For the rest of the summer I was sucked into a whirlwind of female company unlike anything I'd ever experienced before. And every day I wondered when it would come to end? When would they cast me out as quickly as they'd roped me in? I wasn't beautiful, or all that smart. I wasn't popular or confident or really all that interesting.
Or so I'd thought.
Until these girls showed me different, and the longer I spent in their company, the more I started to believe. To dream. To hope. As the days of summer grew shorter, it became harder not to lose that new-found sparkle, and perhaps it was in sensing my growing anticipation, that spurred Shayne to propose we swear an oath of sisterhood.
We were hanging out at Priya's family home in New York. Her parents were vacationing in Dubai, and had left her with a hired chaperon, Ms. Mills. As Ms. Mills had a penchant for Vodka and muscle relaxers on a Sunday afternoon, we'd snuck a bottle of Rosé upstairs and tucked ourselves away inside the master bedroom's massive walk-in closet; the entire space large as my childhood apartment. There, we gorged on greasy pizza and drank chilled wine, surrounded by hundreds of gorgeous stilettos.
This space had become our inner sanctum, our place of worship. Even Shayne seemed equally mesmerized and enraptured by the beauty of towering heels.
Together we toasted the end of a glorious summer, the forging of new friendship (meaning...me!) as well as to wish Caitriona all the best as her family moved to Paris next month. 
That's when Shayne sat up, her brown hair a mess (as always back then), and in lieu of a Bible, she hefted up what would become the symbol of our revolution. 
"Swear," she said, casting her stern gaze to each of us in turn, her Spanish accent thickened with booze, "that no matter what happens, we will always be friends. Nay, more than friends. Sisters." Excited she tried to stand but could only manage to stagger to her knees, Rosé in one hand and the stiletto in the other, which she held out between us. "Swear fealty to our Sisterhood on this Stiletto. Let this symbol bind us together, now and always, so that nothing can ever sever our vow. Not distance, boys, or whatever bullshit life throws our way. We will stand together. For each other. No matter what."
With the six of us drunk and giggling, we'd stuck out hands in like athletes at a big game and swore a vow of sisterhood and fidelity, to support one another, love each other and be together always; our pact spoken over a pair gorgeous pair of black lacquered heels with sinful red bottoms. 
I always wanted to be someone's 'sister'. Now I had five.
That was the moment The Stiletto Sisterhood was born. Or manifesto was simple, our code, sacrosanct. This was the mark of a new chapter. A new stage in our lives.
I happened to just be there in that pivotal moment of its inception. This voyeur watching these gorgeous creatures come together, and for whatever reason, they wanted me to join them. They took me in. 
Sometimes I wonder what would my life be like had I not had that sweetened beverage dumped over my head? If I had never met Shayne? If she had not elected to bring me into her circle, transforming my life far beyond the isolated loneliness I'd become so deeply entrenched--I was drowning in it?
You couldn't group together six more different girls if you tried. 
Fiercely independent, child prodigy, Priyanka, Indian on her mother's side and Swedish on her father's (according to the sperm bank donor papers she found at the age of twelve), pint-sized Caitriona, an adopted Korean raised by German parents who quoted Cosmo like some would Socrates. Isobel, the Italian/Irish sweetheart whose mom who took off when she was seven (more on that later); Shayne—the reluctant royal and the gender fluid a-sexual who you could never quite tell if she was a smoking hot girl or a beautiful boy. Eshe, an African Filipino with a face and body that stood out but couldn't look in a mirror without serious self-loathing.