I know. And she’d been brilliant at it.
“You’ll get your expertise back,” I promise her, though it’s unfair to be so confident when I have no idea which parts of her memory will return, or when.
“Anyway, there’s no reliable record on my socials from early on, but from what I can tell from my in-laws, I met Oliver when I was seventeen,” she says.
Sixteen.
I watch her pore over patchy notes in handwriting as familiar to me as the focus on her face while she scrambles for answers.
But you met me first.
age SIXTEEN
10
Evie
The Photography Club meets on Wednesdays in the art studio at the boys’ school. I’ve just signed up and Bree thinks it’s only for the potential formal dates, but, honestly, it’s because I want more extracurriculars on my CV and my dad gave me his old DSLR camera. I’m genuinely keen. On photography.
I mean, I’m keen on boys,in theory.Just not any boys I’ve actually met. Not a single candidate has measured up to the boys from the pages of the period dramas I wish I lived in, so until someone does, I am romanticizing straight A’s.
Crossing the quad at the boys’ school, I tighten my ponytail and pull at the hem of my skirt. The boys move in packs. Kicking balls and hacky sacks, shoving and headlocking each other, deep voices reverberating off the brick walls—their energy on high alert, tension ramped up at the sudden flash of a maroon uniform amid all the gray and navy.
“None of these boys could dredge themselves out of a pond looking hot in a white shirt if their lives depended on it,” I tell Bree on the phone as I walk. “They’re more likely to dredge themselves out of the gutter they’ve fallen into drunk at a house party.”
It’s all about subtlety for me. Slow-burn, will-they-or-won’t-they tension. “You don’t appreciate how incredibly sexy not having sex is,” I tell her, keeping my voice low in case a teacher, or, worse, a boy, hears me. “I want romance that’sforbidden. When it all seemshopeless…”
“IT ALLISHOPELESS!” Bree shouts back. And maybe she’s right. I should be more careful what I wish for. “We’re so far behind, Eves! Neither of us has even had a first kiss!”
“That’s not true! Lachlan Montgomery hoovered my face off at the interschools’ disco, remember?”
“Yes, and you said that was like a cardiopulmonary resuscitation attempt!”
I end the call as I reach the art studio, attempt to muster confidence, and open the door. There’s a seat near the front, which I slide into. I zip open my pencil case and extract my favorite pen, trying to ignore a trio of obnoxious Year Nine boys, who of course are the absoluteworst, their cracking voices grating on my skin as the minutes pass. Anxiety swells as I realize I might be the only girl in this room.
Quietly, I’m beginning to regret being so obsessed with my marks and my portfolio. Maybe I should have pushed myself to go to more parties so I actually know people. And dropped my standards to the reality of twenty-first-century boys.
Any contenders?Breanna asks by text.
Unless a boy opens the studio door right now and presents himself in a white shirt, breeches, and boots, horse tethered to the bike rails behind the quadrangle, I’m not interested.
On cue the door bangs open.
I look up from my front-row desk as the newcomer ambles into the room without a shred of urgency. He is, of course, not in period costume. Truth be told, he’s barely managing theschool uniform—blue-and-gold striped tie hanging loose around his neck, slate-gray shirt tails flapping, camera bag swinging from his shoulder like he’s rolling in from a tabloid shoot.
The only thing remotely eighteenth-century hero about this boy is his brooding expression. He has troubled brown eyes and a general air of havinga lot going on. I expect him to slump in a chair in the back and withdraw from the whole thing, but he dumps his stuff on the table at the front, kicks the teacher’s swivel chair out from the desk, and sits in it.
Right. Sohe’srunning this? Of all the qualities this boy is giving off, “leadership potential” isn’t blaring.
“Hey, Kennedy,” someone calls, waving a camera in the boy’s face. “Smile!”
He doesn’t bite, totally unfazed by his tormentor in a way that I want to emulate. “Mr. Dalgleish will be here in a minute,” he announces, unzipping his camera bag. “He told me to get us started.”
Suddenly I wishIwas hiding in the back corner, not sitting right up front under the flickering fluorescent light, fresh notebook on the desk beside my camera, perfectly aligned with the angles of the tabletop. This Kennedy person with the scruffy, dark hair and sullen expression glances at me as he clicks a lens onto the frame of his camera, then leans back in the chair and puts his feet up on the teacher’s desk. I notice his laces are untied. Typical.
My own feet are planted firmly underneath the desk in polished black school shoes. My pleated skirt hovers just below my knee as per school regulations and my crisp white shirt is ironed—and not just the scalloped collar poking out from the navy sweater. No shortcuts here. If someone from the uniformsupply company knocked on the door right now, needing a model for an urgent photoshoot, they’d extract me in a heartbeat. Not because I look like a model, but because I carry off the whole studious schoolgirl thing to utter perfection.
The teacher bursts into the room, flustered, and snaps me from my insecurities. He’s carrying a pile of essays and a pair of drumsticks and is wearing a bow tie with music notes. “Ah, good. Kennedy. You’ve got this under control!” he says, and shuffles to a spare desk in the back corner. “Forget I’m here.”
