A 90's Friday Night Lights meets Fifty Shades, only the town is the sadomasochist and the two young lovers their pawns.
July Elizabeth Edwards is stuck in the existence her pretentious, rural East Texas town has allotted her. A shift in social statu...
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It was Saturday night, and I don't think any of us had ever anticipated a party as much as this one. The key was to have as few cars on the road as possible. That wasn't a problem for me. I didn't have one. That was another box I had failed to tick I suppose. Of course, there were others without cars, even in the elite group. They just had better ways of not broadcasting it. In other words, if you were popular enough for whatever reason, they just overlooked that fact and you rode with them. In a way, I suppose that's how I was with Lynn and Reagan, and I was damn lucky for it.
Lynn parked her shiny yellow and black jeep at the top of the driveway at Reagan's house to stay there all night. It was less than a year old and already one of her trademarks. We probably should have taken her jeep with so many to pick up, but again, the trick was not to seem obvious. Reagan's dad had just moved them into this larger house. It was a new two story with an attic on top of Reagan's room she got to use to hang extra clothes and store shoes, and they also had a pool in the back. Her mom decorated like a professional. The place was gorgeous.
Cynthia had frosted blonde hair and crystal blue eyes like Reagan. She wore black eyeliner like the woman on the show our mom's used to watch, Dynasty, and we had never seen her without her false eyelashes on. People often suspected she had gotten work done, but the truth was, she was just that pretty. She and Reagan had that doll-face gene. She really didn't need the eyelashes and all that make up. When Reagan got mad at her she'd pop off and tell us about how her mother had been nothing but a poor hick from Arkansas before she met her dad, and she'd been climbing ever since.
We wanted to think she exaggerated, but the evidence was all around us. Large, framed pictures of a six-year-old Reagan in a rhinestone covered twirling costume posed with two batons, a literal foreshadowing of JonBenet Ramsey. A beauty pageant win each year marked her age and decorated the hallway, the way most parents would represent your birthday or your height on the wall.
One picture always startled me. It was the first one. A four-year-old Reagan with long platinum blonde locks crowned in a pageant dress with a banner across it that read, BEAUTY. Reagan and I had met when we were four years old at that pageant. That's how our mothers were acquainted as well. She won "Beauty" and I won "Talent." I must have looked like the Arkansas hick next to the miniature blonde bombshell.
