‘Evangeline.’ I cringe at how pretentious I sound.
‘This is the forest primeval,’ he quotes in a stage baritone, ‘with the murmuring pines and the hemlocks.’ He looks over at me as he stops at a sign. ‘Very fitting.’
‘I’m impressed,’ I say. ‘And, yes, I do realize that I am a giant cliché.’
‘You don’t believe that,’ he says like a statement, not a reassurance. And he’s right.
‘No. I don’t,’ I reply. ‘Nothing about me is a cliché.’
He’s quiet for a moment. His eyes are on the road. ‘That’s why we’re both still here.’
I don’t quite get what he’s saying. I can feel an undercurrent to his words, something deep and murky, but I don’t know him well enough to take any guesses about what it is.
‘Who’s going to be at the barbecue?’ I ask him.
He smiles to himself. ‘Don’t worry.’ He looks at me. ‘Whoever they are, they’ll love you. Everyone loves you.’
I’m not going to argue with Rob, although I know from the expectant way he’s glancing at me that he’s waiting for me to.
Here’s how this normally pans out. If I were to say something like, ‘No they don’t,’ he would accuse me of false modesty. Or if I accept it and say, ‘OK, yes, most people love me,’ his next move would be to accuse me of vanity. Either way, it would lead to him taking me down a peg.
If I were to skip a step and simply point out that there is no way for me to answer a loaded statement like that, all he has to do is say something like, ‘I was just teasing. Can’t you take a joke?’ or some such passive-aggressive nonsense, when we both know there’s no way for any girl to win an argument like this. And that’s why guys start them. So they can win.
See, I’ve had this argument before. Many times. Usually with guys who know I’m not that interested in them. They’re looking for a way to get in my head. Call a girl rude or phoney or vain, and she’ll do anything to prove to you she isn’t. By my count, Rob has implied all three of these things in less than a minute. I get it. He’s offended I think so little of him, and he wants to punish me. If he were wrong about any of the things he’s implied, I’d think he was a dick.
But he’s not wrong. I think he’s kind of hit the nail on the head here. In fact, I know I am far worse than rude or phoney or vain.
Instead of getting into all that, I look out the window.
16 JULY. NIGHT
I was not the most popular girl in school.
That was Jinka Pritchett. Jinka was the one everyone wanted to be close to. It wasn’t just that she was beautiful with light brown skin, hair for days, and an impossible figure. It wasn’t even that she was valedictorian-smart, or unfailingly funny. No. Everyone wanted to be close to Jinka because she was, hands-down, one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet.
In my school, there was none of that mean girl bully shit you see in teen movies from the nineties. Not with Jinka around. She would defend any geek to any jock, and vice versa. She was patient with even the most annoying, socially awkward kids who invariably say something that they shouldn’t and make everyone uncomfortable. She included even the most forgotten members of our graduating class in at least two parties a year, and she genuinely tried to get to know them.
Jinka reached out to everyone. Jinka cared about other people. Jinka made everyone around her be the best versions of themselves because she wouldn’t tolerate gossip, cruelty, or petty gripes. And Jinka was almost my best friend. I say almost because, with someone like Jinka, everyone wants the best-friend job, and I was just one of the select few who was in on the rotation.
The thing about Jinka was that while she was all of those lovely things I said, she was also incredibly shrewd.
There were five of us. Five beautiful, smart, funny, sweet girls who did everything together: Jinka Pritchett, Scarlet Simpson, Olive Wentworth, Ivy O’Bannon, and me. Jinka was the lynchpin, and the rest of us subbed in as her best friend in a sort of round robin, depending on how uppity any one of us was getting.
For example, if I was rising high and mighty, Jinka would schedule in some one-on-one time with Scarlet and leave me out. I’d get the hint pretty fast. Scroll back your ego or get replaced.
Jinka was the centre because she kept the rest of us a tiny bit off balance. We had no choice but to spin in her orbit, but we didn’t care because having Jinka for a sometimes-best-friend felt better than anything.
But it wasn’t just Jinka. It was the Five of us. Having friends like that was more important than any guy or any teacher or any parent, and we didn’t really care what anybody else thought. Because we were perfect.
And perfect is hard to do. Impossible, in fact.
Rob and I arrive at the barbecue fashionably late. His charm offensive begins as soon as we pull up to the Craftsman-style house. A college-age guy is chatting up a younger girl on the wide front porch.
‘Tay-dog,’ Rob calls out to him.
Tay-dog lifts his beer and starts to howl at Rob in greeting. ‘There he is! Robert the Bruce!’
Rob looks at the girl and wav