Sour Grapes

into the darkness on either side of her, but saw no one—only rows of parked cars. The night here seemed even cooler than before, and she had to clench her teeth to keep them from chattering.
    Out here, alone in the dark, her mental vision of her bright future dimmed just a little. For a moment, Barbie felt a trickle of fear rim from her tailbone up her back to the base of her skull.
    Something wasn’t quite right.
    She had felt this way once before... when she was six years old. She had stretched out her hand to pet the neighbor’s German shepherd. Looking into his eyes, she had felt the same sensation that she felt now. The dog had bitten her. Hard. It had taken seven stitches in the hospital emergency room to close the wound. She still had the scar to remind her, the only blemish on an otherwise perfect body.
    Having reached the edge of the lot and the appointed spot near the pool and patio area, there was nothing else for her to do but wait. And Barbie wasn’t good at waiting, especially when she was feeling a bit weird and freaky. She gripped the cell phone tightly and felt a little less vulnerable. “ You’d better show,” she said under her breath. “And you’d better get here pretty soon, too. I’m not going to wait all night... not even for you.”
    Just as she was deciding that she had, indeed, been stood up, Barbie heard footsteps approaching from behind her. She turned around, a smile of greeting on her carefully glossed lips. But the smile quickly faded when she saw her visitor’s face.
    “ You? What are you doing here?” Rage swept through Barbara Matthews, hot and searing, replacing cold caution. “No, no, no! You aren’t going to screw this up for me. You’re not ! I swear, I’ll kill you first.”
    The dark figure laughed, and the harsh, hard sound of it would have terrified a more timid—or sensible— soul than Barbie Matthews.
    But Barbie’s terror came a moment later when she saw the glint of a gun pointed straight at her head. “ You have two choices,” the person told her. “Number one: You don’t follow my instructions, and I kill you here and now. Number two: You be a good girl, do everything I tell you to do—when I tell you to do it— and I’ll kill you later. It’s up to you. What’s it gonna be?”
    Barbie could almost feel that German shepherd’s fangs sinking into her tender hand. The danger she had seen in the dog’s eyes was exactly what she could hear in this person’s voice. She was in trouble... big trouble.
    And she wanted to live, even if it was only for a few more minutes or hours. Barbie Matthews, Miss California Sunshine, swallowed her pride and nearly choked on it.
    “What you want me to do?”
    “Turn around... and put your hands behind your back.”
    For one of the few times in her life, Barbie did exactly as she was told.
    “Now see there; isn’t that easy?” said the person with the gun. “Even an airhead like you can do it.”

    While Savannah wasn’t jazzed about the idea of her little sister strutting her stuff in what she considered a glorified meat market, she had to admit that she was pretty proud of the kid.
    From her posted position against the wall, Savannah could see Atlanta across the room, sitting at a table with some other girls, laughing and chatting as though they had known each other for years. With familial satisfaction, Savannah noted that Atlanta was, by far, the most attractive one at the table, despite the fact that she was dressed less expensively than the average attendee.
    Savannah wished that Atlanta had asked her for something more appropriate to wear, but she quickly dismissed the idea as ridiculous... as if anything in her closet would fit that teeny-tiny body.
    She watched to see if Atlanta was actually eating anything off the plate set in front of her. While she had her fork in her hand and appeared to be moving food from one place to another, she didn’t actually seem to be sticking any of it in her mouth, chewing, and swallowing.
    A look around the room at the other girls did little to put Savannah’s mind at ease. Most of the young ladies appeared to be doing the same thing... pretending to eat. And most of them were just as slender as Atlanta, some even more so.
    Savannah could remember being that thin... but she had to stretch her memory back... way back... to junior high school. Though not as skinny as these girls, she had been teased mercilessly, called Beanpole, Toothpick, and Ostrich Legs.
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