Freshers

by Tom Ellen

  Luke took a sip of his tea, then sat down and let his legs dangle over the edge of the bridge. I followed suit. Sort of. I followed suit forgetting how my mug was much fuller than his and also that when it comes to smooth physical movement, I am a dud. For a split second I thought I might just tumble underneath the iron railing and into the lake. I made a kind of squawking sound and then just fell on to my bottom with a thump, like some sort of geriatric penguin.

  I looked up and saw that Luke was shaking his hair out over the lake and tea was dripping out of it.

  ‘Oh my god, are you OK? I’m so sorry.’ I almost reached out and touched him, but managed to stop myself in time. ‘I prioritized the tea. I’m sorry.’

  ‘“I prioritized the tea.”’ He started full on laughing, which made me laugh, too. ‘Good to know you value me less than some tea.’

  A part of me wanted to get out my phone and actually text that as a direct quote to Flora.

  ‘Clumsiness is one of my defining features,’ I said. ‘My parents made me do disco dancing for three years to try and like, train it out of me. But all it did was give me even more of a complex. There is a picture in my house where I am wearing a turquoise unitard. I mean, that is only going to give your kid more problems, not less—’ I pinched my thumb to try and physically stop myself babbling. At least I hadn’t snorted. Snorting is probably the least sexy of all mannerisms.

  Luke smiled. ‘My mum made me do flamenco dancing for a term because my sister did it and she didn’t want to pay for a babysitter.’

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘Old enough to know I was the only boy,’ he said. ‘They had to get me a special frilly shirt with red and black dots. I did an exam in it and everything.’

  ‘How did you do?’

  He shrugged in mock modesty. ‘Oh, I can’t remember. Distinction. No big deal. Just a distinction.’

  I laughed. ‘I cannot imagine you flamenco dancing.’

  ‘I was all right at it, actually. Do you want some of my tea?’

  ‘No, like I said, I prioritized the tea. I still have some left.’ I showed him my mug. ‘I feel a bit bad. These mugs have never been used. Look, they still have the label – £2.99, Robert Dyas.’

  ‘I’m sure they won’t mind,’ Luke said. ‘And more to the point, they won’t even know. Plus, we can always blame Stephanie Stevens.’

  ‘Yeah, we could leave them a note that says “Stephanie Stevens did it”.’

  We sat for a bit, just drinking our tea and staring at the lake. It made me realize how exhausted I was.

  Luke sighed. ‘I really feel like today has been one of the longest days of my life. Waking up this morning feels like weeks ago.’

  I wondered if it felt longer for him because of what had happened to make him cry – whatever that was. Did it have something to do with Abbey Baker? Surely not. They were our year’s golden couple. Out of nowhere, an image of them at the leavers’ prom popped into my head. They looked like they belonged on the Oscars red carpet, not in the reception of the Kingston Holiday Inn.

  ‘Yeah, but we made it.’ I held my mug up. ‘Cheers. To making it through the first day.’

  He clinked his mug against mine and nodded. ‘Yup. Me, you and, if Stephanie Stevens isn’t dead, then her too. We made it through the first day of uni. And we both made a friend. Two friends actually, if we count Stephanie Stevens. If she’s dead we can definitely count her, cos she won’t be able to contest it.’

  I shook my head. ‘Seriously, why are people so obsessed with dying at uni?’

  ‘I don’t know. Do you know Reece Morris?’ Of course I knew Reece Morris. He was Luke’s best mate.

  ‘Maybe . . .’

  ‘Anyway, he told me this story about this boy who fell in a skip on the first night of Freshers’, knocked himself unconscious and then got tipped into a landfill site.’

  ‘What? Random. And it’s not just dying. It’s dying in weird ways. My friend from my corridor, Negin, is obsessed with it too.’

  ‘Oh, you’ve already got a friend, have you?’ he said, raising an eyebrow. ‘That’s awkward. I thought me and Stephanie Stevens were your First-night Crew? Anyway, if this Negin’s your friend, then where is she?’

  I actually had no idea where Negin was. Would she be angry that we had got separated? I pointed vaguely out across the lake towards Jutland. ‘Over there somewhere.’

  ‘That’s a duck, Phoebe.’ It started swimming towards us.

  ‘Look, it wants to be our friend.’ I threw a bit of Twix into the water.

  ‘OK, fair enough,’ Luke smirked. ‘It’s you, me, Stephanie Stevens, this girl Negin – whoever the hell she is – and that duck. That’s it for first night of Freshers’. Any more friends is overkill.’

  ‘It’s weird, cos everyone says you don’t speak to the people you make friends with in Freshers’ ever again, but I actually do really like Negin.’

  He held his mug up. ‘Cheers. Me and Stephanie and the duck haven’t made the cut. We don’t care. We’ve got each other anyway.’

  Luke was actually funnier than I imagined. And less confident. He was quite softly spoken, really. He stared down blankly at the water. ‘I wonder what will have happened between now and like, three years’ time’. He said it like he’d almost forgotten I was there.

  ‘We’ll be twenty-one,’ I said. ‘That feels so far away. What do you want to have happened?’

  He didn’t look up. ‘For everything to feel less complicated, I guess.’

  It was the first time he’d said something that wasn’t just banter. It was like his real voice came through. I didn’t know what to do. So I just stayed silent.

  He swung his feet underneath the bridge like a kid. ‘Shall we go and check on our First-night Freshers Friend?’

  He got up and held out his hand to me. ‘Try not to fall in.’

  Even as it happened, I simultaneously imagined describing it to Flora. It was the first time I had ever touched him. I took his hand but didn’t want to put my whole weight on him in case I ungracefully pulled him over and into the lake. We walked back into the block and up the stairs. In the kitchen, we washed our mugs carefully and put them back in the cupboard. Then we looked in on Stephanie Stevens like new parents checking on their baby in its cot. She was snoring so loudly her bookshelf was shaking.

  We wandered back over the bridge and along the walkway. Music was still blaring from Jutland Bar, but the lights had come on now.

  We were walking side by side and every so often our arms brushed. I could feel my heartbeat upping its rhythm. Even though my Year Nine phase of stalking the hell out of Luke Taylor was just an embarrassing memory now, I still really, really fancied him. More than even Max and Adam, the two people I’d actually slept with. A part of me didn’t even have the guts to look at him, in case he could tell.

  We stopped outside Jutland Bar. We were facing each other and not far apart. My tummy flipped over a few times. We were in a classic kiss position.

  ‘See you tomorrow, then, yeah?’ he said, and reached forward to give me a hug. It was just a quick, see-you-later, cursory one; the kind you would give someone you were going to see right after the next lesson. But it woke my whole body up.

  I wandered back to D Block in a bit of a daze. I kept replaying the hug in my head. I messaged Flora, saying, LUKE TAYLOR BREAKING NEWS: EVERYTHING YOU CAN IMAGINE HAS ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

  Negin’s door was closed but I could see her light was still on.

  I knocked gently. ‘It’s Phoebe,’ I said softly. ‘Just checking you’re not dead.’

  ‘Not dead,’ I heard her say. Then she opened the door in her pyjamas and smiled. ‘Sorry I lost you. I was waiting up to check you weren’t dead either.’

  LUKE

  Jutland Bar looked like a bomb site. The lights had come up and people were staggering about, broken and sweaty and blinking at each other like ridiculously dressed moles. Five lads in ripped bedsheet togas were on the dance floor, punching t
he air to ‘Build Me Up Buttercup’. There was a girl wearing a full-length banana costume crying underneath the table football table, while a girl in a Justin Bieber onesie comforted her. Two pissed blokes were playing an aggressively competitive game above them, apparently unaware the girls were even there.

  I felt empty. Not in a stupid, over-the-top, dramatic way. Just sort of . . . numb. And exhausted. I tried to let the phrase ‘We are broken up’ sink in properly, but it was like entering the wrong password. It wouldn’t compute. It felt unreal, somehow. The phone call and the computer room meltdown seemed like days ago. In a weird way, the whole thing with Phoebe and Stephanie Stevens had been the best part of the night. It had taken my mind off everything, at least. There was no way I should have been able to enjoy myself after what had happened, but Phoebe’s sunniness was infectious. She was just so easy to chat to.

  I couldn’t see Arthur or anyone else from the corridor, so I headed back to B Block. Even though it was nearly 2 a.m., I didn’t feel like sleeping. I didn’t want to give my brain the chance to properly process what had happened. I heard the soft thud of music coming from Arthur’s room next door, so I tried knocking. His voice came through muffled: ‘Hang on . . . Who’s that?’

  ‘It’s Luke.’

  There was a pause. ‘All right . . . Come in, then. It’s open.’

  For a second, I thought I must have heard wrong, as there didn’t seem to be anyone inside. Over the music, I could hear a watery tinkling sound, like a burst pipe somewhere in the walls. But then, suddenly:

  ‘Where’d you get to, then?’

  From behind the open door of the sink cupboard, I spotted Arthur’s trainers.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ I said. ‘Didn’t see you. You OK?’

  ‘Yeah, man. Nearly finished.’

  Before I could ask him what he was nearly finished doing, I suddenly realized what the watery tinkling was.

  ‘Sorry, are you . . . y’know? Weeing? In the sink?’

  ‘Yeah. Obviously. What do you think the sink’s for?’

  ‘Well . . . not for weeing in, I wouldn’t have thought.’

  ‘Look, mate, just cos we’re not rich enough to get an en suite, like those posh fucks up in Gildas College, doesn’t mean we can’t improvise, if you know what I mean.’

  I saw the trainers bob up and down, and the tinkling stopped. Arthur stepped out from behind the door, grinning. His face was red and shiny, and he was wearing the Superman cape I’d started the night with.

  ‘All right! How—’ He raised his forefinger, stopping himself mid-sentence. ‘Sorry, forgot to flush.’

  He reached back inside the cupboard and turned the taps on. My feelings about this must have been reflected pretty accurately in my facial expression, because he smirked and said, ‘Don’t you worry, my friend, you’ll be weeing in the sink in no time. I mean, the toilets in this block are literally at the end of the corridor.’

  He switched on his Xbox and pulled a little bag of weed out of his trouser pocket. ‘Go on, then, I’ll have a cup of tea if you’re making one,’ he said.

  I laughed. ‘All right.’

  ‘See if there’s any food as well,’ he whispered. ‘My mum bought me fuck all this term. Just cos I’m not a first year any more, she apparently thinks I don’t need to eat.’

  ‘My mum got me ingredients, but no actual food,’ I said. ‘I’ve got, like, flour and salt and olive oil, but nothing I can actually eat.’

  Arthur raised an eyebrow mischievously. ‘We could always crack out Barney’s Nutella . . . I’m sure he won’t mind if we have a tiny bit . . .’

  Three spliffs and ten slices of chocolatey toast later, we were lying nearly comatose on the floor. Arthur scooped out the last splodge of Nutella and examined the now-empty jar.

  ‘They shouldn’t make this stuff so fucking delicious,’ he groaned. ‘Having something this delicious is clearly going to cause problems within a communal living space. It’s fucking irresponsible is what it is.’

  ‘What we gonna do?’ I mumbled stickily.

  He yanked open his bedside drawer and pulled out a Sharpie. ‘Fuck, I’ve only got a black one. If I had a brown one, we could just colour the jar in, and he’d never know the difference.’

  ‘Until he decided to actually eat some,’ I said. ‘Which we’ve got to assume he will do at some point.’

  Arthur just shrugged and chucked the jar back at me. ‘Just dispose of the evidence. He can’t prove it was us, can he?’

  I went out into the kitchen, but just then Beth’s door opened and Barney stepped out, wearing what was presumably Beth’s T-shirt, since it said ‘LANCASTER GIRLS HOCKEY’ and stretched all the way down to his knees. Beth poked her slightly dishevelled head out behind him, and the three of us just stood there, staring awkwardly at each other.

  And then Barney said, ‘Is that my Nutella?’

  After I’d apologized and promised to buy him a new jar in the morning, I went back to Arthur’s to find him snoring loudly on the floor. I switched off the Xbox and headed back to my own room.

  I lay down on the bed, surrounded by unopened suitcases and untouched Ikea bags, and stared at the dirty yellow ceiling. My phone had run out of battery, and I decided, for once, to leave it that way.

  to Phoebe.

  PHOEBE

  I feel like how cool you are is in your DNA. Cool people naturally sleep until their sleep is interrupted – it’s the mark of the effortlessly rock ‘n’ roll. I wake up at seven most days. Maybe earlier, if I’ve been drinking.

  I forgot where I was for a second, and reached over to push the thin brown curtain to the side and look out of the rickety window. It felt weird. I wasn’t on holiday. I actually lived in this strange little room now, hundreds of miles away from home. Across the road was a little village green and an old church with some ducks waddling about, like a card you would buy for an old person you don’t know very well. A postcard of quiet English countryside life, but with a few thousand teenagers living stage left.

  I was sort of acting being myself, to myself. But the performance involved a lot of faffing. I made my bed, which I never do. I folded up my pyjamas and put them under my pillow – never done that in my life. And then I looked through my drawers of perfectly folded clothes and put on my loungewear. Because, now I am a student, I have a knitted tracksuit thing from ASOS, specifically for lounging.

  I had got dressed just to go to the toilet. Was that what you’re supposed to do? I opened my door slowly and peeked down the corridor. It looked like a hospital. Plastic floor tiles and walls that weird shade of yellow that classrooms are always painted. It was dark, apart from the lit-up fire exit signs. It’s weird that I live somewhere that has fire exit signs.

  I padded down the corridor in my new flip-flops and wondered if anyone else was awake inside their little box. It was so silent in the toilet that I put loads of paper down first and leant forward to wee to try and make it quieter. I wouldn’t say I’m precious about who hears me wee. Quite the opposite, really. I’m liberal with my wee if anything . . . I’ve weed in front of loads of randoms at parties. But the version of myself I was acting isn’t really me. It’s Sandy from Grease when she wakes up in the morning and the birds put her dressing gown on. Her loungewear.

  In the kitchen, every single surface was covered in stuff. Mugs and pans that still had their plastic labels on were piled up in the sink, some still full of food. On the table there were plates with burnt crusts of toast and about twenty mugs half filled with tea. And there were bottles everywhere. It smelt like burnt cheese and stale alcohol. There was a washing-up bowl on the table that still had some red punch at the bottom and a few Doritos floating around in it. I walked over and picked up the kettle, but there was so much in the sink I couldn’t fill it up.

  I didn’t really know what to do, so I just went back to my room and got back into my bed with its new cardboardy duvet cover. I scrolled through pictures of last night. Flora had posted one that looked like some arty al
bum cover. She was sitting on the steps of some grand building in Leeds wearing a ball gown, battered up trainers and a feather boa. Her bright peroxide bob lit up the black and white picture, all moody and messed up. On one side of her was a girl wearing a black dress with a slit and a Breakfast at Tiffany’s tiara, and on the other a boy in a dishevelled tux. She had just captioned it ‘ball’. She felt far away. With people I had never met, in a place I had never been, wearing a dress I had never seen before. It scared me a bit. Like she was slipping away from me. Even two weeks ago, if I had spent the evening with Luke Taylor I would have literally banged her door down at 2 a.m. to tell her about it.

  She still hadn’t read my message from last night, so I started composing a long, rambling essay about what had gone on:

  ‘Luke Taylor TOUCHED me’ – scream emoji, scream emoji – ‘He is so fit I wanna die . . . We drank tea, I think he actually is THE ONE. He used to FLAMENCO dance’ – flamenco dancer emoji – ‘He is actually funny, oh my god, he cried . . . Luke Taylor CRIED’ – cry emoji.

  Then I realized the cry emoji made me a terrible person, so in the end I just deleted everything and wrote ‘WAKE UP, CALL ME’. What would make Luke Taylor cry? Who would make Luke Taylor cry? Luke Taylor cry. Luke Taylor crying had made him hotter. Sensitive, intense, troubled and achingly enigmatic.

  There wasn’t really anything else to do except lie there, listening to the creaking sounds of the building, wondering if anyone was ever going to wake up.

  The evening with Luke had re-cast him as the lead in my daydreams. In a non-weird-stalker way. With a bit of weird stalker thrown in. I wonder if boys ever lie back and daydream scenarios about girls. I wonder, if they were projected on to a screen, would they look the same as ours? It is a bit skank that I’ve been dreaming about Luke Taylor for all these years but never actually considered what he is really like. Him crying and speaking and making tea and being a real person had given me a lot of material.

  Not that I’ve needed material in the past, obviously. He just morphs into whatever I feel like him being at the time. In Year Seven, when I was on the football team, I always imagined us going on football camp together. Later it was seeing him at a gig, and then it was him joining model UN and us both representing Swaziland, or whatever. He’s like the face of the life I want, whatever that is at the time.