AN: I'm going to use a word in this chapter that I've never used before in my life, ever. Never said it, never written it, never typed it. And even though it's in the context of fiction, out of the mouth of someone odious, and it fits perfectly, I can't bring myself to actually type it, so I'm going to fudge a little, and just do the thing where I type the first letter and write a line for the rest, it's that bad. And I'm sorry for using it. The word should go somewhere and die. But under these circumstances would this person use this word? Unfortunately, yes.

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"I wish we could stay," Brina said wistfully, looking at Clio's evening gown, which hung in all its glory on the door of her closet. It was an iridescent white, with a scalloped, off the shoulder bodice and back, with more scallops at the hem, and it swished and swirled prettily around her feet when Clio walked. It was stunning in it's simplicity. "Who's going to tell you how beautiful you look? That's usually Lottie's and my job, right?"

Clio looked at her younger sister and smiled. "I know, sweetie, and I don't know what I'm going to do without you guys tonight. I guess I'll just have to make do with the other two girls."

Finn was also in their bathroom, but he was busy putting blush on his cheeks, and wasn't really paying attention to what his sisters were talking about.

"Cucciola? Passerotto? Time to go!" Their father called down the hall.

Brina sighed. "Come on, Finn, time to go."

He turned to Clio, who laughed as she kissed him and wiped his face before he left with Sabrina. "Have fun, Clio," he called with a wave.

"You too, Finny," she answered.

Her friends started turning up within ten minutes after her family had left, with Archie being the last to arrive.

He probably didn't want to risk running into her father or Francie, Clio realized with a secret smile. Not that she blamed him.

"Welcome, everyone, welcome," she called, hoping she sounded happier than she felt, like she was looking forward to the evening, rather than how she really felt. She just wanted the evening to be over, truth be told, though she really wished she wanted to enjoy it, for Zeke's sake. She knew he was really excited, and had brought her a pink orchid corsage and everything. To him, this was basically a repeat of their senior prom.

"Help yourselves to champagne," she instructed, gesturing to the bottle which was sitting on ice on the island. "Guys, you can use my parents' room and bathroom, ladies, we're in Francie's and my room, okay?"

Both Willow and Joyce were carrying their dresses in garment bags, and had little make up bags as well. Archie, Zeke, and the handsome, freckled, Ira, Joyce's date, carried similar bags for their toilette.

"See you in a bit, fellas," Willow called as the girls decamped to Francie and Clio's room with their things. The other two girls unzipped their bags and hung their dresses up to air, and Clio saw that Joyces's was light green, which was beautiful with her hair, and Willow's was red, which brought out her bright coloring and vivid good looks.

"We're going to knock them dead tonight, I think," Willow declared, looking with satisfaction at their dresses hanging side by side.

"I hope we can help raise a lot of money for the Cardiology wing, too," Clio added.

Joyce only nodded, looking distracted, as she had since she arrived.

"Are you okay?" Clio asked.

Again, she only nodded, and grabbed her make-up bag, heading into the bathroom so she could start on her face.

"What time is the car coming again?" Willow asked Clio as she, too, grabbed her make-up bag.

"Um, 7:00. So we have two hours, which should be plenty of time, right?"

Willow shrugged. "I don't do much to my hair, so it's plenty for me." She gestured toward Joyce.

"Well, I can't do much to my hair," Joyce said, gesturing to her wild curls, "so it's fine for me." They were her first words of the evening.

"I guess I'm the one who will have to hurry, then," Clio said, gesturing to her curling iron.

And around 6:30, the first wrinkle appeared in their plans.

Clio's phone pinged with a text.

She looked at it and made a face.

"You guys, the car's going to be about fifteen minutes late," she said. "Apparently, traffic's a mess on the Henry Hudson Parkway, which has fucked up the surface roads, too. They're saying it will be cleared up pretty quick, but nothing's moving until the cars are towed out of the way."

She texted Zeke in the other room to tell him, but when she looked up, she put her phone down and reached for Joyce in alarm.

"Oh my god, Joyce, are you okay? You look like you're going to pass out!"

Joyce did indeed look very green, with beads of sweat at her temples, grasping the edge of the sink with both hands as she closed her eyes and leaned on the counter.

"No, I'm okay, really, I just need to sit down for a sec."

Willow and Clio led Joyce to Francie's bed, where they laid her down and opened a window slightly to let in the cold, March air.

"Joyce? Are you, um, you know, could you be--pregnant?" Willow asked in a low voice.

Joyce's eyes flew open. "God no!" she answered immediately. "I just haven't had much to eat today, that's all."

"Oh, well we can fix that, let me get you one of my dad's paninis," Clio said with a smile. "They're to die for, you'll love it."

Willow helped Joyce sit up, and Clio heated up one of the Italian pressed sandwiches and brought it to her. Joyce managed to eat half of it, and did look a little better after, though she still was acting a little off.

Willow and Clio just gave each other questioning looks and little shrugs behind Joyce's back and let the matter drop.

Everyone gathered in the living room around seven, complimented each other on how they looked, poured themselves more champagne, and settled down to wait for the car, whenever it might appear.

"Oh, hey, Clio, did you get the email the TA sent out about the report that's due next month?" Archie asked.

Clio shook her head. "Maybe it went to my junk folder, lemme check," she said, pulling out her phone. She scrolled quickly.

"Huh. It's not here, but Joyce, I have an email in my junk folder from you, though, isn't that weird?" Clio said with a laugh, turning to the redheaded girl sitting across from her. "It looks like a video or something.

"Ohmygod, Clio, don't look at it," Joyce said in a breathy rush, trying to grab Clio's phone. "I sent it yesterday, I wish I hadn't--"

But Clio had already clicked on the file and was turning up the volume. As she looked at the screen, Zeke and Archie could see the color draining from her face.

"Clio? Darling? What is it?" Archie rose and went to sit next to her. He recognized it right away.

It was him at the party, unconscious, with the nameless person on top of him.

But he'd never seen video before, only stills. It had never occurred to him that there might be a third person holding the camera. He'd assumed that the camera was sitting, stationary, on a table or something.

Oh my god.

The entire room was silent around them, not knowing what he and Clio were looking at, except for Joyce, but knowing it was terrible by the expressions on their faces.

Archie was moving on the screen, thrashing, head moving back and forth, mumbling. The camera zoomed in on his face, blurry for a moment, then clearing to shocking, awful, clarity on his features.

"Clio? Clio?" he murmured on the recording. "You have to stop. I feel so sick, darling."

"Oh no." Next to him, Clio took a shuddering breath, and Archie could tell she was crying. "You weren't even awake, Archie. You poor thing." She reached for Archie's hand.

The camera zoomed back out to include all of Archie and the person riding him again.

"Clio, please--please stop--so so sick." Then he turned his head abruptly to the side and vomited off the bed, nearly pitching the person on top of him off in the process.

The person holding the camera spoke for the first time, laughing nervously first.

"Maybe you should stop. I think we have enough, anyway, don't you think? Even if we cut out the part where he puked?"

Clio looked up to stare disbelievingly at Joyce.

"That's you," she said in a shocked whisper. "You're the one holding the camera. How could you do that to him?"

Then another voice spoke on the recording, and everyone stared back at Clio's phone again.

"Oh, shut up, Joyce, I'm having fun. This might be the last time I get to fuck Archie Spencer for a long time."

Willow.

Everyone's heads turned to look to where Willow sat, looking beautiful in her bright red evening gown.

"What? You can't prove that's me. The only names I hear anyone say on that tape are Joyce's and Clio's."

The entire room sat in stunned silence. No one knew what to say.

"She told me we could use it to--to blackmail you two," Joyce said in a soft, embarrassed voice. "She said that we could use it to make 'Princess Clio' suffer."

"Why would you want to make Clio suffer?" Zeke asked, mystified. "Just because she's had a nice life?"

"Why wouldn't I?" Joyce burst out, her loud voice shocking in the quiet room. "Clio's had--she's had you to love her since she was in pre-school! Do you think someone as good-looking, as smart, as wonderful as you will ever look at someone like me twice?" She glanced at Ira, her date for the evening. "Sorry, Ira," she added.

He waved, eyebrows raised, indicating that what was happening in the room was so much more important than whether or not she "liked" him.

"And then--and then, instead of blackmailing her or whatever, they break up, and Zeke and Clio end up together, and I realize that Willow just used me to get what she wanted, to get Archie for herself--"

Joyce just collapsed into tears at that point, no longer coherent.

Archie, who had been staring at Willow the whole time, finally spoke. "It was you?" he asked. "You raped me?"

"Of course I didn't rape you," Willow snapped. "Only men can rape people!"

"You forced me to have sex with you when I didn't want to. What else can that be called?"

"You had a hard on, you came, doesn't that mean you wanted to? How could you get any satisfaction from that beanpole, anyway?" She gestured in Clio's direction. "The entitled, privileged, 'Princess Beanpole' who's had a platinum spoon shoved up her ass since the day she was born?"

She turned viciously back to Archie. "You let a bunch of disgusting office workers grope you day after day like I do at the bar and tell me about 'rape' and 'against your will', okay?"

Just then, the elevator doors dinged and opened in the foyer, and Brina, Lottie, and Finn came running happily into the room, shouting, "We didn't miss seeing you all dressed up, yay!"

They all stopped short, correctly assessing that the mood of the room wasn't as upbeat as they thought it would be.

"Great, this is great," Willow said as she rose and poured herself more champagne. "This is turning into a real circus, isn't it?"

"Where are Mom, Dad, and Francie?" Clio asked with a sigh, wiping her tears.

"Practicing driving for Francie's driving test?" Finn responded. "We didn't know you were still home. We're sorry," he added, leaning carefully into his big sister so he wouldn't wrinkle her dress.

"It's okay, Finn."

"Why are you crying?" Lottie asked Clio. "Is she being mean to you?" She gestured toward Willow.

"No, I'm not 'being mean to her,'" Willow said, mocking Lottie's voice and tone back to the younger girl. "I'm just giving her lesson on what real life is like when you're not born on a golden throne that shoots glitter over your head.

"You could use a lesson like that, too, though, couldn't you, Charlotte Jonquille?" Willow said to the Santangelo twin with dark hair. "You were really born under a lucky star." She gestured toward Clio. "This one here is half a member of this family, but you're not even half, are you?"

She looked around the room, at the shocked faces of the people who were staring back at her. Surely she didn't mean what it sounded like, did she?

"It's obvious to everyone, right? I mean, we all know she was born in a Haitian slum to some slut of a teenaged prostitute or something, then brought here because of a complete and total accident of the day she was born. Oh, I read all about it."

By now Lottie, too, had stepped into the relative safety of Clio's arms, on the other side from her brother, between Clio and Archie. Archie had his arm around her from the other side. Her lower lip was trembling.

"Willow, you will shut up, and you will leave our home right now," Clio said, her voice like steel.

The elevator doors opened again, and this time Francie stepped out, saying, "Guess who already drives like a pro? This girl, that's who!" She looked around. "What the fuck's going on?"

"I'm giving everyone a lesson on the ups and mostly downs of real life," Willow told the astonished Francie.

"So listen up, Charlotte Jonquille," Willow continued, "and count your lucky stars, because in most normal households like this, you wouldn't be a spoiled daughter, you'd be scrubbing the floors, which is where most n______ belong, you hear me? Most white people wouldn't even want to touch you, and that's the truth. I know I sure don't. Which is why it's amazing that Archie wants to even date your so called 'sister'--" and here she made the detested air quotes-- "because she's too--" and no one ever found out what Clio was too much of, because at that point Francie vaulted over the sofa and attacked Willow with a roar of anger.

"Oh my god, Francie!" Clio, too, was up off the couch in an instant, but she wasn't fast enough.

Francie knocked Willow to the ground as the champagne glass she was holding went flying to shatter on the kitchen tiles behind her. Then Francie was sitting on her, punching at her chest and face, squeezing with her legs, as Willow tried to scream through her bloody nose.

Ira and Zeke pulled Francie off as Archie held Willow back and kept her from landing a few punches herself. Brina, Lottie and Finn looked in horror, clustered around Clio, who was torn between wanting to help Francie and wanting to protect the younger ones from seeing the mess in front of them.

And into this tableau walked Pete and Daisy, laughing and talking about Francie's driving lesson and their children's antics at dinner. They took one look and stopped in their tracks, having taken two steps into the living room.

"Oddio, what in the world has been happening here?" Pete gasped.