Free Secured Undercover by Charity Parkerson

CHAPTER ONE
    It all began with her name. When dubbed with a name like Flower, you were doomed if you lived in a small town like Flatline, Texas. If you add in having to wear glasses as thick as coke bottles, you were dead meat.
    Her parents had been tree-hugging hippies; at least this was how her aunt always described them. Flower would never know them since they died working for the Peace Corps shortly after her birth, leaving her in the care of her great aunt Millie. Millie was a sweet, conservative woman who did the best she could for Flower, but there wasn’t anything that could be done for her name. You could shorten it to Flo, but then she sounded like she should be waitressing at a truck stop somewhere.
    Her only friend growing up was Bradley Henderson. He was overweight and forced to wear some unfortunate headgear, but one day they discovered they owned the exact same Malibu Barbie, the one with the brown hair, not the bleach-blonde hooch. They were inseparable from that moment, and together were teased without mercy. He was Blowfish-Bradley while she was Flower-Four-Eyes. She thought to go by her middle name once, but it was Luntz, and after learning the things that rhymed with that she quickly reverted back to Flower.
    Flower swore she would change her name to something normal, like Mary, as soon as she turned eighteen, but on her sixteenth birthday, Millie took her to get contacts. That same day she met Chad.
    At seventeen, Chad Williams was already six foot four. His sweeping, dark hair and laughing blue eyes stole her young heart away. He told her that her name was beautiful just like her. Of course, he also told her she was the only girl for him, divested her of her virginity, and then left her stranded at prom, but the new love of her name stuck, even if he did not.
    Her heart was crushed at the loss of Chad, and she was sure she would never recover.
    She momentarily considered marrying Bradley just so she wouldn’t have to spend the rest of her life alone, since, as a teenager, she truly believed that without Chad, the world would come to an end. Luckily, she didn’t go through with it, especially since Bradley now lived as Brandy. He danced four nights a week down at the Queen of Diamonds in Abernathy, and he was everyone’s favorite gal. The Barbie should have been a tip off.
    Flower flipped her long, jet-black hair over one shoulder, brushing her bangs out of her eyes. She readjusted the pins sticking out of her mouth pulling out just one. With the hem of the shimmering gold dress pinned to her liking, she stood, trying to work some of the kinks out of her back.
    “How does it look from the back?” Bradley asked twisting at the waist in attempt to see behind him.
    “Quit twisting it or I’ll never get it right,” Flower chastised.
    Bradley dropped the material as if his fingers were burned. “Sorry, sugar, I’m so excited about this new creation of yours that I’m getting impatient for it to be finished.”
    The Queen of Diamonds held an annual charity event called, of all things, The Queen of Diamonds annual charity event. It was a huge gala, but the biggest draw of the evening was the fashion show at the end of the night. As strange as it may seem, designers fought tooth and nail to have their creations displayed across the stage. Apparently drag queens dropped some serious cash on their costumes, and this year the leading designer was none other than her; Flower Luntz Calloway.
    She loved to make a person beautiful, which was her dream. It may not seem like much to some people, but when people felt beautiful, it showed in everything they did. It made things better, even when you were at your worst.
    She was a huge success in Flatline, Texas, and even fairly well known over in Abernathy, but this event would make her famous. Not the kind of famous where you were stopped on the street for your autograph. It was more of a prestige. But none of it would ever happen if Bradley couldn’t be still