Freshers

by Tom Ellen

  ‘Sorry, but if he bails this time, none of us are speaking to him again. Ever. The end.’ Frankie didn’t look angry, she looked upset.

  Negin nodded and sipped her cream-soda-and-syrup butterbeer. ‘Me and you haven’t even spoken to him anyway. But yeah, to do this twice, he’d have to be either mentally unhinged or genuinely evil.’

  ‘Or dead,’ I said, hopefully. ‘I mean, why did he miss the lecture? This is so gutting it’s tragic. I kept telling people I was saving his seat, and then I had to sit with an empty space next to me for the whole hour.’ I really, really thought he’d come. ‘He’s such a dick,’ I added.

  ‘Scrap that, no he’s not.’ Frankie squeezed my arm. ‘And, sorry, but who the hell is that with him?’

  We all looked over at the entrance to the hall. Luke was walking towards us, smiling, with two other boys next to him. I didn’t even realize I was smiling back until Negin whispered: ‘Look how cute you are. It’s disgusting.’

  Frankie still had a tight grip on my arm. ‘Sorry but I think I might actually die. Look. How. Tall. He. Is.’

  She squeezed harder with each syllable.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ Luke said. ‘Went to the wrong lecture.’

  ‘I can vouch for that, he did.’ The tall boy nodded.

  ‘Nothing’s started yet.’ I tried to sound offhand, but seeing Luke in the flesh was weird; because I spent so much time intensely thinking about him when he wasn’t there, it was like dreams and real life muddling together.

  ‘I’m Luke.’ He smiled at Frankie and Negin.

  ‘Arthur,’ the boy next to him added. ‘First time quidditcher. Or is it quiditchee?’

  ‘Quidditcher, I reckon,’ said the ridiculously tall boy, who had a strong northern accent. ‘If you’re doing the quidditch, you’d be a quidditcher. Like if you’re doing a murder, you’re a murderer.’ Then he smiled at us. ‘I’m Ed, by the way.’

  ‘So, it’s Ed and Arthur,’ I repeated.

  ‘And you’re . . . Luke, was it?’ Frankie said ‘Luke’ as if it was a strange foreign name that she was hearing for the first time. ‘Yes, I think Phoebe’s mentioned you.’

  I made a mental note to kick her later in her sleep.

  ‘You have to go and sign up.’ Negin nodded over to the table where Brandon and Misty were sitting, and the boys wandered off to join the queue.

  Frankie slipped her arms around us as she watched them go: ‘He’s tall and fit and he knows about grammar and quidditch and murder. He’s literally the perfect man. He—’ She broke off as Luke came back. When she’d turned to Negin, I whispered, ‘Does Ed have a girlfriend?’

  Luke smirked at me. ‘I don’t know, why, are you interested?’ Our eyes met for a second.

  ‘No . . .’ I said slowly. He was still smiling his fit smile at me, and I willed myself not to go red. ‘I was asking for Frankie. She’s been looking for a tall man since the first night of Freshers’.’

  ‘Noted. Let’s make it happen.’ He looked around the hall at people warming up and comparing broomsticks. ‘So what goes on at this thing, then?’

  ‘Right, well –’ I pointed at Brandon, who was bobbing up and down excitedly – ‘that’s Brandon. He’s the jolly one. And that –’ I pointed at Misty, who was wearing a dark-red camouflage hoody and looking pissed off – ‘That’s Misty. She’s the not-jolly one.’

  He looked at me. ‘Misty?’

  I nodded. ‘I know, I know. Me and Negin and Frankie have already discussed it.’ We both laughed, and then Brandon gathered us all together in a little circle.

  ‘Right, thanks for coming, gang,’ he said. ‘I’m seeing some new faces here tonight, which is super exciting, isn’t it, Mist?’

  Misty was looking at us like she wanted to kill us, but she still agreed that it was super exciting.

  Brandon carried on: ‘Competitive matches start next week, so today will just be a bit of fun. We’ll play a few friendlies among ourselves. Right, grab some brooms, people,’ he shouted. ‘Let’s do this!’

  I realized I was going to have to actually do physical exercise in front of Luke Taylor. I tried to sneak a look at him in a non-bait way. And when I did, he was looking right back at me.

  LUKE

  The Brandon bloke was the most excitable person I’d ever seen. He was like someone had trapped a rabbit in a human body then wrapped it in a Gryffindor robe.

  ‘OK, so for the friendlies, we usually divide up into houses,’ he yelled. ‘So, let’s just see if we have anything even resembling equal numbers . . .’ He looked around the circle, and his gaze rested on Arthur. ‘How about you, mate? Didn’t see you at our first meeting. What’s your name?’

  ‘Arthur.’

  ‘Great. And what house are you in?’

  Arthur shrugged. ‘No idea. I don’t really care about Harry Potter, to be honest.’

  Brandon smiled, completely unoffended. ‘OK, cool, well let’s put you in Hufflepuff, then.’

  Arthur snorted. ‘Fuck off. No way am I Hufflepuff.’

  Frankie let out a yelp of laughter so loud it echoed round the hall.

  Misty stepped forward and clapped Arthur on the shoulder, proudly. ‘Yeah, you’re right. Hot-headed, fiery, passionate . . . You’re Gryffindor through and through, aren’t you?’

  Arthur sniffed and tried to regain some of his composure. ‘Yeah, I guess. Maybe. Whatever. I mean, it’s not like I care either way.’

  ‘Oh, well, in that case,’ said Brandon, ‘if you don’t mind being Hufflepuff . . .’

  ‘No, we’ve said I’m Gryffindor now, haven’t we,’ Arthur snapped. ‘So I might as well definitely be Gryffindor. Definitely.’

  We split up into two groups. I got put in Ravenclaw with Ed and Negin. We were playing Hufflepuff, who had Phoebe and Frankie on their team.

  ‘I’ve been given a fucking mop!’ I heard Arthur yell from across the hall, where Gryffindor were getting ready to take on Slytherin. ‘I’m supposed to be a wizard, not a caretaker!’

  Somebody blew a whistle, and even though half of us had no clue what to do, we started playing.

  One of the first years chucked me the ball straight away, and I saw Phoebe sprinting towards me. For half a second I had the mad idea to just keep hold of it, and see if she would crash right into me.

  But I didn’t. I chucked it to Ed, and Phoebe pulled up an inch from my chest.

  She hitched an eyebrow and smiled. ‘So nearly.’ Then she sprinted off again, and I suddenly wondered whether I was the first person in history to feel horny on a quidditch pitch.

  Ed was legging it down the wing, the ball clamped under his arm. He stopped short in front of the goal hoop things. Frankie went galloping madly towards him, but he chucked the ball right past her into the top hoop.

  Our team all went mental, and even Frankie started clapping, until one of the Hufflepuffs shouted: ‘You’re not on their team!’

  The Hufflepuff keeper immediately started scanning for a decent pass. I drifted over to Phoebe, and stood right behind her.

  ‘Right, I’m marking you, Bennet,’ I said. ‘There’s no way you’re getting past me.’

  She stepped backwards into me gently, scraping the inside of my leg with her broomstick. ‘This isn’t football, Luke Taylor.’ She turned to look at me, her cheeks flushed. ‘This is a proper sport, yeah? You’re out of your depth.’

  I was finding it pretty hard to concentrate on anything except Phoebe, but I tried to get my head back in the game as the Hufflepuffs were jogging out of their area.

  Someone shouted, ‘Mark up!’ and I yelled, ‘Got Phoebe!’

  ‘No one’s marking me,’ Frankie bellowed, looking directly at Ed. ‘I mean, someone should be marking me, shouldn’t they?’ Ed was totally oblivious to this; he was just watching the ball.

  One of the Hufflepuffs tried a long pass, but Ed plucked it out of the air with his tree trunk arm. He chucked it to Negin, who stared at it blankly for a second and then burst off down the wing.


  It stopped everyone dead. ‘Negin,’ hissed Frankie. ‘Are you joking?’

  Negin was unbelievably quick. The Hufflepuff beaters launched three ‘bludgers’ (flat volleyballs) at her, but she dodged them all. Without slowing down, she sent the ball straight through the top hoop, and our team went mad again.

  Misty stood up and shouted from the sidelines at Ed and Negin: ‘You and you – what are your names?’

  They told her and she started scribbling furiously on her notepad.

  It was weird: that same edge that comes out in me on the football pitch suddenly came out here, too. I really wanted to win.

  Hufflepuff got a goal back, but me and Ed passed it about neatly, then I sent Negin off on another blazing run. Again, she slammed the ball through the hoop, and the three of us high-tenned.

  Brandon jostled about among the chaos, slapping people on the back and randomly shouting encouragement. He’d grin at you if you did something right, and he’d grin more brightly if you did something wrong. When Frankie nearly decapitated him by swinging her broom at the ball, he just fell about laughing and started calling her ‘Belinda Broomswing’.

  Eventually, when we were 14–10 up, another whistle blew, and the Ravenclaws all cheered and collapsed on to the floor. I felt sweaty and knackered and the happiest I had done in ages.

  Misty asked me and Phoebe if we’d mind putting the goal hoops away, and I could feel Frankie and Negin’s eyes on us as we wheeled them out into the corridor. We found the store room and propped the hoops up against an old table tennis table. And then we were just stood there, still red-faced and a bit out of breath, looking at each other. Realizing that we were completely alone in a dusty back room. Just smiling and breathing and not saying anything. We both knew it was gonna happen, and it was sort of exciting and excruciating at the same time.

  Phoebe mumbled, ‘OK, then . . .’ and we both laughed, awkwardly. I felt my heartbeat up its pace, and just as thoughts of Abbey were starting to tumble into my head, she leant forward, and then I leant forward, and then she closed her eyes.

  And then it was like I stopped thinking altogether.

  I put my arms around her, and we were suddenly right up against each other, sticky with sweat, and kissing harder and harder.

  PHOEBE

  Frankie took her full-to-the-brim Shreddies and hot milk out of the microwave and pigeon-stepped to the table so they didn’t spill. Negin and me were eating honey on toast.

  ‘I’m gonna leave it to dry for a bit,’ Frankie said. ‘I only like it when it’s turned into a kind of paste.’ She picked up a bag of sugar and started shaking it out over the top of the gloopy brown mixture. Negin wrinkled her nose slightly.

  ‘So, would you say Luke Taylor is your official boyfriend now?’ Frankie took an un-offered bite of Negin’s toast.

  I shook my head. ‘As if. Would you say random-Freshers’-pull is your boyfriend? We’ve kissed. Once.’

  Negin shook her head. ‘Come on, it’s different. You’ve had this really long build-up.’

  Since it had happened I had felt permanently giddy. I had never had this feeling, about anything, ever. The closest was when I was so bored in GCSE study leave that I entered an online competition and won a luxury holiday to Disneyland, Florida for my whole family. It was the same kind of initial quake and then tremors of fuzzy, giggly aftershock that made me feel like some kind of epic hero.

  ‘Did you tell Flora?’ Negin asked.

  ‘Yup. She literally started hyperventilating. She acted as if we had achieved it together. Like a joint Oscar win.’ She had just kept saying, ‘You’ve fucking kissed Luke Taylor. You did it,’ over and over again. Which was pretty much what was going through my head, even in real time as it was actually happening. Like my subconscious was yelling, ’What the hell? This is cracked out. Is this even real?’

  Frankie started to eat the congealed sugar crust on her Shreddies. ‘He obviously likes you. I mean, he messaged you “goodnight”. “Goodnight” is the most meaningful message you can send someone. It’s more than “I love you”. “Goodnight” actually incorporates “I love you”. Because you only message people you love “goodnight”. No one has ever messaged me “goodnight”. Literally, no one.’

  ‘I just really want to know what happened with him and Abbey,’ I said. ‘But it’s impossible to find out.’

  ‘Is there any way you could like . . . bring it up casually?’ Negin suggested.

  ‘No, because that will instantly make me seem like a crazy person who wants to marry him.’

  ‘Fair. Both ways. I mean, you do.’ Frankie poured another layer of sugar into her bowl. ‘I was telling my mum about it last night. Do you know the woman from Abba married her stalker?’

  I snorted into my tea. ‘OK, stop saying stuff like that out loud. Although, you know, I only have about four memories before I saw Luke Taylor. I know because I counted them recently.’

  Negin looked up from her toast. ‘You specifically counted the number of memories you have before you first saw him? That’s quite weird. No offence, but that is a bit stalkerish.’

  ‘I think it’s romantic,’ said Frankie. ‘But I have a really bad memory, so I don’t have a lot of memories pre the first time I met Ed yesterday.’

  ‘I didn’t specifically count them in relation to him. We’re doing memory on my course. Like how memory is what makes literature. How you can’t have the written word without memory.’

  ‘I have no clue what we do in Archaeology,’ Frankie yawned. ‘They keep talking about science. No one ever told me it had anything to do with science. I’m absolutely crap at science.’ She took another mouthful of Shreddies paste. ‘So, what is the deal with this Abbey, then?’

  ‘I can’t find anything out about her,’ I said. ‘As in she used to be social media obsessed and she has, like . . . disappeared.’

  ‘Oh my god, do you think Luke Taylor killed her?’ Frankie said.

  ‘He does play sport.’ Negin nodded. ‘More testosterone.’

  ’You play sport,’ I said.

  ‘Negin’s killed mad amounts of people,’ Frankie shouted. ‘With her resting bitch face alone.’

  I got up and put more bread in the toaster. ‘Seriously, though, Abbey has vanished. Literally vanished. And now I have absolutely no way at all of finding out what happened between her and Luke.’

  ‘Except asking Luke . . .’ Negin shrugged. ‘Which would be fairly straightforward.’

  ‘Obviously, I’m not gonna do that.’

  Becky walked in wrapped in a massive coat, carrying a pile of parcels.

  ‘Beckster,’ Frankie shouted, even though she was about a metre away from her. She held up her hand and Becky put the parcels on the table and very gently high-fived her. ‘How come you’re back?’

  Becky tucked her hair behind her ears. ‘Me and Aaron had a fight so I got an earlier train.’ I looked at her more closely. Her eyes were ever so slightly red.

  I jumped up and pulled out a chair for her. ‘Are you OK?’

  She nodded. ‘Yeah, I just . . . it’ll be fine. I’m gonna call him in a bit.’ She sounded tired. ‘I might go home again on Tuesday.’

  Frankie shook her head. ‘Tuesday is Halloween. You have to come to the 999 thing. Pre’s here first. I’m making cocktails inspired by everyone’s personalities. You say vodka and Fanta to me, with a dash of green syrup.’ She picked her bowl up and tipped the last of the milk into her mouth.

  ‘All we have currently is vodka, Fanta and some green syrup,’ Negin said.

  Frankie picked up one of the parcels and started unwrapping it. ‘Speaking of the 999 party . . .’ She tore open the plastic packaging with force and emptied the contents on to the table.

  A weird white plasticky dress with a red cross on it fell out. We all looked at the cardboard insert with a stripper-type woman on that said ‘Sexy Nurse Costume’. Frankie sniffed it. ‘It smells really weird. Like marker pen. Shall we try them on?’

  We traipsed ba
ck to my room and she immediately started flinging her clothes off. Becky zipped her up in the costume, and she turned around and threw her arms in the air like she was opening a show in Vegas.

  ‘It weirdly makes you look even taller,’ I said. ‘I think it’s because the dress is so tiny. Your legs look insanely long. Like they are three quarters of your body.’

  ‘Like a daddy-long-legs? Bitch.’ Frankie scowled, and changed model pose. ‘What am I supposed to do? Go to the giant’s costume emporium?’

  ‘If someone spills their drink on you, at least you can just wipe it off.’ Negin squinted at her. ‘Is it made of pencil-case material?’

  ‘No, Negin, I just look like an actual pencil.’ She tried to pull the suspender things up but they only reached a bit over her knees. ‘I thought the only people who actually wore suspenders were Victoria’s Secret models, so why are they so short?’

  ‘I’ll have the opposite problem,’ I said. ‘I bet mine are too long and go right up to my bum.’

  ‘And there is this gap for my boobs, but I have no boobs to put in it.’ Frankie swung round to Becky, who was sitting on my bed. ‘Becky, you aren’t a bitch like these two. Be honest, if you were Ed, would you find me in any way sexual in this outfit?’

  Becky looked a bit overwhelmed by the question. ‘Um . . .’

  Me and Negin burst out laughing. ‘Sorry, you are sexual,’ I said. ‘It was just Becky’s face . . . And the way you said “sexual”.’

  ‘Fuck you all,’ Frankie said, and one of the suspenders fell around her ankles. She plonked down next to Becky. ‘Do you know my mum is actually a nurse? And they don’t even wear this shit. They wear tunics like women on beauty counters. Maybe I should have got the £23.99 one. Did you get the £23.99 one? Come on, I want to see yours.’

  Usually I would have felt a bit self-conscious showing people my body, but Frankie seemed so at home with hers that it kind of made me want to feel at home in mine. Even if I didn’t.

  I think, in my whole life, Frankie was the only girl apart from Mum I had seen completely naked. In PE at school, everyone was so careful, wriggling around inside their Aertex tops. Even when I had been away with Flora, we had put our bikinis on in the bathroom. But the first night Frankie had stayed in my room, she had just stripped off, and it had kind of mesmerized me. Partly just seeing another person’s naked body and partly because she didn’t think it was weird. Like she had never got the memo about squirming around in your T-shirt to take your bra off at a sleepover.