Eva The Avenger

Of Flutes and Boots

Have you ever noticed how these brainy, artistic kids are slightly... dramatic?

Just a bit intense?

How they over-complicate situations unnecessarily? Cast everything in epic, do-or-die terms? Dramatize the smallest gesture? Go on and on and on about stuff?

I swear to Heaven, someday my friends are going to kill me!

...

Following the lead of last year's award-winners, the camp soon split into cliques with varying levels of artistic cache. Eva wanted to ignore them, and even pointed out that we were a sort of clique ourselves. A clique of people, mind you, so monumentally cool that no one else could even grasp how cool we were.

"If we're really that cool," I asked skeptically, "how come no one else has noticed?"

"They're so far below us in coolness that they simply can't see it," she shrugged.

A tall, slim, blond guy was walking by and heard her say that. And he walked past – we were sitting on a porch waiting for dinner to be called – but then he did an about-face and came awkwardly back.

As we looked up at him from our Adirondack chairs, he addressed Eva. "I hope you weren't speaking in jest. Entirely, I mean. It is cool – really, really cool – to be capable, at our age, of throwing off the mantle of shame so frequently placed upon one by these would-be aristos, and I just wanted to..."

He ran out of words and stood looking at us, shifting his feet. Seeming half worried we were going to send him away, and half hoping it would soon be over with.

He had a gorgeous Scottish accent. We were not sending him away.

In fact, I wished he had not run out of words quite so soon. I recovered myself and practically leapt at him.

"What's your name, Sweetie?" Giving him my nicest smile, I drew him down to sit by me. I think it's important to encourage shy people whenever possible.

"I'm Craig," he said, smiling back at me with just the most wholesome kind of shyness.

"Who did you come to camp with, Craig?"

"No one. I came on a scholarship and my mates didn't make it."

"Scholarship in what?"

"I paint. Oil paintings. In the styles of the old masters. It's not considered cool, but I think it's..."

"Absolutely marvelous?"

"Uh... much more challenging than non-representative art."

Eva was leaning forward, chin on hand, watching me and Craig in absorbed fascination. "I've never seen you flirt before," she told me, eyes big.

Craig and I glanced at each other and away, but not before I saw a tiny smirk starting to form on his face.

Enter warm glow, etc.

"Look at them," Arthur said, barely noticing Craig. He was twisted completely backwards in his chair, gazing at a group of young men in frank disgust mingled with envy. "Those people there are the concert pianist clique. I wish I was a concert pianist."

Eva glanced at Arthur's hands dismissively. "You don't have the hand span for it," she said, and stretched. "Lord, I'm hungry. When's dinner?"

I was too interested in Craig to watch the concert pianist clique, but we ran into them when the dinner announcement came over the loudspeaker. All over the porch, kids sprang to their feet and jostled for a position in front of the dining hall doors.

"I'll save us a place, hurry up!" Eva cried, slipping nimbly through the crowd. She found a position in front of the doors and began jumping up and down like a Jill-in-the-box, waving her arms. "Here! Here!" she cried.

No on didn't notice her.

Which is why the behavior of the Concert Pianists was so obviously fake. They bore down, holding their silk-bound hands high in the air to protect them. They were wearing actual suits – concert attire – they affected dressing for dinner, I suppose. They looked very important, and lots of kids simply melted and gave way before them.

Not Eva. She resolutely ignored them and continued to cheer us on. "Push!" she told me. "Out of the way, you, my friend's coming through!" She was ignored.

The Concert Pianists arrived before the still-locked dining hall doors and began crowding in on Eva.

"I'm saving this spot for my friends," Eva said once, and then again, louder when they didn't respond.

They didn't challenge her on the ethics of spot-saving, which they might have done. They just kept crowding closer and closer, pretending not to see or hear her, and discussing Evgeny Kissin in eager tones.

At last poor Eva had to sidle out of their way or be squashed between the door and impending masculine bodies. The gaps behind them were already filled in, and we ended up going into dinner last, sitting at the very outermost table, and being called up to eat after everyone else.

Eva could barely eat, she was so furious. You can tell when she's furious because she goes completely white and sways back and forth while her eyes dry up and her pupils go to pinpoint-status. I started to worry about the Concert Pianists.

"But they're so uncool they can't even see our cool," Craig reminded her uncertainly.

She stared at him dazedly. "Right. Uncool. So uncool. I have to upchuck." She sprinted out of the dining hall. I excused myself to go after her. Poor Eva. She always had stomach upsets when people were mean to her. She hadn't been this bad since 5th grade, though. What a thing to happen at camp, when we'd been looking forward to it for a whole year.

***

Eva didn't try to get us a place at breakfast the next morning. As we gathered on the porch, waiting for the breakfast announcement, she sat with her nose in the air, staring loftily out across the lake.

I watched the Concert Pianists walk past us, everyone else on that side of the porch making way for them. They were all wispy sorts of fellows. It seemed like about three years' growth had gone straight into their hands. However, they made up for their wispiness in build by building out their hairdos to an unbelievable extent. Each wispy head was surrounded by a cloud of glossy, steel-hard hair, arranged sleekly in a professional manner.

A girl rushed up and to one of the Concert Pianists – a fellow with black hair, better-built than the rest. "Jason! I saw you play in community theater last year! I'm from your hometown. Can we get together some time?" She held out her phone for his number.

Jason looked her up and down. "What instrument do you play?"

Her smile faltered. "Um... flute?"

"Oh, no," I whispered, and hid my face.

But I peeked, because it was so quiet. Jason stood looking at her, his eyebrow getting higher and higher, allowing it to sink in that practically every other girl on campus also played flute.

Then the entire clique burst into laughter. The unhappy flautist fled in tears, clutching her smartphone to her wounded heart.

I looked at Eva to get her reaction, but she was still serenely staring out over the water. "What a lovely morning. It makes you forget that the world is full of psychopaths," she said dreamily.

Again we sat at the outermost table, ate, and went our separate ways to our various classes.

But that afternoon in the Student Center, Arthur claimed he had found a way that would allow one to insinuate oneself into any clique on campus.