by Alice Oseman
He walked straight past me, without looking at me, mouth clamped shut, and sat down next to Pip, who was going over today’s scene.
Sunil arrived moments later. He was wearing checked trousers with a black shearling jacket and a beanie.
He took one look at Jason and said, ‘You look exhausted.’
Jason grunted. ‘Rowing.’
‘Oh, yes. How are the six a.m. practices?’
‘Freezing and wet.’
‘You could quit,’ said Pip. She seemed a little hopeful at the prospect.
Jason shook his head. ‘Nah, I do enjoy it. I’ve made a lot of friends there.’ He shot a quick glance at me. ‘It’s just been a lot.’
I turned away. There was no way to make this better.
In true Jason tradition, he was assigned the role of a stern older man. This time it was Duke Orsino from Twelfth Night, another of Shakespeare’s romcoms.
The premise of Twelfth Night is a big, messy love triangle. Viola is shipwrecked in the land of Illyria and, since she has no money, disguises herself as a boy called Cesario so that she can get a job as a servant to Duke Orsino. The duke is in love with a noble lady of Illyria, Olivia, so he sends Viola to express his love for her. Unfortunately, instead of accepting the duke’s feelings, Olivia falls in love with Viola, who is disguised as Cesario, a guy. And, doubly unfortunate, Viola falls in love with the duke. It’s not technically gay, but let’s be real: this play is very, very gay.
Sunil had already volunteered to be Viola, saying, ‘Just give me all of the roles that mess around with gender, please.’
Pip and I huddled next to each other against the wall with my coat over our legs. It was freezing cold in our giant rehearsal room today.
‘You two run through the scene,’ said Rooney. ‘I need to go and get some tea or I will actually die.’
She’d had another of her nights out last night.
‘Get me a coffee!’ shouted Pip as Rooney went to leave.
‘I would literally rather stomp on a nail!’ Rooney shouted back, and I was interested to see that this made Pip laugh instead of her usual gritted-teeth annoyance.
Jason and Sunil were amazing. Jason was well-practised, having done a lot of Shakespeare before, and Sunil was equally good, despite the fact that the only acting he’d done was a minor role in a school production of Wicked. Jason was all, ‘Once more, Cesario,’ and Sunil was all, ‘But if she cannot love you, sir,’ and, overall, it was a very successful run-through.
I sat and watched, and it almost took me out of my head, making me forget about everything that had happened in the past couple of months. I could just live in the world of Viola and Orsino for a while.
‘I am all the daughters of my father’s house,’ said Sunil. One of the final lines of the scene. ‘And all the brothers too.’ He glanced up at me and Pip with a smile, momentarily breaking character. ‘That’s such a good line. New Twitter bio.’
Sunil really seemed to be enjoying being in the production. Maybe more than any of us, to be honest. He and Jason went off to work on the scene on their own, and with nothing to do, I stayed sitting against the wall, knees tucked up to my chin waiting for Rooney to come back from her tea run.
‘Georgia?’
I looked up at the voice to find Pip scooting over to me, her open copy of Twelfth Night in one hand.
‘I had an idea,’ she said. ‘About what you could do in the play.’
I was really, really not in the mood to actually do any acting today. I wasn’t sure I could act as well as I’d thought, anyway.
‘OK,’ I said.
‘There’s another character in Twelfth Night who has quite a big thematic role – the clown.’
I snorted. ‘You want me to be the clown?’
‘Well, that’s just what he’s called in the text. He’s more of a court jester.’ Pip pointed at the scene in question. The clown had some lines leading up to the scene that Jason and Sunil were currently working on. ‘I thought it might be really cool to have you do some of these bits before this Viola-Orsino scene.’
I read the lines, sceptical. ‘I don’t know.’ I glanced at her. ‘I … my acting’s been pretty shit lately.’
Pip frowned. ‘Dude. That’s not true. Those roles just … weren’t right for you. You’re not shit at anything.’
I didn’t reply.
‘How about you just give it a go? I promise I will be nothing but supportive. And I’ll throw something at Rooney if she says anything negative about you.’ As if to demonstrate, Pip pulled her boot off and held it aloft.
This made me laugh. ‘OK. Fine. I’ll try.’
‘I’m back!’ Rooney galloped into the room, somehow not spilling hot drinks everywhere. She slumped down next to me and Pip, putting her tea on the floor, and handing a coffee to Pip.
Pip stared at it. ‘Wait, you actually got me one?’
Rooney shrugged. ‘Yeah?’
Pip looked up at Rooney, genuine surprise, and something almost akin to fondness on her face. ‘Thanks.’
Rooney stared back, then seemed to have to wrench her head away. ‘So how’s the scene going? It’s only two weeks until the Bailey Ball, we need to get this one locked down before then.’
‘I had an idea,’ said Pip. ‘We could add in the clown.’
I half-expected Rooney to immediately protest this, but instead, she sat down next to Pip and leant towards her so she could read her copy of Twelfth Night. Pip made a face of moderate alarm, before relaxing, though not without very quickly adjusting her hair.
‘I think that’s a good idea,’ said Rooney.
‘Yeah?’ asked Pip.
‘Yeah. You do sometimes have good ideas.’
Pip grinned. ‘Sometimes?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘That means a lot.’ Pip nudged her. ‘Coming from you.’
And I swear to God Rooney went redder than I had ever seen her.
It’d been a long time since I’d stood on a stage alone. Well, it wasn’t technically a stage, but the way the other four were sitting in front of me, watching, while I was standing in front of them, had the same effect.
In Twelfth Night, the clown, whose name is actually Feste, shows up periodically to either provide some light comic relief, or to sing a song relevant to the themes of the story. Right before Jason and Sunil’s scene, Feste sings a song, ‘Come away, death’, about a man who dies, possibly of heartbreak because a woman doesn’t love him back, and he wants to be buried alone because he’s so sad. It’s basically just a fancy way of saying that unrequited love is pretty rough.
We all decided that I should recite it as a monologue rather than sing, which I was grateful about. But I was still nervous.
I could do this. I wanted to prove that I could do this.
‘Come away, come away, death,’ I began, and I felt my breath catch in my throat.
I can do this.
‘And in sad cypress let me be laid.’ I kept my voice soft. ‘Fly away, fly away, breath; I am slain by a fair cruel maid.’ And I read the rest of the song. And I felt all of it. I just felt … all of it. The mourning. The wistfulness. The fantasy of something that could never happen.
I’d never experienced unrequited love. I never would. And Feste, the clown, wasn’t even talking about himself – he was telling someone else’s story. But I felt it anyway.
‘Lay me, O, where sad true lover never find my grave, to weep there.’
There was a pause before I closed my book and looked up at my friends.
They were all staring at me, transfixed.
And then Pip just started clapping. ‘Fucking YES. Absolutely fucking yes. I’m a genius. You’re a genius. This play is going to be genius.’
Rooney joined in with the applause. So did Sunil. And I saw Jason very subtly wipe his eye.
‘That was OK?’ I asked, although that’s not really what I wanted to ask. Was I good? Will I be OK?
Everything in my life was upside down, but did I st
ill have this? Did I still have one thing that brought me happiness?
‘More than OK,’ said Pip, smiling wide, and I thought, Yeah, OK. I hated myself right now for a lot of reasons, but at least I had this.
In the two weeks between that rehearsal and the Bailey Ball, we had three more rehearsals, during which we completely surpassed Rooney’s aim of getting one scene done. We got all three done – Much Ado About Nothing with Pip and Rooney, Twelfth Night with Jason, Sunil and me, and Romeo and Juliet with Jason and Rooney, having decided that I wasn’t the best choice for Juliet. We even had time for the pizza night we’d promised Sunil. He and Jason seemed to be fast friends, getting immersed in a discussion about musicals they’d seen, and Rooney and Pip managed to make it through a whole movie without making a single snide comment to each other. At one point, they were even sitting with their shoulders pressed together, amiably sharing a packet of tortilla chips.
Despite everything that was happening behind the scenes, it was coming together. We were actually making a production.
Thank God I had that to hang on to. Without it, I would have probably just stayed in bed for two weeks, because figuring out my sexuality had unearthed a new kind of self-hatred I hadn’t been ready for. I’d thought figuring that out was supposed to make you feel proud, or something. Clearly not.
Something was up with Rooney too. Something had changed in her after that night we’d walked in to find her crying. She’d stopped going out in the evenings, instead spending them watching YouTube videos or TV shows, or just sleeping. I’d got used to the clacking of her frantic typing next to me in our English lectures, but it had stopped, and I often caught her just sitting very still, staring into the distance, not listening to the lecturers at all.
Sometimes she seemed fine. Sometimes she was ‘normal’ Rooney, directing the play with an iron fist, being the shiniest person in the room, chatting to twelve different people at dinnertime in the college cafeteria. She was at her best when Pip was around – exchanging banter and jokes with her, lighting up in a way she didn’t with anyone else – but even with her, I sometimes noticed Rooney turn away, put physical distance between them, like she didn’t want Pip to even see her. Like she was scared what would happen if they got too close.
I could have checked if she was OK, but I was too wrapped up in my own feelings, and she didn’t check if I was OK either, because she was too wrapped up in hers. I didn’t blame her, and I hoped she didn’t blame me.
We were just two roommates dealing with things that were difficult to talk about.
‘If you send me the photos of you in your dress,’ said Mum on Skype the afternoon of the Bailey Ball, ‘I’ll get them printed out and sent to all the grandparents!’
I sighed. ‘It’s not the same as prom. I don’t think there will be official photography.’
‘Well, just make sure you get at least one full-length pic of you in your dress. I bought it so I need to see it in action.’
Mum had bought me my Bailey Ball dress, though it had been my choice. I hadn’t actually planned on getting it because it was too expensive, but when I was sending links of potential dresses to her while we chatted on Messenger, she offered to pay for it. It was really nice of her, and honestly, it made me feel a pang of homesickness more intense than I’d experienced so far at uni.
‘Did any boys ask you to be their date to the ball?’
‘Mum. British universities don’t do that. That’s American schools who do that.’
‘Well, it would have been nice, wouldn’t it?’
‘Everyone just goes with their friends, Mum.’
Mum sighed. ‘You’re going to look so beautiful,’ she cooed. ‘Make sure you do your hair nicely.’
‘I will,’ I said. Rooney had already offered to do it for me.
‘You never know – you might meet your future husband tonight!’
I laughed before I could stop myself. Two months ago, I would have been dreaming of a perfect, magical meet-cute at my first university ball.
But now? Now I dressed for myself.
‘Yeah,’ I said, clearing my throat. ‘You never know.’
Rooney was silent while she did my hair with some thick curling tongs, her eyebrows furrowed in concentration. She knew how to do those big loose waves that you always see on American TV shows, but I found absolutely impossible to replicate by myself.
Rooney had already done her own hair. It was swept back from her forehead and perfectly straightened. Her dress was blood red and tight with a long slit up one leg. She looked like a Bond girl who later turned out to be the villain.
She insisted on doing my make-up too – she had always been a fan of makeovers, she explained – and I let her, seeing as she was way better at make-up than me. She blended golds and browns on my eyes, chose a muted pink lipstick, filled my eyebrows with a tiny brush, and drew neater winged eyeliner than I had ever been able to achieve alone.
‘There,’ she said, after what felt like hours but was probably more like twenty minutes. ‘All done.’
I checked myself out in Rooney’s pedestal mirror. I actually looked excellent. ‘Wow. That’s – wow.’
‘Go look in the big mirror! You need to see the full effect with your dress. You look like a princess.’
I did as she said. The dress was straight out of a fairy tale – floor-length, rose-coloured chiffon with a sequinned bodice. It wasn’t super comfortable – I was wearing a lot of tit tape – but with my wavy hair and shimmery make-up, I did look and feel like a princess.
Maybe I could even enjoy tonight. Wilder things had happened.
Rooney stood next to me in the mirror. ‘Hm. We kind of clash, though. Red and pink.’
‘I think it’s a good clash. I look like an angel and you look like a devil.’
‘Yes. I’m the anti-you.’
‘Or maybe I’m the anti-you.’
‘Is this a summary of our whole friendship?’
We looked at each other and laughed.
The theme of the Bailey Ball had been a huge topic of speculation at St John’s College for weeks, and somehow I was one of the only people who hadn’t found out what it was before the night of the ball itself. This was probably because the only friend I had in college was Rooney, and she’d refused to tell me when I asked, and I wasn’t bothered enough to force it out of her.
Apparently, there’d already been a ‘Circus’ year, ‘Alice in Wonderland’, ‘Fairy tale’, ‘Roaring ’20s’, ‘Hollywood’, ‘Vegas’, ‘Masquerade’, and ‘Under the Stars’. I did wonder whether they were starting to run out of ideas.
It wasn’t immediately clear what the theme was when we walked through the college corridors and out towards reception. The foyer had been adorned with flowers and the stairway had been turned into what looked like a castle wall, complete with turrets and balcony. Inside the dining hall, circular tables featured centrepieces of more flowers, but also crafted bottles of poison and wooden knives.
I only got it when I heard ‘I’m Kissing You’ by Des’ree playing overhead – a song I knew featured prominently in a certain 1996 Baz Luhrmann movie.
The theme was Romeo and Juliet.
We met Pip and Jason outside the doors to St John’s. Jason gave me an awkward nod, but otherwise said nothing to me.
They both looked incredible. Jason was wearing a classic tuxedo, and it hugged his broad shoulders so perfectly that it was like it’d been custom-tailored. Pip had styled her hair extra curly and was wearing black cigarette trousers, but with a velvet tuxedo jacket in a forest green colour. She’d paired that with a pair of chunky faux-snakeskin Chelsea boots, which somehow exactly matched the colour of her tortoiseshell glasses.
Rooney’s eyes flickered up and down Pip’s body.
‘You look nice,’ she said.
Pip struggled not to do the same to Rooney in her Bond girl dress, instead keeping her eyes firmly up at Rooney’s face. ‘So do you.’
Dinner felt like it went on for
a year, even though it was only the beginning of what was to be the longest night of my whole life.
Rooney, Jason, Pip and I had to share a table with four other people, but thankfully they were all Rooney’s friends and acquaintances. While everyone else all got to know each other, I did what I always did and stayed silent but attentive, smiling and nodding when people spoke but not really knowing how to get involved in any of the conversations.
I felt lower than I had ever felt.
I wanted to snap out of it, but I couldn’t.
I didn’t want to be at a party where Jason hated me and Rooney and Pip were living what I would never have.
Sunil, dressed in a baby-blue tux, and Jess, who was wearing a dress covered in mint-green sequins, stopped by to say hello to us, though they mainly spoke to Rooney because she was three glasses of wine down and very talkative. When they went to leave, Sunil winked at me, which made me feel better for about two minutes, but then the brain goblins returned.
This was who I was. I was never going to experience romantic love, all because of my sexuality – a fundamental part of my being that I couldn’t change.
I drank wine. A lot of wine. It was free.
‘Only eight hours to go!’ Pip cried as we filed out of the dining hall after dessert. I was absolutely stuffed with food and, to be honest, drunk already.
I shook my head. ‘I’m not gonna make it till six a.m.’
‘Oh, you will. You will. I’m going to make sure you will.’
‘That sounds incredibly menacing.’
‘I’ll be here to flick you on the forehead if you start falling asleep.’
‘Please don’t flick me on the forehead.’
‘I can and I will.’
She attempted to demonstrate, but I ducked out of the way, laughing. Pip always knew how to cheer me up, even if she didn’t know I was feeling down in the first place.
The Bailey Ball wasn’t confined to one hall – it spread throughout the ground floor of the main college building and into a marquee on the green outside. The dining hall was quickly transformed into the main dance hall, of course, with a live band and a bar area. There were several themed rooms serving food and drink, from toasties to ice cream to tea and coffee, and a cinema room that was playing all the different movie adaptations of Romeo and Juliet in chronological order. The corridors that we hadn’t seen yet were decorated so intensively that you couldn’t see the walls any more – they were covered in flowers, ivy, fabrics, fairy lights, and giant crests for ‘Capulet’ and ‘Montague’. For one night only, we were in another world, outside the rules of space and time.