Who Is Evelyn Dae?
Sarah LaFleur
Copyright Sarah LaFleur 2013
ISBN: 9781310432392
Who Is Evelyn Dae? is a work of fiction. Names, characters, dialogue, and locations are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or people is strictly coincidental.
Volume 1 Digital Edition: ASIN: B00FE0A1UU ISBN: 9781310432392
Volume 2 Digital Edition: ASIN: B00GW2YSOO ISBN: 9781310919787
Print Edition: ISBN-13:978-1493738519
ISBN-10:1493738518
Text copyright © 2013 by Sarah LaFleur
Illustrations copyright © 2013 by Matthew LaFleur
All rights reserved.
To read more about the author and the illustrator visit
https://lafleurdeplume.com
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Enjoy your voyage~
To my daughters S & P.
Volume 1
My name is Evelyn Dae and this is my story…
9:02 am, June 21, 2011
I stand on the precipice of the massive cliff staring at the churning water below me. I wonder how long it would take to hit the surface of the ocean from here. Two seconds? Three? I close my eyes, savoring the feeling of the wind whipping around me as my arms hug my chest.
I try to clear my mind, but the image of him is burned in my consciousness. I let the memories wash over me. His dark curly hair, his deep brown eyes with impossibly long lashes, his crooked smile with the hint of a dimple on his left cheek, and his hands. God I love his hands. He has artist’s hands; long elegant fingers perpetually stained in a rainbow of color from the paint he uses to craft his creations.
Once upon a time I hoped I would become the source of his inspiration. Once upon a time I hoped he would accept the truth about what I already knew. What I knew the very first day I met him, even though I tried desperately not to succumb to temptation. But all that was lost forever now. There was no going back, and so here I was, standing on the edge of my life, wishing for the courage to jump.
It was the first day of school, but not just any first day of school. It was the first day of my junior year of high school, and also the last first day of school I would ever have. Of course, I didn’t know that at the time. At the time, I bounced through my day like every other person enrolled in Cedar Crest High School. It’s not that I hated school. I was merely indifferent.
11:23 am, September 7, 2010
“Hey Lyn!” Margery calls from across the cafeteria. Margery Wilson is my current best friend in our small circle of girlfriends. We spent the past three weeks of summer vacation inseparable, but I didn’t hold out much hope for the intensity of the relationship to continue now that we were back at school. Margery is a straight A student and I, well, am not. “Did you hear about the new exchange student?”
I shake my head as I warily approach her. Already several tables filled with faces are darting their eyes back and forth between us. I am mortified, as much for myself as for the poor person she is screaming about in the most public place possible. I select a seat at our traditional corner table and slouch into it. A moment later she joins me.
“Seriously? Can’t we have one day where you don’t make a scene?” I ask, looking around self-consciously. Most of the audience has returned to whatever private conversation they were having before her dramatic interruption. I do a quick scan for a new face, but everyone looks exactly as they had last year.
“I wasn’t!” she protests, dropping her lunch tray on the table with a loud smack. Droplets of chocolate pudding splash up, peppering her freckled arms. I roll my eyes and hand her the cloth napkin from my packed lunch box. I eye her as she dabs the food from herself.
“So what about the new student?”
Her eyes light up. “Not just a new student, but a foreign exchange student, with an accent!” she exclaims so giddy with excitement, she is literally bouncing up and down in her chair.
“Does Celebrity have a name?” Anyone new to our boring Oregon school is traditionally dubbed ‘Celebrity’ for at least a week, possibly two.
“Oliver Knight,” she replies in a dreamy voice like she’d been drawing little hearts around it in her head all day. I glance at the expression on her face. Yeah, she definitely has been doing that.
“Marge, stop it! You are embarrassing both of us. What do I care?”
“Well for starters, you’re the only one of us who has a class with him.”
“And you know this because…”
“Stacy Knopp told me. She has homeroom with him and managed to peak at his schedule.” Stacy was my best friend last year, but went to Nashville to spend the summer with her Dad. I spotted her briefly in the halls before homeroom for the requisite ‘how was your summer, I can’t believe we haven’t seen each other for two months’ freak out, but clearly this had developed since then.
“How is it possible that between the four of us, I’m the only one in class with him? What else is he taking?”
“He’s mostly with the seniors: advanced French, creative writing, economics, and calculus. Even with my AP’s and Joanie’s panache for language, we don’t quite stack up.”
“Yikes! Sounds like a brain. What in the world would I have in common with him that you guys don’t?”
“Studio art,” she replies smugly with her hands on her hips. Of course that would be the one thing I had in common with Celebrity. The only class I look forward to is studio art, which meets during the final period of the day. It’s the one place I feel at home. The one place I can be myself, but now looking at my best friend’s face, I knew I would need to pay attention to this fantasy boy for her.
“Oh no, I’m not signing up for a semester of spying on Celebrity…”
“Oliver…”
“Whatever! Studio art is me time.”
“Me time?” Joan asks with a confused expression, as she sashays gracefully to our table with Stacy following close on her heels. “You two aren’t fighting already?”
“She won’t talk to Oliver for us,” Margery says, wagging an agitated finger in my general direction. I look over for support, but cringe at the three sets of irritated eyes glaring back at me. My jaw drops open.
“You have to,” Stacy says, dropping the anger and going with pleading instead. “You’re the only one of us who has more than five minutes with him.”
“Did all three of you fall down the same love tree today?” It’s a stupid question. They have it bad. I throw my hands up in defeat. “Fine, fine. I’ll see what I can do, but I’m not promising I’ll talk to him or anything. You know my rules.”