Claire arrived at City Hall one minute past the official Kiss-Off starting time, and already there was a pastel-colored, fruit-scented, lip-glossed line that snaked out the door and down the concrete steps. SAS were nowhere in sight. What if they bailed because they didn’t have anything to wear? Claire squeezed the tragic thought from her tortured conscience and hyper-prayed that wasn’t the case. But she had no way of knowing. They had ignored her I-worked-extra-hours-to-earn-dry-cleaning-money-for-you-and-I-am-so-beyond-sorry messages for four days straight—just like Claire would have ignored Todd’s had he tried to apologize for messing up the dress sabotage. But the video he’d shot of SAS being ambushed was now a YouTube favorite. It had over fifty-nine thousand views and had scored 4.5 stars, so he had zero regrets. Despite the overcast sky, the thick heat bore down on Claire like a soggy chenille blanket. Or was that guilt? A layer of sweat began forming under her flatironed bangs, and her Dress Barn dress might as well have been cut from sandpaper.
