Chapter Thirteen
Evelyn could smell the weed seeping into the carpet and walls. She was at some holiday high school party, wandering through throngs of half-dressed teenagers crowding the downstairs of a two-story house in suburban New Jersey.
In the living room, where a Christmas tree was lit up for the season, dozens of empty beer cans lined a coffee table. In the kitchen, red and green Jell-O shots were being served. On the porch outside, a group of football players, clad in their letterman jackets, passed around a bong.
“Someone’s going to get grounded,” Two said, appearing beside her.
Evelyn had to agree.
And then, her eyes landed on the teenage version of herself.
“No freaking way,” Evelyn said, and moved closer to inspect.
Her younger self was now standing just beyond the kitchen, back pressed up against a row of white cabinets, nursing a drink from a red solo cup. Wearing a pair of low-rise jeans, her midriff fully showing, she made small talk with David, also an adolescent.
“Lion in Winter,” teen Evelyn said, resolutely.
Teen David cocked his chin. “No way.”
“Yep,” Evelyn replied, resolutely. “I’m standing by my choice.”
“But that was a play first.”
“Katharine Hepburn,” she said, before adding, “Peter O’Toole. Some movies are just classics.”
“Like Galaxy Quest.”
“Galaxy Quest is also legit great film work.”
David tipped his bottle of water in her direction. “But if we are accepting plays as films into the ‘Best Movie Ever’ category . . . how about Six Degrees of Separation?”
“I never saw it.”
David was incredulous. “What?! John Guare? Will Smith? It’s a classic.”
Evelyn shrugged. “Sorry.”
“Well, then.” Teenage David slammed his water down on the counter. “I know how we can settle this debate right now. Why don’t we go over to my house, and we’ll watch it together.”
Evelyn laughed just as the front door to the house whooshed open. Jackson Fields, clad in his red-and-white letterman jacket, was standing in the threshold with three other members of the Rutherford Lions football team.
“Oh my God.” Teenage Evelyn twisted to David and began adjusting her clothing, lipstick and hair. “He’s here. How do I look?”
David hesitated. “Great.”
“I’m going to go say hello.”
She chugged back her drink and handed him her empty cup before sauntering off to the front door, where she flirted with Jackson Fields unabashedly. Evelyn, watching the scene unfold in real time—and from the perspective of a grown-up—chewed on her lower lip.
“So,” Two said, leaning in, “you just ditched him.”
“I didn’t ditch him.” Evelyn defended herself. “I had only even gone to that party because I knew Jackson Fields was going to be there. I had the biggest crush on him all throughout high school. David totally knew that.”
“Right.”
She turned back to the scene unfolding before her.
Now her younger self was hanging on Jackson, his one arm slung around her waist, practically holding her up as she dragged her tongue up his neck.
And there was David, standing in the kitchen, his face crestfallen.
Watching the scene unfold, Evelyn knew why she’d made that choice.
Yet there was something weirdly poignant about revisiting a memory from childhood from the perspective of an adult.
She could see her own insecurities sitting on that teenage version of herself.
It was in the outfit she was wearing, all that exposed skin, which she tried desperately to cover with her arms. Or how she chugged back alcohol, bringing herself way past tipsy, in order to find some liquid courage for the evening.
But mainly, it was in the way she blew David off .
. . because he was the nice guy instead of being cool.
Jackson Fields was simply a means to an end, because what she really wanted from the most popular boy in school—the boy who barely looked at her in science class and during gym—was his attention.
There was something about the way Jackson ignored her, made her feel small and insignificant, that fed into the patterns she had been raised with.
She was a broken girl from a broken home, after all.
Even though her parents had tried their best, her idea of love had been perverted.
Evelyn had gotten what she’d wanted.
She lost her virginity to Jackson Fields, the most popular senior in her class, that evening.
Yet what had surprised Evelyn the most about finally doing the big deed was how insignificant it all was.
The way people talked about it in school, and in media .
. . it seemed like it was this important, earth-shattering thing.
That her hymen would break, and somewhere, trumpets would sound.
Earthquakes would shake and rattle the earth.
She would walk in the door, and instantly, her mother would sniff the air and know.
Instead, thirty seconds after he entered her, it was over. Jackson grunted his way to completion, and Evelyn lay there, the sheets still made on the bed beneath her, wondering why people put so much time and energy into conserving this tiny and irrelevant thing . . .
Grown-up Evelyn found her gaze drifting back to teenage David.
He was leaving the party.
David glanced back once, over his shoulder, in the direction of the bedroom where she and Jackson were heading, and grown-up Evelyn felt an ache inside her heart.
Perhaps the worst part of losing her virginity to Jackson was that it hadn’t mattered.
Not to her. Not to him. When she returned to school after winter break, he hadn’t even cared enough to tell anyone that they had slept together.
It was like those thirty seconds never happened, but her relationship with David had been irrevocably changed.
They stopped hanging out after that. They became distant.
They wouldn’t really connect again until several years later, while in college.
“Are we done now?” Evelyn choked out the words.
Two pointed toward a food pantry.
Evelyn shook her head and, stepping through the threshold, found herself wading through tulle. The music of her youth faded out.
Her life had been full of heartbreaks. Some of those heartbreaks were the result of her own bad choices. But she had never been a bad person. She was simply a child, without tools or life experience, fumbling around a bedroom with a stranger, believing it would heal her.