This Time Next Year

by Sophie Cousens

  When his parents split up there had been talk of selling the blue house and his mum moving out of London to somewhere quieter. Maybe she would have been better off in a small village, somewhere people were nosy and wanted to know your business. In London, if you wanted to keep yourself to yourself there was no one to stop you.

  Quinn crossed the railway bridge and London changed in an instant, like crossing through curtains from front stage to back. The scene transformed from boutique shops, flower stalls, and cafés that sold four types of milk, to a road full of buses, noise, graffiti, and street vendors thrusting newspapers at you. Most of his friends lived on this side of the tracks. Often Quinn felt more at home here—people didn’t look at you so closely, it was easier to get lost in the crowd. Up in the sky a single firework exploded. Quinn looked up to see tendrils of light cutting a slash through the gray sky, a loner firework breaking free.

  * * *

  —

  Bambers was packed by the time Quinn arrived; he couldn’t get over how popular it was. Clusters of teenagers were crammed into the room, swaying self-consciously to the music. In the middle of the dance floor the older, drunker kids were taking up all the space, swinging each other around, screaming the words to “Around the World” by ATC. The air smelled of cheap Superdrug body spray with “going out” names like Twilight Seduction or Midnight Mist. Sweat hung in the air like in a hot locker room after games. Disco lights were set up at the far end, strobing circles of red, blue, and green that jumped across the ceiling of the dimly lit hall. A DJ was on decks in front of the kitchen kiosk, a purple banner covered in musical notes that read music melvin was draped over the kiosk. There was a trestle table bar selling soft drinks, crisps, and those glow sticks you snapped in half to make them work. The table was being manned by the usual selection of mums—the kind of mums who baked cupcakes with “2004” written in gold icing, the mums who came early to help hang paper bunting and label Coke bottles with stickers reading one pound.

  “Quinno!” called a voice across the hall. Quinn looked up to see Matt strutting toward him. “Quick, have some of this.”

  Matt handed him a bottle of warm Coke that smelled like it was eighty percent vodka. Quinn took a sip and tried not to gag.

  “Painter’s already pulled,” said Matt, elbowing Quinn in the ribs.

  Matt was short with pointed features and deep-pitted acne across his chin and the lower half of his cheeks. He was friendly, funny, and brilliant at football, but he didn’t get much attention from girls even though, recently, girls were all he talked about. “Fucking Painter, look at him!” Matt pointed out Paul Painter, a well-built blond rugby player in their year. He had his arm around a girl in a black velvet minidress over by the vending machine that only sold out-of-date crisps.

  Quinn felt one of the phones in his pocket buzz. His mother was texting him already. He slapped his friend on the back and handed him back the bottle of Coke.

  “You won’t make it to midnight if you drink this.” Quinn looked around the room to see who else he knew. “Is Jonesy here? Patel?”

  “Jonesy’s smoking. Patel said it was all lame twelve-year-olds and went to try the pub—says he knows the doorman, such bollocks. Have this, I’ve got plenty.” Matt handed him back the Coke.

  Quinn felt his shoulders begin to relax as he took another sip of alcohol.

  He replied to his mum; he’d arrived, he was fine. She’d messaged telling him to get a cab home on the account; she said she’d ordered him one for twelve fifteen. It was only a short night bus back to the railway bridge and then a five-minute walk home, but there was no point arguing with her.

  “Your mental mum let you out then?” came a voice behind him, and Quinn felt a friendly punch land in the side of his ribs. He turned to give Jonesy a thump on the arm. “It’s yer birthday, it’s yer birthday,” Jonesy sang, grinding his hips into Quinn and waving his arms in a dance.

  Duncan Jones was one of Quinn’s best friends and one of the only people who could get away with making jokes like that about his mother.

  “You got Dr. Quincey here drinking?” Jonesy asked Matt, taking the Coke out of Quinn’s hands and sniffing it. “The mentalist isn’t going to like that.”

  “He’s got to have the odd night off,” said Matt.

  “Let’s not talk about my mum tonight, dickheads,” Quinn said.

  “Let’s talk about Matt’s mum then. Mrs. Dingle is looking proper MILF these days,” Jonesy said, making a kissing, clicking sound with his tongue and giving Matt a wink.

  “Don’t you . . .” Matt took a lunge at Jonesy. Quinn stepped between them and held out a palm to intercept Matt’s flailing fist.

  “Boys!” came a warning voice from one of the trestle-table mums. “We’ll have none of that, please.”

  The night rolled on. Deepak Patel reappeared, having failed to get into the pub, DJ Music Melvin turned out to be half decent, and Quinn danced and drank and laughed with his friends. At one point a few girls came shuffling over to dance next to them, but Matt scared them away with his version of break dancing.

  “If you want to pull, you’ll have to ditch Pizza-Face,” Deepak said, pointing at Matt, who by this point was staggering around the dance floor, sloshing his drink down his T-shirt, shouting out lyrics to “Bootylicious” by Destiny’s Child. “Those girls clearly want to get to you, but Matt keeps leching on anyone who gets close.”

  Quinn hadn’t thought about trying to kiss anyone tonight. He never tried to kiss girls, it just happened sometimes without him doing very much. His school was all boys, but whenever he and his friends hung out with girls, it was usually his louder, more outgoing friends who did all the talking, while Quinn, without trying to, came off as the quiet, interesting one.

  A group of girls wearing crop tops and faded denim were watching him from a line of plastic chairs at the side of the room. They all clasped disposable red cups between both hands. One wearing too-red lipstick smiled at him. She was pretty but, even with the vodka, he wouldn’t know what to say if he went over there alone.

  At ten to midnight, Quinn slipped off the dance floor and hid in the corridor by the loos. He didn’t want to be exposed at midnight. Music Melvin would start playing “Lady in Red” or some other saddo slow dance. There’d be the awkward shuffle as people tried to line themselves up with someone to kiss, his mates nudging one another, merciless in their mocking of both success and failure. He couldn’t deal with that kind of pressure. He replied to another text from his mum, the fourth of the evening. Happy New Year, Mum. Honestly, go to bed, I’m fine.

  When he looked up from his phone there was a girl standing in the corridor opposite him. She had straight blond hair, soft freckled skin, and a bright, cheerful face.

  “Don’t mind me.” She gave a little shrug and leaned back against the wall, resting one foot up behind her. “I’m just hiding from lemming o’clock on the dance floor.”

  Quinn gave a nonchalant nod.

  “Don’t you hate how everyone just gets off with whoever they’re standing next to at midnight? It’s such a meat market. I bet most people don’t even know the name of the person they’re kissing. So gross,” said the girl, shaking her head and making a disapproving little scowl.

  Her cheeks were flushed and she rubbed her neck with the heel of a palm. Music Melvin was playing “2 Minutes to Midnight” by Iron Maiden—not so predictable after all.

  “Yeah, gross,” Quinn said quietly, then after a pause, “Did you say lemming o’clock?”

  “Lemmings all copy each other, don’t they? They don’t think for themselves.”

  She gave him a coy smile. Then she looked off down the corridor and pushed her foot away from the wall. Quinn felt as though she was about to leave. He didn’t want her to go. He tried to think of something else to say.

  “Apparently there are like, thirty different species of lemming.”
>
  Of all the things to say, why had he gone with that? How did he even know that? He must have picked it up from one of the nature documentaries his mother watched. This is exactly why he didn’t talk to girls. He glanced up at her face, convinced she was going to laugh at him.

  “Good knowledge,” she said, leaning back against the wall again. “I love a lemming fact.”

  Quinn felt his shoulders relax.

  “What species do you think is out there on the dance floor then?” she asked, fiddling with a strand of blond hair.

  “Probably the lesser-known urban species—Teenagius drunkerus,” he said.

  She let out a laugh like a garden sprinkler, firing out little bursts of joy. The sound sent a fizz of energy through Quinn.

  Voices back in the hall started shouting in unison, “Ten, nine, eight . . .”

  Quinn was suddenly filled with an overwhelming compulsion to kiss this girl. His mates wouldn’t have noticed someone like her, with her Doc Martens boots, roll-neck top, and high-waisted jeans, but something in her face stood out to Quinn. She was luminously pretty but clearly had no idea that she was. Her whole way of being felt magnetic to him.

  “Six, five, four . . .”

  He tried to catch her eye. He’d overheard Toby Sampson in the locker room once saying that was the key to it, just look at them long enough without blinking and they’ll know you want it. She looked back. He looked away. He was no good at the looking game. He took a step toward her, pretending to be intensely interested in something on the wall behind her shoulder. He put a hand up against the wall by her head, then he just stared at his hand, unsure of what to do next. God this was awkward. She was going to laugh at him, ask him what he was doing. She’d tell all her friends about this weird lemming-fact guy who’d tried to kiss her by the loos.

  “Three, two, one— Happy New Year!”

  He dared another sideways look at her. She was looking up at him, her pupils flushed wide. Then her eyes darted nervously from side to side.

  “Um, hi,” she said.

  “Hello,” he mumbled, dropping his gaze to the floor. “Can I . . . Would it be OK if I . . .” Oh god, what if she said no? He wasn’t sure any kiss was worth this level of stress.

  “Yes,” she said, her voice breathy and nervous, her cheeks flushed pink.

  She shut her eyes and tilted her head up toward him as he closed the space between them. Quinn felt his stomach flip as her soft full lips pressed gently against his.

  Quinn had kissed girls before but not like this. The kisses before had been wet and mechanical, pleasurable, but consciously so, and somehow a bit ridiculous. Like the girl from the hockey club who just stuck her tongue out and moved it back and forth into his mouth like a lizard. This was something entirely new; every part of his body was invested in this, her mouth entirely in sync with his own. He felt an instant firm reaction beneath his jeans and pulled away, embarrassed that she might notice.

  “Wow,” she said softly, her face flushed. “Um, happy New Year.”

  “H—”

  Quinn couldn’t even repeat the sentence back to her, his mind was so full of questions; was this what kissing was supposed to be like? What was her name? Could he see her again? Could he kiss her again now without pressing his offensively hard jeans against her?

  Before he could answer any of these questions, his phone started to ring, then his other phone started ringing too. The girl glanced down, perplexed.

  “Sorry.” Quinn took a step back, pulling both phones out of his pocket. His mother was calling on one, the taxi company on the other. It was one minute past midnight. Quinn turned his back on the girl, not wanting her to look down at his jeans. “I’m . . . I need to take this, but wait here, please. I’ll be one minute.” He gave her an apologetic, pleading look and backed out of the side door into the courtyard beyond.

  “Yes,” he said, answering the phone to his mother. “Mum, I’m kind of bu—”

  “Quinn.” She was crying. “I need you to come home right now.”

  “Mum, I’ll be back in half an hour, I said—”

  “You need to come back now, Quinn, I think there’s someone in the garden, trying to get into the house.” She sounded breathless, panicked.

  Quinn sighed a slow, resigned sigh. He called back the cab; he’d be five minutes, just long enough to get the girl’s name and number. But when he went back inside to the corridor, she had gone.

  February 1, 2020

  Minnie woke up in a panic. She couldn’t breathe. Something was suffocating her. She sat bolt upright, gulping for air, her arms flailing frantically. A gray ball of fur flew across her bed with a “screeeeoooow” sound. Since moving home, Lucky had taken to sleeping on her face. Whether he had separation anxiety, or he simply missed having a warm spot to sleep on at the top of the fridge, Minnie didn’t know, but it was turning into a life-threatening situation.

  Looking around the room, Minnie had that momentary feeling of not knowing where she was. The ceiling was too close, the windows weren’t where they should be, and there was the ominous sound of ticking, like a hundred bombs about to go off. Then she remembered she was at her parents’ house on a mattress on the floor in her old attic bedroom. There were no bombs, just the combined sound of a hundred clocks.

  The small, eight-by-ten-foot space was packed with boxes and old suitcases. Her father’s workbench was set up in the middle of the room, covered with the remaining tools and magnifying lenses he hadn’t got around to moving. The wooden frame of her deconstructed bed leaned against one wall, stacked away to make more room for boxes.

  The last few weeks felt like an unraveling to Minnie, wool being pulled from her body, stripping her of comfort and leaving her naked. All the ways in which she defined her current life had been removed. Minnie was a chef, she ran a pie company, she lived off the Essex Road, and she dated Greg. Breaking up with Greg felt like stripping off that last piece of identifying clothing.

  Handing back the key to her flat had been painful.

  “It’s only temporary,” Leila had reassured her as she helped move boxes into the hall. “You won’t be at your parents’ forever.”

  But Minnie couldn’t see how she was ever going to manage to rent a place on her own again. What with moving house, breaking up with Greg, and the flurry of orders to fill at work, she hadn’t had a chance to plan what she was going to say to Leila about the business. She’d been waiting for inspiration to strike, but it hadn’t struck.

  She glanced up at one of the clocks on the wall to see what time it was, but each clock showed a different time. She checked her phone, eleven a.m. She’d been awake half the night, her brain too full; she must have finally dozed off around six. The jostle of thoughts now began again in earnest and she knew she would have no peace until she plucked them out one by one and confined them to a list. She typed a note on her phone.

  TO DO:

  Apologize to Quinn Hamilton for being horrible cow.

  Tell Leila I want to close the business.

  Think of excuse—why do I want to close the business?

  Help Bev, Alan, and Fleur find new jobs.

  Secretly plan Leila’s perfect engagement.

  Get new job for self.

  Find somewhere to live.

  Stop being so shit at life.

  Buy cat food.

  Help Bev resolve existential crisis.

  Build bed/Sort out room.

  Then she moved number eleven to the top of the list. It was best to start the day with achievable tasks. She picked up a box that had “Minnie’s stuff” scrawled on the side. Inside was an old karaoke tape player with a broken pink microphone, a half-built Lego Millennium Falcon, and an owl money-box she’d painted herself. She shook it hopefully, but it didn’t rattle. At the bottom of the box was
a pink photo album decorated in blue glitter glue. In round cursive twirls she had written, “Summer Camp 2005.” Minnie flicked reverently through the pages. The book was full of pictures of her with Leila the summer they’d first met. Every year, she’d begged her parents to let her go to that summer camp and every year they’d said they couldn’t afford it. They usually just asked Will to watch her in the holidays, but then Will got a summer job, so Dad relented and she was allowed to go.

  On that first day at camp she’d seen Leila walking toward her wearing a pink leotard and green hot pants. She was the coolest person Minnie had ever seen in real life. Minnie had cowered as she’d approached, convinced someone like Leila would only be coming over to say something cruel to her—but she’d just smiled and asked Minnie if she wanted to join them for a water-balloon fight. For Minnie, it had been platonic love at first sight.

  It took Minnie most of the day to sort out her bedroom; there was so much nostalgia imbued in each object from her childhood. Eventually, she was satisfied that the room felt habitable. She’d rebuilt the bed, stacked all her dad’s boxes neatly against a wall, and categorized all her things into: “Old to Keep,” “Old to Bin,” and “Things For Now.” She didn’t want to unpack the “Things For Now” boxes; it would be conceding that her stay at home was more than temporary.

  As a final gesture to brighten the space, she propped the only piece of art she owned against a pile of boxes at the foot of her bed. It was a print of a painting called Automat. Leila had given it to her for her twenty-first birthday and Minnie had treasured it ever since. It depicted a woman in hat and coat sitting alone in an American diner, gazing thoughtfully into a cup of coffee. She looked alone but not lonely; there was something self-contained and contemplative about the woman. You wanted to know what she was thinking, where she had come from, where she might be going. On the back, Leila had scribbled a note—“Be a good companion to yourself and you will never be lonely.” It was one of Leila’s highest aspirations: self-sufficiency.