Freshmen Page 24

  “OK.” I had no idea what was going to happen, but even more worryingly, I had no idea what I really wanted to happen.

  Earlier, getting stoned with Arthur, I’d tried to think about what I’d do if Abbey told me she wanted us to get back together. I eventually concluded that my head would say no, but my gut—or was it my heart?—would say yes. Why can’t bodies think as a whole? Or was it just my body?

  There was a knock on the door. The handle swiveled, and Arthur’s head appeared.

  “I will have a cup of tea, then, if you’re mak—” He saw Abbey and stopped. “Oh. Hi.”

  “Hey.” Abbey smiled.

  “Abbey, this is Arthur. Arthur, Abbey.”

  “All right? Just seeing if you fancied some Scrabble action, Luke, but no worries. I’ll see you later. Nice to meet you, Abbey.”

  “You too.”

  When he’d left, she looked around the room: “It’s so cool, this. It’s like living in a big apartment building with all your friends.”

  “I’m so sorry about you not going to Cardiff,” I said. “I can’t believe I haven’t even told you that yet.”

  “It’s OK.” She nodded. “I really think it was for the best. I think if I’d gone this year, I would have ended up dropping out in, like, two weeks. I just know I wasn’t in the right place for it.”

  “But you’re going next year?”

  “Yeah. My mum and Miss Sawyer sorted it out.”

  She stood up and started flicking distractedly through the books on my desk. She picked up the Ariel book—Phoebe’s present—and murmured, “This is pretty,” and I thought about how my life was starting to become so messy I might never untangle it.

  She put the book back on the desk. “Sorry, Luke. I don’t know what’s up with me at the moment. It’s quite random to just get on a train and come up to see you.”

  “No, it’s not random. I mean, it is a bit random. But good random.”

  “I just thought it would be better if we actually saw each other. That it might help us both figure out what we wanted.”

  “Yeah. Definitely.” There was a pause while she stared down idly at my Modern Romantic Poetry anthology. Then I said: “Do you fancy a cup of tea?”

  I went back out into the kitchen and checked my phone. I had two missed calls from Phoebe. I checked her Story: they were on the bus into town. In the picture, she was smiling brightly, wearing an IT’S MY BIRTHDAY, BITCH badge that I assumed was Frankie’s doing. Using every bit of mental strength, I forced out all traces of guilt and concentrated on boiling the kettle.

  We drank our teas, and then I cooked us some gloopy, slightly burnt tuna mayonnaise pasta, which Abbey actually seemed quite impressed with, mainly because it was the first meal I’d ever made her that didn’t involve a microwave or my mum. We ate it at my tiny desk, sat so close that our plates overlapped at the edges, and laughed about stupid stuff: what people from school were doing on their gap years, how her fancy friend Veronica had converted to Buddhism within forty-eight hours of arriving in Thailand. It almost felt like the beginning again; the early days of ninth grade, when we were just getting together, realizing how much we liked each other, how well we seemed to fit.

  But there was also this weird, nagging sense of unreality about it all. Like we both knew deep down that this was an odd sort of flashback that couldn’t possibly sustain itself in the long run. At some point, we had to talk about the future.

  When we’d finished eating, I went and washed up, and checked the pictures of Phoebe and the rest of them in Brown’s. I told myself I could think about all that later. I just had to get through whatever was going to happen with Abbey, and then I could make the world’s biggest apology to Phoebe tomorrow. I went back into the room and said: “So what do you want to do?”

  She shrugged. “Well, I was sitting on a train for three hours, so it’d be nice to go out for a bit. You could show me York.”

  “There’s not much to show.”

  “Erm, excuse me. I’m sure your mum told us York was the UK’s second most popular tourist destination?”

  “Yes, I think she only mentioned that seven hundred times over the summer.”

  She laughed. “Well, then.”

  We walked off campus and followed the little leafy back streets into town. Even though I was purposely aiming us in the exact opposite side of the city to where Brown’s was, I still felt a constant thrum of terror as I imagined Phoebe or Frankie or Negin stepping around every corner.

  We’d just turned onto the main road, which was lined with identical red-brick terraced houses, when I heard a sudden burst of music and shouting.

  “Oi! Taylor!” I looked up to see Trev leaning casually out of a top-floor window, waving a can of lager at me. The room behind him was packed with people, dancing and shouting and drinking.

  “Trev!” I shouted up at him. “Is this where you live?”

  He shook his head. “No idea whose house this is. But I’m sure everyone’s welcome. You coming in?”

  I looked at Abbey. “Erm, no, I don’t think so.”

  Abbey shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind. It’d be nice to meet some of your friends.”

  “No, I really think—”

  “Luke Taylor! Get the fuck inside!” Drunk Toby had materialized next to Trev at the window, brandishing a half-empty bottle of vodka.

  “We could just say hello.” Abbey smiled.

  “I’ll let you in!” Trev yelled, disappearing back into the room.

  Feeling the panic in my chest step up a few gears, I pushed the broken gate open. Trev ushered us into the living room and I realized I recognized nearly every single person inside it. Misty and Brandon and the quidditch team were all here. Hot Mary was chatting with Liverpool Paul on the sofa. Even Caribbean Jeremy was sitting on the carpet, inexpertly rolling a stupidly big spliff.

  Drunk Toby came galloping down the stairs and whacked me on the back. He handed me a can of Stella and then started introducing himself to Abbey. Trev turned to me: “What’s going on with Will, then? Do you think he’s actually gone for good?”

  “Dunno,” I said. “I haven’t heard anything.”

  “I heard he had to see the provost. They might disband the team.”

  “Shit, really?”

  He took a swig of beer. “I was thinking, you know, if they do, we should just start our own thing next semester. No initiations, no dickheads, no Dempers. Just playing soccer and having fun.”

  “That’s actually a really good idea,” I said.

  “I’ve already told Toby,” Trev said proudly. “He’s on board.”

  “I reckon Ed would be into it, too.”

  We clinked cans and he staggered off toward Jeremy, who was now attempting to light his precarious spliff. I looked past them, over at the doorway, to see that Negin and Frankie had appeared, and their eyes were shooting daggers at me.

  And next to them, Abbey was talking to Phoebe.

  Abbey Baker looked as neat and perfectly groomed as she always had.

  She has that Kate Middleton–type hair that no one really has in real life, long and bouncy and perfectly blow-dried. She was wearing an impossibly white cotton tank top with little purple strawberries embroidered on it tucked into her jeans. Her white Converse didn’t have a single mark on them. Her nails were painted pale lilac to match the strawberries. She had hugged me like we had been friends at school. Not a cold, I-don’t-really-give-a-shit hug but a warm, genuine one.

  “Phoebe, I want to know everything,” she said. “It’s so shitty being on a gap year. I keep seeing photos of people going out every night and I’m just sitting with my mum and dad watching Countryfile.” She laughed gently. Everything she did was sort of reserved.

  I was trying so hard to keep smiling that it
was difficult to concentrate on what she was saying. I felt like if I pretended it was just me and her in the room I might be able to get through.

  I couldn’t look at Flora next to me, or over at Frankie and Negin. Flora was deliberately not looking at one corner of the room, so I knew that’s where Luke was. The nerves in my tummy were mostly because of Flora. Because she is an unknown quantity. She could say anything at any moment.

  “I love your trousers. We match.” Abbey took a sip of her drink and smiled at Flora. “I want to be able to wear vintage stuff but I just don’t know where to start. You always look amazing. You need to give me some tips.”

  Abbey was nice. I had never heard a bad word about her. She had always been in the popular group but she was one of the ones who everyone knew was actually OK. She was sweet to everyone. She ran the homework club with the seventh graders when she was in tenth grade. She was the full package, really. Girlfriend material.

  Flora looked down at her seventies flares, which were covered in psychedelic pineapples and strawberries. It wasn’t Abbey’s fault. I looked at Flora. She must feel it. That Abbey didn’t deserve to be hurt. That she hadn’t done anything. I willed her to be nice.

  “Strawberries are clearly the thing. Phoebs, here…” Flora unpinned her strawberry brooch and leaned over and jabbed it into my tank top. It dug into me.

  “Ouch.”

  “Oops, sorry.” She fastened it. “Strawberry crew.”

  Abbey got out her phone. I smiled as she took the picture.

  She showed it to us. I didn’t look like myself. Or maybe I did but I just felt so weird that nothing seemed normal. Flora was half smiling. A kind of noncommittal smile. Like she didn’t want to give anything away one way or another. Abbey was doing a perfect off-duty model smile. Warm and accessible and polished.

  I looked across the room by accident and saw Frankie and Negin. Frankie’s face looked different, too. She was usually so animated that I had never really stopped and realized that she was actually quite beautiful in a statuesque, almost old-fashioned way. When she wasn’t scoffing she looked like a woman from a Victorian painting. The kind of face people used to call handsome. She was expressionless almost. She looked grown-up.

  “I need the bathroom,” I said, and didn’t look at Flora but just crossed the room. In my peripheral view, I thought I saw Luke’s shape but I made myself keep moving forward.

  There was someone in the bathroom. I could hear footsteps behind me. Neither Frankie nor Negin spoke. We just stood outside the bathroom, all waiting together. Hot Quidditch Marco walked out carrying a cup of blue liquid. None of us said anything.

  He smiled. “You look serious.” The way his Italian accent said the word “serious” would usually have made Frankie burst into an impression. But she didn’t. He held the blue drink out. We all shook our heads in a way that said “not now.”

  We crammed in and locked the door. You could tell boys lived here. It was functional with a grimy edge. I sat on the toilet and Frankie and Negin sat on the edge of the bathtub. None of us spoke. And the longer none of us said anything the harder it got to break the silence. I felt like it should be me. Like they were waiting for my cue. To see whether I was angry or sad or confused. They didn’t want to jump in any direction until I had.

  “I just…I don’t know…I hope Flora is OK.” It was empty. Of course it was. Flora would be OK on Mars, psychedelic flares and all.

  “She’ll be fine. She knows her…kind of.” Frankie was serious.

  “I don’t want her to feel like I’ve left her.”

  Negin shook her head. “She won’t.”

  “I don’t want her to make anything…weird.” This was closer to the truth. I couldn’t bear for her to make me endure some public scene.

  “I don’t think she’ll say anything to Abbey,” Negin said gently. “If she was going to she would have done it by now.”

  I nodded. I wasn’t going to cry. I wasn’t angry. I just wanted to evaporate. To not have to live through what was coming. There was a knock on the door. My stomach lurched intensely. It must be Luke.

  “You all right, ladies?” It was Josh’s voice.

  “Phoebe isn’t very well,” Frankie said to the door.

  “I’ll get you some water,” he called back, and we heard his feet thud down the stairs.

  The silence continued until he knocked on the door again. Negin opened it and he handed her a cup of water. “Classic Bennet, peaking too early.” None of us responded, and he seemed to catch that something was going on. “Hope you’re OK.” He leaned over and touched me really gently on the shoulder and then left, shutting the door behind him.

  “Shall we just go?” Frankie said. “There’s no point sitting in here for hours.”

  “I’ll go. Flora will come with me. You two should definitely stay. I mean, Ed might be coming…I don’t want you guys to—”

  “To be honest, I think this evening is a bit cursed,” Frankie said. “I don’t think I want tonight to be me and Ed’s night anyway. I think tomorrow will be a better day for…everything.”

  I just needed to get from the bathroom to the front door. It was, like, fifteen steps. As soon as I was out I would be OK.

  “I don’t want to say goodbye to anyone,” I said.

  “We’ll just say you are really ill.” Negin put her arm around my shoulder. It was so unlike her that for a split second I felt tears prick. “Ten seconds and we’ll be out of here.”

  “I’ll go and tell Flora,” Frankie said.

  Negin held my hand as she unlocked the door. She squeezed it. We walked out. I could hear everyone in the living room and in the kitchen. A couple I had never seen before was making out in the hall.

  “My coat’s in the living room,” I whispered to Negin.

  She nodded. “OK, wait here, I’ll get it.” She walked in just as Flora walked out. She was shaking her head like she was slightly pissed off. She looked up and saw me. She threw her arms around me. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  Negin came out holding my coat. I put it on and shuffled toward the front door. As we passed the living room I heard my name.

  “Phoebe?” I looked up. It was Abbey. “Are you leaving?” She looked so earnest.

  I nodded. “I don’t feel very well.”

  “Luke!” Abbey shouted. “Phoebe Bennet is leaving.”

  Flora shook her head. “Fuck’s sake.” She said it under her breath and Abbey’s face flickered momentarily.

  Luke appeared beside Abbey. I made myself not look at him.

  “I don’t have my bag,” I said to no one in particular.

  “I’ll get it.” Abbey turned and went back into the living room.

  “Hope you feel better.” Luke’s voice sounded tiny.

  “You’re a fucking asshole.” Flora said it plainly and clearly but low enough that only we could hear it.

  “Flora, please.” I reached down for her hand but she shook it away from me.

  “No, Phoebs. Don’t try to make it better for him.”

  “Stop. I don’t want—”

  “Fine.” She looked at Luke. “Go and enjoy the party, Luke. It’s Phoebe’s birthday, after all, so it’s important we all really have a good time.” She handed him her glass of punch and smiled a huge fake smile. “Enjoy.”

  Abbey was standing behind Luke, holding my bag. She reached over and handed it to me. I knew she had heard. And I knew that she knew. She looked the same as she had twenty minutes ago, perfectly coiffed, but her face couldn’t hide it. She was broken. She looked at me and something in her eyes triggered something in me. I knew I was going to cry and that there was nothing I could do to stop it.

  “Thank you,” I said, and put the bag over my shoulder.

  “Fuck. My stuff is in the
bedroom.” Flora turned and bounded upstairs. And I ran out the door.

  The cold felt so good. I ran to the end of the street and turned the corner. I was right in front of the bricks that me and Flora had touched only a few hours ago. It felt so weird. So much had changed. How could it all have changed so quickly?

  I let myself start crying.

  “Phoebe.” I turned around. Josh was there. I let him hold me. And then I was physically shaking.

  It was weirdly violent. Like my whole body was part of it, these long convulsions that I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t control myself. It was so loud. Not tears, but huge gasping wails. Every time I tried to stop they sounded more strangled and desperate.

  The force of his hold steadied me. I let him hold me so tight that all the sounds were buried in him. It went on and on until the gulps slowed to every ten seconds or so. He just held me and held me. Rocked me gently in a kind of rhythm that matched how I was crying until it was soothing and I didn’t want him to let me go. I couldn’t speak and he didn’t speak. I stepped away and the cold air hit me and I gulped an aftershock of a cry. Josh didn’t seem to need to say anything. It was like he would have stood next to me endlessly, not needing any kind of explanation or movement. I opened my mouth to speak and breathed in, but I didn’t know what I wanted to come out. I wiped my nose with my sleeve.

  Finally, I said: “I feel sick.” I didn’t know if I did. I didn’t even feel like I was connected to myself, like I was in my own body. I just said it because I felt like maybe it could be true.

  He nodded. “Do you have a hair tie?”

  I took mine off my wrist and he took it from me and tied my hair into a ponytail. “You’ll be fine now. Nothing worse than sick in hair. Just feel free to really puke your guts out now if you need to.”

  A rasped laugh came out of me. “OK. Thanks.” I stared at the pavement. “What a shit birthday.”

  “Well…” He took his backpack off. “OK, Bennet, it hasn’t been ideal, I get that. I mean, I’m sure other birthdays have been better. But you haven’t had my birthday present on other birthdays.”