Imperative Fate by Paige Johnson

Please.
    Under any vendetta, I am no one to judge. I nodded accordingly. “I understand. Ellie Anne is a very honest girl and a better friend,” I assured. We all nodded like ostriches in the cartoons, lips parted. 
    Gracious in no time flat, Ellie Anne was laying the Helpless Visionary act on thick! Animated by her decadent knowledge—the White Collar lingo—the fair-haired girl even had me rooting more passionately for Anthony.  
    “He’s a real go-getter, Daddy. Isn’t that so, Dahlia?” she enticed. “He embodies Conservative principles better than your current Whip. Look at the DNC gnash their fangs at him like he’s Newt Gingrich 2.0, established; I mean, c’mon, the NRA gives standing ovations. Whichever acronyms you want to scramble, it’s a win. I think it’d be great all around to cross campaign trails again, Papa. Harold Winchester is sold on him as fervent as your oil bill, I’ve a place to know; I spoke with him yesterday . . . Oh, yes, he certainly remembers that fiasco Erin, Andrew, and Deben caused, that awesome week in the Alps . . . Yes, I know . . . No, he didn’t mention. You know what he did tell me? He’s green . Can you believe that? A Texan!”   
    Raising his glass when he said it, “Ah. Good. Like the American Dream. There are umpteen definitions but we all know what it means when we hear it” imparted bluntly from Mr. Moss’s lips.
    I think he left a word out of that statement: politicians. As in we politicians know what it means when we hear it, because I definitely did not. He’s new and fresh, inexperienced, a marketing ploy, an environmentalist, jealous? Which is it? I pondered, too self-conscious to voice my confusion, stuffing my mouth with food to stay untouchable. Which, by the way, cooking is another thing Miss Perfect is good at (though, confidentially, she burnt the potatoes).
    Rustling her tall spotted socks, Blondie conferred, “The Post will eat it up, no doubt!”
    “El, I’ll refute that the day Roger Clinton puts down the beer, the day feminists admit they’re selective and pick up a shaving razor.”
    “Hey, I don’t thin—” I started to interrupt, Ellie’s father paying me no mind as his crafty offspring bludgeoned me under the table with her ideology book.
    I wasn’t trying to ruin anything, really, I wasn’t. I know Ellie gets no time with her father (he congregating or bunking in his office half the time), and I never want to squelch that, but their banter was becoming too vicious. Those people didn’t seem worth making fun of. It made me uncomfortable.
    The only reason I think Ellie’s pro-Anthony argument struck Mr. Moss is because it came directly from his daughter’s mouth and no one else’s. He owes her for time copped out.
    “Oh, we’re just joshing,” Ellie told me, shaking Mr. Moss’s knee, gleeful as a rich American girl should be. “Daddy’s over the violence, but a few jabs here in private are harmless. He used to be a boxer, you know.”
    Her father shook his head, cutting his meat. “No one cares about that, love,” he insisted, jutted chin and other sharp features—his bell-ish locks—swaying back and forth. 
    “Stop pretending you’re modest!” Ellie giggled, forthright changed: “Oh, Papa, but you can be generous. We can help them, the Connors, can’t we? I know you don’t believe in too much stumping for others, but it’d be a sin not to. We have so much, they have so little, and, well, I have such a little list of friends,” she lured, utilizing those Tweety Bird eyelashes.
    Even masculine Mr. Moss was powerless to the charms of her fresh-cut countenance, her fun and drive.
    My cheeks rouged. Again, they spoke of the misfortunate and the left as if they didn’t sit before them.
    It was as though Ellie wiped all the make-up from my face and gazed through me, the capillaries of poverty evident before I’d ever given my fraudulent name.
    Anthony and I aren’t fancy people, but I thought we could fool