“Sorry, sweetie, your father and I are watchingAntiques Roadshow.”
“Mum, did you see the photo? This pot isat someone’s house. You’d only ever see it in the foyer of the Hilton Hotel or somewhere.”
“Are you at a party, darling?” she asks. “Try to focus on your friends.”
I wish I was sitting beside her now, on the comfy sunken couch in our Newcastle terrace watching cozy British TV. Or back at Bree’s. I endured the first four years of high school in the boardinghouse, until Mum and Dad came to an arrangement with Bree’s parents and the school that I could board with them. It suits my social anxietywaybetter.
“I know you’re not keen on big groups,” she continues, “but I’m sure if you just try to strike up a conversation with someone nice, it will all be okay.”
She’s right. What am I doing, standing here talking to my mother about garden ornaments and feature lighting while everyone else gets happy on whatever Max Turner tipped into the punch?
“Stop gawping at that pot and try to look normal!” Bree instructs when she returns with a paper napkin full of cheeseand crackers. She’s caught me fidgeting with the black midi pencil skirt and cropped emerald cami she made me borrow, even though it’s unexpectedly cold.
“Oh, God,” I say under my breath when I notice that boy, Kennedy, from the Photography Club. “What’s he doing here?”
Bree follows my line of sight across the pool to where Kennedy’s standing, looking exactly as humorless as he did last week in the classroom. Definitely not in a party mood. I doubt he ever is.
He’s talking to some girl. She’swellinto the party and clearly also into the whole moody Brat Pack thing he’s got going on. She knows precisely how to wear a dress without fidgeting and where to put her legs and arms, which is basically all over him at every opportunity, while flicking impossibly shiny platinum hair over her shoulder at regular intervals. Exactly the hair I wish I had instead of this mass of wild curls that took Bree an hour to straighten.
“Is thathim?” Bree is fascination personified. “The photo-grapher?”
I hadn’t realized my blow-by-blow account of the whole train wreck had painted him quite so clearly in her mind. “He’s cute,” she decides.
Hardly.
“He’s just like all the others.” I shrug and stuff a cube of cheddar into my mouth, washing it down with a swig of the beer she brought me in a red plastic cup, the sour taste biting my tongue.
“I don’t know how else you expected your exhibition idea to go,” she says.
But isn’t that exactly the point? Bree knows why this matters, although now is not the time to remind her of the websitehalf the boys at this party have probably seen her on or of how scared it made her feel.
That girl isstilltrying to get Kennedy’s attention. He looks a hundred miles away as reflections from the pool dance across his stern face. I suppose if you dressed him up in trousers instead of jeans, ditched the leather jacket for a long, dark cloak and thigh-high boots … with those waves of dark hair, he might be at home traipsing across the moors, dark and tormented, in a Brontë novel.
When I look back at Bree, she is studying me from under her precision-straightened black fringe. Her on-point, cat-eye liner crinkles as she smiles knowingly.
No!“Bree! He put me on the spot in front of everyone. And then he let my suggestion get howled down.” Wherever she’s going with this, she’s dead wrong.
Luckily, someone screams annoyingly over by the punch, which distracts her. She takes a sip of beer and plots to overthrow what she calls the “fangirls holding Tom Jenkins hostage near the drinks table.” I had no idea she was so interested in Tom. It’s not like her to let a group of girls stir her up this much.
“Don’t look now, Evie,” she says, softly. “But your nemesis is staring at you.”
My heart thumps, and of course Idolook.
“Hey! Evie!” he calls across the pool.
I watch as he removes the girl’s hand from his person and points at me, as though I’m his long-lost best friend. Right when I’m galvanizing myself to reject his olive branch, a brawl breaks out behind us. Bree and I spring out of the way, only to be crashed into by the drunken boys, who push us to the edge of the water.
And then push me into it.
13
Evie
Beneath the surface, it’s shockingly cold and blissfully peaceful, dance music muted. Shadowy figures converge on the water’s edge above me, distorted through ripples of water.
Underwater, there’s a boy—perfect face and blond hair floodlit, blue eyes fixed on mine as we ricochet off each other and time stands still. Just for a second or two, but long enough for me to lose myself in his attention, before instinct hits and I try to kick my legs in this awkward skirt, wedge-heel shoes striking the pool floor, and start to panic.
The boy’s expression shifts. His arms pierce the water as he powers toward me, a sense of relief washing over me.I’ll be okay.
