Freshers

by Tom Ellen

  In fact, no. Definitely. Because now she was missing out on uni. Her whole life was broken in half. And it was all my fault.

  ‘We just can’t let her go to Cardiff like this, Luke,’ her mum had said. ‘She’s had one bad knock already with the results, and now, after what happened last night . . .’ She sighed, heavily. ‘I just don’t want her getting any more knocks, you know? She was in such a state this morning, saying she didn’t want to go next week. And I think for once that she’s right. You’ve got to be in a certain . . . frame of mind, to start university. And with everything that’s gone on, she’s just not ready right now. So, we’ll wait a year, and . . . see what happens.’

  I hadn’t really said much. I’d just let her talk. She’d said they were going away for a week or so, as a family, and that maybe it would be best if me and Abbey didn’t speak for a bit.

  I’d walked back to the corridor in a sort of numb daze. I thought about calling one of my mates. Reece or Harry or someone. But what would they say? It’s not like I could talk to them about the endless missed calls or the constant nagging guilt or the crying in the fucking computer room. I wouldn’t even know how to start that conversation.

  I got three missed calls in quick succession from my parents, making me one hundred per cent sure that Abbey’s mum must have phoned them, too. It suddenly felt like I was treading water in a thunderstorm, beginning to sink.

  I just wished I could understand what had happened. What had changed inside me. I mean, surely, if you don’t feel the way you used to feel, isn’t it better to be honest? To actually own up to it? Or should you spend the rest of your life pretending, just to keep everyone else happy?

  I bought two Twixes, went back to my room and fell into a lumpy, half-hungover sleep.

  When I woke up again, it was dark. I stared around at the empty walls, with the two unopened suitcases still sat grumpily on the carpet. Outside, I could hear people bustling between the blocks, plastic bags clinking with pre-drinks bottles.

  To take my mind off the call, I unpacked and started putting some pictures up. I’d brought my tatty little red folder with me, where I keep everything of any emotional value – pictures, cards, letters, that sort of thing. But that hadn’t really helped, because most of the stuff in it was Abbey-related. She was in pretty much every photo. All the letters and cards were from her. Who else would send me a letter? Her name was written right through my life, like in a stick of rock. Who the hell was I without her?

  There was a knock on the door and Arthur didn’t even wait for a reply before kicking it open. He stood in the doorway, yawning stickily and blinking at me, the sickly sweet smell of weed wafting in with him.

  ‘I will have a cup of tea, then,’ he said. ‘If you’re making one.’

  I laughed despite myself. ‘I’m not making one. And we’re out of milk anyway.’

  ‘There’s two pints in the fridge!’

  ‘They’re Barney’s. They’ve got Post-Its on them.’

  Arthur made a face. ‘Fuck’s sake, milk is communal. Everyone knows that. Certain things are beyond Post-Its.’ He started holding up fingers. ‘Milk, butter, beer, chicken kievs . . .’

  ‘Did you eat his chicken kievs? He was going on about that earlier.’

  Arthur shrugged. ‘Like I say, they’re communal. Clue’s in the name: Kiev. Russia was the birthplace of communism.’

  He walked into my room and started picking through the stuff in my folder, snorting at random photos of me and Reece in fancy dress. Then he held up a card that said, ‘Life begins at 40!’

  ‘Why the hell have you got this?’ he laughed.

  ‘Oh, it’s just a stupid thing,’ I said. ‘Private joke.’

  Rita poked her head round the door. ‘Aw. Are you two decorating? I had to get a book from the library, so I thought I’d come and say hello. So weird being back on the old corridor.’

  ‘Reets, you’re doing Law,’ said Arthur. ‘Tell Luke that chicken kievs are communal.’

  ‘We’ve haven’t covered chicken kievs yet,’ Rita said. ‘That’s not till third year.’

  Arthur dropped the card on my bed and walked out. ‘Well, Rita will have a cup of tea with me. Rita’s a real friend.’

  They left and I stared down at the card. It wasn’t a stupid thing, really.

  I pulled the others out of the folder. As well as ‘Life begins at 40!’ there was ‘Good luck in your new job!’, ‘Happy Chinese New Year!’ and ‘To The World’s Best Granddad!’

  It had started on Abbey’s sixteenth birthday. We’d only been going out a couple of months, and I was coming back from holiday when I realized I hadn’t got her a card. The card shop at the airport had a pretty rubbish selection, and the only vaguely birthday-related one said ‘You are 8 today!’ and had a big colourful badge on the front. I gave it to her later that night, and she’d cracked up laughing.

  After that, it snowballed: every Christmas, birthday and anniversary, we competed to see which of us could give the most random, obscure, inappropriate card. I remember us both snorting tea out of our nostrils as she opened my personal masterpiece: ‘Congratulations on Becoming an Uncle!’ last Valentine’s.

  That had only been, what . . . seven months ago? Back then, there was literally no part of me that could imagine life without Abbey. I was totally, completely convinced we would be together for ever. How the fuck can you just . . . lose that feeling? Why had I lost it and she hadn’t?

  I lay down on the bed again and tried to trace it back, properly. It had definitely started around A-Levels. Our parents had both agreed we should spend less time together, so we could concentrate on revising, and I remember noticing after a while that it was almost a relief to not have to see her every day. To have more time to myself. It was like this murky, guilty secret I carried around with me, and every time we were together, it got heavier.

  And then, after exams had finished, there was Tenerife. That was when things had really started to go wrong. Me and Harry were the only ones with girlfriends, so we used to head back early every night while the rest of them got off with randoms on the dance floor. And on the last night, I’d just thought: fuck it, and stayed out. And that Naomi girl had kept smiling at me, and dancing nearer and nearer and nearer. And nothing had happened, obviously, but the truth was . . . I had wanted something to happen. And that felt just as bad, somehow. I remember lying in bed that night, listening to Reece mumbling drunkenly in his sleep, and feeling like I’d properly betrayed her. Like things could never go back to how they were.

  When I got home, I swore she could tell. She could tell something was up, anyway. And it was like the more I backed off, the more tightly she clung on. I started calling less and less; she started calling more and more. And slowly it was like all the fun was being strangled out of the relationship, and we were just spending time together because . . . that was what we did.

  And then results day came, and she opened that envelope, and as she crumpled down on to the bench in tears, it was like our whole future crumpled with her. We wouldn’t be spending the next three years together at York Met. And that seemed big and scary and terrible, but deep down it also seemed exciting. Because for so long, it was like me and Abbey were almost the same person. Or, maybe, just that we were completely defined by each other. To half the school I was just ‘Abbey’s boyfriend’, but now, for the next three years, I would be . . . me.

  I should have told her, right there on that bench, how I felt. But I didn’t. I just held her and kissed her and promised we would make it work.

  I felt the tears start to prickle under my eyelids. It was ridiculous; this was supposed to be the most exciting week of my life, and I was pissing it away, crying in my room. I could hear Arthur and Rita’s muffled laughter through the wall. I sat up, took a deep breath and tried unsuccessfully to calm the frantic whirring guilty panic in my stomach. I washed my face, stuck a few photos up on the wall – all Abbey-less – then stuffed the cards back into the folder and pushed it un
der my bed.

  I went and knocked on Arthur’s door and he shouted ‘It’s open!’ The room was thick with weed smoke. Arthur was slumped at the foot of his bed, playing Xbox, while Rita sat cross-legged on top of the duvet, drinking tea and reading a book the width of a house brick.

  I took the spliff off Arthur, had a drag and offered it to Rita.

  ‘Oh, no, thanks,’ she said. ‘I don’t smoke.’ She smiled down at Arthur, who was staring blankly into the TV. ‘I just come here for the sparkling conversation.’

  I took another drag.

  ‘So, how was Freshers’ Fair then?’ she asked, folding her page over and putting the book down. ‘Did you sign up for anything?’

  ‘Yeah, football and . . .’ It hit me. ‘Oh fuck!’

  ‘What?’ said Arthur. ‘Tell me you didn’t sign up for the fucking Caribbean Soc?’

  Rita laughed. ‘Poor old Jeremy. He’s always trying to get me to join that. I keep telling him: my mum’s from Trinidad, I’m from Luton.’

  ‘No . . .’ I moaned. ‘It wasn’t that. It was quidditch.’

  Arthur frowned at me. ‘What, the Harry Potter thing? Do people really play that?’ He looked at Rita. ‘People can’t actually fly, can they?’

  ‘We don’t cover flying till third year either,’ she said.

  ‘I was supposed to go to this quidditch thing this afternoon,’ I muttered. ‘I completely forgot.’ Phoebe and the balloon and the handshake all suddenly swirled into my head.

  ‘You dickhead,’ Arthur scoffed. ‘I told you not to sign up for anything you weren’t genuinely interested in!’

  ‘I am genuinely interested. Like, I was going to go, honestly. It’s just . . . Something came up.’

  Everywhere I turned I was fucking things up. I’d only just met Phoebe properly and already she probably thought I was a total prick. I suddenly felt I had to go and see her. To say sorry for not being there. Her block was only a minute’s walk away. She’d be doing pre-drinks there right now. I stood up.

  ‘I’m just going out for a bit.’

  Arthur paused the game. ‘Oh, great, well get some more booze while you’re out, yeah?’

  He dug into his pocket for a wrinkled £20 note. ‘There you go. Just get as much beer as that will buy. And maybe some crisps. Quavers.’

  I headed out towards Phoebe’s block, feeling the weed start to take effect in the form of a fuzzy warmth behind my forehead. I walked across the grass to D Block and looked up to see her through the first-floor kitchen window. She was talking to a tall blonde girl and a bloke with a shaved head. They were all drinking and laughing, throwing robot dance moves to some hip hop track I could hear thumping through the glass.

  I had a weird sort of moment of clarity. Why the hell did I think she cared whether I was at the quidditch thing or not? Who was I to her? No one. Someone she used to walk past in the corridor at school.

  I sat down on a bench and rubbed my eyes. Every window of every block was full of noise and people, and I suddenly felt tiny and invisible and completely alone.

  I stood up to go, feeling the scrunched-up £20 note in my pocket and wondering how much cheap booze it would buy. I needed to try and get my head straight. To think a bit more clearly. And the best way to do that, I decided, would be to get really, really pissed.

  PHOEBE

  ‘None left,’ Frankie shouted from the other side of the fancy-dress shop. She groaned before disappearing. Me and Negin found her splayed out on the floor, wailing dramatically. Her height meant she covered almost an entire aisle.

  ‘Shame,’ the woman at the front of the shop said halfheartedly. ‘We’ve been that busy.’

  Above the empty section where Frankie was lying was a label that said ‘ghost robes’.

  ‘This is effort,’ Frankie whined and closed her eyes as if she was going to fall asleep on the shop floor. ‘I swear the last five nights have broken me.’

  I kicked her gently. ‘Come on, last night of Freshers’, mate.’

  ‘All right, Connor, calm down.’ Negin shook her head and then peered at Frankie. ‘And what’s happened to you? This morning you were so emoji party obsessed you wanted to make a papier mâché lychee with a yoga ball.’

  ‘No, but such a good idea.’ Frankie opened her eyes. ‘If someone bowls in papier mâchéd up as the lychee I’m gonna be livid. Same with the duck coming out of a cardboard-box egg.’

  Negin picked up a random scythe. ‘The ghost is so obvious.’

  ‘What about the moon?’ I said. ‘We could all go as the moon at different stages of its development.’

  Frankie snorted from the floor. ‘You’re supposed to take an emoji and sex it up. Like, sexy crocodile, sexy satchel, sexy loaf of bread.’ She flung her leg in the air and pouted. ‘Sexy the moon in different stages of development.’ She howled with laughter.

  ‘Sexy bread,’ Negin repeated slowly. ‘Sexy. Bread.’

  Frankie held a finger up. ‘Mate, trust me, there will be at least one sexy loaf of bread there. Probably two or three.’

  ‘If you wanted to be sexy you would go as the bunny girls or the flamenco dancer or the . . . I dunno . . .’ I got my phone out.

  ‘Sexy bread,’ Frankie shouted.

  The woman behind the counter glanced over at us. ‘I’ve got no Playboy bunnies left,’ she said. ‘And no sexy senoritas either.’

  ‘See?’ I said to Frankie. I looked at the woman: ‘How many bread costumes have you got left?’

  ‘None. We’ve got a Heinz beans?’

  ‘I don’t think there’s a Heinz beans emoji.’ I looked down at Frankie. ‘We just need to find any old thing now. It’s three o’clock. We just need to buy whatever.’

  ‘It’s the last night of Freshers’ Week,’ Frankie said. ‘We’ll remember it for ever.’

  Would we though? It was impossible to know. There’s always a chance that tonight is going to be the night you remember for ever, but then it never is. I’ve randomly never forgotten me and Flora sneaking out of our houses in the middle of the night in Year Eight and cycling round the empty town centre. Not the whole night, just this snippet, this moment of it, really. I don’t know why my brain chooses to remember that, out of all the nights that ever happened. Maybe tonight would be burnt into my brain for ever. Maybe tonight is one of those nights. Maybe.

  Over the past five days, me, Negin and Frankie had started to feel like a little team. We messaged each other when we woke up and went shopping together and checked we were all not dead before we went to bed. It was a relief to have found people who were nice and who seemed to like me. They weren’t Flora, but then how could they be? That’s what’s weird about the whole thing; how you’re expected to be so insanely close to people you’ve only just met. I was still careful with Negin and Frankie; I tried to pick up on what kind of people they were, and mirror it, to not do anything that would rock the boat of our five-day friendship. Maybe we were all doing that though? Maybe we’d all talk about it one day.

  I picked up some mouse ears. Maybe the mouse was a good middle ground between sexy and fun.

  ‘Is there a nun emoji?’ Frankie asked, clambering to her feet. Her and Negin were still buried in their phones. ‘I swear there is.’

  ‘Who would need a nun emoji?’ I picked up a plastic corncob and held it up to Negin.

  ‘The Pope?’ said Negin. ‘The Pope’s on Instagram.’

  ‘Yeah, well, if there is a nun emoji I’m going as that. I am literally the Nun of Freshers’. I need to turn things around tonight.’

  ‘Nothing says get with me like corn on the cob.’ I held it in front of my mouth and smiled.

  ‘There are no tall men,’ Frankie wailed. ‘I thought there’d be Dutch exchange students. I hate my height.’

  ‘Can you hate your height later?’ asked Negin. ‘We’ve got, like, two hours. We need to focus.’ She went back to scrolling through her phone and me and Frankie dutifully followed suit.

  ‘Shut. Up.’ Frankie poked me in the a
rm and looked out the window.

  It was Josh and Will, crossing the road. My whole face flooded with heat.

  ‘I can’t see Will,’ I hissed. ‘Not now. Shall I hide? I’ve never even seen him in daylight.’

  ‘Like a vampire!’ Frankie yelled.

  I had never seen him when we were not in a bar and either about to get with each other or getting with each other. I stared at the floor. We had been together for ages in the club last night. Only a few hours ago really. But in the daytime, everything was different. I picked up a skirt labelled ‘rock and roll sweetheart’ and pretended to be examining it intensely. Frankie and Negin acted ‘browsing with intent’ too.

  ‘This looks weird,’ Negin whispered as the door swung open, and they walked in.

  ‘Hey,’ I said, and waved. Hard. Almost to the level of flagging someone down in the street. I tried to tone it down by tucking my hair behind my ears and sort of shrugging. Which obviously looked quite mental. Will smiled at me lazily. It was ridiculous how he still managed to look hot on three hours’ sleep. I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  ‘There are no ghost robes.’ Thank god Negin was there.

  ‘And no bread. There was never actually any bread.’ And Frankie.

  ‘If Connor was here you know what he’d say.’ Josh smiled.

  ‘Last night of Freshers’!’ we all chimed in a Connor-esque cheer.

  ‘Exactly.’ Josh nodded. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘We’re all going to have a group disco nap to prepare,’ Frankie said. ‘And I’ve bought Crunchy Nut Cornflakes and two bags of giant chocolate buttons.’

  She offered them the open box of cereal we had been eating on our way around town and they both took a handful.

  I was desperate to say something so that the situation wasn’t weird. ‘We don’t know what to go as,’ I blurted out, slightly manically.

  Will smiled at me. ‘Nor do we. You haven’t got any huge cartoon eyes have you?’ The woman at the front of the shop shook her head. Will nodded and grimaced. ‘Stuff like this is not easy on a hangover.’ The fact he had even half-referenced last night made me blush even more. We were facing each other and I felt like he was nervous too. Negin and Frankie and Josh were talking to the woman. I shuffled my feet.