2:6

When Rowan was 14 years old she had been madly in love with the blockbuster movie star du jour. He had been a tall, muscular young man with the devil-may-care attitude that so many of the young rich and famous affected. She had the requisite posters on the wall and had even gone so far as to join the Tiger Beat-sponsored fan club so she could get regular updates and ’personal’ notes from what she considered to be the most beautiful man in the world.

This future husband had a habit of drawling. His heavenly voice was laconic and slow, and no word was safe from his iconic mispronunciation. It was charming, it was sexy, it was sooo mature, and Rowan decided then and there, much to her parents’ dismay, that this was how really beautiful and famous people spoke.

By the time she was 16 she knew better, but by then it was so much a part of her high school image she didn’t dare change. By the time she was 18, she didn’t care much about the schmucks she went to high school with. And then Carmen, whom she was head-over-heels in love with, thought it was endearing. It actually got worse.

After the Carmen episode she resolved to give the drawling accent up once and for all but found that she couldn’t. Oh, she often started out en amour in a normal fashion, but as soon as she got distracted or excited she’d forget and slip back into the drawl. So now she lived with it and even used it for effect. People she didn’t know often underestimated her, and those she did could see the cutting undertones as she employed her drawl to jab pins in people’s expectations.