by Melody John
I realised what she was talking about. ‘You’re worried that they’ll think you’re not asexual enough?’
‘Yeah.’ She looked up quickly. ‘That’s it, pretty much.’
‘There’s not like a test that you have to go through, is there?’
‘What, like hazing? We accept her, one of us, shark-bait hoo ha ha?’
‘Uh, yeah.’
‘Yeah, Lizzie, there’s totally going to be hazing.’ She rolled her eyes, and I laughed. Laura said, ‘I know it’s kind of moronic. But still.’
‘Now, you’ve just been telling me about trusting myself. So I’m going to be cool and quote yourself back to you. Trust yourself on this. You know how you feel, and if you feel that you’re asexual, then go and be asexual. If you were gay, the others wouldn’t be like “pff fake gay girl, here take this test and answer fifty questions about Oscar Wilde and Stephen Fry, and then write an essay on queer theory”.’
‘I actually have a lip gloss called Queer Theory.’
‘See, you’re already halfway there.’
We grinned at each other. ‘Well,’ Laura said. ‘We might not have got a lot of coursework done, but boy, we sure would pass a class in soul-searching.’
‘Hey,’ Dmitri called from the kitchen, ‘do you want tea?’
‘Yeah, thanks,’ Laura called back.
‘Lizzie?’
‘Yeah, ta.’
Dmitri bought in two steaming mugs, and David followed behind him with two more. He sat down on one of the chairs, stretching out his long legs. He was wearing odd socks, one blue and one pink.
I grinned at him. He looked a bit bemused, like he didn’t quite know what I was so happy about, but still he grinned back. And that made me even happier.
CHAPTER NINE
David burst into the kitchen and did a weird spasm against the fridge.
‘What exactly are you doing?’ I asked politely. I was helping Laura with her washing-up.
‘Victory dance!’
‘Ah, yes, how unobservant of me.’
He grinned. ‘I’m finished! I just submitted my final essay!’
‘Oh, awesomeness!’
‘Cool!’ Laura exclaimed. ‘You know what this means.’
‘What?’ David was still shimmying up against the fridge.
‘The Fish Tank!’ she announced. ‘Finally now that we’ve all done our coursework, we can go out and party ‘til we’re purple with no guilt or bad consequences.’
‘I’ve a feeling there may still be consequences,’ David said practically. ‘But they won’t matter as much now, so I take your point. I’ll tell Dmitri.’
‘Sweet!’ Laura flicked a clump of bubbles in my direction. ‘Lizzie. Tonight is the night.’
‘For pie and pudding and Netflix?’ Although I did really like going to the Fish Tank with the guys, sometimes I did just prefer the simpler evenings of TV marathons and innumerable packets of chocolate biscuits.
‘No, my child. Tonight is the night that you wear winged eyeliner.’
‘Oh my.’ I placed a hand over my heart. ‘Am I truly ready, sensei?’
‘You are,’ she said gravely. ‘Take it and go forth with my blessing, for now you know are a man, my son. The wings will guide you on your path.’
‘I kind of want to try eyeliner,’ David said. ‘Would it be weird if I tried it?’
‘Maybe not winged eyeliner,’ Laura said. She looked at him critically. ‘I don’t think it would suit. But smudged out would look better. Kind of grungy and messy, a bit punk, a bit rock. That would suit your bone structure.’
‘Aren’t punk and rock two different things?’ David asked, grinning at me.
‘Pff, like I know.’
‘Smudged is really easy,’ I said. ‘You just have to blend it until you’re happy.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Like, with a brush?’
‘Well, yeah, what else are you going to use?’
‘I don’t know,’ he grinned. ‘I thought it just kind of happened like that.’
I gave an outraged gasp. ‘I’ll have you know that smudged eyeliner takes far more skill and concentration than people would expect. It’s talent, pure, raw smudging talent that keeps me looking so fabulous day after day.’
‘Talent,’ David said, grinning.
His voice made me feel warm inside, but I covered it by smirking back at him and sticking out my tongue.
*
The winged eyeliner seemed to take a very, very long time.
‘You can’t rush art,’ Laura said in a creaky old-man voice like the guy from Toy Story 2. She was so close to my face that I could see the faintest blending lines in her foundation. ‘Close your eyes again.’
‘If it’s going to take this long, I think I might just stick to smudging it out.’
‘Not tonight you’re not. Now hush. Keep still.’ The brush tickled along my eyelashes. ‘Open. Now close.’ Then finally she said, ‘Okay. Perfect.’
I opened my eyes and peered at my reflection. It actually looked really good, in my humble opinion. The thick black liner was crisp and sharp, tapering at a beautifully cat-like angle. It made my eyes look rounder, and their blueness somehow brighter. ‘Wow.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ Laura grinned at me, wiping the brush off on a wipe. ‘I should chuck this course in and study to become a make-up artist.’
David raised his eyebrows in a very flattering way when we came downstairs. ‘So this is the famous cat eyeliner?’
‘Yup,’ I said, and even dared to bat my eyelashes at him.
He looked a little surprised, then came closer, saying, ‘Can I look?’
I closed my eyes briefly, then opened them. His face was very close to mine, his gaze tracing the lines of my makeup. Then he looked at me properly, and smiled. ‘Looks nice,’ he said softly. ‘I like your normal smudgy stuff as well. But this is also nice.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, also softly. For a moment, he still stayed there in my space, very close to me as though he was still examining my eyeliner. But he was looking at me, not my makeup, and it felt oddly special, as though he were looking past the makeup into everything that lay behind it. It was scary. It was freaking terrifying. But I didn’t look away. I smiled slightly, meeting his gaze.
‘Right,’ Dmitri said. ‘If we’ve stopped admiring everyone’s makeup, I thought we were going out?’
David leaned back, and I grinned, but I felt my face burning red. My heart was beating very fast. Laura gave me an encouraging smile, and lightly patted my hand as we headed out of the dorms across campus.
The Fish Tank was noisy and crowded as usual, full of students like us who were celebrating finishing their coursework. Most of the deadlines were this week, so there were a few people still working on their projects, but most of us had already finished.
I bought a jug of strawberry daiquiri, and sat on the bar stools with David. We each had a straw, and we drank slowly. Laura had decided that she wanted to dance, so she’d grabbed a guy she recognised from one of her creative writing classes (‘Whiskey habit,’ she mouthed to me as she hauled him away) and was dancing with him. Dmitri had recognised some of his other friends, and had gone to talk to them, so it was just David and me and the jug.
I tried not to look at him too closely, still feeling a little giddy after our weird moment earlier. It hadn’t really been a moment, not really. He’d just been looking at my eyeliner because Laura and I had gone on about it so much. I mustn’t read more into this than there really was.
I glanced up, and caught him looking at me. He glanced away bashfully, and that gave me an odd boost of confidence. I touched his straw with my own, and pushed an ice cube towards him.
‘Very The Lady and the Tramp,’ he said. ‘If they ever redid The Lady and the Tramp in a modern setting with humans, this is what they’d use instead of a plate of meatballs. A jug of cocktail, two straws, and a crowded bar.’
‘Doesn’t have quite the same atmosphere,’ I said.
‘No, not really.’
‘Do you like coming here? I mean, I like coming here, but sometimes…’
‘Sometimes Tumblr and Netflix seem more attractive?’
I grinned. ‘Yeah, pretty much.’
He grinned back. ‘Yeah, but Laura really likes it, and so does Dmitri.’ He looked around, and spied Dmitri over by the opposite wall. He was just standing by himself, not talking to anyone. ‘Oh,’ David said in surprise. ‘I thought he’d gone to find friends.’
‘Maybe they’ve gone to get drinks,’ I said, trying not to too obviously draw the conversation back.
‘Maybe.’ David shook his head. ‘Here, you have my straw.’ He hopped down off his stool, and buried through the dancing, flailing bodies to get to Dmitri on the other side of the room.
I turned away so I didn’t have to look, and hunched over the jug by myself. David’s straw sat at a crooked angle, and I picked it out of the jug and laid it down on the bar, where it dribbled a few drops of red drink onto the shiny surface. I resolutely chewed down on my straw and took a huge gulp of strawberry daiquiri. It was sweet and cold and utterly delicious, so I drank more.
I didn’t look around to see where Laura was, and I especially didn’t look round to see if David was still being cosy with Dmitri. God, what was wrong with me! Sadness and frustration and anger were all welling up inside me. This was it all over again. Nothing had changed. My stupid little epiphany of the other day hadn’t meant anything. It was still just the same.
This was what had happened with Tom and Liam. I squeezed my eyes shut against their faces, and sucked down more daiquiri. How arrogant I was, how supremely arrogant. Just like before, I’d been assuming that all that was needed was for me to sort out my own feelings, and David would be waiting for me when I got there. It hadn’t been a moment earlier; he’d just been looking at my stupid, stupid eyeliner. There was no moment. No moment at all.
My head was beginning to hurt from all the ice cubes, but I didn’t care. I realised with some surprise that I’d reached the bottom of the jug, but I just shoved it towards the girl behind the bar and asked for a refill. When it arrived, it was dark and sweet and red, swimming with more ice than an Artic sea, and I sucked it down gratefully.
‘Lizzie!’ Laura was back at my side. She grabbed a straw and took a mouthful of drink. ‘You haven’t drunk much of this.’
I blinked at her, then realised that she thought that this was still the first jug. That seemed suddenly ridiculously funny, and I began to giggle.
Laura raised her eyebrows. ‘Uh, okay.’
I leaned in closer to her. ‘It’s okay.’
‘Okay?’
‘Yeah.’ I chomped down on my straw. ‘It’s a metaphor, Hazel Grace.’
‘What is?’
I laughed, and felt tears at the back of my eyes. ‘It’s all okay. Except when it’s not, because it never is.’
She frowned. ‘How much have you drunk?’
‘Just this jug. And the other jug.’
‘What other jug?’
I shook my head. ‘No, same jug. Same jug, but different jug. Two jugs. But also one jug.’
She sighed. ‘I’m going to take you back to your room.’
‘No! No, I’ll go by myself. Sorry, I’m kind of…’ I slid off my stool, and felt a little dizzy. ‘You can’t get drunk on that stuff anyway. It’s all sugar.’
‘Well, apparently you’re the first person in the world to get drunk on it.’ Laura shook her head. ‘All right, come on then.’
‘I can go by myself,’ I insisted.
‘Yeah, sure you can.’ She grabbed our bags and coats, and linked her arm through mine. She marched me out of the club and back across the dark campus to the dorms.
Somewhere along the way, I realised that I was crying. I tried to be quiet about it, but it was cold, and that made my nose run even more than the tears, and soon I was sniffing and snuffling like an asthmatic bulldog. Laura didn’t say anything; she hustled me along back into the dorm building, then along into my bedroom.
She pushed me onto my bed, and while I curled up in a ball and wailed into my pillow, she went to the kitchen and came back with half a packet of pink wafers and a cup of tea. She put them on my desk, and then came and sat on my bed. She patted my shoulder. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’
I shook my head. I couldn’t think about anything; I just wanted to cry and sleep. ‘You can go back, I’m sorry I made you leave.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t going to let you leave like that.’
I sniffed deeply, and tried to smile at her. ‘I’m okay. I really am. You go back. I think I just got brain freeze, and it kind of combined with essay stress, and I’m just really tired. I just need an early night.’
Laura teetered, clearly torn.
‘Go on,’ I said, giving her a little shove. ‘I’ll be really cross if you don’t go back and enjoy yourself.’
‘Well, all right,’ she said. ‘If you’re sure.’
‘I am sure.’
‘Okay.’
‘Don’t—don’t tell the others that I was crying. Just say I was tired.’
‘Okay.’ She smiled at me. ‘You go to sleep. And drink your tea. I put about half the sugar bowl in it, just how you like it.’
I almost started crying again at that, but I just gave her a watery smile as she went out the door. I wanted to just sleep and cry, but I forced myself to sit upright. I sat for a moment with my head in my hands, then I made the packet of biscuits float towards me. I chewed on a pink wafer, but it was dry in my mouth, and the tea was too hot to drink.
I scrubbed at my face, leaving black makeup stains on my wrist, and left my room for the kitchen. The dorm floor was dark and quiet. When I flicked on the kitchen light, the brightness hurt my eyes, so I turned it off again and felt my way to the sink. I found a clean glass, and filled it with cold water.
When I turned around, Dmitri was standing right next to me. I choked on my water, and coughed and snorted for a good five minutes.
‘Why are you crying?’ he asked, looking concerned. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes,’ I said. Then, ‘No.’
‘Ah.’ He paused, and cocked his head to one side. The gesture reminded me so much of Liam that I almost dropped the glass. I burst into tears again.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Um. Maybe you should go to bed? Yeah? You’ll feel better then?’
I nodded blindly, and stumbled out of the kitchen back to my bedroom. I sat down on my bed, then realised that I was still holding the glass. A sob choked me, and I made it float back towards the desk.
A small sound made me look up blearily. Dmitri was standing in the doorway, and he was looking at me curiously. ‘Is that your power?’
‘Yeah.’ A fresh wave of tears burst out of me. My heart hurt like someone was punching me in the chest with a sledgehammer. ‘Just that. It’s hardly a power at all. Look.’ I waved my hand, and my Funko figures rattled, and a book on the floor flipped open, and its pages rustled as though in a breeze. ‘Big fat whoop. Telekinesis. Wow. Such power, very magic.’
I tugged at my bootlaces hopelessly, feeling like I was drowning.
Dmitri took a few steps into the room. I thought he was going to say something, but instead he just said, ‘I’ll take that back for you.’
I didn’t know what he was talking about, but he picked up the glass. He paused with his hand on the door handle. ‘Goodnight, Lizzie,’ he said in a rather odd voice.
‘Goodnight,’ I sniffed. I hardly heard when he shut the door. I wrestled with my laces, and finally managed to undo them. I kicked my boots off and burrowed under the covers without bothering to undress any further. I closed my eyes and felt my tears leak out onto the pillow, knowing that there would probably be loads of mascara stains on the case tomorrow, but too sick and miserable to care.
*
I must have slept for a few hours. Then I was suddenly awakened by a blur of voices outside my room. The
noise made my head hurt, and I stumbled out of bed to yell at whoever it was to kindly shut the hell up.
I fumbled my door open and looked blearily up and down the corridor. It was a crowd of about five people lurching back to their rooms. They were laughing, and they stank of booze. ‘Oi!’ I said thickly. ‘Shuttup.’
