Loveless

by Alice Oseman

  I waited for Rooney’s inevitable comeback, but it didn’t arrive.

  She blinked several times. I turned to look at her properly, and realised she was about to cry.

  ‘I did like –’ she began to say, but stopped, and her face just crumpled. Tears started falling from her eyes, and before she could say anything else, she turned abruptly and walked away.

  Pip and I watched her disappear round the corner.

  ‘Shit, I … I didn’t mean to make her cry,’ Pip mumbled.

  I had no idea what to say now. I almost felt like crying too.

  ‘We really are sorry,’ I said. ‘We – I’m sorry. I meant everything I said in my message. It was just a weird, drunk mistake. Neither of us like each other like that. And I’ve apologised to Jason too.’

  ‘You talked to Jason?’

  ‘Yeah, we … we talked about everything. I think we’re OK now.’

  Pip said nothing to that. She just looked down at the floor.

  ‘I really don’t care if you don’t want to come back to the Shakespeare Soc,’ I said. ‘I just … I just want us to be friends again.’

  ‘I need some time to think.’ Pip went to shut the door, but before she did, she said, ‘Thanks for bringing my jacket back.’

  Rooney had stopped crying by the time I returned to our room.

  Instead, she was changing into going-out clothes.

  ‘You’re going out?’ I asked, shutting the door behind me and flicking the light switch. She hadn’t even bothered to turn the light on.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, pulling a bardot top over her head.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because if I stay here,’ she snapped, ‘then I’ll have to sit and think about everything all night, and I can’t do that. I can’t just sit and be with my thoughts.’

  ‘Who do you even go out with?’

  ‘Just people in college. I have other friends.’

  Friends who don’t ever stop by for tea, or come over for movie nights and pizza, or check in with you when you’re feeling rough?

  That’s what I wanted to say.

  ‘OK,’ I said.

  Her normal bullshit, was what I’d been telling myself. That was how I justified it all, really. The skipped lectures. The sleeping in until the afternoon. The clubbing every night.

  I didn’t take any of it seriously, really seriously, until that night, when I woke up at 5 a.m. to a message reading:

  Rooney Bach

  can your let me in im outside coellge

  Forgotmy key

  It had been sent at 3.24 a.m. The college doors were locked between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. – you needed your key to get back into the main building.

  I often woke up in the early hours and checked my phone, before very quickly going back to sleep. But this panicked me so much that I leapt out of bed and immediately called Rooney.

  She didn’t pick up.

  I put on my glasses, dressing gown and slippers, grabbed my keys, and ran out of the door, my mind suddenly filled with visions of her dead in a ditch, choked on her own vomit, or drowned in the river. She had to be fine. She did stupid stuff all the time, but she was always fine.

  The main reception hall was dark and empty as I thundered through it, unlocked the door, and ran out into the dark.

  The street was empty, apart from a figure sitting on a low brick wall a little way ahead, huddled into herself.

  Rooney.

  Alive. Thank God. Thank God.

  I ran up to her. She was just wearing the bardot top and a skirt, despite the fact that it had to be like five degrees outside.

  ‘What – what are you doing?’ I said, feeling inexplicably angry at her.

  She looked up at me. ‘Oh. Good. Finally.’

  ‘You … Have you just been sitting here all night?’

  She stood up, attempting to be nonchalant, but I could see the way she was clutching her arms, trying to control her violent shivering. ‘Only a couple of hours.’

  I wrenched off my dressing gown and gave it to her. She wrapped it round herself without question.

  ‘Couldn’t you have called someone else – one of your other friends?’ I asked. ‘Surely someone was awake.’

  She shook her head. ‘No one was awake. Well, a couple of people read my messages, but … they must have ignored them. And then my phone died.’

  I was so alarmed by this that I couldn’t even think of anything else to say. I just let us back into college and we walked to our room in silence.

  ‘You can’t just … You need to be more careful,’ I said as we entered the room. ‘It’s not safe to be out there on your own at that time.’

  She started changing into her pyjamas. She looked exhausted.

  ‘Why do you care?’ she whispered. Not in a mean way. A genuine question. Like she honestly couldn’t fathom what the answer was. ‘Why do you care about me?’

  ‘You’re my friend,’ I said, standing by the door.

  She didn’t say anything else. She just got into bed and closed her eyes.

  I picked up her discarded clothes from the floor and put them in her wash basket, but then realised her phone was in her skirt pocket, so I fished it out and put it on charge for her. I even poured a little bit of water into Roderick’s planter. He really was looking a little perkier.

  And then I got into bed and wondered why I cared about Rooney Bach, queen of self-sabotage, the love expert who wasn’t. Because I did. I really, really did care about her, despite how different we were and how we probably wouldn’t have ever spoken if we hadn’t been roomed together and all the times she’d said the wrong thing or made a mess of a situation.

  I cared about her because I liked her. I liked her passion for the Shakespeare Society. I liked the way she’d get excited about things that didn’t matter very much, like rugs or plays or college marriage. I liked the way she’d always genuinely wanted to help me, even though she’d never actually known the right thing to say or do and had given much worse advice than I’d initially realised.

  I thought that she was a good person, and I liked having her in my life.

  And I was starting to realise that it was unfathomable to Rooney that someone could feel that way about her.

  I was woken up again two hours later by the sound of Rooney’s phone ringing.

  We both ignored it.

  When it rang the second time, I sat up and put my glasses on.

  ‘Your phone’s ringing,’ I said, my voice croaky from sleep.

  Rooney had not moved. She just made a grunting noise.

  I rolled out of bed and stumbled over to where Rooney’s phone was on charge on her bedside table, and looked at the caller ID.

  It read: Beth

  I stared at it. I felt like I should know who this was, somehow, like I’d seen the name before somewhere.

  And then I realised that it was the name of a person half a metre in front of me, in the only photo Rooney had put up on the wall next to her bed. A photo that was a little crumpled from all the times it had fallen off the wall and been trodden on.

  The photo of thirteen-year-old Rooney and her best friend from school. Mermaid-hair Beth.

  I swiped to answer the call.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hi?’ said the voice. Beth. Was this Beth? The girl in the photo with dyed red hair and freckles?

  Did she and Rooney still talk to each other? Maybe Rooney did have other friends who checked in with her, I just didn’t know about them.

  And then Beth said, ‘I got some missed calls from this number last night and I just wanted to check who this was, in case it’s an emergency or something.’

  I felt my mouth drop open.

  She didn’t even have Rooney’s number saved.

  ‘Um –’ I found myself talking. ‘Sorry – this actually isn’t my phone. This is Rooney Bach’s phone.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Rooney Bach?’

  ‘Uh, yeah. I’m her uni roommate. She … she was pr
etty drunk last night, so … maybe she drunk-called you?’

  ‘Yeah, I guess … sorry, this is really weird. I haven’t seen her for … God, it must be like five years. I don’t know why she even still has my number saved.’

  I stared at the photo on the wall.

  ‘You don’t still talk to her?’ I asked.

  ‘Uh, no. She moved schools when we were in Year Nine and we didn’t really keep in contact after that.’

  Rooney had lied. Or … had she? She’d told me Beth was her friend. Maybe that had been true when she was younger. But it wasn’t now.

  Why did Rooney have a photo of a friend she hadn’t spoken to for five years on her wall?

  ‘How is she?’ asked Beth.

  ‘She’s …’ I blinked. ‘She’s OK. She’s good.’

  ‘That’s good. Is she still into theatre?’

  I didn’t know why, but I felt like I was going to cry.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Yeah, she is. She loves theatre.’

  ‘Aw. That’s nice. She always said she wanted to be a director, or something.’

  ‘You should – you should message her sometime,’ I said, trying to swallow the lump in my throat. ‘I think she’d like a catch-up.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Beth. ‘Yeah, maybe I will. That’d be nice.’

  I hoped she would. I desperately hoped she would.

  ‘Well … I’ll hang up then, as this isn’t an emergency or anything. I’m glad Rooney’s doing well.’

  ‘OK,’ I said, and Beth ended the call.

  I put down Rooney’s phone. Rooney herself hadn’t moved. All I could see of her was the back of her head, her ponytail falling out, and the rest of her covered up by her floral duvet.

  What I’d thought was a mask was actually a wall. Rooney had a solid brick wall round some part of her that nobody was allowed to know.

  She’d spent the year knocking my own wall into pieces. I deserved a chance at doing the same to her.

  So I called an emergency meeting of the Shakespeare Society.

  We were going to get Pip back. And Rooney was going to help, whether she liked it or not.

  It was a Saturday, and we agreed to go out for mid-morning coffee. Jason had an early rowing practice, Sunil had an orchestra rehearsal, and Rooney would not get out of bed until I slapped her on the back of the head with her aqua rug, but somehow we all made it to Vennels Café by eleven o’clock. I finally knew what Vennels was.

  ‘That … is a lot,’ said Sunil, once I explained my plan. ‘I could get Jess involved. She plays the viola.’

  ‘And I’ll ask my rowing captain if we can borrow some stuff,’ said Jason, tapping his fingers over his mouth. ‘I’m sure he’d say yes.’

  ‘I … I don’t want to bother anyone,’ I said. The thought of other people having to help felt kind of embarrassing.

  ‘No, Jess will actually be upset if I don’t ask her to take part,’ said Sunil. ‘She’s obsessed with stuff like this.’

  ‘What about Rooney?’ said Jason to Rooney. ‘What do you think?’

  Rooney was slumped back in her chair and clearly did not want to be awake.

  ‘It’s good,’ she said, trying to sound enthusiastic but failing dismally.

  Once Jason and Sunil headed off to their own things – Jason had a study group and Sunil was meeting some friends for lunch – Rooney and I were left alone. I thought we might as well stay here and have some food, since she hadn’t had any breakfast and we didn’t have anything else to do.

  We ordered pancakes – I went for savoury; she went for sweet – and chatted for a while about mundane topics like our coursework and the upcoming reading week.

  Eventually, though, she cut to the chase.

  ‘I know why you’re doing this,’ she said, her gaze level with mine.

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Making me go out for breakfast and help you with the Pip thing.’

  ‘Why’s that, then?’

  ‘You feel sorry for me.’

  I put my knife and fork neatly on to my empty plate. ‘No, actually. Wrong. Utterly wrong.’

  I could tell she didn’t believe me.

  And then she said, ‘You spoke to Beth on the phone.’

  I froze. ‘You were awake?’

  ‘Why’d you answer the phone?’

  Why had I answered the phone? I knew most people would have just let it go to voicemail.

  ‘I guess … I hoped she was calling to check up on you,’ I said, and I didn’t know how much sense that made.

  I had just wanted Rooney to know that someone had called. That someone cared. But Beth wasn’t that person. She didn’t care any more.

  ‘Was she?’ asked Rooney in a small voice. ‘Calling to check up on me?’

  I could have lied.

  But I didn’t lie to Rooney.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘She didn’t have your number saved.’

  Rooney’s face dropped. She looked down, to one side. She took a long gulp of apple juice.

  ‘Who is she?’ I asked.

  ‘Why do you have to do that?’ Rooney leant on to one hand, covering her eyes. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘That’s fine. I just want you to know that you can.’

  I ordered another drink. She sat in silence with her arms folded, seemingly trying to cram herself further into the corner of the room.

  It took two weeks of intense planning.

  In the first week, we coordinated the time and place, and Jason went on a mission to sweet-talk the captain of his rowing team into letting us use what we needed. After we sent him to barter with a four-pack of beers, he returned with a smile on his face and a spare key to the boathouse, and we celebrated with pizza in Jason’s bedroom.

  In the second week, Sunil brought Jess along to a rehearsal. Although I didn’t feel I knew her very well, having only spoken to her a couple of times, she immediately demanded to know where I’d got my jumper – it was beige with multicoloured Fair Isle patterns – and we proceeded to bond at length over our shared love for patterned woolly jumpers.

  Jess was completely in favour of taking part in our scheme, despite the number of times I told her it was OK if she was too busy. And when she took out her viola and Sunil took out his cello, I realised why she was so keen – they clearly loved playing music together. They started running through the piece, chatting about it as they reached difficult parts and making little notes on the sheet music.

  Both of them seemed different here, as opposed to at Pride Soc, where they were constantly running around, organising everything, being the president and the vice-president. Here, they could just be Sunil and Jess, two best friends who liked making music.

  ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get it perfect before Sunday,’ Sunil promised, with a big smile on his face.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, but it really didn’t feel like enough thanks for what they were doing.

  Rooney begrudgingly agreed to take control of a tambourine. The first couple of times we ran through it together, she just stood there, tapping it against her hand, looking down at the ground.

  But as we got closer to Sunday, she started to get a little more into it. She began bobbing on the spot as we ran through the piece. Sometimes she even sang along, just a little bit, like she was sure nobody could hear her.

  By the end, I almost thought she was having fun.

  We all were, really.

  We were all having so much fun.

  And this was going to work.

  The night before that Sunday, Rooney did not go out.

  I wasn’t sure why. Maybe she just didn’t feel like it. But for whatever reason, she looked up from her laptop screen as I returned from the shower and asked, ‘Wanna watch YouTube videos and eat biscuits?’

  I squeezed into her bed, which was, like last time, pretty uncomfortable, so I said without thinking, ‘What if we moved our beds together?’ and Rooney said, ‘Why not?’ So, we did. We both pulled our beds into the centre of the roo
m, squishing them together to make one giant double bed, and started watching TikTok compilations while making our way through my packet of chocolate digestives.

  ‘I’m really nervous about tomorrow,’ I confessed halfway through the third video.

  ‘Same,’ said Rooney, crunching a biscuit in her mouth.

  ‘Do you think she’ll like it?’

  ‘I honestly have no idea.’

  We didn’t say anything else for a little while, and we soon finished the biscuits too. When the fourth video ended, Rooney didn’t go to find a new one, so we just lay there silently in the light of the screen.

  After some time – maybe a few minutes, maybe longer – she asked, ‘D’you think it’s weird I’ve still got that picture of Beth?’

  I rolled my head to face her.

  ‘No,’ I said. That was the truth.

  ‘I do,’ she said. She sounded so tired.

  ‘If she couldn’t be bothered to keep in contact when you moved schools then she doesn’t deserve you,’ I said. I was angry at Beth, honestly. I was angry at her for making Rooney care so much about someone who didn’t care about her.

  Rooney huffed a tiny laugh into her pillow. ‘It wasn’t her. It was me.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘When I was in Year Nine … that’s when I met my ex-boyfriend.’

  ‘The … horrible one?’

  ‘Ha, yeah. There was only one boyfriend. And he was horrible. Not that I realised that at the time.’

  I didn’t say anything. I waited and let her tell the story.

  ‘He went to a different school. We would text each other all day every day. I was instantly obsessed with him. And I … I soon decided that the best thing would be for me to move to his school.’ She snorted. ‘I just screamed at my parents until they let me move schools. I made up lies that I was being bullied, that I had no friends. As you can imagine, I was the actual worst child alive.’

  ‘And Beth was from your old school?’

  There was a pause, before Rooney said, ‘Beth was the only real friend I ever had.’

  ‘But … you stopped speaking to her …’