“
Pulling off my cover-up, chucking it on the stone flags, I dive in, the shock of the cool water on my overheated skin exactly what I need to stop me thinking. I do a length underwater as fast as I can, and when I come up, gasping and shaking my head, I realize that everyone’s staring at me.
“Wow,” Evan says, looking over his guitar, which is propped on his lap as he sits cross-legged on a towel. “You in a race with the Invisible Man?”
I giggle at this image.
“Violet,” he sings, strumming a chord. “Running a race with a serious face--so did you win? Or was it him? Don’t forget, Vio-let--Dive in!”
He ends on a high falsetto note, grinning at me.
“That doesn’t make much sense,” he adds. “But hey, at least I rhymed your name.”
“Violet’s pretty easy,” I say, propping my arms on the edge of the pool and smiling back at him. “Regret, forget, net, jet, yet, set, bet--”
“Try Evan,” he suggests. “Apart from numbers and heaven, which gets old very quickly, there’s practically nothing.”
“Numbers? Oh! Eleven…seven…” I furrow my brow.
“Devon,” Kelly calls over. “That’s a county in England.”
“Leaven,” I add. “You do it to bread.”
Evan’s expression is comical, his blue eyes stretched as wide as they’ll go as he plucks a string and, in a singsong nursery-rhyme voice, intones:
“From the age of seven to eleven
Before he tragically went to heaven
Evan leavened bread in Devon.”
He throws his hands wide. “See? Not much to work with.
”
”