“Evelyn got here at five o’clock today. You didn’t even bother to show up until after the party started, and it isn’t Evelyn’s sister out there tonight. I don’t demean your events.”
“It was just a joke,” Camilla said. “I thought it would be funny.”
“Well, it isn’t.” Souse was tapping her fingers frantically.
Evelyn, on the other side of Souse, leaned toward her and said, in a voice low enough she hoped Camilla couldn’t hear, “I’m so sorry. I would never have let her put that in the bio had I known.”
“Thank you,” said Souse, abruptly pushing her chair back from the table. She had disappeared by the time the MC said, “Jennifer Foster is a champion fencer, has released a CD of her own songs, and recently had her painting entitled Empty Houses as a finalist for the prestigious Courbet Award, the first girl from Spence to do so in two years. In the fall, she will be attending Whitman College, a small liberal-arts college considered the Williams of Washington.”
Evelyn noticed Souse at the side of the stage, whispering something to Agathe, the chairwoman. Agathe gave their table a worried look, then she nodded.
The girls lined up with their escorts behind them, stiffly smiling as the photographer took pictures, then filed onto the dance floor for a jolting waltz.
The orchestra finished “Try to Remember,” and Evelyn poked Camilla. “Is that a reference to how blacked out all the debs are going to get tonight?”
“If they’re not already,” Camilla said.
“Phoebe looked fantastic.”
“She did, didn’t she?”
The lights went back up onstage, shining on Agathe, who looked nervous and was saying something to the MC. “Very well,” he boomed into the microphone, not realizing it was on. Agathe skittered to the side of the stage.
“Now, as is the tradition at the Bal Fran?ais, we have la danse d’honneur, in which we ask a former debutante to come forward and begin the second dance with our esteemed ambassador,” the MC said. The spotlight swooped over to Evelyn’s table, where Camilla sat up and gave a humble Oscar-nominee nod. “This year the hostesses of the Bal Fran?ais are pleased to ask Miss Evelyn Beegan to lead the dancing. Miss Beegan?”
Evelyn was squinting in the spotlight when she heard the applause, and looked to see Camilla smiling and looking straight ahead.
“Miss Beegan?” the MC said.