Loveless

by Alice Oseman

  We were shepherded to the club through the cold streets of Durham by Sunil and some other third years. Rooney had already attracted a small crowd of ‘friends’, if you could call them that yet, and I hovered towards the back of her group, apprehensive.

  Everyone seemed so excited.

  Nobody else seemed nervous.

  Most people my age had been to clubs by now. Most people I’d known in Year 13 had frequented the club in our nearest town, which from what I’d heard was a sticky, terrifying hellhole of regrets. But I was the one regretting not having gone with them, now. This was just another example of something I had utterly failed to experience during my teenage life.

  The entrance was down an alleyway, and it was free to get in before 11 p.m. They didn’t need IDs as we were all wearing freshers’ wristbands. Inside, it was as if someone had designed me my own personal hell – a tight-packed crowd, sticky floors and music so loud it took Rooney repeating herself three times before I realised she was asking me if I wanted to go to the bar.

  I listened to what she ordered so I’d know what to ask for – vodka and lemonade. Then there was chatting, and more chatting, and more chatting. Well, shouting, actually. Mostly people wanted to talk about what are you studying, and where are you from, and how are you finding it all. I started repeating sentences word for word to multiple people. Like a robot. God. I just wanted to make a friend.

  And then there was dancing. I started to notice just how many of the songs were about romance or sex. How had I never noticed that before? Like, almost all songs ever written are about romance or sex. And it felt like they were taunting me.

  Rooney tried to get me to dance with her, just in a casual, fun way, and I tried, I swear I tried, but she gave up quickly and found someone else. I bobbed along the side of various people I’d had conversations with. I was having fun.

  I was having fun.

  I was not having fun.

  It was nearing eleven o’clock when I messaged Pip, mostly because I wanted someone to talk to without having to shout.

  Georgia Warr

  HEY how are you this evening

  Felipa Quintana

  Everything is absolutely fine why do you ask

  I may have smashed a wine glass

  Georgia Warr

  pip . . . . . . . . .

  Felipa Quintana

  Let me live

  Georgia Warr

  how come you’re drinking

  Felipa Quintana

  Because I am the master of my own fate and I live for chaos

  Jk our corridor is having a pizza and alcohol night

  Btw I think I left my jacket in your room last night?

  Georgia Warr

  oh no!!! i’ll bring it when i visit you, don’t worry

  ‘Who you texting?’ Rooney shouted in my ear.

  ‘Pip!’ I shouted back.

  ‘What’s she saying?’

  I showed Rooney the message about Pip’s smashed glass. Rooney grinned at it, and then laughed.

  ‘I like her!’ she shouted. ‘She’s so funny!’ And then she went back to dancing.

  Georgia Warr

  anyway guess where I am

  Felipa Quintana

  Omg where

  Georgia Warr

  A CLUB

  Felipa Quintana

  ARE YOU JOKING

  I never thought I would see this day

  Baby’s first club!!!

  Wait was this Rooney’s idea? Is she peer pressuring you???

  Georgia Warr

  no i wanted to go haha!!

  Felipa Quintana

  Okay well be safe!!!!! Don’t do drugs!!!!! Watch out for nasty men!!!!!!!

  I hung in there, bobbing, until Rooney wanted to get some fresh air. Well, as much fresh air as you could get in the smoking area out the back of the club.

  We leant against the brick wall of the building. I shivered, but Rooney seemed fine.

  ‘So?’ she asked. ‘What’s your official clubbing verdict?’

  I made a face. I couldn’t help it.

  She threw her head back against the wall and laughed.

  ‘At least you’re honest about it,’ she said. ‘A lot of people hate it and still go anyway.’

  ‘I guess.’ I sipped my drink. ‘I just wanted to try it. I wanted to be a part of the uni experience. You know.’

  She nodded. ‘Gross clubs are an important staple of university life, yes.’

  I couldn’t tell whether she was being sarcastic.

  I was a little drunk, to be fair.

  ‘I just want … I want to meet people, and … do normal things,’ I said, throwing back the last of my drink. I didn’t even like it that much, but everyone was drinking, and I’d look weird if I wasn’t, wouldn’t I? ‘I don’t have a great track record of doing that very well.’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Nope. I have hardly any friends. I’ve always had hardly any friends.’

  Rooney’s smile dropped. ‘Oh.’

  ‘I’ve never even had a boyfriend. Or even kissed anyone.’

  The words just came on out before I could stop them.

  I immediately cringed at myself. Shit. That was the thing I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone any more. That was the thing people had made fun of me for.

  Rooney’s eyebrows raised. ‘Wow, really?’

  She wasn’t being sarcastic. That was pure, genuine shock. I don’t know why I was surprised – people’s reactions during truth or dare on prom night must have been how everyone felt. But it really got to me in that moment. The weird looks. The people who’d suddenly see me as a child, as immature. The movies where the main characters freaked out about being virgins at the age of sixteen.

  ‘Really,’ I said.

  ‘Do you feel bad about it?’

  I shrugged. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And you want to change it? Now that you’re at uni?’

  ‘Ideally, yes.’

  ‘OK. Good.’ She turned so she was facing me, leaning against the wall with one shoulder. ‘I think I can help.’

  ‘O … K …’

  ‘I want you to go in there and find one person you think is hot. Or a few. More chance of this working.’

  I already absolutely hated this idea. ‘Oh.’

  ‘Try and get their name, or at least memorise what they look like. And then I’ll help you get with them.’

  I did not like this scheme. I did not like this at all. Survival Mode was kicking in throughout my body. I wanted to run.

  ‘Oh,’ I repeated.

  ‘Trust me,’ she grinned. ‘I know a lot about relationships.’

  What did that mean?

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘So I just pick a person and … you’ll set us up?’

  ‘Yes. Sound good?’

  ‘… Yeah.’

  If the university experience was all about bad decisions, at least I was doing something right.

  I felt a bit like David Attenborough.

  I circled the club on my own, leaving Rooney at the bar, focusing on the guys first. There were a lot of hoodies. Sweat-patches on T-shirts. A lot of them had the same hairstyle – short sides, longer on top.

  I kept looking. Surely I’d find someone I fancied eventually. The club was packed – there had to be a good couple of hundred people crammed into this room alone.

  And yet, I found no one.

  There were guys who were objectively ‘attractive’, of course, by modern-day media standards. There were guys who clearly worked out a lot. There were guys who had fun hair or good fashion or a nice smile.

  But I wasn’t attracted to any of them.

  I didn’t feel any sort of desire.

  When I tried to picture standing close to them, kissing them, touching them …

  I grimaced. Disgusting, disgusting, disgusting.

  I decided to change tactics and look at the girls instead. Girls are all pretty, to be honest. And they have much more variety in appearance.

  But
on a basic, physical level, did I feel attraction?

  No.

  Lots of people had started hooking up already – kissing each other underneath the flashing lights and the love songs playing louder than the voices in our heads. It was a little gross, but it had an element of danger that made it beautiful. Kissing a stranger you’d never see again, kissing someone whose name you didn’t even know, just to feel a little high in that moment. Just to feel the warmth of someone’s skin on yours. Just, for a while, to feel purely alive.

  God. I wished I could do that.

  But the idea of trying to get with any of these people – no matter their gender – was, honestly, unnerving. It made me feel itchy. Shivery, maybe. It filled my stomach with a weird, horrible dread, and a warning siren went off in my brain. It felt like my antibodies were fighting it off.

  What was I going to say to Rooney?

  Out of hundreds of students, I couldn’t find anybody I thought was hot. Sorry.

  Maybe she could just choose someone for me. God, that would be so much easier.

  It would be so much easier if I had someone to just tell me what to do and who to be with and how to act and what love actually was.

  I abandoned my search. Tonight I would remain kiss-less. Romance-less. And that was fine. Right? That was fine.

  I didn’t know whether I’d wanted it or whether I hadn’t. Honestly, it might have been a little bit of both. Just like with Tommy.

  Wanting and not wanting at the same time.

  It wasn’t until an hour later that I spotted Rooney again through the blurry, flashing mass of bodies. She was in the middle of the dance floor, making out with a tall guy wearing ripped skinny jeans.

  His arms were round her waist. One of her hands was on his face.

  It was a picture of passion. Movie romance. Desire.

  How.

  How could a person reach that point in the space of an hour?

  How could she do in one single hour what I was unable to force myself to do in my whole teenage life?

  I hated her. I wanted to be her. I hated myself.

  It all hit me then, suddenly. The music was so loud I felt like my vision was blurring. I shoved through people to get to the edge of the room, only to find myself pressed up against the wall, which was wet with condensation. I looked wildly around for the door, then started barging my way towards it, and out, into the chilly, empty October air.

  I breathed.

  I wasn’t going to cry.

  Three of the John’s third years were having a conversation in the smoking area, leaning against the wall, including, to my surprise, Sunil.

  He was my college parent – I knew he’d help me. I could ask him to walk me back. But as I stepped forward, I felt embarrassed. I was an absolute failure. A child. Sunil turned, glanced at me curiously and I willed him to ask me if I wanted to go back to college and whether I wanted him to walk back with me. But he didn’t say anything. So I just left.

  After a couple of hours in the noisy club, the high street’s silence felt like it was echoing around me. I could barely remember the way back to college because I’d been so stressed on the way here that I hadn’t been paying attention to where we’d been walking, but thankfully, I found myself on the cobbled path and walking back up the hill, past the castle, then the cathedral, and then I could see the stone steps of St John’s College.

  ‘There’s something wrong with you,’ I said under my breath. Then I shook my head, trying to get the thought out. That was a bad thought. There was nothing wrong with me. This was just who I was. Stop thinking about it. Stop thinking about any of it.

  I could message Pip and – what would I even tell her? That I was terrible at clubbing? That I could have tried to kiss someone but decided not to? That I was utterly failing at my new start? Pathetic. There was nothing to even tell her.

  I could talk about it with Jason, but he’d probably just tell me I was being silly. Because I was. I knew this whole thing was ridiculous.

  So I just walked. I kept my head down. I didn’t even know what was wrong. Everything. Myself. I didn’t know. How come everyone else could function and I couldn’t? How could everyone live properly yet I had some sort of error in my programming?

  I thought about all the people I’d met in the past few days. Hundreds of people my age, all genders, appearances, personalities.

  I couldn’t think of a single one I was attracted to.

  I opened the door to college so loudly that the man in the little office gave me a stern look. I suppose he thought I was a drunk fresher. God, I wished I was. I looked down at my dress, the one Mum had seen in River Island and said, Oh, isn’t that perfect? And I’d agreed, and she’d bought it for me, so I could look nice and feel nice during Freshers’ Week. I started to well up. God, not yet, please not yet.

  My room was empty – of course it was. Rooney was out there living her life and having experiences. I grabbed my washbag and pyjamas, went straight to the bathroom, got in the shower and had a cry.

  ‘So you have very high standards,’ Rooney said to me the next morning while I was eating a bagel in bed and she was doing her make-up in front of her mirror.

  We would have talked about it last night, but I fell asleep in the middle of reading a Steve/Bucky Regency Era AU fic, only to wake up a few hours later to find Rooney returned, fast asleep, her make-up still on and her boots discarded in the middle of the aqua rug.

  ‘That’s … accurate,’ I confirmed. I did have high standards. I wasn’t sure what exactly my standards were, but they were undoubtedly very high.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, seemingly unfazed. ‘We’ve got loads more chances to find you someone. It won’t be that hard.’

  ‘Won’t it?’

  ‘Nope.’ Her mouth dropped open as she did her mascara. ‘Loads of people are looking to hook up this week. There are so many opportunities for you to meet people. It won’t take us that long to find you someone you like.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘What’s your type?’ Rooney asked at lunch.

  Lunch at college was just like lunch at school – cafeteria food and sitting round tables and benches – but ten times worse due to the added pressure of socialising with a bunch of people I didn’t know very well. As irritating as I found Rooney’s effortless ability to thrive at university, I was actually very glad to have her in situations like this.

  Thankfully, however, this was the first meal that Rooney and I had showed up to in which we didn’t spot anyone Rooney knew, so we were able to sit just us.

  ‘Type?’ I asked, my mind immediately going to Pokémon types, and then wondering whether it was a food question of some sort and looked down at my pasta.

  ‘Type of guy,’ said Rooney, mouth full.

  ‘Oh.’ I shrugged and speared a piece of pasta. ‘I don’t really know.’

  ‘Come on. You must have some idea. Like, what sort of guys do you find yourself liking?’

  None of them, is what I probably should have said. I never like anyone.

  ‘No type in particular,’ is what I actually said.

  ‘Tall? Nerdy? Sporty? Musicians? Tattoos? Long hair? Boys who look like pirates?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Hm.’ Rooney chewed slowly, looking at me. ‘Girls?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘D’you prefer girls?’

  ‘Um.’ I blinked. ‘Well … I don’t think so? Not really.’

  ‘Hm.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s just interesting.’

  ‘What is?’

  Rooney swallowed, smirking. ‘You, I guess.’

  I was about eighty per cent sure she was using ‘interesting’ as a synonym for ‘weird’, but, oh well.

  ‘I had an idea,’ Rooney said to me in a very earnest tone that evening. I would have taken her seriously were she not dressed as a sexy fried egg in preparation for the John’s college bar
fancy-dress party. This comprised a body piece in the shape of a fried egg, but with thigh-high socks and giant heels. I was actually quite impressed – it was an incredible way to say ‘I want to look good, but also let you know that I have a sense of humour’.

  I was not going to the fancy-dress party. I’d told Rooney I needed a night to just be on my own and watch About Time swiftly followed by La La Land, and, to my surprise, she’d said that was fair enough.

  ‘An idea?’ I said from my bed. ‘About …?’

  Rooney walked over and flopped down next to me on my bed. I shuffled up so the fried-egg body piece wasn’t literally crushing my torso.

  ‘Your no-romo situation.’

  ‘I’m really not that bothered,’ I said, which was obviously a lie. I was extremely and consistently bothered, but after yesterday’s fiasco I was ready to give up rather than put myself through that again.

  Rooney held up her phone. ‘Have you tried any dating apps?’

  I looked at the phone. I’d never met anyone our age who used a dating app. I hesitated. ‘Do people our age use dating apps?’

  ‘I’ve used Tinder since I turned eighteen.’

  I knew what Tinder was, at least. ‘I don’t really think Tinder is for me.’

  ‘But how will you know if you don’t try?’

  ‘I don’t think I need to try everything to know I don’t like it.’

  Rooney sighed. ‘Look, OK. This is just an idea, but Tinder is a really good way to just have a look at what guys are actually out there, like, in the vicinity. You don’t actually have to talk to them, but, like, it might at least help you get an idea of what sort of guy you want to go for.’

  She opened Tinder on her phone and immediately showed me a picture of the first guy who popped up. ‘Kieran, 21, Student’.

  I looked at Kieran. He looked a bit like a tall rat. Which, you know. That sort of look does it for some people.

  ‘I don’t think this is my thing,’ I said.

  Rooney rolled off my bed with a sigh, her egg costume nearly knocking over the glass of water on my bedside table. ‘It’s just an idea. Do it if you get bored tonight.’ She walked over to her own bed and grabbed her bag. ‘Swipe left is no, swipe right is yes.’