THE REDHEAD ☾ jj maybank

22 | midsummers

"Cheer up, buttercup." Kie comments, tapping the girl's chin gently with a smile.

"Wrong flower." Delilah mumbles.

"Hey, JJ will be fine." Kie reassures. "You know how he tough he is since you two run around committing small crimes together. He'll be fine with the police."

But it's not JJ being the police that Delilah's worried about. It's the fact that an abusive father is going to have to bail his son out of jail, which will then lead to more cuts and bruises being inflicted onto the boys skin. Delilah has to attend an event surrounded by Kooks while knowing that JJ, the one person that she cares about the most, is at risk of being harmed.

Anna enters the room with a smile tugging at her lips as her eyes rest upon the teenage girls. They look so clean in their expensive dresses and with their hair styled, which is all thanks to the mother since she kindly helped them get dolled up. It's different to how they look in their everyday lives with specks of dirt on their skin from the activities they get up to.

"You two look gorgeous." Anna compliments.

"I look like a bourgeoisie pig." Kie fires back.

"Will you please not worry about socioeconomic injustice for one night?" Anna tells them.

"Mom, people that aren't even three miles from here have no power, no running water, and we're going to Midsummers." Kie states. "That's so tone-deaf."

"Do you know how hard we had to work to get into the Island Club?" Anna asks.

"Yeah, Mom. How could I forget? You had to grovel for ten years—" Kie replies, annoyance in her voice.

"Twelve." Anna corrects, interrupting her. "We also had to cough up a huge chunk of dough, and do you know why we did that?"

"To keep up with the Joneses?" Kie questions.

"No, so you could have the same experiences that I had as a child." Anna replies. "Honey, do you know what the Island Club is?"

"A factory farm for debutantes." Kie bluntly replies.

"It is a nice place, with nice people, where you can do fun stuff." Anna informs.

"With out-of-touch rich people while they island sinks slowly into the ocean." Kie adds.

"No offence, Miss Anna, but none of these things are really that fun." Delilah speaks up to help her friends argument. "You see these cuts on my face? They're from the so called nice people."

"Girls, it's for one night. Now put your party faces on and get out there." Anna instructs, walking out of the room.

The pair turn to look at each other with similar looks of annoyance plastered across their faces. Lila has experienced these things first hand and made that argument to back their points, but it got ignored.

✦ ·  ·  ·  · ──────────── ·  ·  ·  · ✦

The teenage girls are now at Midsummers where they carefully push their way through the crowd of rich people. They've been here for awhile now and feel nothing but boredom because everyone that surrounds them both are all so much older. Though, their eyes are locked ahead of them and onto Pope as he works on barbecuing the food — his father and him are two of the workers responsible to provide service for the Kooks.

"Excuse me, sir." Kie begins, putting on a British accent. "Do we have to shuck these ourselves?"

Pope slowly turns around with an unimpressed look crossed over his face as a sigh slips past his lips. But this is instantly replaced by a wide smile at the sight of two of his friends standing in front of him. He was unhappy when Heyward first put him up to this job, but now he's relieved that he won't be completely alone in a place filled with tone-deaf Kooks.