Freshmen

by Tom Ellen

  “Yes,” Rita said. “Yes, you have. Now, give me some change for the machine.”

  Me and Rita stepped out of B Dorm into the mid-morning breeze. “How you finding Frosh Week, then, Luke?” she asked as we trooped along the covered walkway toward the vending machines.

  “Yeah…It’s good. I mean, it’s pretty…crazy. But good. I dunno. How was your orientation?”

  “Not great, to be honest,” she said. “It’s, like, there’s so much pressure to have fun that you can’t really…have fun. You know?” I nodded. “Plus, I was breaking up with my boyfriend,” she added. “That was pretty grim.”

  Something I had learned about Rita over the past few days was that she didn’t really do small talk. She came out with big, meaningful, surprisingly honest statements in the same way most people came out with comments about the weather. It made me really like her.

  “Was he at York Met, too?” I asked. “Your boyfriend?”

  “No, Jack’s at Edinburgh. We both went off to college thinking it would be OK long distance, and then three days into Frosh Week he just called me and said it wasn’t going to work.”

  “Shit, really?”

  “Yeah.” We got to the vending machine, and she started feeding a bill into the slot. “I mean, it’s fine. And it’s definitely for the best that it happened. He was actually a bit of a dick, to be honest. He used to wear a newsboy cap. And you can’t really get away with that unless you’re a farmer or a 1920s gangster.”

  “And he wasn’t either?”

  “Unfortunately not, no. So, yeah…I guess my memories of Frosh Week aren’t that great on the whole. I mean, it’s good that you’re having fun and everything, but it does get better than this, trust me. Contrary to popular belief, this is not the best bit of college.”

  She smiled at me as the Twix bars spiraled off the shelf and clattered noisily into the machine’s belly. For a split second, I considered telling her about Abbey. Just spilling everything that had happened from the day we received our exam results to right now, and asking her what she thought. I wanted to talk to someone about it so badly.

  But if I couldn’t get it straight in my own head, how was I supposed to explain it to anyone else? The truth was, I didn’t know how to describe it without it sounding like I was the bad guy. Like I’d ruined Abbey’s life. Which seemed to pretty much confirm that I was the bad guy. That I had ruined her life.

  We said goodbye and I headed over to tryouts. The fields were all the way across campus, so I followed the covered walkway right around the edge of the lake, exchanging nods with people I vaguely recognized from drunken nights out. The grass was still shimmering with dew and the ducks were out in full force, quacking their heads off. It was bitterly cold, but the sun was glaring down in the bluish-white sky, making my hangover scratch angrily at my temples.

  All the soccer bros greeted me enthusiastically, even when I told them I might genuinely throw up at any minute. “Don’t worry, mate, we’re all suffering,” said one guy named Toby. “I haven’t slept in four days.”

  The captain—a posh, floppy-haired guy named Will—gathered everyone together in the middle of the field. “All right, boys. Thanks for coming. I know it’s not easy during Frosh Week. But we’re just going to do a few drills and play a quick match—just take it easy and have a laugh, basically.”

  I’d seen Will before—most nights this week, actually—in various clubs, usually hooking up with Phoebe on the dance floor. I’d tried to go and chat with her a couple of times—mainly to apologize for bailing on quidditch—but she’d either been surrounded by people or attached at the lips to Will. It seemed weird to me that we hadn’t even spoken since the Orientation Fair.

  Will carried on: “Anyway, if you make the cut, we’ll have initiations in the next couple of weeks, so be afraid….”

  A junior named Dempers, who was short, stocky and red-faced, added, “Be very, very fucking afraid.”

  An uneasy laugh rumbled around the first years, but Will just waved it away. “He’s fucking with you, don’t worry. We’re not that bad.”

  In the end, tryouts were actually quite fun. My team lost the match—due largely to having Toby as the goalie—but I still scored twice, and I could tell I’d done OK by the way Will and a few of the others thumped me on the back as we left the field. For the first time all week, I actually felt happy and vaguely in control. Soccer’s always had this weird effect of blocking everything else out; giving me something real and physical to focus on that means I literally can’t focus on all the other shit swirling about in my head. At the end of a game, I feel battered and sore and tired, but I also feel better. Like I’ve been rebooted or something.

  As we were all stumbling back to the changing rooms, I got caught behind Will and Dempers and a couple of the other guys who were huddled around Will’s phone.

  “Mate, have you seen the wall today?” Dempers was whispering excitedly.

  “Classic Wicks,” laughed Will.

  “She was seriously fucking hot, actually,” said another guy.

  They suddenly realized I was behind them, and Will dipped the phone back into his pocket and grinned at me. “Good game, Luke, mate. See you tonight, yeah?”

  “You look amazing.” She really did; I couldn’t stop staring at her. Liberty had really gone for it in the sexy cherub department. She was wearing Kawaii-type frilly white hot pants, white over-the-knee socks, a white tank top and giant white feathery wings. Unbelievably, she still seemed to have copious amounts of glitter left, and had lathered herself in it head to toe, which gave her a slightly oily, celestial sheen. She had brought her curling iron into my room and was doing her white-blond hair in ringlets. Negin was meticulously drawing whiskers onto Frankie’s face and Becky was wrapping giant pieces of brown fur around her ankles.

  “I don’t think I look like a monkey.” Becky jabbed a giant safety pin through some fur. “I look like a shire horse, if anything.”

  “No, but do the shy face,” Frankie shouted. Becky put her brown furry hands over her monkey-painted eyes. Frankie burst out laughing. “Let me take another picture—honestly, it’s amazing.”

  Negin had threaded her corn through some string and was wearing it around her neck. “I look like someone from the Depression.”

  “They would have eaten their corn, not fashioned it into a necklace,” I said.

  “I played Lennie in Of Mice and Men once!” Frankie screamed, putting her hand up like she was in a lesson. “Just saying.” And she started shouting the word “alfalfa” again and again in a strange American accent.

  “What is alfalfa?” Negin asked.

  “No one knows; it’s one of the great mysteries of the book,” Frankie replied, still in character.

  I looked at myself in the mirror. Negin had done a good job of my mousie whiskers—I just had to remember not to rub my face and smear them everywhere.

  I was wearing jeans and a white tank top, and I had threaded a Babybel cheese through some of Negin’s string and hung it round my neck. I adjusted my ears. I wasn’t gonna stop traffic with a runway entrance like Liberty, but I felt good.

  “My ears keep getting lost in my hair,” I said.

  “I like it. Your mouse is very Pre-Raphaelite.” Frankie started making the plastic turtle walk along the floor.

  “I was going to cut all my hair off before college,” I told her. “But the hairdresser said cutting it would make it lighter and it would stick out sideways.”

  “I think that would look cool,” Negin said. “I cut mine the week before I came.” She got out her phone and showed us a picture of her with stick-straight, waist-length black hair.

  “You look so different,” we all chimed. She did.

  “Do you think Bowl-Cut Girl did all the colors right before she came here?” I asked. />
  “I think she was born like that.” Frankie shrugged. “I think she came out of her mum with a rainbow bowl cut. I must find out her name.”

  “I heard it was Persephone.” Liberty had still only curled one tiny bit of hair.

  “You said it was Ariel,” Negin said to Frankie.

  “Yeah, but I think that’s just because she reminds me of a mermaid, and I got confused.” Frankie was throwing the turtle in the air and catching it.

  “Persephone is a cool name. It probably is that.” I gave up trying to flatten my hair around the ears.

  Becky’s phone flashed, and she smiled at us apologetically. “Sorry, it’s Aaron. Won’t be a second.”

  She picked up her monkey tail and walked out.

  “Becky and Aaron are one hundred percent goals,” Frankie sighed. “You know he sent her flowers on the first day. They were literally at the check-in desk when she arrived.”

  “Ah, that’s lovely.” Liberty sighed. “The most romantic thing my ex ever did was piss my name in the snow.”

  Frankie shrieked with laughter, then added: “That’s actually quite impressive, to be fair. You have got a long name.”

  We trooped out into the kitchen, where the boys were already assembled, drinking. All of them had painted their faces with thick yellow paint, and Negin had drawn various emoji expressions on each of them with black eyeliner.

  Connor was wearing a top hat and a fake mustache and seemed even more excited than usual. When Liberty started rinsing the mixing bowl to make the punch, he stopped her.

  “Got a better idea!” he shouted. “To the bathroom!” He picked up a bag of bottles and a tub of Nesquik and charged off.

  We all squeezed in to see Connor perched with one foot on either side of the bath, simultaneously pouring out a bottle of wine and a bottle of tequila. “We can turn this into a giant punch bowl!” he said.

  I saw Negin wrinkle her nose slightly. The bath was absolutely disgusting. There was a dark-gray soap scum ring around the top and some long black hairs drooping off one of the taps. Even after Connor had poured in everyone else’s contributions, plus two liters of Coke, a bottle of grape juice and the powdered Nesquik, the liquid inside barely covered the bottom of the tub. It looked like grainy, purple hand soap with a weird, shiny film across the top.

  Connor scooped a glass into it and handed it to Negin.

  “I don’t drink,” she reminded him politely.

  “Oh, yeah, ’course,” said Connor. “So is that, like, a religious thing, then?”

  She shrugged. “In this case, it’s more a not-wanting-to-get-gastroenteritis thing.”

  Connor chugged the glass himself. Then he leaped into the bath and lay down, knocking his frilly shower cap off in the process. “Come on, team!” he yelled. “Bath of booze!”

  Josh came in wearing a donut pool floatie around his middle and his normal jeans and T-shirt. He looked at Connor. “That might not be totally cool with health and safety, but whatever. It’s the last night of Frosh Week.”

  “Last night of Frosh Week!” Connor bellowed.

  “Right,” said Josh, “quick round of Never Have I Ever and then head to the bar.”

  We all went back into the kitchen and started arranging the chairs into a massive circle around the table, and I noticed Connor, still dripping with bath booze, position himself next to Liberty with one deft move.

  “Guys, before we start, I just want to say thanks so much for adopting me,” Frankie announced. “Honestly, I actually feel emosh. I love the old people because obviously, they share their prosciutto and cheese plates with me. But you guys actually saved me.”

  “You’re an honorary D-Dormie,” Josh said. “So you can start the game.”

  I looked around the table. I had been really lucky; everyone was so nice. Even people like Phillip and Nathan, who never got that involved, were here. We had formed a random but solid little group.

  “I have never felt attracted to anyone in this circle,” Frankie said proudly.

  A murmur rippled around. Connor, Liberty and Josh all drank.

  “Do you know by the time you leave college there is an eighty percent chance that the phone number of the person you are going to marry is in your phone?” Frankie nodded exaggeratedly as she said it.

  “Have you got Will’s number in your phone yet? That’s the question!” As Liberty screamed it, everyone made cooing noises at me.

  Will and me had somehow become a thing. I got nervous when I saw him walk into a room, and giddy when he smiled at me. So far, in the realm of boys, college was definitely delivering.

  “I read that, too, about the phone numbers,” Negin said. “I’d like to see the evidence.”

  Frankie put her hand up again. “My parents met in college.”

  “It’s just more stress,” I said. “By junior year we’ll all be scrolling through our phones hysterically.”

  “I have never puked in the shower,” Connor bellowed, and then stared at Liberty.

  “It wasn’t me,” she wailed, and pulled her angel wings around to cover her face.

  “I have never had sex outside,” Josh said, and took a big sip of beer.

  You had to be so on your guard in these games, come across as grown-up and experienced and fun. I didn’t really care, but for people who were really private—like Becky—it must feel like torture. I suddenly wondered if that was why she was still in her room.

  Things progressed until there was no punch left in the bath, so Connor pulled a quarter-full bottle of vodka out of the cupboard.

  “We need to go soon,” Josh said. “Last round.”

  “I have never jerked off!” Connor shouted, and burst out laughing.

  All the boys drank. Every single one. Even Nathan and Phillip. They all did. None of them looked the remotest bit shy, not like they had with some of the sex questions. I felt my face go ever-so-slightly red and I stared down at my glass. I glanced sideways to look at Frankie, but she was just talking to Negin as if neither of them had really heard. Liberty giggled to herself but kept her glass in her hand. I felt like between the girls it was suddenly awkward, even if between the boys everything had gotten more jovial. Jerking off. Even the phrase is a boy word. Boys jerk off. Maybe none of the girls drank because they didn’t even associate the words with themselves.

  For a second I thought about drinking, but I wasn’t brave enough. Even Liberty the sexy cherub wasn’t brave enough. It’s weird how so many things in the world are unsaid.

  Connor didn’t notice. He turned the empty bottle upside down. “Let’s go,” he shouted.

  Arthur opened his closet to pull out what appeared to be a large, puffy brown dress, held up by brown suspenders. Then he twirled it around and I saw the dress had two big googly eyes painted on it.

  “It’s the pile of poo!” he said cheerfully.

  “Yeah, I can see that,” I said. “Are you really wearing that?”

  He downed the dregs of his lager and chucked the can at the trash, missing by a fair distance. “Yeah,” he said. “I wore it last year, too.”

  “I thought you said you got off with three girls at the emoji party last year?”

  “I did.”

  “What, dressed as a massive turd?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Impressive.”

  “Thanks. Who knows? I might even beat that this year.”

  “What, really?” I said, genuinely surprised. “I thought you were…You know? You and Rita?”

  Arthur laughed. “I wish.” And then his grin dissolved for a second, and he blinked down at his shoes. “I mean, I do wish a bit.” He caught himself and snapped straight back into joking mode. “But anyway…Come on, let’s get going!”

  We rounded up our suite mates from
where they were pregaming in the kitchen and headed down to the bar. Beth had glued a hockey stick emoji to her sweatshirt, Barney was wearing a wink-smiley beanie and the chemists all had specially made T-shirts featuring the cry-laughing emoji in protective science goggles.

  The bar looked easily the craziest it had all week. Everywhere you turned there were ballerinas doing shots, giant bunches of grapes dancing and tons of people wearing those big ball-shaped lightshades on their heads, sloppily painted yellow with random emoji faces.

  Arthur spotted his sophomore friends Dan and Hassan at the bar, so we headed over. As I ordered some beers, I felt a damp plop on my right shoulder and looked down to see that a clump of stringy spaghetti had fallen on me.

  “I’ll have a pint and a shot, freshman,” said Will, picking the pasta off my shoulder and putting it back into the plastic bowl he had strapped to the top of his head.

  “Pasta emoji,” I said. “Like it. Very niche.”

  “Thanks, mate. I thought so.” He thumped my shoulder and leaned in. “Listen, we’re not officially sending emails till next week, but I might as well tell you now. You made the team.”

  “I feel like they are having a heart-to-heart.” Frankie took a sip of her drink. “Will keeps touching Luke Taylor meaningfully.” We were all just standing in a row on the dance floor, watching them. Frankie grabbed my cheese necklace, pulled me toward her and stared into my eyes.

  “Touching him meaningfully,” Negin repeated, and shook her head.

  “I know, when he’s supposed to be doing that to Phoebe.” Frankie burst out laughing at her own joke and sprayed me and Negin with Skyy Blue.

  “Stop staring. Can we all go and dance or just do something else?” I pleaded.

  Negin and Frankie ignored this and continued looking at them, so I did, too.

  “Your greatest love sprung from your greatest hate.” Frankie put her arm around me.

  “Will hasn’t sprung from him,” I said. “And I don’t hate Luke.”

  “Are you saying you love Will?” Frankie took another sip with her arm still around me, putting me in a kind of headlock.