“What are you talking about?” asks the blonde. Her tone is aggressive, but I have a feeling she’s trying to sound tougher than she is to match up to her friend.
“We played together when we were kids,” I say. Their mothers were my mother’s best friends, the two women who accompanied the police chief the night he told me my mother was dead. And their families are, if I remember right, the two other founding families of Carrefour.
“What on earth are you talking about?” Peregrine asks in a bored voice.
“I’m Eveny Cheval,” I say.
The girls’ eyes widen, and behind them, I hear the gorgeous guy draw a deep breath.
“Eveny Cheval?” Chloe repeats in a whisper. She touches the black stone hanging from her neck and looks at Peregrine. “Sandrine Cheval’s daughter?”
“That’s me,” I say weakly. It’s just like I thought; everyone knows I’m the girl with the dead mom. The two girls behind Chloe and Peregrine are whispering furiously and shooting me strange looks. The guys are standing silent, but all of them are gazing at me too.
“Eveny,” Peregrine says after a moment. “Why yes, of course.” She pauses then shoots me a dazzling and undoubtedly fake smile. “Our mothers will be thrilled we ran into you. They’ll want to see you immediately.”
With that, she whirls on her stiletto heel and whisks away.
“Well, welcome home,” says Chloe, giving me an odd look before following Peregrine. The other two girls skitter after them, while the three guys take turns sizing me up as I stand self-consciously glued to the spot. The first guy, who has floppy hair and hazel eyes, waits only a moment before running after the others and grabbing Chloe’s hand. The second, who’s smarmily handsome in a Clark Gable kind of way, shoots me a knowing look before turning. But the blue-eyed guy stands as rooted to the ground as I am before Peregrine calls for him. He looks back once with a confused expression on his face before following after the rest of the Dolls.
“Well, that was bizarre.” I feel strangely breathless after they’re gone.
Beside me, Drew snorts. “Welcome to Carrefour.”
We walk back to the house in silence as I think about the perplexing reaction of the girls I remember vaguely from childhood. I’d expected a weird welcome, since I’m sure everyone in town knows the tragic story of my mom, but they’d stared as if I were a movie star—or a murderer. There must be something I’m not getting.
“You want to sit outside for a bit?” I ask once we’ve climbed over my back wall. Drew agrees, so I dash inside to grab two Cokes from the refrigerator before leading him out to the garden. Boniface is there trimming rosebushes and humming to himself, but when he sees us, he says hello, winks at me, then makes himself scarce.
“Well, that’s about the welcome home I’d expect from that group,” Drew says once we’re alone.
“I thought they might judge me for what happened to my mom,” I say as we sit down on the edge of one of the rose planters. “But that felt like an overreaction, right?”
“They’re just weird. It’s not about your mom’s death as much as it’s about them thinking they’re better than everyone. They’re only giving you a hard time because you’re new here and they can.”
“Well, they sound delightful,” I reply. “This school year should be great.”
Drew laughs. “Hey, Carrefour’s not all bad. Wait until you come out for a day in the Périphérie.” He pauses. “In fact, how about Sunday? There’s a crawfish boil at my buddy’s place.”
He launches into an elaborate explanation about how it’s a big Louisiana tradition, and although it’s early in the season for fresh crawfish, he has a friend who flash-freezes them each year so he can host big blowout parties in the winter. “There’s corn, potatoes, onions, sausages, hot sauce . . .” He keeps going, but I tune out when he begins listing beers.
I find myself thinking instead about the cute guy from the funeral and feel immediately foolish when I interrupt Drew’s story to ask, “Who was that guy, anyway?”
Drew stops mid-sentence and looks at me. “What guy?”
I swallow hard. “Sorry,” I say. “Just the one from the funeral who was looking at me funny.”
“Eveny, they were all looking at you funny.”
“But I mean the one with the blue eyes,” I mumble.
“The light-skinned black dude?” Drew asks.
I hesitate, not quite liking the face he makes as he says it.
Drew rolls his eyes. “Oh, that’s Caleb Shaw,” he continues. “He’s, like, a genius at school or something. I heard he got a perfect score on his PSAT in the fall, but he’s a little . . . odd.”