Diaries of an Urban Panther by Amanda Arista

stopped when I saw the four dark marks down my shoulders. They were shadows of their former selves but they were there and visible to anyone who got close enough to really look.
    Which meant I was fine. Standing next to Jessa, no one was going to really look at the Sasquatch by her side.
    J essa looked like something out of Vogue as she flipped her perfectly straight black hair over her shoulder. She checked her Chanel lip gloss one more time in the mirror in her foyer before turning towards me. “Ready?”
    “Sure,” I shrugged.
    “You okay?” she asked as she locked her front door and we started to the elevator.
    “Fine. Work has just been rough this week.”
    “Typing your little fingers to the bone?” she said wiggling her fingers in front of her, mocking my daily activities.
    “Yeah. And they want me to collaborate on this online thing they are cooking up.”
    “Uh-huh,” Jessa said as she watched her reflection in the sliding metallic doors.
    “So it’s like double the work.”
    “That sucks,” she said taking a deep breath and fogging up the place on the elevator doors that had caught her attention.
    I stopped there. She had gotten that glazed look she sometimes got, which meant that she wasn’t listening.
    T he other girls were already at the elevators that would take us up to the 33rd floor club, all looking straight out of the magazines with their little skirts and halter tops and perfect tans. And here I was, a head taller than everyone else, paler than everyone else, in a knee-length black dress with my hair in a ponytail because the curls just were not cooperating.
    “You look really good, Violet.”
    The compliment caught me off guard and it took a second for me to respond. “Thanks, Carrie. I really like your new highlights.”
    “Really?” she squeaked. “I wasn’t sure, it being so late in the year, but I just saw this picture and I knew that I had to have them, she said spinning her finger around one of her curly locks.
    “Good choice.”
    We filed out of the elevator of the Ghostbar and followed Jessa to the bar. Eyes followed her as she walked, swaying her hips to the rhythm of the music echoing through the blue-lit room.
    And here is where the fun starts. Usually, within the first twenty minutes of entering anything that might be construed as a meat market, someone offers to buy Jessa a drink. Some nights, she can go the whole time without paying for a single cocktail. Sometimes, she can even swing getting drinks for the whole table. The guy comes over, maybe with a few friends that go for the shorter, cute girls, and then Jessa somehow gets them to go away to let another guy or guys come in and do the same thing.
    It really is an art form. Something about the ebbing and flowing of testosterone really needs to be studied in a lab somewhere. There are strategic places and timing and hand movements and I have seen all of them so many times that maybe I should lead the study since I’m usually just watching anyway.
    With the first set of guys, I was the odd woman out and decided to take my Baileys to the terrace to look out at the skyline. Dallas has one of the prettiest skylines I’ve ever seen. Maybe that’s why I stayed here. Maybe it was the great weather. Maybe it was the fact there was a Starbucks on every corner. As I stood there looking out at the city below, I was content for the moment. Not feeling like a girl with a destiny, not feeling like a victim. Just feeling like Violet.
    Jessa joined me.
    “Is something wrong?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest and looking up at me with a raised eyebrow.
    “No, I’m fine. Just enjoying the view.”
    “You hate heights.”
    “I don’t hate heights,” I laughed as I looked down at the thirty-three floor drop below me.
    “You sat on the floor of the Ferris wheel last year at the state fair.”
    I remembered. Terrified in the little cage, I was convinced it would snap off the huge wheel and we would all go tumbling