Dani found herself nodding too before slowly advancing towards them. As she walked, she mustered all the courage she had to speak up to them, Hoodie in particular. Perhaps he was the only mean one. Perhaps his friends simply enabled him to behave the way he did.

As she approached the two men, she finally realized just how much taller they were: they positively towered over her small frame. She glanced to her right. Chloe, with a distant look on her face, was lifting up Hoodie’s foot with one hand and trying to get the sneaker on with the other. She wasn’t doing a very good job. Her hands looked absolutely tiny.

“Dani, what do you think?” Polo asked.
“About what?”
“About the shoes. Come on, we want a female opinion here, and these two will say anything to sell their stuff to us.”
“Um.”
She looked down. She could see the tops of his tan feet. The loafers were clearly very high quality. The price tag on these probably was larger than everything she was planning to get, combined. “They are nice, I suppose. Classy.”
He posed again in front of the mirror. “Do they really look nice? You think?”
“Yeah...”
“Could you please get a better look?”

This was silly. Dani shook her head and prepared to take a step back, but Polo spoke again, and there was something magnetic about his voice; something that made her stop.
“Could you please lower yourself and get a better look now? I insist. I would really appreciate it.”