Eve White: Literary Agent

from LEAVING

She pretended not to see him at first. That was part of the game she played with him. Perhaps she didn’t want him to see that she hoped to find him there – perhaps in her heart of hearts, she didn’t want to find him there. She could never really work out her feelings towards Chris. They were ‘in love’ of course, but sometimes she wanted to hurt him. She was often guiltily aware that her relationship with him was based on the guidelines laid down in magazines. From the very beginning, True Romance had made it so easy for her to know what to say and how to say it. When he had first told her that he loved her ¬– that terribly solemn moment she had been longing for since their first kiss – instead of flinging herself into his arms and saying, ‘I love you too!’ she’d looked up at him with dramatically dewy, troubled eyes and said, ‘Love’s a big word, Chris!’ She knew it was straight out of True Romance, but it was so right, so perfect, she just had to say it. And it went down so well. After that she had many occasions on which to thank True Romance for the right words at the right time. She sometimes wondered how she would have managed without it – what lines would she have said without that ready-made script in her head. Not, of course, that she still read True Romance, but for one whole year when she was thirteen, she’d read almost nothing else. That year she’d made the emotional leap straight from Superman, Mandrake and The Phantom, to True Romance – and the information about holding hands and kissing and trembling with desire (hidden in print so fine that at first glance it looked boring) was amazingly explicit to her innocent, comic-adjusted mind. It gave her wave after wave of sexual thrills. The stories were all about Trembling Teenage Love, Turgid Teenage Sex and Tragic Teenage Remorse. Pretty much what her relationship with Chris had been for the last three years – but now it was becoming a Terrible Teenage Trap.