by Melody John
‘I saw you yesterday,’ he said. He didn’t sound as though he meant it in a threatening way. He didn’t even sound that interested. ‘In the tragedy class.’
‘Um, yeah. Yeah.’ I sidled past him as best I could, my back almost pressed up against the countertop. I couldn’t tell if he was looking at me, but I felt incredibly obvious and conspicuous. The plate rattled again, and the lid of the bin in the corner began to open. I squashed down on my emotions and tried to control myself.
‘You’re studying English?’ he asked.
‘Yeah. English and History.’
‘Cool. I’m just doing straight English.’
‘Oh. So, um…’ Don’t panic, don’t panic, you can do this, ‘what classes are you taking?’
‘Tragedy, Dickens, Modernism, and Theory.’
Tragedy and Dickens were two of my classes. But that was okay, I knew about it, so I would be prepared. I could just avoid him. I hardly socialised with the normal people in any of my classes, so I could avoid him just as easily. It was okay. I was okay.
‘What are you doing in History?’
I jumped, and tried to hide it. ‘Um. Victorian Culture. Colonialism. Romantic Influences.’
‘Romantic Influences?’ He laughed.
I didn’t say anything, just bent down to open the fridge.
‘So what’s that?’ he prodded. ‘Romeo and Juliet, that kind of thing?’
‘No, it’s not romantic like romance. It means Romantic, with a capital R. Like, adventures and nature and, and sense of wonder, and…’ I found the yoghurt and straightened up.
He was right next to me, right next to me, within touching distance. I startled back and dropped the yoghurt.
He exclaimed in surprise, and I ducked to the floor, grabbed the pot, and edged away from him. The pot had remained intact, and I went to the cupboard and found a bowl and spoon.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ I said, trying to sound cheerful. ‘Yes, yes, I’m fine.’
‘You seemed very surprised to see me here.’ He waited, but when I didn’t say anything, he said, ‘I’m new, you see, I started late. I had to go through clearing.’
I knew I should say something, but I couldn’t think of anything. ‘Oh,’ I managed finally.
‘I’m Dmitri, by the way.’
‘Oh,’ I said. There was a long silence, and then I very reluctantly said, ‘I’m Lizzie.’
‘Right. Cool. Nice to meet you.’
I slopped yoghurt into my bowl, and then put the pot back in the fridge. I glanced up and saw him frowning at me, then I ducked away and slid past him to the door with my bowl. I should say something—‘goodbye’, ‘sorry, got to dash’, ‘see you later’. Something like that.
But instead I just clutched the bowl of yoghurt and fled back to my room. I ate the yoghurt, not tasting it, but knowing I had to eat something. I waited in my room until I heard him leave the kitchen, then dashed back and quickly rinsed my bowl and spoon, crashed them onto the draining rack, dashed to the bathroom to brush my teeth, then back into my room to fetch my bag, then out of the halls and across campus to the lecture hall.
*
I’d forgotten that one of my classes after lunch was Dickens. I slunk into the seminar and chose the seat at the very back of the room, on the edge of the table. It was a long room with two doors, and I made sure that I was only a few steps away from the second one.
Slowly the rest of the class dribbled in. There was a moderately successful turnout today, and about eight students arrived soon after me. Then the tutor arrived. Followed by Dmitri. He paused in the doorway, gazing all around the room. I felt him look at me, but when I looked away, I still peeked at him out of the corner of my eye. He took a seat near the front of the class, next to the same boy who’d been reading Testament of Youth in the tragedy class yesterday. I tried not to stare at the back of his head.
‘Right,’ the tutor said, rubbing his hands together. He was an energetic little man who always dressed in black. He had a trim little beard and moustache, and I thought he looked rather like an opera singer. He and the tutor who looked like Julie Bowen alternated lessons between them. ‘So I trust you’ve all familiarised yourself with the material today? Everyone is enthused and ready to discuss Great Expectations?’
There was a faint murmur from some of the students. The tutor took this to mean wild enthusiasm, and bounced to the whiteboard. ‘Right! So today we’re going to be looking closely at the character of Estella, as she perfectly represents both the idea of the Gothic and demonstrates various facets of Victorian gender politics.’
I underlined one of the quotes on the extract. ‘You must know,’ said Estella, condescending to me as a beautiful and brilliant woman might, ‘that I have no heart—if that has anything to do with my memory.’
I really liked that. I knew it wasn’t healthy, and that Estella was totally traumatised and would have seriously benefited from a buttload of therapy, but still. No heart meant that she was cool and detached and strong. She wouldn’t let herself be taken advantage of, or used and cast aside.
Though really, it didn’t do her any good, did it? pointed out the part of my mind that had actually read the whole novel. She marries Bentley Drummle for money and it makes her completely miserable. She’s only kind of starting to think about being happy at the end, when she goes off with Pip. But that’s only according to the revised ending—in the original ending, she marries someone else and Pip just stares wistfully at her from afar.
God, this was a cheerful novel.
‘Dmitri, what do you think?’
I snapped upright, then tried to look as though I’d just been stretching.
Dmitri ran his hand over his dusty-coloured hair. ‘Estella’s very frigid, but it’s not her fault. It’s nurture, not nature. Human beings aren’t like that naturally—but it’s not anything to do with gender. Dickens seems to be saying that she and Miss Havisham are especially unnatural, tying in with the Gothic, because they’re female, and females are meant to be sweet and nurturing, like Biddie. But that’s because he was writing with the ideal of the Angel of the House in his mind—the idea that women are born to be subservient wives and mothers. But that’s a dated reading. It would have made sense to a Victorian audience, but a modern audience should dismiss that version at once.’
Huh.
‘That’s very interesting,’ the tutor said, stroking his operatic moustache. ‘Do you think it’s purely focused on gender? Dickens is making a statement about the nature of gender roles, rather than humanity itself?’
‘I think it is about gender,’ Dmitri said, so confidently that it almost seemed rude. ‘Look at Jaggers. He has death masks on his walls, and he’s not the most likeable or sympathetic character, but he thrives and prospers. Because he’s male. But Mrs Joe is also mean and hard, and she’s practically lobotomised into becoming a sweeter and more passive character. Because she’s female.’
‘Good,’ the tutor said, and bounced to the whiteboard. He scribbled down a block of unintelligible notes, and I frowned at the back of Dmitri’s head. I didn’t know what I had been expecting, but not something like that. I didn’t know why it was surprised me so much—it wasn’t as though every guy in the course was like Tariq. But I’d assumed that Dmitri would be like (like Liam) maybe more conservative, or—No, to be honest about it, I’d assumed that he would be an offensive jerk, and then I would be given solid justification for hating him.
And then he came out with stuff like that, and now I felt really bad for being so prejudiced. God, it wasn’t my fault! He was a sylph, he had a mesmer, so it wasn’t like I was completely unfounded in not trusting him! And just because he said one sensible thing didn’t make him perfect.
I scowled at my paper and wrote ‘gender imbalance re: Estella, Mrs H and Mrs Joe vs Jaggers. Biddie sucks.’
CHAPTER FIVE
Someone was knocking at my door. ‘Lizzie?’
‘Yeah?’ I popped
out one earphone.
‘Can I come in?’
‘Uh, yeah.’ I shoved the packet of biscuits down under my covers.
The door opened, and Laura came in. Her room was a few doors down from mine, and I knew her by sight. We said ‘hi’ if we passed each other, but not much more than that. She looked around my room interestedly. ‘Oh cool, Back to the Future! Can I look at your Funkos?’
‘Uh, yeah, sure,’ I said.
Laura went to the windowsill. She smiled and ran the tip of her finger along the sill. ‘I have the black and white Beatles set, and I’m working towards the full Supernatural cast.’
I had thought Laura would be the last person to even know about Funko figures. She was always very primly dressed, lots of blouses and dresses with Peter Pan collars, and she always had perfect winged eyeliner, and her perpetually neat auburn hair was usually tied back with a ribbon. Very fashionable and, well, maybe not mainstream, but—oh god was this who I was now? Making snap judgements about people based on what they looked like and how they did their hair?
I was a terrible person.
‘Would you like a biscuit?’ I asked.
‘Oh yes, thank you.’ She took a chocolate digestive and crunched it delicately. She didn’t leave any crumbs. ‘I was going to ask if you’d like to come out. A few of us from this floor are going to check out that club on campus, and I thought it would be nice, fun.’
‘Oh,’ I said.
‘You don’t have to come,’ she said quickly, ‘I was just asking, I thought it would be a bit mean if we all sailed out and didn’t even ask you if you wanted to come.’
‘Yeah, no, thanks,’ I said. ‘I will come.’ I’d taken off my makeup and was wearing my pyjama bottoms. ‘I just need to, uh, freshen up a little.’
Laura laughed. ‘I’ll wait for you in the kitchen. I’m really glad you’re coming.’ She smiled, and it sounded like she was really sincere. ‘It feels like I still hardly know anyone here.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘It’s all a bit of a madhouse.’
She grinned. ‘That’s accurate.’ She went out, and I closed the lid of my laptop. For a moment I felt like calling after Laura and saying no, sorry, I wasn’t going to go out, I was going to stay inside and watch Doctor Who until my eyeballs shrivelled up. But, no, that wasn’t the way to move on.
I slid out of bed and found a pair of jeans, then slapped on some concealer and navy eyeliner. I’d been trying to wear lipstick recently, but it wasn’t going so well; I always ended up wiping it off after ten minutes because I was so paranoid about it smudging or ending up on my teeth. So I just went with the eyeliner, and tousled up my hair in an attempt at beachy waves, whatever the hell they were.
Laura was waiting for me in the kitchen, and she smiled and said, ‘You look nice.’
‘Thank you,’ I said warily, then said, ‘I like your dress. And how do you manage to get your eyeliner so perfect?’
She laughed as we headed downstairs. ‘Practise, just loads and loads of practise. And sticky tape.’
‘Tape?’
‘Yes. Haven’t you heard of that before? You take a bit of sellotape and kind of align it with your eye, and then you draw your liner along the edge. Then you peel the tape off, and you’re left with a really neat line.’
‘Wow. That sounds really weird.’
‘I know, I thought so too, but it really works!’
‘I’ll have to try it. I normally just smudge it all out, so it doesn’t matter if I’ve made any mistakes.’
‘But there’s an art to that as well.’ Laura pushed open the door, and we came out onto the path. It was getting dark, the sky swirled with pink and orange like raspberry ripple ice cream. It was cold as well, with a harsh breeze that cut through my leather jacket and nipped at my bare neck.
I shivered. ‘Where’s this place?’
Laura gestured towards the campus circle. ‘Near to the pizza place. You’ve never been?’
‘No…’ I’ve been hiding in my room because people scare me now. ‘I haven’t really explored much.’
She nodded sympathetically. We started walking. ‘I’ve found that. It’s so different from Sixth Form, isn’t it?’
‘I went to a college,’ I said. ‘It was very lax there. But it was good. I kind of miss it.’
‘God, yes. Now it all feels so much more real. There’s no safety net now.’
‘Don’t remind me,’ I said. ‘It feels like everything’s meant to make sense now. Like, you know how in films the character goes off to university, and that’s kind of it for them, they go there and it’s this wonderful period of enlightenment and knowledge and…’
‘And instead it’s about trying to cook spaghetti so you don’t starve, and trying to understand Modernism so you don’t fail.’
‘I didn’t think you were doing English?’
‘Oh, I’m not really, I’m majoring in Creative Writing. But one of my tutors is obsessed with Modernism. It’s all very confusing. Not quite what I expected, really.’
The knowledge that someone else was also finding their course different to expectations was overwhelming cheering. I felt a rush of companionship towards Laura. ‘What are the people in your creative writing classes like?’
‘Well…’ She hesitated. ‘I don’t want to be rude, but so many of them are just pretentious wankers.’
I exploded into laughter. I’d never have expected her to use a phrase like that. There was evidently much more to Laura than Peter Pan collars and neat Mary Janes.
‘I don’t mean that in a mean way,’ Laura said, half laughing along with me. ‘Some of them are really nice. But they all think they’re the next Hemmingway or Ginsberg, and…’
‘Don’t tell me,’ I said. ‘They all smoke Cuban cigars and are desperately trying to develop a whiskey habit.’
‘Oh my god, how did you know?’
We giggled together, and I felt a lot more confident as we approached the campus buildings. The club was a small, silver-ish building decked out with tasteful bright blue neon signs. A sign above the door declared that it was called ‘The Fish Tank’.
Inside, it was pretty much as I had expected—dark, full of flashing lights, bouncing bodies, and deafeningly loud music. It was so loud that for a moment I couldn’t even tell what the tune the DJ was playing was. Then I laughed.
‘Oh god!’ Laura yelled. ‘Not “Call Me Maybe”!’
‘I like it!’ I yelled back.
She rolled her eyes. ‘Then you’re the only person in the entire world who does!’
‘I know! The Queen sent me a certificate saying so!’
Laura laughed and grabbed my arm. ‘I can see the others!’ She steered me through the crowds, and we ended up at the bar with a group of five other people. I recognised a few of them from my floor. One of them was David. The other was Dmitri.
‘Hey, Lizzie,’ David yelled.
‘Hi,’ I yelled back, grinning inwardly at the shirt he was wearing.
‘Nice you came out.’
‘Thanks. I’ve never been here before.’
‘What?’
‘I’ve never been here before.’
David grinned. ‘Neither have I! But my mum told me to get off Tumblr and go make new friends.’
I couldn’t help it. I grinned back. Despite Dmitri standing right there, despite my conflicting feelings about—well, everything—I was suddenly glad that I’d come out.
Laura bought a jug of something purple that tasted pretty much like a Slush Puppy, and she, David, and I huddled around it with a straw each. I caught David’s eye as we both fished for an ice cube, and we grinned at each other.
Then Dmitri was suddenly at my elbow saying, ‘Any room?’
I choked, grabbed my straw, and turned away from the jug, then doubled over, coughing.
‘Are you all right?’ Laura asked.
‘Yeah,’ I managed, my eyes watering. ‘Just…’ I slid along the bar so Laura was between Dmitri and me. ‘Sorry.’
I coughed again, and looked away.
‘Hey,’ someone said, dispelling the awkwardness that had begun to grow. It was a boy called Jamie; I had him in one of my history classes. He draped himself over the bar and grinned around at us all. ‘What you guys up to?’
Given the jug full of purple whatever, it seemed like a rather obvious question, but Jamie didn’t seem sober enough to realise that. He reached out and poked Laura’s arm. ‘Laura. Lau-ra.’
Laura didn’t seem at all pleased, and moved her arm away. ‘Yes, Jamie.’
