Freshmen Page 27

  “Any couples come into the middle,” the photographer said.

  “No couples here, mate,” Connor bellowed. “Single and ready to mingle: D Dorm middle floor.”

  “Have you seen Ed?” Negin whispered to Frankie.

  She shook her head. “Do you think if I had seen him I would have just kept that information to myself?”

  The photographer walked along the line manually adjusting our poses before saying: “OK, best Christmas smiles.”

  “Last day of semes—” Connor’s yell was cut short suddenly. He burst out of the formation and sprinted across the hall. Our eyes all followed him and found Becky at the entrance.

  She was standing in a long blue dress, smiling. And standing next to her was Luke.

  Connor was charging madly toward us and my first thought was: He’s going to punch me. He is literally going to punch me in the face.

  But he didn’t. He just picked Becky up and carried her victoriously back to her screaming hall mates, who swallowed her in an onslaught of hugs and kisses and war whoops.

  I just stood there, by myself, watching it all happen and feeling simultaneously really pleased and slightly awkward. All week I’d had this picture in my head of me turning up at Phoebe’s birthday dinner with Becky in tow, and the two of us being given this hero’s welcome. Obviously, that plan had completely gone to shit over the past twenty-four hours, but still…at least something good had come out of it.

  Phoebe broke away from the Becky huddle and looked over at me. She was wearing this long white dress, and it brushed the hall floor gently as she crossed to me. I couldn’t read the look on her face. But then, I never really can.

  All she said was: “How did you find her?”

  “This girl in Ed’s hall, Jamila, used to go to school with her,” I said. “She gave me her address.”

  Her eyes widened a little bit. “What, you actually went and physically got her?”

  I nodded. “She only lives, like, an hour away.”

  “That…” She fiddled with the weird fur scarf thing she was wearing. It was like she was trying to find the right words hidden somewhere inside it. “That was an amazing thing to do,” she said finally. “You have a weird ability, Luke Taylor, to be the hero and the villain at the same time. Like, concurrently.”

  “Right…” I shoved my hands into the pockets of my dad’s too-big tuxedo jacket. “Is that a compliment, or…?”

  She rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. “No, it’s definitely not a compliment. But it’s still impressive. It’s, like, just when we are all going to sentence you to death for doing something terrible and unforgivable, you go and do some miraculous thing that saves you at the eleventh hour. I mean…how did you convince her to come back?”

  I shrugged. “To be honest, I think she was already convinced. She said she’d told her boyfriend about the photos and everything, but they’d made up and they were back together now. So I think she would’ve come back next semester anyway. All I did was convince her to come back for tonight.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Just that I was so sorry about everything that happened, and that no one, literally no one, had fucked up this first semester more than me. But I was still coming back. I told her we should both look at it like first semester didn’t happen. Like, next semester we were starting again from scratch.”

  We looked over at Becky, who was still being joyously manhandled by Frankie, Negin and the rest of them. She caught my eye for a second—or maybe it was Phoebe’s eye—but whosever it was, she looked happy. Definitely the happiest I had ever seen her.

  I turned back to Phoebe. “This is gonna sound weird, but can we go outside for one second? I’ve got to give you something.”

  “That sounds ominous….”

  “Please, just one sec.”

  I grabbed my bag and she grabbed her coat and we walked out of the hall and started following the edge of the lake around to Wulfstan.

  “So look…,” I started. “I know it’s awkward to mention your birthday—”

  She cut me off with a humorless snort-laugh. “Last night was pretty much a disaster from start to finish.”

  “Because of me.” I nodded.

  She didn’t look at me. “Well…at least eighty percent because of you, yeah.”

  We got to the First Night Bridge and both automatically sat down on it, with our legs dangling out over the edge. The hum of music and laughter from the hall carried across the lake toward us. Earlier, on the train back with Becky, I’d tried to rehearse this whole big speech in my head, but, like everything else this semester, I ended up just bumbling straight into it without thinking.

  “Phoebe, listen,” I said. “I know that everything that happened with Abbey yesterday makes me out to be a complete asshole. And obviously, the reason for that is because I am a complete asshole. But you have to know: I barely spoke to her all semester. Yesterday she came up here out of the blue. And I know it was awful, and I’m so sorry, but it was also good because we finally sorted everything out. We just needed to see each other and say the last things we had to say, and say goodbye properly. And we’ve done that. And the truth is…I told her how much I like you. Because I really, really like you. And I want us to be a couple. Like, an actual couple. You have been the best thing about college. The only good thing.”

  I stopped to catch my breath, but Phoebe didn’t say anything. She was just watching the water lapping softly at the bank below her. I reached into my backpack.

  “I should have given you this yesterday. And it’s not wrapped because I am a jerk. And, y’know, also because I was busy heroically bringing Becky back….”

  She gave me a pretty hefty eye roll for that, which, to be fair, I deserved.

  “But anyway…happy birthday.”

  I handed her the Ariel book, and she just stared down at it blankly, like I’d given her a bus ticket or something. Finally, she said: “It’s beautiful.”

  “Do you really like it?”

  She turned to look at me. “Of course. Thank you. It will be on my shelf forever.” She touched the yellowy, frayed corner of the cover, gently. “I love things like this. Like, when you look at them it reminds you suddenly of some really specific memory. Something you thought was buried, but then you touch this kind of emotional portkey and it all comes back to you.”

  “Yeah.” I nodded, even though I wasn’t entirely sure what she was on about. I was mainly wondering if and when she was going to respond to my declaration of…not love, exactly, but pretty serious like.

  Suddenly, she said, “Why were you crying on that first night?” and I must have flinched or something because she added, “I saw you in the computer room.”

  I exhaled. “Well…me and Abbey had had this awful summer and I just couldn’t take it anymore. We broke up that night. Or…started breaking up. I don’t know. It feels so long ago. But I felt like there was all this pressure welling up inside me, and it just got to be too much…I can’t really describe it.” I shook my head. “I can’t really describe anything. I think about that a lot. I feel like the words that can explain what is actually happening inside me don’t exist.”

  She looked at me and almost laughed. “Listen…this is awkward but I really don’t care anymore.” She took a deep breath. “I had the biggest crush on you at school. I feel like I’m on a TV show doing some big reveal, but whatever, there it is. Secret’s out.”

  I didn’t really know how to respond to that. I was more interested in whether she liked me now. So I just said: “Well, that’s nice…thanks,” which for some reason made her laugh so hard that her fur thing fell off and nearly dropped in the water.

  I grabbed it before it could tumble over the edge. “Hang on, do you mean even in tenth grade when I had that ridiculous, shaved-at-the
-sides haircut?”

  She laughed again. “Well, it lessened then, obviously. That was when I turned my attention to Max Fulda.”

  “Thank god. I would have lost all respect for you.”

  She wrapped the fur back around her neck, and I wondered if maybe I should try to kiss her.

  She stretched her legs out over the water and sighed, and then looked me dead in the eye. “To be honest, Luke, and obviously I may live to regret this, but…I just don’t think I want to be with you.”

  He opened his mouth to respond, but I kept talking.

  “I want us to be friends,” I said. “Proper, real friends who would be there for each other whether we were getting with each other or not.”

  He closed his mouth and then nodded. He looked out across the lake.

  “And right now,” I said, “don’t you need a proper friend more than you need a girlfriend?”

  He smiled sadly. “Well, yeah. I haven’t got too many real friends at the moment.”

  “That’s not true.”

  He straightened his back and reached over to hold my hand. “Phoebe, seriously, I know things have been really messy, honestly, I know that, but—”

  I shook my head to cut him off. “Things haven’t been really messy, Luke. You’ve been really messy. And your mess has started to mess me up, too. So if you really do like me, then be a good friend and don’t let that happen.”

  He breathed out slowly, like he’d just been deflated. But he kept holding my hand. Finally, he said, “If friends is your final offer, Phoebe, I guess I’ll have to take it.”

  I wriggled my fingers around his, into a handshake position: “To friendship.” He laughed and we shook on it. He was really handsome in a tux. Clean-cut and broad and grown-up. He looked like he was born to wear it, and walk down a red carpet having his picture taken.

  We clambered to our feet and started to walk back around the lake. When we got to the hall I said, “I’m just going to put the book back in my room. Don’t think Sylvia would forgive me if I got Jägerbomb all over it.”

  He nodded. “See you in there.”

  I watched him walk off into the madness of the ball, where Ed and Arthur and a few others were cheering and waving him over. And that was it. I had rejected Luke Taylor. Eighth-grade me would have died from shock at that sentence. It actually made me laugh out loud, to myself, like a lunatic. And then I wanted to tell Flora. I got out my phone and saw she had texted back:

  You look awesome, best one. If you ruin that dress I will kill you xxx

  I went back to my room and squeezed the Ariel book on the little bookshelf. Who knows, maybe Luke Taylor would turn out to be the love of my life, but in order to ascertain that, I would have to actually get to know him first, and pay real attention this time.

  I wandered back down the deserted Jutland walkway, and as I crossed the parking lot I could see Josh was near the entrance to the hall. As I came in, he turned and smiled and I felt a bit nervous. He started walking toward me, and I wondered what we would say.

  “What time you heading home tomorrow?” he asked. There was a tension in his voice I had never heard before.

  “Think my mum’s coming at midday.”

  Neither of us knew what to say next. In my head, I replayed the moment I had tried to kiss him. It was almost unbearable.

  Just as I was about to make an excuse and walk off, he threw his arms around me. And I hugged him back. And we both just stayed there in the hug. The words we’d said had felt all strange and wrong and not what we meant, but the hug felt right and not weird and how things really were.

  We broke away and looked at each other and I didn’t understand what was happening between us. What he felt and what I felt and what everything meant. But there was loads of time to figure that out.

  “I’ll see you later, Bennet.” He smiled.

  I found Frankie and Negin at the edge of the dance floor, watching Becky get frantically waltzed about by Connor. Luke was on the other side of the hall, dancing with Arthur and Rita and everyone. There was still no sign of Will, or any of the other soccer boys.

  “So…” Frankie took a sip of her drink. “Glad you and Luke Taylor are love’s young dream, because my life as the nun of York Met is continuing without my consent.”

  Negin gave me a look that said: Things are not good.

  “Shape-Face Girl and Ed are over there,” she whispered. I followed her glance to where Ed and Sophie-or-Sarah were kissing, right in the middle of the dance floor.

  “Oh shit,” I groaned.

  Frankie huffed. “Maybe if I had a banana mouth and perfectly circular eyes I could bag an attractive tall man, too.”

  “Well, I’m not with Luke Taylor, either,” I said. “So you can also sign me up to the York Met nunnery.”

  “Me too,” Negin sighed. “Interesting Thought Boy is getting with some random girl.”

  “What?” We followed her gaze. I didn’t recognize ITB at first without his holey sweater. He looked less philosophical in a tux. But there he was, his tongue down the throat of some rand—

  “That’s not a random!” I yelled. “That’s Stephanie Stevens.”

  “Who?” Negin and Frankie said in unison.

  I shook my head. “I should never have saved her life. I should have let her choke on her own vomit.”

  We stood in a row, my head leaning on Frankie, and Negin’s head leaning on me. We just watched Stephanie Stevens and ITB, and Ed and Sophie-or-Sarah like we were watching late-night QVC.

  “Oh well…” Frankie sighed. “I think we should just get Becky, dance our asses off, then go back and decoupage our letters and competitively eat cheese toasties until one of us dies from a cheddar overdose.”

  “Sounds good.” I looped an arm around each of them. “I mean, you know loads of people die in freshman year right? Like, millions.”

  1

  HANNAH

  Grace burst into my bedroom with such force that she nearly fell over.

  “Freddie isn’t in France!” she announced triumphantly as Tilly came crashing in behind her.

  I sat up in bed, where all morning I had been watching videos of baby sloths and tutorials on how to do cat-eye eyeliner flicks.

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “Yes!” Tilly yelled, and started doing a little victory dance on the spot.

  “But I stalked him this morning,” I said, “and there’s a picture of him actually standing in front of the Eiffel Tower, holding up a baguette and pretending it’s a mustache. He literally couldn’t be more in France if he tried.”

  “Yeah, he was there,” Tilly squealed, “but then the most amazing thing happened: his house got robbed and they had to come home early!”

  “Obviously, it’s really bad about his house and everything,” Grace cut in dutifully.

  “Yeah, yeah.” Tilly nodded. “Obviously…but the point is…he’s coming to Stella’s tonight. Fact.”

  “Fact,” Grace repeated. “And you are totally going to get with him. Tonight is the night….” She crinkled her nose and smiled.

  I kicked off the comforter and swung my legs out of bed. “What? No…I’m not ready.”

  “You are ready,” Grace soothed. “You are totally in the right place. He’s so the right person.”

  “No, I don’t mean emotionally ready. Obviously, I’m emotionally ready. I mean I’m literally not ready. I haven’t gotten out of bed for three days. I look like an absolute mess.”

  “You look like you always do,” Tilly said.

  “Thanks, Tills.”

  “Seriously, Hannah,” said Grace. “You’ve always said Freddie was the one you’d lose it to. The only reason it hasn’t happened yet is because you’ve been on exams lockdown for, like, the last four
months.”

  “Fate was keeping you apart,” said Tilly grandly.

  “And now fate’s brought you back together,” said Grace. “Have you got any food?”

  “Excuse me, I thought we were talking about the role of fate in my life?”

  “Yeah, but I’m hungry—I can’t contemplate fate on an empty stomach.”

  I slumped back into bed. “Go downstairs and have a look, then. My mum hides the snacks above the microwave.”

  They clomped down to the kitchen. Grace was right. I’d put losing my virginity on the back burner until after my College Board exams. Although “losing” is such a random word for it. It’s not like you’re gonna find it under your study guide, is it?

  I used to dream about losing it to someone fragile and kind. Someone who understood me and was really cool but didn’t care what other people thought of him. Someone with dark, curly hair who tanned really well and spoke Italian. Or maybe was Italian.

  Freddie Clemence is not fragile, kind or Italian. He’s not the love of my life. At least, I hope he’s not, or I won’t have much of a life to look forward to. But surely, if everybody held on to their virginity until they found the love of their life, there’d be a lot more virgins roaming around.

  Half the problem is that I do the same thing with boys that I do with clothes: I imagine an outfit before I go shopping rather than just waiting to see what’s in the stores when I get there. I daydream scenarios that will never happen. I think about boys falling in love with me who in real life wouldn’t look at me. And it’s not even me in the daydream; it’s this sort of celebrity version of me, all glossy and poised and sexy. I imagine being invited to parties where events play out perfectly. How I’ll meet the love of my life and he’ll be inexplicably drawn to me and say things like, “I would die for you, Hannah.” And then we’ll have sex in a car like in Titanic.

  In reality I’m either making out with Freddie in a corner or cleaning up someone else’s puke because I feel bad for the person whose party it is.