Freshmen

by Tom Ellen

  She opened the door and blinked at me. She was wearing a comforter like a toga, and her hair was sticking up all over the place. “Luke Taylor. I was literally just talking about you.”

  “Erm, yeah, sorry to wake you, Frankie. It’s just that Phoebe…She needs you. She’s in the bathroom.”

  She made a face. “Is she puking? Can’t you deal with the puke? You are her boyfriend.”

  “Well…not technically…”

  Frankie narrowed her eyes. “Not technically puking or not technically boyfriend?”

  “Frankie, can this wait? Phoebe actually, genuinely needs you. Like, now.”

  She sighed and swung the door fully open to reveal Negin under another blanket in the bed. “Fine. Negin, let’s go. The sisterhood calls.” Then she turned back to me: “So what’s actually wrong with her?”

  I could hear people talking in the kitchen.

  I could smell the toasties they were eating. I couldn’t think at all knowing they were so close. I should have brought my phone. I couldn’t really go back and get it now. I just had to get this over with.

  I started speaking to myself in my head, like before a test. Everything is going to be OK. You can do this. I rolled my shoulders back like I was about to start an Olympic sprint. Fuck. The longer you wait the more freaked out you’re going to get.

  I took a deep breath and pushed my fingers inside myself. I tried to move them around, but I couldn’t feel anything. I sat back down on the toilet seat and then pulled my underwear fully off. I put my leg up on the toilet, the same way Flora taught me when I put a tampon in for the first time. I pushed my fingers inside again and for a second I thought I felt it. Every time I tried I felt a bit more nauseous. It was definitely there, I just couldn’t get hold of it. Oh god.

  I tried to breathe deeply and then I realized I was rocking back and forth like a lunatic. My face was so boiling. I put my cheek against the cold wall and a hot tear squeezed out. Maybe I should call Mum? Or Flora? Or the National Health Service hotline?

  There was a soft knock on the door. “Phoebe.” Negin sounded totally calm. “Are you OK?”

  “Phoebs,” Frankie hissed. “Luke told us what happened. Don’t panic. Negin is a doctor.”

  “Negin is not yet a doctor,” Negin corrected her.

  “I am freaking out,” I whispered. I sounded crazy. It came out like a wail.

  I heard the kitchen door open and people tumble out. I shut my eyes.

  There was a wallop on the door, and I heard Negin say: “Phoebe’s in there.” Then Connor bellowed: “Phoebs, you vomit legend! I had a tactical puke earlier and carried on.”

  I heard him and the others bundling off down the hall and then slamming their doors. As I opened the bathroom door, I realized I was actually crying. “I don’t want to go to the hospital.”

  Frankie was holding a toastie and Negin was wearing her fleece pajamas. They hugged me, and we walked quickly across the hall to Negin’s room.

  “Where’s Luke?” I whispered.

  “In your room,” Negin said. “I told him we would get him when you wanted him.”

  “When you no longer had his condom womping around up your cavities.” Frankie took a bite of toastie and Negin gave her a look. “Sorry.” She reached over and held my hand. “It’s gonna be OK.”

  “Have you tried to get it out?” Negin said gently.

  “Yes, I’ve been trying for, like, ten minutes.”

  Frankie yanked her hand out of mine. “You’ve just put your vag juice on me.”

  “I’ve washed my hands, obviously.”

  “There will still be vag juice traces. I don’t even want to eat this toastie now. Cheese and Marmite and crotch.” She took a bite of the toastie and then threw it in the trash. “I suppose people eat vag juice all the time, but still…”

  “What am I going to do?” I put my hands over my face.

  “Have you Googled it?” Negin pulled her phone out of its charger. “You Google it, too,” she barked at Frankie.

  “My phone is in the kitchen,” she said, and walked out.

  “It will be fine, I promise.” Negin’s voice was really calm and comforting. “It’s in Google predict. So it obviously, you know…happens.”

  Frankie came back in holding a jam sandwich and her phone. We all sat on the bed in silence while they Googled.

  “Phoebs, have you really, like…got in there and tried?” Frankie said. “ ’Cause people on here seem to think you can definitely get in there.”

  “People on where?”

  “The Internet. Cosmopolitan.”

  “I don’t know if that is…reputable.” Negin was scrolling down her phone. “But I can’t find it on this health website.”

  “There are loads of Yahoo! answers.” Frankie shook her head. “Man, some of these people…I get why people ask the questions, but who goes around answering them? Smileyturtle underscore happydayz, with a ‘z,’ says: ‘Dude, sex before marriage is against God.’ He’s written it in capitals: ‘AGAINST GOD.’ ”

  “Why do you think it’s not on the site?” I looked at Negin.

  “Because maybe it’s too…impolite.”

  “I actually love Luke Taylor.” Frankie flopped back onto the comforter. “His little face was so confused. He looked like a newborn otter. What is going on with you and Luke Taylor anyway?”

  “Frankie, there is a condom lodged in her vagina,” Negin said. “This is not the time for relationship analysis.”

  Frankie sighed melodramatically: “ ‘Luke Taylor’s so dreamy he got a condom lodged in my vagina.’ ”

  “Is that supposed to be my voice?” I said. “I’m not Welsh.”

  “What kind of moves was LT pulling, then, eh?” Frankie took a bite of her jam sandwich and thrust her crotch forward.

  I started laughing, and then I literally couldn’t stop. I really hoped Luke couldn’t hear across the hall.

  “Just a friendly reminder that you still have a condom stuck in you.” Negin flicked my cheek with her finger. “Are you still drunk?”

  “No,” I gasped. “I think I’m in medical shock and now it’s making me hysterical.”

  Frankie leaped up. “Have you tried jumping up and down to make it fall out?”

  She started jumping and the whole room began to shake. I stood up and jumped in the air a couple of times.

  “Anything going on down there?” Frankie asked as she came to a stop.

  “No. What am I going to do? I literally have no idea what to do.”

  “I know what to do.” Frankie grabbed her phone.

  “Are you calling an ambulance?” Negin wrinkled her brow. “Because this is not an emergency situation.”

  “It fucking is,” Frankie said.

  “I don’t need an ambulance!” I shouted.

  “Mummy,” Frankie barked into the phone. “Mummy, wake up, I need you. It’s an emergency.”

  There was no sound at all on the other end. “Mummy?” Frankie said again. She put her phone on speaker.

  “Sorry, darling,” the voice crackled. “I had to go into the sitting room and shut the door. Are you OK, Francesca?” Frankie’s mum sounded like a radio announcer from the war.

  “Basically, Mummy, in a nutshell, you know Phoebs, well, basically she had sex with this boy Luke Taylor—”

  “Oh, well done, Phoebe,” her mum interrupted cheerfully. “Yummy Luke from school.”

  “Are you joking?” I mouthed at Frankie, but she held up a hand to stop me.

  “Anyway, Mummy, they had sex, and now the condom is stuck up her vag.”

  “Oh Christ.” Frankie’s mum sighed. “Is she there with you?”

  I nodded.

  “She is, Mummy, but she’
s too embarrassed to speak. She’s just nodding.”

  “It’s not embarrassing at all, Phoebe, darling,” Frankie’s mum’s voice boomed. “I have seen all sorts of things up there in my time. Even a bottle of Wite-Out.”

  “Mummy is a nurse, remember.” Frankie frowned. “She doesn’t just look up people’s vaginal passages for fun.”

  “Do we need to go to the ER?” Negin mouthed at her.

  “Do we need to go to hospital, Mummy?”

  “I don’t think so,” the voice crackled. “If you keep calm I can tell you what to do. Wash your hands, Frankie, darling. You’re going to have to try to get it out.”

  Frankie recoiled. “Mummy, that is absolutely gross. I am not putting my hand up there.” She looked at Negin. “Can’t you do it? You want to be a doctor.”

  “Darling, it’s going to be absolutely fine. Phoebe, lie down and put a cushion underneath your bottom. Frankie, try to find a light and go and wash your hands.”

  There was a frantic little silence while I moved Negin’s toy elephant off the pillow and lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling. Just as I was plucking up the courage to speak to Frankie’s mum, Frankie came back into view above me, wearing some sort of miner’s light on her head.

  “See, I’m using my gap-year stuff, Mummy. I’ve got the headlamp on.”

  “Oh, darling, well done,” the impossibly posh voice chimed. “You just need to approach this rationally. It’s probably gotten stuck on the side, near the top, OK?”

  I couldn’t see Negin’s or Frankie’s faces, and they’d gone completely quiet.

  “Erm, you’re going to have to crack out your chacha,” Frankie told me. “We can’t do it through your Minnie Mouse pajamas.”

  I wriggled out of my pj’s. Frankie whistled. “Very neat. Perfectly trimmed lawn you’ve got there. You clearly knew Mr. Taylor was going to be—”

  “Frankie.” Frankie’s mum and Negin said it at the exact same time.

  “This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me,” I groaned.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Phoebe,” the posh voice tutted. “There are people in camps in Syria.”

  “Oh god…”

  “Phoebe, just relax—she won’t be able to do it unless you are relaxed.”

  “Just imagine I’m Luke,” Frankie cooed.

  “Shut up.”

  “Mummy, I can’t see anything, even with the flashlight,” she whined.

  “You need to get closer and really look. Then just slide your finger in and do a sweep.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about, Mummy? Phoebs, I can’t do this. We’ll have to go to the hospital.”

  “Let me look.” Negin sounded almost angry. “Don’t speak for a second, Frankie.”

  I flinched as her fingers went inside me and I felt it being pulled out.

  “Negin, you fucking legend!” Frankie shouted it so loudly it must have woken the entire building.

  I stood up and we all stared at the shriveled condom lying on Negin’s navy blue sheet.

  “It’s a boy!” Frankie shouted. And Negin laughed harder than I had literally ever seen her laugh. Even Frankie’s mum was laughing on the phone.

  “Mission accomplished.” Frankie grinned, and then threw her arms around me.

  “So…,” I said. “This is not how my nights out usually end.”

  “Or begin, I hope,” Phoebe added.

  “No, exactly. At no point in the beginning, middle or end of my average night out do I normally end up in the family planning clinic. I swear.”

  We both laughed awkwardly and shuffled on the hard, uncomfortable, bright-orange chairs. It had been a pretty restless night’s sleep, and now, at the rarely experienced hour of 8 a.m., we were sitting in the waiting area of the campus sexual health center, which was all the way across campus.

  “Seriously, Phoebe. I’m really sorry. This is obviously quite, quite shit.” I reached down to squeeze her hand: “Hope you’re OK?”

  She squeezed back: “Yeah, course—it’ll be all right. It’s not like we didn’t use protection. It’s just that the protection didn’t end up being as…protective as we’d have liked. I might get, y’know, tested, though. Just to be sure.”

  “What, for…if you’re pregnant?”

  “No, they give you the morning after pill for that. I mean for, y’know…” She lowered her voice. “STIs.”

  “Oh, right. Yeah, definitely. But I mean, that should be OK, shouldn’t it? I’ve only slept with one other person. And we were both each other’s first.”

  What with all the condom terror, I hadn’t really had time to process what had actually happened last night. I had slept with someone else. Someone who wasn’t Abbey. It’s not like I didn’t know it was going to happen eventually, but now that it had, it still felt massive. Like things had changed permanently, and there was no going back.

  There was a pause while Phoebe studied—or pretended to study—a brochure called “Ten Things You Didn’t Know About Chlamydia.” Finally, she said: “Oh right, so really? Abbey Baker’s the only girl you ever…?”

  “Well, yeah.” I shrugged. “We went out more than three years. Started going out when I was fifteen.”

  Phoebe nodded. It felt weird talking to her about Abbey. It felt weird even thinking about Abbey, to be fair. I’d been trying not to think about her at all over the past week. Which had actually been surprisingly easy. Worryingly easy. Every time she popped into my head, it was like my brain automatically chucked her straight back out again.

  I knew I should tell her what was going on. Especially now that me and Phoebe had actually slept together. But telling Abbey the truth hadn’t exactly worked out over the past few weeks. Telling Abbey the truth had done nothing but cause us both fuckloads of misery. So telling Abbey the truth didn’t really seem like a viable option.

  Phoebe was flicking absently through the chlamydia brochure. Or not “brochure.” Leaflet, I guess. “Brochure” makes it sound like chlamydia is a holiday resort.

  “How about you, then?” I asked. “Y’know, since we’re being honest.”

  She dropped the leaflet and held up two fingers. Then she said, “Well, actually, now it’s…” She added another finger.

  “Oh yeah? Who are the other lucky guys, then, eh?”

  She blushed, smiling. “Do you remember Adam Kramer? And Max Fulda?”

  “Erm…” For a second I could only focus on the fact she hadn’t said Will’s name. I had to make a conscious effort to actually respond. “Don’t remember Adam, but I had Art with Max in tenth grade. He was seriously good.”

  “Yeah.” She nodded. “He’s at Goldsmith’s now. We sort of went out for a couple of months just before school ended.”

  “You didn’t think about trying to make it work long distance?”

  “Not really. I guess we both thought it would be better to meet some new people.”

  “Well, you’ve done a great job there,” I said, and we both laughed, drawing irritated glances from the other people in the waiting room.

  A lady with a clipboard bounded in and called, “Phoebe Bennet?” I gave Phoebe another hand-squeeze, and she got up and followed her out. I sat there reading about chlamydia and wondering whether I should try to call Abbey at some point. Or at least message her. Just to make sure she was OK. The thought suddenly occurred to me that if I didn’t, we might never speak to each other again. Would I be all right with that? It’s, like, you go through all this stuff with somebody—grow up together, basically—and then one day they’re out of your life forever. There’s nothing else that goes from a hundred to zero that quickly. With friends, you just drift apart slowly or whatever: you never actually say “We’re not friends anymore” or “Our friendship’s over.” But with girlfriends it�
��s like it’s everything and then, suddenly, it’s nothing. Is that how it always happens? In three years’ time would Phoebe just be another person I never spoke to anymore?

  Finally, Phoebe came back into the waiting area. “She gave me the morning after pill, and I took the test,” she said. “So, hopefully, all good.”

  We walked out into the sharp, cold, morning sunlight to see Will heading straight toward us. I felt a little spasm of panic, but it was way too late to try to avoid him. He was with his roommate, that Josh guy who worked at Bettys with Phoebe.

  Josh was smiling. Will wasn’t.

  “All right, you two,” Josh said brightly. “Top night last night. I thought we did the emergency services proud.” I noticed him and Will were both staring down at my hands, which I thought was a bit weird until I realized I was still holding the chlamydia leaflet. I stuffed it into my pocket, and Josh hitched an eyebrow. “Having an eventful morning?”

  Phoebe shuffled her feet and laughed. I stayed silent and so did Will, so Josh filled the awkwardness by murmuring: “Ooookay, then.”

  I could feel Will’s eyes on me, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Where are you guys off to, then?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

  “Library.” Josh grimaced. “Got essays in for tomorrow, and we can’t work at ours because the boiler’s fucked and it’s freezing.” He half smiled at Will. “And the landlord here won’t sort it, so…”

  Will shot him a half smile back, but the annoyance in it was obvious. I realized I hadn’t actually chatted with Will about the house stuff since he’d first mentioned it. I needed to get that sorted out. The chemists in my hall had literally already found their place for next year and signed the contract.

  Another chasm of awkwardness opened up, and Josh scratched his head and chucked one more “Oooookay, then” into it. I’d only met him a couple of times, when we were out and drinking, but he seemed like a really good guy. I was massively glad he was here right now, anyway. Just me, Will and Phoebe would have been genuinely unbearable. Josh grinned at Phoebe: “You working Friday, Bennet?”