These are like staples on my nostalgia bookshelf. They're always out, always accessible.
I don't remember who gave me this book, but someone did. It's written in the front.
This was published in October 1988, so I would have just turned 10. Heh. Not sure when exactly I got it, but there's some life context for no real reason.
The author is Ann Reit, who looks to have done some other romance stuff, but I never looked for any of it. And I'm not going to now. At 133 pages, this is a very fast read.
The basic premise is that two 14-year-old best friends date the same guy and it completely changes their relationship.
There's a lot going on in here though.
Phoebe, the blue-eyed blonde, feels plain next to Eve. A bit unusual for the time, because it was typically the blondes that were the glam ones and the brown-eyed brunettes that felt plain. Eve is the bubbly, friendly, outgoing yet also pretty superficial one. Phoebe is the Smart One. Not nerd-level smart, but you can tell this is the distinction between them and it's kept up through the entire book. Each girl has moments of wanting to be more like the other one. Phoebe wants Eve's family, especially her older sister. Because the book is from Phoebe's point of view, you don't know what Eve thinks about Phoebe's family, but she definitely doesn't have as good as relationship with her sister as Phoebe does. Phoebe thinks her mother is a neglectful scatterbrain. She's definitely a scatterbrain, but she proves by the end how much she does pay attention. She thinks her parents fight all the time, but that's explained by her mother as just their odd way of showing love. Her mother says Phoebe is the only one her father openly shows how much he loves. It's Phoebe who grows throughout the book, coming out of her place in Eve's shadow, making new friends and seeing her family in a new light. It's even recognized in the text that she realizes it's she who's different and not Eve.
Eve isn't an unlikable character. She's simply different than Phoebe and because we don't get into her head, we don't get to know her very well. Her presentation as shallow is compounded by this.
So these two girls are super close. They're obsessed with Gone with the Wind and reference it constantly. They wear the same colors to parties, only in reverse.
"Okay," I said. "I'll wear the gray short skirt, my red sweater, and those printed red tights. Now you."
"You picked good, for a change. I'll wear my red pleated skirt, the gray fuzzy sweater, and those crazy gray stockings your mother gave me last Christmas."
You've got to be besties to pull that shit.
Until a boy comes along.
The relationship is a bit odd. A new boy comes to town and decides to date both Eve and Phoebe. They take turns. It's not clear if he's dating other girls, too, though it's quite possible. It feels like a lot of time passes, but it really doesn't. It's October in Chapter 2 and Christmas in Chapter 10. Phoebe says "the weeks went by" in Chapter 11, which is the final one. So maybe it's spring?
The odd dating system goes on for a while, with people commenting about how weird it is that the girls aren't jealous of each other. They say everything is fine, until suddenly it isn't. It's Phoebe who falls for Quentin, the guy, first, but Eve is close behind. And it doesn't take Phoebe long to realize Quentin has fallen for Eve. Then it's only a brief matter of time before Quent and Eve are an exclusive couple, Phoebe and Eve drift apart, and Phoebe discovers she's got to figure things out on her own.
It's annoying to watch one idiot boy, because there's not anything especially likable about Quentin, tear apart these two friends. Phoebe's not comfortable around Eve because she feels rejected, hurt and jealous. Eve isn't comfortable around Phoebe because she feels guilty. So Eve and Quent disappear into couples land, while Phoebe makes new friends, gets over everything, still misses Eve, and eventually gives another boy a chance, only to realize they're meant to be friends only. But she does get a neat friend out of it. I like Ernie.
So what happens with a boy like Quentin? A boy like Quentin moves on. One day, Phoebe sees a messed up Eve in the cafeteria, obviously upset, so the two ditch school and Phoebe takes Eve home to talk. They end up mending fences in the end and Phoebe realizes that nothing is ever going to go back to being the same, because she's changed, but she's okay with that.
The scene on the cover is from the very last page of the text, where Eve is washing out some bleach or whatnot she put in her hair because she wants a blonde streak. She jumps in the shower with her clothes on and Phoebe goes in with her. "Ernie wouldn't understand this, and Carrie probably wouldn't either. But I did. And Eve did."
If this was written in modern times, I think we may have gotten the ending we deserved: the girls end up a couple. Throughout the book, Phoebe doesn't seem that into kissing boys. It doesn't take her long to dismiss Ernie from possible boyfriend status to just a friend. And her descriptions of Eve are...well...
I watched Eve sitting on her bed, her knees drawn up to her chest, and her head bent toward her feet. She was carefully painting small white dots on top of the bright purple polish already on her toes. The tip of her tongue was sticking out of her mouth and she was barely breathing. Suddenly, she let a huge noisy burst of air out of the corner of her mouth, trying to move a dark brown curl of hair away from her eyes. That was like Eve. She could do a totally graceless thing and look good doing it.
And...
Her eyes filled with excitement and confidence. Her cheeks flushed with a sweet, pale pink and a mist of perspiration on her forehead that just made her look dewy, not sweaty. I knew he saw the way her dark hair curled around her face and head, and how she was biting her lower lip, making her teeth look whiter against the pink of her mouth.
Even when she realizes she really likes Quent, she doesn't describe him with an ounce of the force she uses to describe Eve.
I've always been disappointed in the cover for this reason. I want to see the Eve that Phoebe sees, not her with wet hair (that in no way could have been as curly as the book describes) and her eyes closed. Where is this captivating Eve?
I don't know what it is about this book that it's something I've always come back to, but there's just something there. It's not the best written thing. It's certainly not very long. I'd love to see it redone with a version from Eve's point of view, too. Not intertwined, but the same story from her point of view in a completely separate book, but the two books are sold in one copy.
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