Zoe choked on her words.
She had never met anyone so brutally blunt.
What did she mean her instincts were spot on?
What right did Claire have to dislike her?
She hadn't even done anything wrong!
In Zoe's mind, she was never the one at fault.
"I don't know what I did to upset your friend."
Zoe pivoted to Zara the second she realized Claire was impossible to manipulate.
She was clearly trying to pin the blame on her cousin.
Zara threw her hands up. "Beats me. Probably right around the time you tried to ruin our friendship."
Zoe was silenced once again.
When did this stupid brat get so infuriating to talk to?
"I honestly wasn't trying to cause trouble. I was just telling the truth."
"If that's what you want to believe, Zara, there's nothing I can do about it."
Zoe defended herself, insisting she had zero malicious intent.
"Oh, well, I'm just telling the truth too. Are you just jealous?"
Zara pointed to her own face with a smirk. "I might not be as gorgeous as Claire, but I'm still lightyears out of your league."
Zoe remained silent.
Zara's face was literally the only thing she had going for her.
"Our looks are given to us by our parents. It's incredibly shallow to say something like that."
"I may not be as pretty as you, but I have absolutely no reason to be jealous."
"If being less attractive means you have to be jealous, doesn't that mean you must be incredibly jealous of your friend?"
Zoe was incredibly quick on her feet.
Her logic wasn't technically flawed.
Zara scoffed. "My friend and I both fall into the 'stunning' category. We aren't like you."
That struck a serious nerve with Zoe.
Feeling immensely satisfied, Zara shot Claire a victorious wink.
Claire sighed inwardly; someone of Zoe's caliber was definitely a bigger headache than Shirley.
The real issue was that Zoe was incredibly resilient, and she didn't just crumble after taking a hit.
She was constantly calculating her
next counterattack, and Zara scoring
a temporary verbal victory
mean
nothing in the grand scheme of
things.
To completely crush someone like this, you either had to assert absolute dominance
over them or beat them at their own manipulative game.
Given Zara's straightforward personality, she was incapable of doing either.
"You and Claire are indeed both very beautiful, but the vast majority of us here have completely average looks. Do you look down on all of us normal people just because of that?
Zoe was a master at shifting the target.
With that single sentence, she subtly dragged the entire crowd into the crossfire.
Because compared to Zara and Claire, they really were just average.
One of the girls who already disliked Zara let out a cold sneer.
"I'd love to ask your mother if we're so hideous that we don't even deserve to breathe the same air as her daughter!"
This girl's mother was a fake friend of Zara's mom.
If this really got back to her mother, Zara would inevitably get a harsh lecture.
No matter how much Zara's mom secretly favored her daughter, she would have to
publicly apologize for failing to raise her correctly.
"What's wrong? Can't win an
argument, so you're going to go cry
to the adults?" Zara fired back-
stubbornly. "Of course my mom will
lecture me. She'll tell me not to speak the brutal truth so loudly."
Now the girl was completely furious!
Because she truly was one of the plainest girls in their elite circle.
She was even more average-looking than Zoe, a direct result of her parents' loveless, business-driven marriage.
Money couldn't overwrite genetics.
In a desperate bid for beauty, the girl had flown overseas for plastic surgery.
But instead of looking naturally gorgeous, she just looked like a cookie-cutter
internet model, still completely eclipsed by Zara.
She was infinitely more jealous of Zara's face than Zoe was.
When she had gone abroad for her surgeries, she had even brought a photo of Zara
as a reference.