Freshmen

by Tom Ellen

  He pulled out an extremely crumpled package with Thomas the Tank Engine wrapping paper.

  I smiled weakly as he handed it to me and unwrapped it slowly. They were cookie cutters. A cupcake, a ladybird, a cactus and a train. I cupped them all in my hands. “Thank you. I love them. Especially the train.”

  He nodded. “I told you, I knew you were a train person.”

  “It’s really weird.” I held it up and looked at him through the middle of the train outline. “I told Flora today, and I was going to tell you.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “I decided what I want to do with my twentieth year.”

  “Indeed, Miss Bennet?” He picked the cactus up and looked at me through it. “Well, what is it, then?”

  “I want to go traveling. Like around Europe. Inter-railing. You know”—I held up the train—“on trains.”

  We looked at each other through our cookie cutters.

  “Well,” he said, casually looking to the side. “Are you going on your own, you know, just training it about on your own or—”

  “Well, I might ask some people, you know, I don’t know. I’ll have to see, if anyone…wants to come.”

  He looped his arm through mine and pulled me in toward him. “Let’s get you home.”

  But I didn’t want to go home. I wanted to be close to him. I pulled back and looked at him and took a step forward. And then I kissed him on the cheek, gently, near his mouth, and then moved across and kissed him again, closer this time. He cupped my face in his hands and made a sort of quiet, frustrated moan.

  “Phoebe…” He took a step away and put his hands in his pockets. “Let’s get you home.” He sounded upset. Almost angry. I had never seen him even vaguely angry before.

  I could feel myself going red. I got my phone out and ordered a cab. He walked away a bit and stood with his back to me.

  “Phoebe—”

  “Don’t say anything. Like, please. I just can’t face anymore tonight.”

  “Phoebe, I just…Listen. You know what I want in my twenty-first year?”

  “What?” I almost shouted it.

  “To know that I will know you for the rest of my life. For forever.”

  “Yup.” I shook my head as I said it and turned and started to walk up the road. “Whatever.” I could hear his paces behind me. “Will you at least leave me to feel humiliated alone?”

  His paces stopped. We had only walked about five feet. The cab slowed down and I got into it, keeping my eyes fixed on the floor.

  “Are you getting in?” the driver asked, and Josh must have shaken his head because the driver shrugged and wound the window up.

  He glanced in the mirror and it made me do the same. He had clearly assessed the situation in one bored flick of the eye: drunk student. My mascara had run all down my face, and my eyes were still red and swollen. Neither of us spoke. I looked at my phone just in time to see I had seventeen messages before it died. So I just peered into the darkness and tried to block everything out.

  Finally, we slowed to a stop. “Mind how you go, love. They’re never worth it.”

  It made me smile. “That’s what my mum says. She says you shouldn’t trust anyone with a Y chromosome between the ages of fourteen and thirty-seven.”

  He nodded. “Sounds about right.”

  I slammed the door shut and looked up at D Dorm. The kitchen was lit up but all the rooms were dark. I was glad no one was there to have to explain it all to. Music was still playing in the bar and I could see some people playing foosball. It was sort of comforting to see life going on as normal.

  And then I saw him.

  He was standing alone at the bar, swaying ever so slightly from side to side, drinking a beer. It was the first time I had actually seen him since the soccer game. I didn’t want him to see me so I started to walk quickly, but I heard the doors swing open as I passed.

  “Phoebe!” Will shouted.

  I kept walking.

  “Phoebe.”

  I stopped and turned to look at him. That confident swagger had completely disappeared. He just looked lost and a bit desperate.

  “Can I talk to you?” he said. “There is something I just really, really need to say….”

  By the time I caught up to Abbey, she was almost halfway into town. But she wouldn’t even stop to look at me.

  “Abbey, please…”

  She just carried on storming forward into the freezing night. “Please let me explain,” I said. “I’m so sorry. I’m a fucking idiot.”

  “Fuck. You. Luke.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Train station.”

  “Abbey, don’t be crazy. There won’t be another train back now.”

  She spun around and looked me straight in the eyes. “Oh, OK, fine. So what? Shall we just go back to the party, then?”

  “Well, no, obviously not, but—”

  “Why the fuck did you even take me in there?” she hissed.

  “Because you wanted to go,” I said pathetically.

  “Yeah. That was before I knew the girl you’ve been secretly fucking would be there, too.”

  I looked down at the pavement.

  “So you have?” she said.

  I looked back up at her but didn’t speak. She closed her eyes and nodded.

  “Right,” she said with her eyes still closed. “Did you know she would be there?”

  “Of course not,” I muttered.

  “So how long were you thinking you could keep this up?”

  I almost laughed. “How long…Abbey, you’re talking like I’m some fucking criminal mastermind, or, like, serial playboy. It should be pretty obvious that I wasn’t thinking. About anything. It’s like I haven’t been thinking all semester. I’ve just been…blindly moving forward, smashing into stuff as I go.”

  Abbey was shaking her head, staring down at her feet. I kept going, feeling a strange lightness at finally telling the truth. “I’ve been trying to fit in and make friends, but everything keeps falling apart. It’s, like, school was so…easy. With you and Reece and soccer and everything, it all just slotted into place. But here, it’s different. It’s like nothing fits properly.” I exhaled and watched my smoky breath mushroom out like a speech bubble above our heads. “This thing with Phoebe,” I said quietly. “It was the first thing here that seemed to fit.”

  Abbey looked up at me, tears glinting in her eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me about her, Luke?” she shouted. Like, literally shouted. I saw a light go on in the window nearest us.

  I shrugged. “Same reason you didn’t tell me about Marcus?”

  She turned around again and started walking.

  “Abbey, I’m sorry.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Seriously, please. There won’t be any trains now.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “And even if there are, it’ll be ridiculously expensive at the last minute.”

  She stopped suddenly and spun around furiously to face me. “I’VE GOT A YOUNG PERSON’S FUCKING RAILCARD, LUKE!” she screamed.

  It was so loud that two guys in the restaurant across the road popped their heads out.

  I couldn’t help it. It was like something just snapped inside me.

  “Are you actually fucking laughing?” Abbey whispered.

  “I’m sorry…”

  “You’re such a…” But then she was laughing, too. Laughing and crying at the same time. Big gulping laughs sloshing into big groaning sobs.

  We stood there for a few seconds like that; barking like mad seals, while the guys in the restaurant just stared at us.

  Then she wiped her eyes with her sleeve and sat down on the wall of the house we were outside. “Oh, fuck
ing hell, Luke.” She took a deep breath and blew it back out. She sniffed and stared down at the pavement. “Phoebe Bennet,” she said blankly. “From school.”

  I shook my head. “No…well, yeah, but we’re not together, or anything….We sort of were, though. I don’t know what we are, really.” I paused. “I’m so sorry, Abbs.”

  She looked up at me, eyes glistening. “No, it’s all right, I suppose. I mean…we were broken up. We are broken up.”

  “Yeah, but still. I should have told you.”

  She shrugged. “I should have told you about Marcus.”

  “Well, yeah. Fucking Reece told me about Marcus. Or, at least, he told me to check Instagram.”

  “Yeah. Sorry. I shouldn’t have put that picture up.”

  “Why did you?”

  She opened her mouth to answer and then stopped. Then she suddenly burst out laughing again. “I wanted you to see it,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  “It’s all right. I don’t know what’s wrong with me either. At least we’re confused together.”

  She dried her eyes on her sleeve again and took a couple more wobbly deep breaths.

  “Why did you come up, Abbey?” I asked. “I mean, do you want us to get back together?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” she sighed. “I don’t know what I want, really. I just wanted to see you. I’ve missed you.”

  “Yeah, I’ve missed you, too. Still, you’ve got old Marcus now, haven’t you….”

  She snickered. “Marcus is a dick, Luke. His Instagram is, like, ninety percent Latin proverbs.”

  This made me lose it again: “I suspected he was a dick, but I didn’t want to say anything.”

  When we’d both stopped laughing, she said, “But I guess he did make me feel better.”

  “Well, maybe he’s not a total dick, then.”

  She looked at me. “Does Phoebe Bennet make you feel like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Better?”

  I didn’t really know the answer to that. To be honest, the idea that Phoebe would ever even want to be in the same room with me again seemed pretty unlikely, so it was hard to assess my feelings for her. But still, I gave it a go.

  “I really like her, yeah. I like being with her.” Abbey smiled sadly and nodded. I shifted closer to her along the wall. “I really want you to be OK, Abbs.”

  “I think I am now,” she said softly. “But it’s weird, you know? Like, half my bedroom wall is pictures of me and you. And now…what am I supposed to do with them? Put them up in the attic and forget about them? Or just throw them away? I don’t want that. I don’t want to forget that we ever happened.”

  “Me neither. But why do we have to? I wouldn’t ever change what we had. I was so happy with you. Maybe it’s the right thing that it’s over, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t have happened. I’m glad it did.”

  “I’m glad, too,” she said, smiling. “But maybe we shouldn’t see each other for a bit, though. After tomorrow, I mean. It might be a good thing. It might mean that we can see each other in the long run.”

  “Yeah. I really, really want that.”

  She reached into her bag and handed me an envelope. “Here. I forgot to give you this. Early Christmas card.”

  I opened it. It had a picture of some golf clubs and a pint of beer on the front, and it said: TO A WONDERFUL STEPDAD ON FATHER’S DAY.

  “Shit,” I said. “That’s good. That’s really good.”

  Inside the card she’d written: Luke—whatever happens, you made me the happiest I’ve ever been.

  We walked back to Jutland arm in arm. Back in my room, I made tea and gave her the bed, even though she insisted it wouldn’t be weird if we both slept in it. But it really felt like we’d gotten past something tonight—something we’d never really gotten past in the summer—and it seemed stupid to risk going back a step.

  I laid out three pairs of jeans and a jacket on the floor beside her, and tried unsuccessfully to get comfy. I thought about Phoebe. About how our relationship—or whatever the hell it was—really had been the one thing here that had actually made me happy.

  “You sure you’re all right down there?” Abbey murmured in the darkness.

  “Yeah, I’m all right. ’Night, Abbs.”

  “ ’Night, Luke.”

  And I really was all right.

  At least, I was all right until about four-thirty a.m., when a piercing electronic scream burst down the hall and zapped me awake.

  “Mmmph…” Abbey sat up suddenly, her hair over her eyes. “Whassat?”

  “It’s the fire alarm,” I groaned over the noise. “Come on, we’d better go down. It won’t be a drill at this time of night.”

  I shrugged on my jacket and handed Abbey my old parka, and we wandered downstairs, where half of Jutland was already shivering outside in their coats and pajama bottoms.

  Arthur bumbled over, barefoot and wrapped in two zip-up hoodies, looking extremely worried. “Fuck, man, I think this was me, you know,” he whispered. “I had a dream that I was making cheese on toast. Maybe I actually did make cheese on toast. Maybe I was sleep-toasting.”

  “You can’t sleep-toast, Arthur. It’s impossible. Also, for someone who smokes as much weed as you do, your dreams are surprisingly boring.”

  He wasn’t listening. “If this turns out to be my fault, I’ll be out on my ear, man. I set the alarm off last year, too. Trying to light a spliff off Rita’s hair straighteners.”

  I nodded across to D Dorm, which was also leaking pissed-off, half-asleep people. “I wouldn’t worry about it. They’re evacuating the other dorms, too. It was probably someone in there.”

  Negin, Frankie and Flora were already outside the entrance, shivering together, wrapped in a comforter. They all turned at the same time to look at the main staircase, where Phoebe was shuffling down the steps, sheepishly.

  With Will right behind her.

  I didn’t look up, but I knew everyone was staring at us.

  Will had already started to walk away, but as he did he shook his head and almost laughed to himself. “Whatever,” he muttered, pushing past me. “You’re a fucking bitch.”

  Before I was even sure I’d heard him right, he disappeared down the walkway, back toward the bar. I looked around for someone to acknowledge what had happened but there was no one. I scanned the crowd but the only person who met my gaze was Abbey. Luke was next to her, his eyes on his feet. I smiled at her, and she smiled back. A watery acknowledgment of something that I couldn’t decipher.

  Negin, Frankie and Flora were outside the other entrance. The staff was counting us and holding clipboards and yelling for people to keep still and be quiet. I tried to walk over but one of them told me in no uncertain terms that was not allowed. The girls just stood, huddled together, not speaking. It was like they genuinely had no idea I was there, but I knew that couldn’t be true.

  People had comforters and blankets wrapped round them. Some were starting to make loud jokes and a few were even singing. But this vacuum surrounded random little circles of people scattered across the grass. One where Luke and Abbey stood completely still, not looking at each other; one where Frankie, Negin and Flora were avoiding even glancing in my direction.

  Finally, we were allowed back in. I trudged slowly back up the stairs. Not even Connor really acknowledged me as he shuffled to his room.

  Negin’s door was already shut. I knew I should be brave: knock and explain everything to them, so that bit of my life, at least, was OK again. But I was too scared I would mess that up, too, and end the night with less than nothing. So I didn’t.

  I pushed my door open and looked at my phone. I stared at the picture of a cake Mum had sent earlier. It had my name on i
t. In the message she’d written Celebrating in your honor xx.

  As I climbed into bed, my whole body felt heavy, but my brain was whirring like mad. I curled myself up into a ball under the comforter and stared out through the window at the silent little church outside. I closed my eyes and tried to rock myself shut like a seashell, to block out every single thought. How could every part of my life have unraveled within three hours? I thought I would never sleep, but I went from being awake to completely unconscious in one single beat. I didn’t wake up to do that weird alcohol pee you do in the night when you’ve been drinking. I didn’t dream. I didn’t even move.

  I woke up to Flora picking her stuff up around me.

  “My train is in an hour.” She didn’t look at me as she said it, just kept gathering her makeup off the floor and chucking it randomly into her array of canvas bags. She seemed calm, but underneath I knew her heart was beating really fast. The classic girl freeze-out. I’m angry at you, but there is no way I’m going to come right out and say it.

  She sighed as she scrunched up her pajamas and shoved them in.

  “I slept in Negin’s room.” She said it like I had asked the question first.

  “Sorry…You could have—”

  She rolled her eyes. “Yup.”

  “I’m sorry I left you at the party.”

  She didn’t look at me. “It’s totally fine. Honestly, I actually had a really good night after you left.” I couldn’t tell if she was mocking me or not. Her voice was so even.

  “I was just really upset and I wanted to get out of there.”

  She nodded but still didn’t look up. “Yup…last night was certainly full of drama.” It was belittling, like she was making out I had loved every minute. Like I was some attention-seeking drain.

  I laughed to try to defuse it. “Just so you know, nothing happened with me and Will. It was actually really weird. As he left, he called me a bitch.”

  She picked up her little pot with the confetti stars that she sometimes stuck underneath her eyes, but she did it so forcefully they all scattered across the room. Tiny gold and silver stars wafted to the floor.