Living in oblivion

"You never see extreme cataclysm coming," Charles Wallace always says, and he's usually right (although "extreme cataclysm" is redundant, and he gets annoyed when I remind him of that). I called Duncan last night to see what he was up to this week, but his mother said he was out with Eva. She sounded a bit surprised about that, but I thought it was normal enough, as they are in the same band. I assumed that April, Gerald, Luis and Jeremy would be around, too.
I finally ran into him at lunch. I wanted to tell him that Gerald had been thrown out of my English class again today (my English teacher is showing us the Canadian film version of Beowulf, and for some reason Gerald keeps trying to get in to watch it). Duncan was sitting alone, staring blankly at his gelatin dessert.
"Duncan, are you all right?" I asked. He nodded. "How was rehearsal last night?"
"Eva is fine, thank you. We've been together for a few weeks now," Duncan said mechanically.
"Er, you've been with me for the past few weeks--you haven't had any time to date Eva." Duncan nodded his head rapidly.
"It's really strange. I was so worried about April and her grandfather that I didn't feel weird and paranoid like usual. Then I woke up yesterday and Eva called and reminded me we'd been dating for a while and nothing had changed. Nothing's still changed--now she's trying to flirt with Gerald and Luis at the same time, and April's too depressed to notice." Jeremy had come over to the table by this time. "Man, I didn't steal your girlfriend. I keep telling you that." Jeremy didn't look very happy.
"So, did Eva tell you yesterday that she'd been dating Duncan for weeks?"
"Yeah, it was kind of sudden," Jeremy admitted.
"Did she smirk on the phone?"
"That's not nice," Jeremy said, without much conviction. "I've been with her all this time--when'd she have time to date Duncan? In her sleep?" Right at that point Eva herself was coming into sight, so I took my lunch over to an empty table and reread my French homework.