by Tom Ellen
‘Josh popped in to see you,’ Frankie said. ‘And you weren’t there, so we made these and kept you one.’
‘Don’t know how the fried egg will taste cold,’ Negin added. ‘But it’s the thought that counts.’
They sat down opposite me and I bit into the cold congealed egg and icing. It still tasted quite good.
‘Do you wanna get a coffee?’ Negin asked. I nodded and started to collect up my things.
‘I need to photocopy stuff first.’ We wandered down the stairs and into the weird little room filled with whirring photocopiers. We waited in the line and watched a boy copy page after page of a book called Why Do Buses Come in Threes?
I noticed a group of girls swing through the security gates and walk past us. And then one of them turned on her heel and started back towards the photocopy room. Two of her mates broke away and followed her. I realized the first girl was Sequin Skirt from the Fit Sister gig. And Bowl-Cut Mary and Wedding Veil were behind her.
‘So.’ Sequin Skirt girl chucked her bag on the floor and looked right at me. ‘Your boyfriend is a fucking lying arsehole.’ She shouted it into the silence of the library and the quiet whirring of the photocopying. The boy stared straight ahead like he hadn’t heard, but he tensed. My whole body shook with adrenalin. I didn’t know what to say.
‘Are you still with him, cos fucking hell—’
‘Jen, you’re acting like a pyscho.’ Mary put a hand on the girl’s shoulder, and shot me an apologetic look. ‘Phoebe is my mate and it’s not her fault she shagged a guy who turned out to be a twat.’ She shrugged. ‘I mean, we’ve all done it.’
Jen’s face softened slightly and she half-glanced at me. ‘OK, sorry. This whole thing’s just utterly rancid. You’re not still with him, are you?’
I shook my head, and looked at the floor like I was being told off.
‘This is so not Phoebe’s fault,’ Frankie snapped. ‘Like, come on, how can it be? Luke lied to her, too.’
‘And Becky, the girl who left, is our friend,’ Negin said gently.
Mary’s eyes widened. ‘Is she OK?’
‘We don’t know,’ I said. ‘She won’t reply to any of our messages or calls. She’s just disappeared.’
The boy at the photocopier collected up his pages quickly and edged out. Jen stood in front of the door. ‘OK, so what the fuck are we gonna do about this? The pictures are literally all over campus. This is the time to annihilate those bastards.’
A middle-aged man carrying a pile of books tried to walk into the room but Jen held her hand out. ‘We’re having a meeting in here, sorry.’
‘We need to do something to humiliate them,’ Mary said. ‘To make them get how cruel and disgusting they are. To make them understand that it’s not a joke.’
‘That Becky is a real person,’ Negin said, and Jen nodded: ‘Exactly.’
Becky had become sort of famous. The girl who left uni because she was so ashamed. It was awful. We had talked about it non-stop: when she might have slept with that football bloke, whether her boyfriend knew, why she hadn’t told us at the time. Why she hadn’t told us she was leaving. Even Connor felt bad about it. He said if he saw the boy who posted the picture he would knock him out.
‘It’s their last game of term next week,’ Jen said.
‘Yeah, that is the moment.’ Mary nodded.
‘Laxatives?’ Wedding Veil suggested. ‘In their water bottles?’
‘I think we should graffiti the pitch,’ Frankie said.
‘Yeah, but how would we actually do that, without someone seeing before and getting rid of it?’ Jen shook her head.
‘I’ve got an idea,’ I said. They all looked at me, and I felt scared and excited at the same time.
LUKE
The only sound was the echoey clack-clack-clack of Will’s studs on the tiles.
It was ten minutes before kick-off, but no one seemed particularly pumped. They were all either checking their phones or lacing their boots or just staring down at the changing-room floor.
One of the freshers, Murf, suddenly piped up. ‘The girls on my corridor have literally stopped speaking to me,’ he said. ‘Like, I’ll go in the kitchen and they just literally pretend I’m not there.’ He laughed. ‘It’s like . . . fuck’s sake. Chill out.’
‘People are so fucking touchy, honestly,’ Geordie Al said. ‘It’s not even that bad.’
Will stopped pacing, and looked at him. ‘It was blatantly Louise who took those screenshots,’ he told him. ‘She must’ve known you were fucking around on her. She was probably trying to get you back.’
Al scratched at his stubble. ‘Maybe . . .’
‘It could have been a lot of people, to be fair,’ Wicks said.
‘Whoever did it, did it anonymously,’ snapped Dempers. ‘So we aren’t gonna find out, are we?’
‘Yeah, well . . .’ Will started pacing again.
Over the past few days, all anyone had talked about was who might have leaked the screenshots. To be quite honest, I didn’t give a shit. It was literally the last thing on my mind.
Phoebe had basically cut me out of her life. She wasn’t returning my calls or messages. Rita and Arthur had barely spoken to me, too. Worst of all, though, a girl had left uni. Her whole life had been ripped down the middle, and it was all our fault. My fault. I could have stopped it. First Abbey, now Becky. It was like everything I touched turned to shit.
I glanced over at Trev, who was just staring down blankly at his unlaced boots. I wondered if he was thinking what I’d been thinking all week: that it wasn’t worth it. That being friendless and houseless and alone for the next three years was still much, much better than being part of all this.
There was this Sylvia Plath poem we’d done that I couldn’t get out of my head lately. It was about her keeping this box of bees in her house, and being half-terrified, half-fascinated by it. By the chaos that would come if she opened it. The last few nights, lying awake, I kept thinking: that’s me. It’s me and the Wall of Shame. Until last week, it had been something I’d just done my best to try and ignore. But now it was like the bees had busted out and they were swarming through the house, stinging people, and I couldn’t just sit there, pretending they didn’t exist any more. I had to actually do something.
‘What’s gonna happen, do you reckon?’ asked Wicks, nervously. ‘Like, do you think we’ll all get in shit for this?’
Will exhaled, bored. ‘How can we get in shit for it? It was just fucking banter. The girls weren’t naked or anything, were they?’
‘That Becky girl did drop out, though,’ said another second year, quietly. ‘I mean, that’s quite . . . serious, isn’t it?’
Dempers finished lacing his boots and glared at Geordie Al. ‘If you hadn’t nailed that Becky in the first place . . .’
‘I don’t even know why you did,’ Will muttered. ‘She’s rank.’
‘Yeah, well, why d’you think it’s called the Wall of Shame?’ said Geordie Al, trying to lighten the mood, and failing quite spectacularly.
Will looked up at the clock. ‘Anyway, come on,’ he murmured.
We all trooped out on to the pitch. The Manchester team were already out there, and it slightly freaked me out to see that we had the biggest crowd we’d had all term. Not that they looked particularly supportive. There was no cheering or applause as we came out; just odd little pockets of nervous chatter. I had the sudden feeling people had turned up to see more than just a game of football.
The whistle blew, and we kicked off. I tried to focus on the game, but I kept noticing commotion in the crowd – ripples of movement that stopped as soon as I turned to look at them.
I’d just fed Will the ball, and he was tearing off down the wing, when the commotion suddenly exploded into something else.
About thirty girls streamed on to the grass around us, shouting and screaming. At first, I thought they were all wearing brightly coloured clown suits, or something, but after a second I realized it was pyjamas. Th
ey were all dressed in pyjamas.
Our team and the Manchester lot just stood there, frozen, as the pyjama-clad girls stormed the pitch around us. I spotted Phoebe, Frankie, Negin, Mary, and some of the girls from the Fit Sister night.
The crowd were going even more mental than the girls themselves; they were laughing, clapping, cheering, whooping, shouting. I stayed there, glued to the spot, with absolutely zero clue what was going on.
Suddenly, as quickly as it had started, it was over. The girls dropped in unison down on to the muddy grass, and lay there, totally still, like a load of weirdly dressed dead bodies.
The Manchester team and the ref looked even more confused than we did. The bloke who’d been marking me leant in and whispered: ‘Does this normally happen, mate?’
Will had been frozen like the rest of us, watching all this with his mouth hanging open, but now he finally managed to get himself together. He strode across to Mary and Frankie, who were both lying on their backs in front of him. The crowd was so loud he had to yell down.
‘OK . . .’ he shouted. ‘What the fuck?’
‘What d’you mean?’ Frankie shot back. ‘I thought you liked looking at sleeping girls?’
Then Mary sat up, and glared around at me, and the rest of the team. ‘Yeah, come on! What’s wrong with you? Get your fucking phones out!’
Will sighed, and bent down towards her, his hands on his knees like he was talking to a naughty little kid.
‘Yeah, OK, you’ve made your point. Can you fuck off now, please? We are actually trying to play a match here.’
My eyes found Phoebe among all the madness. She was lying on the centre circle in her blue pyjamas with whales on, but I couldn’t see her face. Like everyone else, she was watching Mary and Will.
Will stood up: ‘You lot are so fucking lame.’ Then he chipped the ball over to me. ‘Taylor.’ He nodded. ‘Let’s just keep playing.’
I looked at him, then at the crowd. I couldn’t see a single face in there – it was just a sea of phones pointed straight at me. I thought about Becky again, and the idea suddenly occurred to me that if this was a cheesy American film, I’d probably pick the ball up, walk over and punch Will in the face.
But it wasn’t, and I didn’t. Instead, I just kicked the ball gently back to him and started walking off.
‘Where you going, Taylor?’ he shouted. ‘I said keep playing.’
I turned back round to look at him. ‘You can keep playing,’ I said. ‘I’m done.’
For some reason, he smiled at this, and then nodded. ‘Yeah. I fucking knew it was you, wasn’t it, Taylor?’ he said.
Before I could say anything back, Frankie shouted something at him – something I didn’t hear, because of the wind and the noise of the crowd. Will looked down, and his whole face crinkled with scorn.
And then, suddenly, he booted the ball at her.
For a split second, the whole crowd went silent. It was like all the air had been sucked out of them. There was just the dull thud of the ball hitting Frankie’s chest, and then her strangled sort of half-gasp-half-scream.
I didn’t think; I just reacted. I was suddenly sprinting towards Will, with no plan for what I’d do when I got to him. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Trev had had the exact same idea – he was streaking out ahead of me, aiming straight for Will.
But somehow, Ed got there first.
He bolted out of the crowd, threw himself at Will and just flattened him. I expected him to start hitting him, or something, but he didn’t. He just shifted his weight and sat there calmly, on top of him.
‘Frankie,’ he said. ‘Are you all right?’
Frankie stood up and dusted herself off. ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’ She stared down at Will with her hands on her hips. ‘What is wrong with you?’
‘Get the fuck off me, you fat fuck!’ Will was screaming at Ed.
‘It’s not fat, mate,’ I heard Ed say. ‘It’s muscle, thank you very much.’
Dempers stomped over, but Ed just smiled up at him and he shrank backwards, and suddenly Frankie was dancing about madly in her Adventure Time pyjamas, and the crowd was roaring with laughter and Mary and Negin and the others were cheering and taking photos of Will as he wriggled out from under Ed and stormed back to the changing rooms.
And I was just stood there, on the edge of the pitch, wishing I could celebrate with them.
PHOEBE
None of us took our pyjamas off.
We did a sort of victory lap of Jutland. For Frankie, it was an actual victory lap. She ran in a circle around each college, clapping her hands at the bemused-looking people in the windows, like she had just won the Olympic 100m.
Bowl-Cut Mary did a backflip. She just casually did it, as if before she came to uni she had been a professional gymnast, as well as a singer in an electro band and a tattooed, pastel-haired siren.
‘I love Bowl-Cut,’ said Frankie, flopping down on the grass outside D Block.
‘She’s so hot,’ I sighed. ‘But still, she’s just a person. An unobtainably cool one, obviously, but still, a person.’
We watched her dancing by the lake with Jen and Wedding Veil and the rest of them. Her oversized nightie said ‘My Marxist feminist dialectic brings all the boys to the yard’ on it, and she was wearing leggings with cartoon David Bowies riding unicorns.
‘I kind of just want to admire her from a distance,’ Frankie said. ‘I’m worried if we get too close to her, the illusion will be shattered. It’s like, my mum used to be obsessed with Colin Firth – like, obsessed – and then she saw him in Peter Jones buying scales – kitchen ones not weight ones – and she spoke to him, and he was polite and everything, but he clearly just wanted her to fuck off. And I just feel like if I really get to know Bowl-Cut Mary she might not be everything I hoped and dreamt, you know.’
The sky cracked and it started to rain – big, heavy droplets – so all of us piled up into D Block, our pyjamas and hair dripping like crazy as we ran up the stairs.
Connor, Liberty, Nathan and Phillip were doing pre’s in the kitchen, and Connor marched straight up to me, Frankie and Negin and bundled us into a group hug.
‘Were you at the match?’ Negin laughed.
‘Course I was.’ He broke out of the hug, grinning broadly. ‘Never been so proud to be D Block. You lot were fucking amazing.’ He held up his vodka and Coke. ‘For the Beckster.’
‘The Beckster,’ Frankie shouted.
Liberty leant in to me: ‘God, I hope she’s OK.’
I nodded. ‘Me too. I just wish she’d reply to our messages.’
‘I’ve got an appointment to see her personal tutor this week,’ Negin said. ‘And I’m saving all her lecture notes.’
Connor put on some incredibly loud hip hop, and started pouring drinks for Bowl-Cut and the rest of the girls. The kitchen was already heaving, and the noise was so loud we were soon attracting people from all over Jutland. It was like a celebration. Within half an hour, it seemed like everyone on campus was stuffed into our corridor – every room was packed with people I’d never seen before. There were even randoms sat in the shower, drinking.
Connor waved his phone at us. ‘You know you’re famous? Everyone’s Story is just videos of you lot storming the pitch.’
It was raining so hard that you could hear it above the music, but it was so hot inside that the windows had steamed up. Liberty had made a kind of dance floor in the middle of the kitchen and was madly showing off routines she had invented to various Justin Bieber songs. Everyone seemed like they had been wound up and set off.
I went to the loo and saw I had a message from Flora: ‘What are your bday plans BEST ONE?’
I wrote back straight away: ‘I haven’t seen you in for ever. Can you come up for it next week? It’s the day before our Christmas Ball, but we can still GET ON IT’. She sent back: ‘YES YES YES!’
I came out to see Connor hauling his mattress off his bed and shoving Nathan and Phillip’s skateboards underneath it.
&n
bsp; ‘Right, clear the corridor,’ he shouted. ‘D Block chariot, coming through.’
Negin grabbed Liberty, Nathan and Frankie, and all of us ran as fast as we could and jumped on to the mattress, whooping like mad as it sped down the corridor, faster and faster and faster. People came out of their rooms and showered us with beer as we flew by.
The mattress crashed into the kitchen door, and we all fell off, screaming with laughter. ‘Again, again,’ Frankie was yelling. Then she looked up, and suddenly went pale.
‘Bagsy us next.’ Ed was there, scratching his damp curly hair and grinning down at us. And Luke Taylor was stood right beside him.
Ed hugged all of us, but Luke just nodded and leant awkwardly against the kitchen counter.
‘We could hear you lot from B Block,’ Ed said. ‘Although, to be fair, they can probably hear you in Scotland.’
I snuck a look at Luke, his hair still wet from the rain, and wondered if I would ever stop feeling stuff for him. Like, when I am fifty, will I still look at him and feel scared and excited and on edge? I feel like it will never go away. It got written into my DNA so long ago that my body doesn’t know how to undo it. If Luke Taylor murdered someone I’d probably end up marrying him in prison.
If Connor sensed any awkwardness, he didn’t show it. He just thumped beers into Ed and Luke’s hands, and then started dragging the mattress back up the corridor.
‘So, Luke Taylor . . .’ Negin said. ‘What are you actually doing here?’
Frankie nearly choked on her cocktail, and even Ed winced and clenched his teeth.
Luke shuffled against the counter, and took a swig of his beer. ‘I just wanted to say sorry, I guess. Because I really am sorry. I’ve felt so shit about it all term. So guilty. It’s not an excuse, or anything, I know. But it’s the truth.’
Everyone was looking at him, but he was looking at me. ‘I’ve been such a dickhead. I don’t know what else to say. I don’t know why I didn’t do anything earlier, but then when Becky left, it was just . . .’ He took another sip of his beer, and looked around at everyone this time – Negin and Frankie and Ed, and then back to me. ‘I’m so, so sorry,’ he said again, and I could feel how much he meant it.
