“You two are elitist swine,” Liza said while the faucet water ran. “My man will love my dirty hands. ‘I love a woman who can get filthy,’ he’ll say.” She hugged herself tightly and gave the impression that dirty hands were groping her back. Her dress was one of Janae’s early pageant dresses before she’d shot up three inches in six months, a black lace halter with a short, ruffled tulle bottom. It was backless, all the way to the base of her spine. It was a bold look to be sure. But she was too short to pull off a gown like her sisters, who had gotten their mom’s height.

She was most proud of this hair, though. Liza’s hair was in an immaculate twist-out that sat in rich brownish-red curls out to her shoulders. She had to immortalize it now before it turned into a ball of fur in ten minutes. When she pulled out her phone, her two sisters immediately went into a duck-face-hot-girl pose, and they must have snapped forty pictures between them.

“Off we go, Bennett sisters!” Liza said and snapped two more filtered pictures of her and her sisters.

“Are you going to post these on your Insta account?” LeDeya smiled into the camera.

“Not with those boobs out, I won’t,” Liza said.

LeDeya shrugged in her borrowed salmon taffeta gown. Even at sixteen, LeDeya filled out the chest much more than her sisters.

Janae pulled at the back of LeDeya’s dress nervously. “I guess I let it out a little too much,” she said while holding a sewing needle between her teeth. Liza laughed as LeDeya tugged, pulled, and protested against her oldest sister’s modest revisions.

Liza scrolled to the best photo of all three of them and posted it with the hashtags #offtoBabylon #Bennett2winit.

Her feed exploded with exclamations and thumbs-up emojis. If her plan worked, she’d be a household name. Her followers were itching for a confrontation.

MERINO WOOL

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Just double-checking on the security parameters we set up for tonight. No one gets in with heavy coats, bandanas, signs, or weapons. I only plan to be there for the first 45 minutes. So let’s make sure I have a detail in case people want to swarm me or pick my pockets.

D.F.

Dorsey Fitzgerald was in a terrible neighborhood. On purpose.