Page 34
“Your mum sure loves her books and magazines,” she said.
Yawning, Evie blinked. “What can I say? Like daughter, like mother.”
Sunita placed the stool inside Evie’s closet and stepped up, shifting a clear bag of cardigans on the top shelf followed by the lid of a cardboard storage box.
Evie glanced up from the floor. “Oh Sun, don’t bother up there. It’s just clothes and junk.”
Holding up an old copy of Flirty Girl, Sunita smiled. “Like this gem?”
“Oh wow!” Fiona laughed. “You still have those?”
Sunita tossed the magazine down to Evie, its ragged cover graced with what had passed for teenage sophistication eighteen years prior: Amanda from Dalston Grove adorned in a bohemian peasant blouse and floppy hat from Topshop. “Mum must’ve packed them when I moved out.” She flipped through its pages, pausing to revisit a dog-eared article entitled “Undatable: Are You Unlucky in Love?”
Sunita dug through the box. “I’ll never forget that school trip to Skara Brae. You were so pissed.”
“I wasn’t pissed,” she protested.
Fiona hauled a thick cookbook off a shelf. “What happened?”
“You bought Evie’s copy of Flirty Girl,” said Sunita. “The one with Nick’s poster?”
“I did?” Fiona’s tone was high and dripping with uncertainty.
“The newsagent always put it aside for her dad to pick up.”
Brow creasing, Fiona lowered the heavy book to the floor. “Eves, why didn’t you say something?”
She flicked the page. “And stomp on your excitement? No way.”
“I don’t remember any of this,” said Fiona. A notoriously crap liar, Evie knew she was telling the truth. “The one thing I do remember was getting my period for the first time and having to ask the teacher for a pad.”
“Oh, I remember that!” said Sunita. “I was so embarrassed for you.”
“I was envious.” Evie pored over another page.
Fiona’s lips quirked. “Careful what you wish for, right?!”
“God, yeah. Truer words have never been spoken.”
Grinning, Fiona dismantled another stack of books as Sunita, high up in the closet, tugged the corner of an old duffel, releasing something rectangular wrapped in turquoise fabric. “Oh shit!” she gawped, gathering the torn bag in her arms as Evie was struck on the head.
Her shoulders hiked protectively up to her ears. “Oww!” She grimaced, glaring at the culprits scattered around her: Bye Bye Birdie, West Side Story, Grease 2—Nick’s DVDs—lying beside his crumpled bowling shirt. Post-split, he didn’t ask for his stuff back, and Evie didn’t have the heart to trash it either.
She knew she ought to. What was the point of hanging on to it? Like the old Twirl wrapper and the Ba’ photo and every other doomed souvenir from their relationship, their mere existence was an agonizing reminder of her teenage foolishness and the boy she had loved and inexplicably lost.
Fresh from their split, Evie hid it all away and told herself tales to facilitate moving on: Nick’s a selfish dick, he HATES Orkney and you don’t want to be with someone like that, and the most sob-soaked tale of all—Nick’s not the empathetic, trustworthy boy you thought he was.
With repetition and time and countless balled-up tissues saturated with tears, the words took root, growing into full-fledged stories, which shielded Evie from the harsh reality of her pain. She believed each one with every beat of her bruised heart, but to finish the job and ditch the mementos of their relationship? That was a step too far, a move toward permanently erasing something that was once beautiful and life-changing…and real.
Well, at least Evie thought it was.
“Babe, you okay?” Sunita hopped off the stool and kneeled down, gently resting her hand on Evie’s back. “I’m sorry. How’s the head?”
She dragged the shirt toward her, keeping the embroidered Louis hidden. “If I wasn’t awake before, I am now!” Her playful smile wavered as she held up Grease 2.
Scrutinizing the film titles, Sunita snickered. “No wonder you buried those away. Eves, your teenage taste was in your ass!”
“Don’t I know it.” She hastily rounded up the DVDs.
