Freshmen Page 26

  “He called you a bitch, did he?” she snapped as she started trying to pick up the stars. “Poor you, Phoebs. Do you want a cuddle? Do you want everyone to stick up for you? Do you want a special party just for you? Like, what is it you want?”

  “I’m sorry. I really…I know it looks weird he was in my room. He’s the boy who—”

  “I know who he is.” It was almost scornful. “I just don’t know who you are.” She turned and actually, properly looked at me for the first time. “Like, Phoebe, I came to see you. I paid money and spent a week making you a photo scrapbook. I was excited yesterday. I have missed you. And you just spend the whole time talking about, or being treated like shit by, Luke fucking Taylor. I mean, I don’t give a shit what happened with Luke, or this Will person. I care about the fact you are my friend. You are my best friend, Phoebe. But who are you? I was worried about you. Really, really worried. I called you a million times, but you just ignored me. You just left that party, left me on my own.”

  She gave up on the stars and carried on packing her bags. “I don’t know. D’you remember in summer how we talked and talked about going to college? Like, how we couldn’t wait for our lives to actually start? You were the one who saw school as this whole new beginning, but all you’ve done is come here and act like it’s still eighth grade, and the only thing in your life is fantasizing about Luke Taylor. Who, by the way, in real life, is a dick. You’re confusing our Luke Taylor with the real one.”

  She picked up her phone and looked at it. “My taxi’s here.”

  And she walked out. Just like that. I hadn’t even gotten out of bed.

  I could hear Frankie and Negin in the kitchen with the others. Drinking tea and laughing as if life was normal. I went to my door three times and couldn’t get up the courage to open it. I got dressed really slowly and meticulously and brushed my hair section by section.

  When I finally managed to walk to the kitchen and push the door open it was almost midday. Frankie, Negin and Liberty were all sitting at the kitchen table. “Morning, Phoebs.” Liberty smiled and then walked out, clearly feeling the tension.

  Neither of them spoke.

  “Hey,” I said, and shuffled over. I didn’t even feel like I had permission to sit down. Connor appeared at the door and then quickly disappeared again. Frankie took a sip of her tea.

  “How are you both feeling?” I tried to keep my voice even.

  “I just…” Frankie stared at her empty cup. “The thing with Will. I just found that really strange.”

  “After what happened with Becky…,” Negin added. I felt like it was a line she had rehearsed, something she had wanted to get out before I even came in.

  It was like this tangled spaghetti mess. Everything in my life was twisted together so tightly that it was impossible to separate. If one bit of it went wrong, everything else did, too. I almost didn’t have the energy to try to explain it all. “OK…,” I started. “Look. Nothing happened with Will. When I got back, he was in the bar.”

  They both looked down at their cups. What if they didn’t believe me?

  “He saw me, and he came out and just kept repeating himself again and again and saying he was in so much trouble. That he was already failing his course and now he was gonna get kicked out of York, and that he was a good person and that people had to realize that he was a good person. He told me his dad hates him, which was fucking strange, and I just didn’t know what to say. He was just so drunk. So I made him a cup of tea and—”

  Negin put a hand up to stop me. “You made Will a cup of tea?” She sounded disgusted.

  “I know, it sounds weird. It is weird. But he seemed so desperate. He was in such a state. And then he told me that he had been called to see the provost and that he needed to sort things out or the soccer team would get disbanded and he would get expelled.”

  “Good, he should get chucked out.” Frankie shrugged. “That was the whole point of the protest.”

  I nodded. “I know, I know.”

  “Did you tell him that?”

  “I just said that it was a mess. He asked me to come and see the provost with him today. As, like, a character witness. Someone who was in the protest but didn’t want him to get chucked out. Who could vouch for him and say he was a decent guy.” Frankie laughed sharply at that. “I told him no, obviously,” I continued. “But he kept asking and he got more and more upset that I wouldn’t do it. Like, he was almost crying. And then the fire alarm went off.”

  Frankie and Negin looked at each other. “Right.”

  “Do you want a cup of tea?” Negin said quietly. I nodded.

  “Honestly…I really, really know that last night was a fucked-up mess and that I acted—”

  “Yeah, it was,” Frankie said. “But not really because of you.” She smiled at me softly. “The Abbey thing was awful, Phoebs.”

  “Yeah. It feels like this domino effect of fucking awfulness piling up around me. Like I’m drowning in it. The last thing I need is to go to a ball. I need to go to a mental institution.”

  “There’s no milk,” Negin groaned.

  We trudged downstairs to buy some. Frankie hadn’t bothered to change out of her pajamas and still had her comforter wrapped around her. We walked into the shop and some people looked at us and exchanged glances. We bought the milk in a slightly tense, exhausted silence. As we walked back we noticed a group of people staring at the notice board outside the bar. We slowed down and it took me a second to compute what I was seeing.

  It was right in the middle, pinned on top of loads of other sheets. In grainy but all too clear black-and-white. Asleep, head tilted back on the pillow, hair frizzing in all directions, mouth lolling wide open: a photo of me.

  I watched Abbey’s train shrink until it was a tiny speck on the horizon. Then I found a bench and just sat there pointlessly for a bit, looking up at the display board and listening to the announcer’s dreary voice echoing around the walls.

  It was weird to think that this time tomorrow, I’d be heading home. Seeing mum and dad again. Seeing Reece and everyone. Spending the whole Christmas holiday summing up first semester to various relatives in short, socially acceptable sound bites. “Yeah, it was good. Tiring, but really good.” That’s probably what I’d go with. I mean, how can you actually describe the first semester to anyone? How can you possibly express the confusion and awkwardness and freedom and fun and terror and just general batshit insanity of it all? You can’t. You just have to live through it.

  I got up and started trudging slowly back down the platform. For some reason, something Arthur had said last week kept circling around and around in my head. It had been about three in the morning, when we were stoned watching Netflix, and he’d started going on about this philosophy book he was reading. He said the person who wrote it, some Russian-sounding guy, had this theory about how human beings aren’t just one single, unified “I”—they are actually billions of separate, tiny “I’s”, all pulling in different directions to try to get what they want.

  At the time, I’d just told him to shut up so I could concentrate on Iron Man 3. But now, after Abbey and Marcus, and Phoebe and Will, and everything else that had happened this semester, the whole concept suddenly made sense to me. Walking through this freezing station, I didn’t feel like a real, unified person; I felt like a swarm of stupid, confused, jealous “I’s,” all stuffed into the same body.

  At least things with Abbey finally felt OK. Or on their way to being OK in the long run. But things with Phoebe…Seeing her come down those stairs last night with Will had been grim. Really grim. I hated the idea of them together, but did it actually change the way I felt about her? It was weird; the more I thought about it, the only thing that all my “I’s” seemed to agree on was Phoebe.

  That was when it hit me. Maybe it wasn’t too late for the surprise.<
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  A lot had changed in the last twenty-four hours—Abbey had come to my room, Will had come out of Phoebe’s—but it didn’t really make any difference. The truth was, I’d been acting all week like this whole thing was just about me and Phoebe, when really that was obviously bullshit. It was way more important than that.

  I looked up at the display board again and dithered for a few seconds, wondering whether this actually was or was not a good idea. Standing there, in what was quite literally the cold light of day, it could very easily be considered a bad idea.

  But no. It had seemed like a good idea last week, when Ed had told me about Jamila. And it had seemed like a good idea every day since, as I sat in the library with Phoebe and thought about what it would mean to her.

  So it still felt like a good idea now. Or, at least, I had to make it a good idea.

  The door was bright red with an over-the-top eagle knocker in the center.

  It didn’t match the front garden, which was full of dead plants and a few black trash bags. There wasn’t a doorbell. I lifted the eagle’s wings and knocked. The knocks sounded much clearer and more sure of themselves than I did. I could hear footsteps thudding toward the door and felt a shudder of nerves.

  “Wait a second, I can’t find the keys.” It was Will’s voice. I looked at the gate. I could still run away.

  A key turned in the lock and it opened. Will was wearing brushed cotton pajama bottoms and a T-shirt with Michelangelo eating pizza that had a speech bubble saying I’M A PARTY DUDE. And he was wearing glasses. He just stood there.

  “I didn’t know you wore glasses.” I don’t know how I thought I would start it. But not like that. Not in a small talk, I’ve-just-bumped-into-you-at-the-optician’s sort of way.

  “Yeah, only for watching TV and…stuff.”

  There was a silence. I looked down at the floor, which was still covered in restaurant leaflets and unopened letters.

  “Josh isn’t…” He ruffled his hair. For a second I thought he was trying to suppress a yawn.

  “I wanted to talk to you, actually.” My voice didn’t shake. I was impressed by how level it sounded.

  He looked behind him. Hoping for someone to come and save him, maybe.

  “Come in.” He extended his arm, welcoming me. “Would you like a cup of tea?”

  “Yeah. OK. Thanks.” Accepting tea felt like I was coming in peace. I was supposed to be confronting him, and he was ruining it with his boarding school manners.

  He shut the front door behind me, and our mutual uneasiness made the seconds slow down.

  I cleared a patch on the sofa and thought about the last time I’d sat here. I listened to him put the kettle on. He popped his head around the door. “We haven’t got any milk. Or tea bags. Do you want hot Tang? Or Josh has got some Fanta?”

  “Fanta would be great, thanks.”

  I had to say something as soon as he came back in or I would just end up having a polite glass of Fanta and leaving, like a surreal interlude to this whole fucked-up thing.

  He handed me a dirty-looking glass and I took a sip. It was completely flat, like drinking sugared water. I wondered what Will’s family home looked like. Some massive country estate with boot scrapers and a chrome convection oven and a dog named after a Greek philosopher. I wondered if his dad really did hate him, and if he even remembered telling me that.

  He had left the kitchen door open. I could see right through to his bedroom. To the bed with its burgundy comforter and still-bare mattress. I almost made a joke about him still not having put a sheet on. How sick am I?

  If I let any more small talk happen, I wouldn’t do it. I stared into the Fanta, took a deep breath and then looked straight at him. “Why did you put that picture up on the notice board?” My voice was louder and angrier than I had expected.

  His face tightened for a second, then relaxed. “Phoebe, I didn’t,” he said slowly. “The boys on the team think it was Taylor. I mean, you did…”

  He left it there. But I didn’t. It was so ridiculous I actually laughed. He was like a little kid.

  “Will, I know it was you. You were angry when you left. You called me a bitch.”

  He shook his head. “No, I didn’t.”

  “At least admit it. This is a joke. What’s the point when we were both there? Luke Taylor might be a complete jerk in many, many respects, but I know for a fact that he wouldn’t…”

  I couldn’t think of the words to make him understand. Were there even words that could describe all this?

  “He wouldn’t do something to deliberately make someone…to humiliate someone on purpose.”

  He ruffled his hair again and laughed awkwardly, shifting his weight from leg to leg. “OK, I hold my hands up.” And then he actually, literally, held his hands up, like he was saying he’d eaten the last chocolate at Christmas. “I am a massive dick. And I was really wrecked. I just thought you could maybe do me that one little favor, which would basically mean I wouldn’t get kicked out of college. But, obviously, that was too much of a hassle….”

  “Are you being serious? Will, the whole thing is completely disgusting. It’s sick. Becky left school. A girl left because she felt so bad about it.” I didn’t shout. I just let the words fall plainly between us.

  He sighed. “Yeah, but come on, Phoebe. Like, she probably had issues anyway. If that is gonna make you leave college, then…Come on. That is just ridiculous.” He snorted slightly. “I mean, the photos thing…It was just supposed to be a laugh between the team. And now, honestly, people are acting like it was some gross, creepy, terrible thing.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Because it is.”

  He took his glasses off and started cleaning them on his T-shirt. “Just so you know, I didn’t start that stuff. Like, god, that was actually nothing to do with me. Just cause I’m the captain, people are making out like I invented the whole thing.”

  “You still took my picture. And then you printed it out and put it on the notice board….” He didn’t say anything. He looked out the window. I wondered if he was thinking about that night. The night we didn’t have sex.

  He picked up his phone and looked at it. Like he was bored. “Look, I’m probably gonna get kicked out for it anyway. Like I say, I admit it. I am a bad person.”

  But I knew from the way he said it that he didn’t really believe it. That he thought saying sorry made everything better. That he actually thought he was a great person underneath it all.

  “I don’t know why Josh was ever friends with you,” I said quietly. “I don’t know why anyone is friends with you.”

  He laughed again, nervously. “Me neither, what a douche. Phoebs, I hope things are OK between us now, anyway, like, thanks for coming to clear the air.”

  “It’s not clear.” I thought about telling him about my own appointment with the provost, but I didn’t. I got up. “I just wanted to see what you would say.”

  Neither of us knew how we were supposed to say goodbye. I should have marched out and slammed the door behind me but I just picked up my bag and then fumbled about checking if I had everything. Then I made a kind of awkward face and walked to the door. He politely followed me, his autopilot charm kicking in. The unopened mail scrunched underneath my boots. I put my hand on the lock to open it.

  “See you later,” he said quite brightly, really.

  I half turned back to him. “Honestly, you just don’t get it. And even being chucked out of York won’t make you get it. I’m going to tell the provost that you actually spent time finding that picture, and printing it out, and taking it to the board, and finding pins so you could put it there so that people would wake up and laugh at me. But nobody did. Everybody just thought you were gross and said, ‘I hope he gets chucked out.’ Honestly, I really hope you do.”

  I didn�
��t walk out feeling any kind of triumph. I didn’t feel any better about any of it. Just a tiny bit better about myself.

  Later, as we all wandered over to Central Hall, I sort of wished I hadn’t worn Flora’s dress. She had lent it to me before everything had happened, when everything we owned was still shared. As we were getting ready, I’d sent her a picture of me wearing it and written that I missed her. She still hadn’t texted back.

  The dress wasn’t even a dress, really. It was a nightie from the 1930s. It was ivory silk and had initials embroidered on the front that said EWR. We had spent ages wondering what names they stood for.

  “I can’t even talk to you normally,” Frankie said to Negin as we headed up the walkway. “You’re so different in evening wear.”

  Negin looked like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. She was wearing a plain black dress with a high neckline. With the dress and her bob and her small diamond earrings, she made everyone else look like they had tried too hard.

  Frankie was in plain red silk, and Liberty was wearing a white floor-length dress with a slit. She had stepped up her usual glitter game to include a single hand-painted-by-Negin silver glitter snowflake on her shoulder.

  The spaceship building looked amazing. Totally different from the safety presentation day. All the chairs had been folded down into the floor to make a giant wooden dance floor, and the walls were covered in tinsel and fairy lights and holly. A massive Christmas tree loomed right at the back of the hall, throwing its shadow over the DJ stage. I tried to pick out Luke among the swarms of tux-wearing boys, but I couldn’t see him.

  We waited patiently in the line to have our photo taken. An arch of silver and white balloons had been put up specially for the occasion.

  “I want to take my shoes off already,” Frankie groaned. “And eat. I wish I had brought those Mini Cheddars with me.”

  “Come on, then,” the photographer shouted, and we all crammed in under the arch. I adjusted the fake fur shrug thing Liberty had lent me, and smiled as brightly as I could into the lens.