I didn’t pay the boys as much attention as I knew I was supposed to, and I didn’t care. Molly and Orla fawned over them and it pained me to watch, forcing me to wonder if their entire personalities were simply carved out of something they read about in a teen girl magazine. They were far too obvious. When the boys were around Molly’s laugh was shrill and giddy, and she would touch their arms for far too long when they spoke to her. She wore makeup that was too dark and made weak attempts at trying to curl her hair exactly the way Connie did. Orla, to her credit, wasn’t as overtly ridiculous as Molly. She asked questions that made her sound dumber than she really was and wore clothes that left little of her lithe body to the imagination but her tone at least stayed neutral and her laugh was normal when they were around. I questioned quite often if I was the only one who noticed just how desperate they all were with the boys we knew. Loud, grating laughter they practiced in the mirror. Tossing their hair around and bending down to try and underscore their chests. I realized quite quickly that they modeled their flirtatious behavior on Connie’s, trying hard to emulate the way she acted and failing horribly at it because no one else could possibly have imitated her easy, natural, mesmerizing nature. Connie was the only girl I knew who didn’t throw herself at boys. She was the only girl who didn’t make herself look silly. Instead, it was the boys who threw themselves at her.

Sometimes I would tune everyone else out simply to watch Connie. Every boy we knew existed entirely under her spell. She was effortless. When she walked her hips would sway just slightly enough that you wouldn’t think she was trying, and her curls bounced as she moved. She took to wearing low-cut tops and bright lipstick, and in the summer she always made sure to ask one of the boys to help her put sun cream on her back. She didn’t reach out and grab them the way the others did; she would touch a boy lightly on the arm or the shoulder when they spoke, just for a moment. She offered them crumbs and they chased her, ravenous for more. Her laugh was like a song and when she talked her voice was low and commanding. Every boy demanded her attention. They made fools of themselves just to make her smile but she kept them at bay, always wanting. Connie was an expert at the art of flirting. It was so effortless for her, the way it wasn’t for Molly and Orla; they simply came to her, and she never had to try.

I got used to Connie keeping the boys at bay. When we hung around the beach in a larger group couples would sometimes start to pair off but Connie always refused, pushing them back with a flirtatious rejection that was easy to excuse. A boy and a girl would kiss and then head off somewhere else away from the rest of us, usually the dunes, and return to us later. More often than not they didn’t so much as look at each other for the rest of the day. It was childish and immature, pathetic attempts at needing to come across as cool and attractive. Orla kissed six boys from Christopher’s by October of Fourth Year, two of them quite regularly, and Molly had long lost count. As far as I knew, Connie hadn’t kissed any of them. She never went off to the dunes with a boy and at house gatherings, before alcohol was introduced to the group, she never snuck off to someone’s bedroom or bathroom or basement. They all tried so hard, and she shot them down.