by Alice Oseman
“This is my fault,” he said, grimacing. “It’s my fault that Ben was angry in the first place, so it’s my fault that Solitaire—”
“It’s not anyone’s fault,” I told him, “except Solitaire’s.”
On Tuesday, Kent keeps me back after English. Becky seems to be quietly hopeful that I’m in some kind of severe trouble, but Kent says nothing until everyone is gone. He sits on his desk, arms folded, glasses angled at a nonchalant slant.
“Tori, I think we need to talk about your ‘Heroes of Pride and Prejudice’ essay.”
“. . .”
“It was a very angry essay.”
“. . .”
“Why did you decide to write it in that way?”
“I really hate that book.”
Kent rubs his forehead. “Yes. I got that impression.”
He retrieves my essay from a cardboard folder and places it between us.
“‘I am sorry, Mr. Kent,’” he reads, “‘but I have not read Pride and Prejudice. I disagreed with the very first sentence, and that was enough for me.’” Kent looks up at me briefly before skipping to my second paragraph.
“‘Alas, Elizabeth Bennet does not love Mr. Darcy while he is “imperfect.” Only once his better character is revealed does she decide that she will accept Pemberley and the hundred billion a year. Fancy that. It seems that it is impossible for the females in this novel to look past an exterior and try to dig out the greatness within others. Yes, all right, Elizabeth is prejudiced. I get it. I get it, Jane Austen. Well done.’”
“Yeah,” I say. “All right.”
“I’m not done,” chuckles Kent. He skips to my conclusion. “‘This is why Mr. Darcy is, in my eyes, a true hero. He struggles on, despite being so harshly treated and judged. Pride and Prejudice is one man’s fight to be seen by others as he sees himself. Therefore, he is not typical. A typical hero is brave, confident, and dashing. Mr. Darcy is shy, haunted by himself, and unable to fight for his own character. But he loves, and I guess that is all that matters in the world of literature.’”
I should be embarrassed about this, but I’m really not.
He sighs. “It’s interesting that you identify with a character like Mr. Darcy.”
“Why?”
“Well, most students choose Elizabeth as the strongest character.”
I look at him squarely. “Mr. Darcy has to put up with everyone hating him for reasons that aren’t even true, and he doesn’t even complain about it. I’d call that pretty strong.”
Kent chuckles again. “Elizabeth Bennet is thought to be one of the strongest women of nineteenth-century literature. I take it you’re not a feminist.”
“You think I’m not a feminist because I empathize more with a male in a pretentious nineteenth-century romantic comedy?”
He smiles broadly and doesn’t answer.
I shrug. “It’s just what I think.”
He nods thoughtfully. “Well, that’s fair. Don’t write so colloquially in your exam, though. You’re smart and it’ll get you a bad mark.”
“All right.”
He hands me back the essay.
“Listen, Tori.” He scratches his chin, making a grating sound against his stubble. “I’ve noticed that you’ve been quite significantly underachieving in all your AS subjects.” He pauses and blinks. “I mean, you were doing really very well in Year 11. Especially in English.”
“I got a B in my sociology mock last term,” I say. “That’s not that bad.”
“You’ve been getting Ds in English, Tori. People who get two A stars in English GCSEs do not then get Ds at AS level.”
“. . .”
“Can you think of a reason for why this has happened?” He stares at me cautiously.
“I suppose . . . I don’t really like school . . . anymore.”
“Why’s that?”
“It’s just . . . I just hate being here.” My voice dies away. I look up at the classroom clock. “I need to go. I need to get to music.”
He nods very slowly. “I think that a lot of people hate being here.” He turns his head to the side and glances out of the window. “But that’s life, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“If you go on acknowledging that you hate it, you’re never going to want to be here. You can’t give up on it. You can’t be defeatist about it.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”
I run out the door.
TWO
I FIND LUCAS by the lockers at the end of school, and this time he really cannot avoid me.
He’s with Evelyn and that guy with the quiff. They’re all pinching their noses because Solitaire stink-bombed the entire school approximately one hour ago. Classic, disgusting, and unnecessary; however, most people in school today seem to be generally supportive of this particular prank. The smell in this corridor is moldy egg. I cover my mouth and nose with my jumper.
Lucas, Evelyn, and quiff guy are in conversation—serious conversation—but because I’ve recently turned into a rude and arrogant person, I don’t give a crap that I’m going to interrupt.
“Why are you avoiding me?” I call.
Lucas nearly drops several large ring binders and stares around Evelyn’s head. He moves his hand away from his nose. “Victoria. God.”
Evelyn and the guy turn and study me suspiciously before slinking away. I step toward Lucas. He’s got his bag slung over his shoulder.
“Are you sure Evelyn isn’t your girlfriend?” I ask, still holding my jumper over part of my face.
“What?” He laughs nervously. “Why do you think that?”
“I always see you with her. Are you her secret boyfriend?”
He blinks several times. “Uh, no. No.”
“Are you lying?”
“No.”
“Are you angry because I forgot we were going to meet up on Saturday?”
“No. No, I promise I’m not.”
“Then why are you avoiding me? I haven’t seen you since . . . I haven’t seen you this week.”
He shoves the ring binders into the locker and withdraws a sizable art sketchbook. “I’m not avoiding you.”
“Don’t lie.”
He flinches.
I get it. Lucas has tried so hard since term started to be friends with me again. And I’ve been such an arse about it. Just because I hate making friends, I’ve been rude to him, I’ve ignored him, I’ve avoided him, and I haven’t made a single bit of effort for him. That’s me, as usual, being an utter dick to everyone for no apparent reason. I get it. I get that I don’t exactly engage with people. But since Saturday, I’ve felt that not engaging can be just as bad as the alternative.
Now Lucas doesn’t seem to even want to know me.
“Look,” I say, dropping my jumper, feeling desperation sink into my soul. “We were best friends once, weren’t we? I don’t want you to avoid me. I’m sorry I forgot about Saturday. I forget stuff like that. But you’re one of three people who I’ve ever been friends with, and I don’t want to not talk to you anymore.”
He runs a hand through his hair. It’s halfway down his forehead.
“I—I don’t know what to say.”
“Just please tell me why you avoided me on Saturday.”
Something’s different. His eyes shift from side to side. “I can’t be around you.” Then quieter: “I can’t do this.”
“What?”
He slams the locker shut. It makes a noise that’s far too loud. “I’ve got to go.”
“Just—”
But he’s already walked away. I stand by his locker for a minute or so. The moldy-egg smell appears to be intensifying, as does my hatred for Solitaire. Lucas forgot to lock his locker properly, so I can’t resist opening it and having a look inside. There are three ring binders in there: English literature, psychology, and history, along with a bunch of sheets. I pick one up. It’s a psychology sheet about coping with stress. There is a picture of a girl holding her head in both hand
s, a bit like that famous painting The Scream. One of the suggestions is regular exercise, and another is writing down your problems. I replace the sheet and shut Lucas’s locker.
THREE
GRANDMA AND GRANDDAD have come round. The first time in months. We’re all at the dinner table and I’m trying not to catch eyes with anyone, but I keep seeing Mum glance concernedly toward Granddad and then glance concernedly toward Charlie. Dad’s sitting between Charlie and Oliver. I’m at the head of the table.
“Your mum’s told us you’ve got back onto the rugby team, Charlie,” says Granddad. When he talks, he leans forward like we can’t hear him, even though he speaks twice as loud as everyone else. I think that this is very stereotypical of Granddad. “It’s a blessing they let you back on. You really messed them around, what with all that time off.”
“Yeah, it was really nice of them,” says Charlie. He’s holding his knife and fork in his hands by the side of his plate.
“It feels like we haven’t seen Charlie for years,” says Grandma, “doesn’t it, Richard? Next time we see you, you’ll probably have a wife and children.”
Charlie forces himself to laugh politely.
“Would you pass me the Parmesan, Dad?” asks Mum.
Granddad passes the Parmesan. “A rugby team always needs a skinny one like yourself. To do the running, you understand. If you’d have eaten more earlier on, you would have grown big enough to be one of the proper players, but I suppose it’s too late for that now. I blame your parents, personally. More green vegetables at an early age.”
“You haven’t told us about your Oxford trip, Dad,” says Mum.
I look at the plate. It’s lasagna. I haven’t eaten anything yet.
I discreetly retrieve my phone from my pocket, and I have a message. I’d texted Lucas earlier.
(15:23) Tori Spring
look i’m really really sorry
(18:53) Lucas Ryan
It’s fine x
(19:06) Tori Spring
quite clearly it’s not
(19:18) i’m so sorry
(19:22) Lucas Ryan
It’s not even about that tbh x
(19:29) Tori Spring
well why are you avoiding me then
Dad’s finished his dinner, but I’ve been taking it slow for Charlie.
“How are you getting along, Tori?” asks Grandma. “Enjoying Sixth Form?”
“Yes, yeah.” I smile at her. “It’s great.”
“They must treat you like adults now.”
“Oh, yes, yeah.”
(19:42) Tori Spring
you at least need to tell me why
“And your lessons are interesting?”
“Yes, very.”
“Thought much about university?”
I smile. “No, not really.”
Grandma nods.
“You should start thinking,” Granddad grumbles. “Important life decisions. One wrong move and you could end up in an office for the rest of your life. Like me.”
“How’s Becky?” asks Grandma. “She’s such a lovely girl. It would be nice if you could keep in touch when you leave.”
“She’s fine, yeah. She’s good.”
“Such beautiful long hair.”
(19:45) Lucas Ryan
Can you meet me in town tonight? x
“How about you, Charlie? Have you been thinking about Sixth Form? Subjects-wise?”
“Erm, yeah, well, I’ll definitely do classics, and probably English, but apart from that I’m not really sure. Maybe PE or something. Or psychology.”
“Where are you going to apply?”
“Higgs, I think.”
“Higgs?”
“Harvey Greene. Tori’s school.”
Grandma nods. “I see.”
“An all-girls school?” Granddad scoffs. “You won’t find any discipline there. A growing boy needs discipline.”
My fork makes a loud noise on my plate. Granddad’s eyes flicker toward me, and then back at Charlie.
“You’ve made some good strong friends at that school. Why are you leaving them?”
“I’ll see them outside of school.”
“Your friend, Nicholas, he’s at Truham Sixth Form currently, is he not?”
“Yeah.”
“So you don’t want to be with him?”
Charlie nearly chokes on his food. “It’s not that; I just think that Higgs is a better school.”
Granddad shakes his head. “Education. What’s that compared to friendship?”
I can’t take any more of this and I’m getting much too angry, so I ask to be excused with a stomachache. As I leave, I hear Granddad say:
“Girl’s got a weak stomach. Just like her brother.”
I arrive first. It’s snowing again. I sit at a table outside Café Rivière. We agreed to meet at 9:00 p.m., and it’s just gone ten to. The street is empty and the river quiet, but a faint echo of one of those indie bands—maybe Noah and the Whale or Fleet Foxes or Foals or The xx or someone like that, I can never tell the difference anymore—is drifting out of an open window above my head. The music continues to play while I wait for Lucas.
I wait until 9:00 p.m. Then I wait until 9:15 p.m. Then I wait until 9:30 p.m.
At 10:07 p.m., my phone vibrates.
(22:07) Lucas Ryan
Sorry x
I look at the message for a long time. At the single word without a full stop, at the tiny, meaningless x.
I place my phone on the table and look up at the sky. The sky always seems to be lighter when it’s snowing. I breathe out. A cloud of dragon breath sails above my head.
Then I stand up and start to walk home.
FOUR
IN WEDNESDAY ASSEMBLY the Sixth Formers spread themselves along five sectioned-off rows of the hall seating. You have to fill up all the gaps, otherwise not everyone will fit in the hall, so you don’t get to choose where you sit. This is how I end up accidentally sitting between Rita and Becky.
As people are filing into the seating rows, Ben Hope, back at school with a moderately bruised face, stares directly at me. He doesn’t seem angry or scared, and he doesn’t even try to ignore me. He just looks sad. Like he’s about to cry. Probably because he’s not going to be popular anymore. I haven’t seen Ben and Becky together yet, which is a sign that maybe Becky actually listened to my explosion. I think about Charlie. I wonder where Michael is. I wish Ben didn’t exist.
Kent’s taking the assembly. He’s talking about women. Most of our assemblies are about women.
“—but I’m going to tell you the absolute truth. You, as women, are at an automatic disadvantage in the world.”
Becky, on my right, keeps changing which side she crosses her legs. I make a conscious effort not to move.
“I don’t think . . . that many of you realize how fortunate you have been so far.”
I start counting Kent’s pauses under my breath. Becky doesn’t join me.
“Going to . . . the best . . . girls’ grammar school in the county . . . is an unbelievable privilege.”
I can see Lucas two rows in front of me. He managed to catch eyes with me as he was sitting down on the way in, and I didn’t bother trying to look away. I just stared. I don’t even feel angry, really, about him standing me up last night. I don’t feel anything.
“I know that many of you . . . complain about the hard work, but until you’ve faced the real world, the world of work, you can’t understand the meaning . . . of hard work.”
Rita taps me suddenly on the knee. She holds out her hymn sheet. Underneath the lyrics to “Love Shine a Light” she has written:
You’re isolating yourself!!!!!!
“You are going to face a phenomenal shock once you leave this school. This school, where all are treated as equals.”
I read it several times, then study Rita. She’s just someone I know. I’m not really friends with her.
“You are going to have to work harder than men . . . to get to where y
ou want to be. That is the simple truth.”
She shrugs at me.
“Therefore I hope that while you’re at this school, you’ll think about, and be appreciative of, what you’ve got. You are all very lucky. You have the potential to do anything you want to do and be anything you want to be.”
I fold up the hymn sheet into a paper plane, but I don’t fly it, because you can’t do that in assembly. Everyone stands and sings “Love Shine a Light,” and the lyrics nearly make me laugh out loud. On my way out, I drop the paper plane discreetly into Becky’s blazer pocket.
I don’t sit with anyone at lunch. I end up not having any lunch, actually, but I don’t mind. I walk around the school. At many points during the day, I wonder where Michael could be, but at other times I’m fairly sure that I don’t care.
I haven’t seen Michael all week.
I have been thinking a lot about his skating. National Youth Semifinals.
I wonder why he didn’t tell me about it.
I wonder why he isn’t here.
I’m sitting against the tennis courts, surrounded by seagulls, which is odd, because they should have migrated by now. It’s Period 5. Music. I always skip Wednesday Period 5, because that is our performance practice lesson. I am watching as every girl in Year 7 makes her way out of the main school building and onto the field, some running, most laughing, and each with a collection of party poppers in her hands. I can’t see any teachers.
I don’t know what Solitaire has said to Year 7, but it is clear to me that this is its doing.
I take out my phone and load up Google. I type in “Michael Holden,” and then I type in the name of our town. Then I press enter.
Like magic, my Michael Holden appears in the search results.
The first result is an article from our county newspaper entitled “Local Teen Wins National Speed Skating Championship.” I click on it. It takes a while to load. My knees start to bob up and down in anticipation. Sometimes I hate the internet.
The article is about three years old. There is an accompanying picture of fifteen-year-old Michael, but he doesn’t look so very different. Maybe his face is a little less defined. Maybe his hair is a little longer. Maybe he’s not quite so tall. In the picture, he is standing on a podium with a trophy and a bunch of flowers. He is smiling.