“I was actually going to go to the restaurant.”
“The food’s that bad in your homestay?”
She giggled nervously and took a few halting steps across the street toward him. “To use the phone, actually.”
“Calling Mumsy to bail you out?”
“Well, no, actually. I was going to call the travel agent.”
He slapped the broom handle. “I dig it. Going straight to the source to break free from this prison camp. Won’t your parents be alarmed when you show up at home unannounced?”
“I hadn’t really thought it through. Maybe they’ll be happy?”
“After what this forced-labor program cost? Doubtful.”
“Well, maybe I’ll have the agent send me to Paris for a while, then.”
Preston laughed, and Evelyn felt her cheeks redden and the flush spread throughout her body. She couldn’t believe she had made someone like Preston laugh. She was here, talking to one of the most popular uppers—and, seemingly, keeping him entertained—when she had spent a whole year barely talking to boys at all. She wished someone were filming it, so she’d have evidence of social success that she could look back on during those long nights in her dorm.
“I like it. Escape to Paris, fully funded by the ’rents. They’ll never be the wiser. Evelyn, right?”
“Right.”
“Evelyn what?”
“Beegan.”
“Beegan. What is that, Irish?”
Evelyn shifted her weight to her back foot. “Korean. Russian. African.”
Preston smiled and released the broom handle, balancing it carefully against the doorframe. “Multiethnic. How modern. I’m going with you. I want to see if escape is indeed possible.” He stepped over a small puddle, and his loafers shone even in the low light as he joined Evelyn in the street.
At the bar, he’d bought both of them thick, almost chewable coffees, as she—having forgotten about the time difference—left a message for the travel agent in Easton who’d arranged her flights.
She ended up not needing the flight out. That night, Evelyn heard hoots from below her window, and she dropped to the floor, crawling over so she could see who was there and why they were making fun of her. It was Preston with Charlotte Macmillan, an international-set girl from Evelyn’s dorm who was rumored to have gotten restrictions for sneaking into James Ying’s room after hours. They were with a few other “coolies,” as they were known at Sheffield, and they didn’t seem to be jeering at her. Preston was actually calling for her to come out with them. She stood up, waved, and joined them.
As the term went on, she found it surprising and comforting to finally have friends, a group, people who didn’t mind her and maybe even liked her. She sent pictures to her mother of her with actual humans. There were other kids in the Sarennes program who were odd and said weird things and wandered by themselves among the Loire Valley chateaus on weekend trips, and she wasn’t one of them. She was part of something. She constantly monitored herself to make sure she wasn’t being annoyingly overbearing or too dull and played her role well as the easygoing straight man to the antics of Preston and the others.
When she returned to Sheffield, she wasn’t quite popular, but she had a place. One of the Sarennes girls said she would be perfect for lightweight crew and took her down to the boathouse on the first day of spring term, and the coach said she should be a natural with her build. Then she had another new group of friends to sit with and make inside jokes with and fling Ammonoosuc water at and sing with on the bus to weekend races at Groton and Kent. Now Charlotte was flopping down next to her in the dorm common room and asking her if she wanted to order Delvecchio’s chicken-finger subs. Charlotte asked Evelyn to room with her for upper and senior years so they could get the “hot-doub,” the fourth-floor double with a balcony and a hidden back closet where Charlotte could smoke cigarettes. Evelyn now had a reference tag on her, friends-with-Preston, that made her stand out among the masses at Sheffield.
Her mother came up for Easter weekend Evelyn’s lower spring and insisted she invite a friend to dinner. “Mommy, what do you think about taking out a whole group?” Evelyn suggested.
“What group?” Barbara asked.