Don’t You Miss It

Don’t You Miss It is a grief novel about four college best friends — Lisa, Vera, Hannah and June — and what happens to the three survivors after Lisa dies in a freak accident during senior week. It is about female friendship as a first great love, the guilt of surviving, the lies friends tell one another, and the terrifying question of whether a friend group was ever as perfect as it felt.

The novel opens in Myrtle Beach, just before graduation from Cooke College. The four girls are asleep in one bed in their cheap, disgusting senior-week rental: Hannah, Vera, Lisa and June tangled together after days of beach, alcohol, sunscreen and sleep deprivation. The narration immediately tells us they do not know it will never be like this again.

That evening they get ready to go out. Their roles are familiar after four years together: Lisa controls the music, June supplies caffeine and makeup, Hannah applies everyone’s makeup with competent older-sister precision, and Vera mothers everyone with water, clothes and worry. They toast to graduating, sunscreen, aloe and being best friends. Lisa is badly sunburnt and puffy-lipped, but still exuberant. She is the wild, funny, camp-loving friend whose post-grad plan is only to return to summer camp as a counselor.