no way in hell that I had the nerve to buy something like that.

Sure enough, a note had been plastered on the back of the garment with a sewing pin.

For Nate, Ryan had scrawled next to a clumsily drawn winking face.

A barrage of thoughts had flashed through my mind as I appraised the dress, like whispers from both a devil and an angel sitting atop my shoulders.

Throw it out, one said, you can't pull it off.

Fake it 'til you make it, the other challenged, reminding me of my manifesto.

But it was a third voice — Chontelle's, actually — that had been the tiebreaker. Sex is a powerful tool for us women, she'd told me only days prior.

I needed power. That night more than any other.

And so I had tried on the dress.

Assessing my reflection in the mirror, I was confident that I had made the right choice. And not just because the dress itself was beautiful and show-stopping and everything that a good hosting dress should be. No, the best part wasn't the way that the dress hugged my waist or sculpted my barely-existent curves. The best part was seeing myself standing between Chontelle De La Cruz, Irvine's resident bombshell, and Kat Forde, a would-be-Hadid cousin. It was the fact that, for the first time, I was seeing what everyone else saw when I walked alongside the Queen's Counsel through the school halls or sat between them at lunch. And I looked like I belonged.

At least, Elle did.

And that's precisely how I needed her to look if we were to pull off that night's mission.