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CHAPTER 10 EVIE

She pressed send, finally done with the clinic application. Now it was out of her hands. Setting aside her tablet, she stretched out on her living room couch. Time for some lazy time—she deserved it after this week. Her General Virology professor assigned a nauseating amount of reading, and she also had a lab report due in three days.

Jake hadn’t texted her since last night, when he’d turned in his application. It wasn’t an issue; he went offline whenever he needed to focus on homework. At least they were able to study together a couple of days ago at Jake’s place. In contrast, her Saturday Sins group chat in just a few hours was an endless exchange of memes, everyone despairing about their heavy workload. Kale was quick with his thumbs and dominated the chat while Viet, who was added recently, lagged behind. His latest meme: a fainting Elmo.

Evie didn’t think much about friend groups until after they were made. It just happened. Often by sheer proximity. Without their rooming situation, she and Lis would have never met. Without Lis’s involvement in the forensic science club, she could say the same thing about her friendship with Kale and Tate.

Unlike kindergarten, where any playmate became your friend—even for only a few hours—friendships at her age were a magical web of trust, feelings, and understanding that started with a shared interest or experience. Connections made during a coffee run, a lunch date, a movie night, until it didn’t matter where they would meet. Evie and her friends shared a telepathic connection after so many years together, their words often perfectly capturing her thoughts, but conversely, they knew when words were unnecessary.

There was friendship between her and Jake the night they confessed; if words were assigned to the sparks floating in the air, it’d be excitement, fear, hope , and perhaps a thousand more words. And it was present that very first morning her friends formed the idea for Saturday Sins. She, Kale, Tate, and Lis gathered in the dorms, still drunk. Kale had stood up, and randomly declared himself the breakfast king, and then they all laughed because they must have looked ridiculous with their bedheads, baggy eyes, and pounding headaches. It was magnetic. It was natural.

It was fated.

Over the years, they kept their group to only the four of them. They all had friends outside of this, but Evie would bet everyone would say they were closest to the people inside the group. This wasn’t on purpose. Those friends lingering outside their group had other groups they perfectly belonged to.

Evie sensed Viet hadn’t found his group yet; maybe they would become his. She didn’t know too much about him, but he wasn’t socially awkward or unlikable. He might be a drifter, a chameleon. Considering how easily he blended in at their dinner, full of third-year strangers, he could fit in in a lot of places.

Friendship took time, and Evie figured she would help him as much as possible. Not out of pity. Not out of curiosity. Was it too drastic to say out of need?

During their runs, Viet felt solid next to her; an extension of her, almost. If the two of them ran hard enough, and together, they would get to their destination quicker. It wasn’t logical, but that was the thought that’d popped up. Their running routine had started after crossing paths again on their respective runs. It surprised Evie since the campus was huge. So she and Viet decided to run together, three times a week, starting at seven because it worked with their class schedule. As they cooled off on the lawn, which had become another custom of theirs, a memory of home would occur to her and she’d share it, and Viet would immediately catch on. Reminiscing together was always fun.

At Davis, she wasn’t close to anyone from Westminster, and some topics she couldn’t mention, not without having to explain herself. Evie liked the pull of knowing someone from home, someone connected to her by infinite threads that stemmed from places like school, temples, grocery stores.

For example, there was a cranky cashier at Sage Street Market, a café for students. Each time, without fail, the fifty-something-year-old woman would ring Evie up and call her by different names. To her credit, they all started with E : Emily, Emilia, Emerald. Close enough. Evie saw no harm in letting it continue. She was actually amused by it because there was a gym teacher at La Quinta who also forgot everyone’s name, and it became a running joke among the high school students.

The other day, Evie was with Viet, who made the same connection, and they laughed together. Viet had been early for their run, not just on time, and as he approached, he used his hand to shade his eyes from the sun. A handheld water bottle was in his other hand. Neon green, which, despite Evie’s limited personal knowledge, seemed too bright for his personality; Viet’s groundedness and his everyday clothing suggested neutral colors. He then explained that the color was meant to be eye-catching in case something happened to him. Depending on the perp’s—“Perp?” she laughed—movements and planning, the police could possibly find the water bottle and extract DNA or fibers from it.

“Your mind’s pretty dark.”

“Yeah, but my water bottle isn’t.” Viet shook it for emphasis.

Well. He wasn’t wrong.

Evie smiled at the first-year’s meme and replied with her own carefully selected meme: a reality TV personality, a notorious mother hen, praising her child with her camera in hand. A wish for herself and the Saturday Sins group.