Summer Skin

by Kirsty Eagar

  ‘Now, look, don’t make it difficult for me. We’ve got half an hour to have that barbecue set up. I want the freshers to meet their mentors before the Head starts making speeches.’

  ‘Use your minions. What’s the point of being president if you don’t?’ Leanne said, sidestepping her with a smoothness Jess admired.

  ‘I am using them. But we need more hands,’ Farren said, swivelling around as she spoke because Leanne was already at the doorway. ‘Allie’s helping,’

  That made Leanne pause. Jess, too, was surprised. ‘She is not,’ Leanne said.

  ‘She is. Come on, don’t make me beg.’

  ‘Okay, I won’t then,’ Leanne said, and left.

  Farren made a huffing noise, and turned her attention back to Jess. Frowned. ‘Don’t you want to get dressed first?’

  CHAPTER 4

  KNOWN BETTER

  ‘Okay! There are several ways to tie a toga, but I’m only going to show you one. If you don’t listen you’ll have to work it out yourself, because I am not your mother and I don’t repeat myself,’ Farren bellowed.

  Jess, standing beside her, snickered. ‘Rehearse that much?’

  ‘Start by making a noose,’ Farren said loudly, giving Jess a look. She clicked her fingers impatiently and Jess handed over her sheet.

  As Farren started winding the tail of the sheet, Jess looked around, pressing her beer to her cheeks and neck. The first few days of semester had been oppressively hot, the air syrupy thick, but for the first time that week there were clouds in the sky, and, now the sun was setting, the stillness seemed charged, expectant: a thrumming beneath the murmur of music and voices. Ahead of that night’s inter-collegiate toga party, Farren, president of Unity’s student council, had decided to split the college for pre-drinks. The girls had gathered on Unity’s flat concrete roof; the boys were down in the bunker.

  Most of the freshers were paying rapt attention, sitting directly in front of Farren and Jess, sheets bundled in their laps, all of them in bikinis or one-pieces—a sea of summer skin. The older girls had already wrapped their togas and were further back, only pretending to listen. The T-floor girls, Farren and Jess’s floormates, weren’t even pretending. They had their backs to the presentation and were absorbed in pouring their drinks over the railing—presumably they hit target, too, because there came a distant shout.

  Farren turned to Jess. ‘Arms up, sunshine.’ She was British Indian, and still had traces of her English accent despite having lived in Australia for eleven years. Jess, accordingly, held her arms out wide as Farren started wrapping the sheet around her trunk. Tightly.

  ‘Jesus, Farren, it’s not a corset,’ Jess said. A mistake, because if anything Farren pulled it tighter. Farren was yet to tie her own toga, or maybe she didn’t intend to. It was draped around her shoulders like a cloak, paired with a black crocheted bikini top, red velvet shorts, fishnet stockings and her purple Docs, her long dark hair in two plaits. Jess wished she could work a look like that. She felt conservative by comparison in her cut-offs and Black Milk Pixie Dust zippered one-piece (limited edition, thank you very much).

  ‘When you’ve wrapped it, loop the roped tail around your neck and tie it off with the other tail.’ Farren stood back to admire her handiwork. ‘If you want more shape, tie some cord around your waist, or under your boobs.’

  The freshers broke into a polite round of applause.

  ‘You’re kidding,’ Jess said.

  ‘They’re terrified of me,’ Farren murmured, looking pleased.

  Jess glanced past her at the T-floor girls. Leanne finally seemed to have remembered she had a part to play, and had stopped dicking around. Giving Jess a theatrical thumb’s up, she shouted, ‘Hey, Farren!’

  Farren turned and Leanne held up her phone. Jess’s phone, actually—Leanne had demanded a working prop. ‘Mikey called. He needs you down in the bunker.’

  ‘Why didn’t he call me?’

  ‘That’s what I asked him. Do I look like your secretary?’ Leanne said, appealing first to Farren, and then to Vanessa Ng, who actually was Farren’s secretary. Vanessa shook her head.

  Farren left, muttering dark things about the usefulness of her vice president. Jess knew they didn’t have to worry much about their cover story, because when Farren reached Mikey she probably would discover he needed her help with something. As soon as Farren was gone, Allie, standing near the sound system, dropped the volume on Meg Mac.

  ‘Okay!’ Jess shouted, trying to get the girls’ attention. ‘We’re going to have to make this quick, so listen up. Guys? Hey!’

  ‘Shut the fuck up, bitches!’ screamed Leanne, joining her in front of the group, and there was a sudden silence.

  Jess coughed, nodding her thanks, feeling nervous with all attention now focused on her. It was different standing up there beside Farren; Farren just sort of filled a space. ‘So, last year, at the toga party, the guys from Knights ran the inaugural Dragon Slayer Sweep.’ With those words, the quiet seemed to take on a different quality. The girls had not only stopped talking, they’d stopped moving.

  ‘Yeah. Most of you know what I’m going to say. But for those of you freshers who don’t—it was a cash prize that went to the first knight who slept with a Unity girl. Given that we don’t actually have a herald, take the dragon label as a further insult.

  ‘The guy who won it slept with Farren. She went back to his room. Obviously, she knew nothing about the sweep—none of us did.’ Jess’s voice grew raspy, her face starting to burn. She cleared her throat. ‘And she also didn’t know that the arsehole was going to stream everything to two other guys—the judges—in another room. Thanks for that, Skype. So, you can imagine how she felt when—’ Jess broke off, unable to finish the sentence, shaking her head. Even now, it made her so angry she wanted to kill somebody. Because she’d been there when Farren returned to Unity, been witness to her distress.

  One of the freshers put up her hand, which reminded Jess of high school, and in that moment she was aware of the vast distance between who she’d been back then and who she was now.

  ‘Speak,’ Leanne scolded. ‘Don’t put up your hand, just speak.’

  ‘Did Farren take action?’ the fresher asked, and it wasn’t really a question so much as a prompt, an expectation.

  Jess opened her mouth, then closed it again, glancing at Leanne, who made a don’t-look-at-me face. ‘Um, no, she didn’t,’ Jess said eventually. ‘It was kind of complicated. She didn’t want—Like, she felt that if she did, she’d be admitting there was something to be ashamed of, and …’

  A different fresher started to raise her hand, realised what she was doing and lowered it again. ‘Are they still at college?’

  ‘The guys who did it?’ Jess shrugged. ‘We don’t know. She never told us who they were. And no one from Knights would say anything—they protect their own like that. The whole thing kind of got hushed up. So …’ Her voice had grown raspy again, and she coughed. ‘The thing is, tonight brings it up again. We want to make tonight about something else—’

  ‘Cutting it short, we’re holding our own competition,’ Leanne said, putting Jess out of her misery. ‘The inaugural Knight Rider challenge. I came up with that, by the way, so feel free to clap.’ That broke the tension. A wave of laughter passed through the girls, followed by applause, hoots and cheers. ‘But don’t be misled by the name,’ Leanne continued. ‘To participate, you do not ride a knight. In fact, under absolutely no circumstances are you to—’

  ‘Sit on their lance,’ Jess finished for her.

  Leanne barked an appreciative laugh. ‘Exactly. No sitting on their lances, no letting them Virile Agitur. Do not sleep with a boy from Knights—’

  ‘Ever,’ Jess added, extra vehemence in her voice because she’d had a sudden memory of Blondie standing over her while she swabbed a concrete floor. ‘Because if you do, you’re like a traitor to Farren, and every other girl in this place. And—and—well, just every girl. Full stop.’

&nbs
p; ‘That was so beautiful,’ Leanne said, patting her on the arm. ‘So we’ve all got the point? If you make jiggy-jiggy with a knight, Jess will ask you to leave the college. Obviously, tonight, you won’t get them back here on the promise of a coffee alone, though, so you are going to have to pretend you’re up for it. Then, when you’ve got a live one, the first thing you’ll need to do is restrain him. If you pick a fresher, chances are he’ll pass out anyway, but we’ve also got a whole bunch of these.’

  Leanne nodded at Allie, always her willing assistant, who stepped forward, holding a plastic bag. Her sheet wasn’t fashioned in a toga. Instead, she’d wrapped it around her like a towel, securing it with a badge of the Aboriginal flag, displaying her ample cleavage. She probably had a strapless bra or bikini top on beneath it, but you couldn’t be sure—nothing like suspense as an attention getter. Jess glanced around the faces in front of her, saw all those eyes focused on Allie, and she knew the thoughts going through their minds as they toted her up: wearing her sheet that way might have showed off her rack, but it didn’t do anything for her chunky shoulders. With her golden brown skin and her blonde hair worn loose and tousled, she had the beach girl look down pat, though. Her make-up was minimal, smoky eyeliner and glossy lips. And her legs were good, but were they good enough for the slits she’d cut up the sides of her costume, nearly to her waist? Wasn’t she a little too girl-next-door to be acting like she was a goddess?

  And driving all of these questions, was their real question: What did she have that they didn’t?

  The answer was the kind of self-fulfilling prophecy that messed with girls’ heads. Allie had the numbers: a mind-blowing following on Instagram.

  Leanne reached into the plastic bag and held up a plastic cable tie; such a small object to be greeted with such a loud round of applause and cheers. And Jess realised, with some surprise, that the girls were onside—always a fifty-fifty proposition with a Unity crowd.

  Leanne smiled, pleased with the reaction, and said conversationally, ‘If you need to use them, I find they work a lot better if you secure the person’s arm to an object, like the leg of a desk, or the arm of a chair, instead of just binding their wrists together.’ Jess and Allie side-eyed each other. ‘If you’re worried about going one on one, go two on one. Tell the knight that you and your friend are going to make all his schoolboy fantasies come true. But the main idea here, in case you haven’t already worked it out, is to give him a makeover.’

  Jess listed some of the many ways they could get creative, drawing hoots and cheers with each point—it was heady, really; she was starting to understand why Farren liked giving speeches so much. ‘Oh, and don’t forget to record your efforts. Allie will be your judge this evening—’ Allie bowed to the gathering, one arm clasped to her cleavage, scoring whistles and whoops, ‘—and she’s going to need photographic evidence. In fact, we all want to enjoy it, so load it on Instagram, or Facebook.’

  Leanne took over: ‘Goes without saying, the person who does the most impressive job will become an instant legend, but they’ll also be awarded tonight’s prize, kindly borrowed last Sunday by Flash here—’

  ‘Ah-aahh!’ the second and third years chorused on cue, echoing the song by Queen, and Jess grinned. She’d always secretly loved her college nickname.

  Allie held up the Knights jersey with a flourish, showing its front and then the back to the crowd. Unity Knight Rider was now screen-printed on both sides.

  When they saw it, the gathering erupted. Allie turned the music back up. Everybody was definitely pissed, but it was hard not to get caught up in the energy of the occasion. Jess and Leanne glanced at each other, laughed, and then looked away.

  ‘You and your stirring emotions,’ Leanne said, nudging her with a shoulder.

  ‘Oh, fuck off,’ Jess said placidly. ‘Farren’s my best friend.’ They watched Allie, handing out cable ties. ‘Hey, what’s Virile Agitur mean, anyway?’

  Leanne made a snorting noise. ‘“Do the manly thing”.’

  ‘Oh, God. That is so funny.’

  ‘It gets better,’ Leanne assured. ‘Do you know what our motto means?’

  ‘Didn’t know we had one,’ Jess said, surprised.

  ‘Read your handbook. It’s Nemo me impune lacessit.’ Leanne paused for effect. ‘“No one wounds me with impunity”.’

  CHAPTER 5

  BOYS LIKE YOU

  By ten o’clock, the downstairs part of Building 33 was jammed with sweaty, frenetic, sheet-clad bodies, many of them drunk, which was to be expected when the ticket price to an event included all the alcohol you could drink. Somehow, the DJ pulled off a segue from Arctic Monkeys to 360 and Gossling, and a fresh wave of people pushed onto the dance floor, Jess, Farren and the Z-floor boys among them. The Z-floor boys hadn’t bothered with togas, but had cut holes in their sheets, wearing them poncho style. They seemed to be hearing their own music, floating around in a knock-kneed kind of way, probably on something—Jess could never tell with that lot—but Callum left his bubble long enough to pat her on the back and ask, ‘You all right, little fella?’

  He was a cherubic-looking engineering student, with an odd blend of shyness and high excitability. He was also, apparently, suffering some sort of short-term memory loss, because he’d asked Jess that same question five times in as many minutes.

  ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ she asked, shouting to be heard over the music. Then she frowned, distracted. ‘What’s going on with your glasses?’

  He obediently bent towards her. The lenses were smeared with what looked like Vaseline, although Jess was pretty sure it was actually lubricant. She cleaned them using his sheet, and he put them back on, blinking at the world around him with an air of revelation.

  ‘Thanks, Jess! The guys must have done it. I was really scared. Thought something was wrong with my eyes.’

  ‘Right,’ Jess said. Some nights you just weren’t drunk enough to deal with drugged people. Then she noticed Brendan and she stopped moving. Callum’s size eleven boot stomped on her sandal, causing her to double over in pain.

  ‘No, I’m okay,’ she muttered, hobbling. Callum hadn’t even noticed.

  Brendan’s presence explained why Callum had kept checking on her. He must have known Brendan was there—they used to be floormates, after all—and assumed Jess did, too. But it hadn’t even occurred to her that Brendan would go. He’d left college.

  She tried to dance again, feeling like a puppet pulling its own strings. Brendan’s arms were slung around a pair of Unity third years, and he lurched the two girls from side to side like he was having the best time in the world, his pretty eyes hidden by his long fringe. His sheet was wrapped around his waist, probably to show off the tatts on his neck and chest. He was lean, without an ounce of body fat, and Jess knew it was the hungry, restless energy burning in him that had whittled him down to muscle, sinew and bone. She’d been attracted to that energy. And she’d escaped from it, too.

  She watched him, he ignored her, and after a moment she realised that most of the surrounding Unity crowd were sneaking glances at the two of them. So nothing had changed, they were still providing the entertainment.

  Jess glanced at Farren, who was dancing with Davey Walters, Z-floor boy and her boyfriend. Farren frowned, as if to say, What the hell are you still doing here? It was all Jess needed. She turned away, pushing through the crush of bodies to reach the outside area, where there were fewer bodies and more air. Brendan hadn’t followed her—if he had, his hands would have been on her already. Parting the skirt of her toga, she dug her Zippo out of the pocket of her cut-offs and flicked it on. She watched the flame, desperate for some kind of relief. He’s out of college, you’re out of the relationship, so breathe, she told herself.

  When she was calmer, Jess headed back inside, but through a different doorway, one further down.

  ‘Flash.’

  Jess turned to see Allie, leaning against the doorway, clutching an empty plastic cup, and a naughty little voice in her h
ead captioned the moment: Just hanging at the toga party, looking miserable.

  ‘Hey, what are you doing here by yourself?’ Jess asked.

  But Allie only gave her a funny smile, as if she didn’t trust herself to speak. She reached out, touching Jess’s cheek, and Jess caught her hand, squeezing it.

  ‘You okay, Allie?’ she asked, concerned now. Allie didn’t seem like herself at all. Definitely not the girl who racked up hundreds of comments every time she posted something online.

  Allie shook her head. ‘I’m okay, I’m just … You know.’

  ‘Did somebody say something to you? Who?’ Jess asked, her voice sharp now. It happened from time to time—guys who recognised Allie and seemed to think that because she was accessible online, she was just as accessible in the real world. Jess put an arm around Allie’s shoulders. ‘I guess, if you put yourself out there, you’re going to cop the wrong sort of attention sometimes, too.’

  It wasn’t the right thing to say because she felt Allie tense. Dropping her arm, she tried to smooth things over. ‘Well, just so you know, I’m in hiding, too. I just saw Brendan.’

  Allie finally looked at her, giving her a pinched smile of sympathy. ‘Bet that went well. What’d he say?’

  ‘Nothing. He didn’t get a chance. I ran off—very mature of me. But we’ve talked about it, and talked about it, and I can’t keep explaining myself. It’s over. Does he really think that if he keeps pushing I’ll change my mind?’

  Allie didn’t seem to be listening, her attention fixed on someone in the crowd of people outside.

  ‘Um, so, anyway,’ Jess finished lamely. She sighed, leaning back against the wall beside Allie. Then she straightened, spotting Brendan through a gap in the crowd. He was looking around, as though searching for someone. ‘Shit. There he is. Come upstairs with me?’

  •

  On the top level things were less feral, but the line for the bar was five deep. Jess joined the back of the queue and felt exposed and vulnerable until a pair of boys took up position behind her. She didn’t know what was more shocking: seeing Brendan for the first time since their break-up in the summer holidays, four weeks ago, or her reaction to seeing him again: a hot panic that made it hard to think. The problem with Brendan was when he’d been drinking he liked to escalate things, typically in ways that were humiliating for her.