LUKE
Phoebe was up and out of the room faster than I had ever seen a human being move.
As soon as the tutor bloke said, ‘See you all next week,’ she just snatched her bag off the table and bolted out the door. I’d barely even noticed him saying it. But then, I’d barely noticed anything he’d said once I’d looked at my phone and seen that message staring up at me. My first ever university seminar and I learnt practically nothing because I was obsessing over a twelve-word text.
As far as I could see, there were two possibilities. One: it was a joke. Quite a weird, inexplicably harsh joke but, still, a joke. She was winding me up. She wanted to embarrass me. Or maybe she thought I’d find it funny. Whatever, Possibility One meant that she was clearly mental.
Then there was Possibility Two: that it was a genuine message, genuinely meant for someone else, genuinely saying that Phoebe Bennet thought I was ‘the hottest boy on Earth’.
I much preferred Possibility Two.
I re-read it over and over again as I walked back down the covered walkway to B Block. I dodged the ducks and nodded at randoms I recognized from Freshers’ Week, and slowly let the whole concept of Phoebe shift and transform in my mind.
It was weird. It was like the message had suddenly lit her differently in my brain. I wondered why I hadn’t seen it before. She was definitely hot. She was really funny. That hour we’d spent together on the first night was one of the only times I’d felt relaxed and easy here. She had this openness and positivity about her that sort of drew you in, made you feel more open and positive, too. Even the occasional rush of Abbey-guilt couldn’t stop me smiling as I thought about her. By the time I was back at B Block, punching in the entry code and clambering up the echoey staircase, I officially fancied Phoebe Bennet.
The corridor was totally empty. The chemists were all in labs from nine to five and a knock on Arthur’s door revealed he was out, too. I braved the socks-and-sewage brie stink and went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. There were three sides of A4 propped up on the table, addressed to Arthur, with the heading: ‘UNACCEPTABLE CHEESE SMELL’. I started reading and had just got to the final paragraph about ‘missing Twiglets’ when Rita walked in. She immediately heaved and covered her nose.
‘My god, that cheese is not messing about, is it?’
I waved Barney’s essay at her. ‘He’s already had a formal written complaint about it. Do you want a tea?’
‘Yeah, that would be nice, cheers. Just sat through an incredibly boring lecture, so I need one. Is Arthur in?’
‘Don’t think so. I’ve just knocked.’
‘Oh.’ She frowned and looked around at the cold, sticky, pasta-sauce-spattered kitchen, still holding her nose. ‘Well, we can’t very well have a nice cup of tea in here, can we?’ She unpinned the laminated fire safety sheet from the notice board and inserted it carefully into the crack of Arthur’s door.
‘Er . . . Rita. What are you doing?’
‘It’s fine,’ she said, biting her lip in concentration. ‘I used to do it all the time last year when Arthur wasn’t in.’
‘Is that definitely legal?’
‘I’m a law student, Luke,’ she said, as if that somehow answered my question. She jiggled the laminate gently and tried the door handle at the same time. Suddenly there was a soft click, and the door swung open. ‘Ta-da,’ she said, flopping on to Arthur’s bed. I followed her in, and as we sat sipping our tea, I decided I had to tell someone about the text.
‘Bloody hell,’ she murmured, reading it with raised eyebrows. ‘She’s not very subtle, this girl, is she?’
‘So do you think it’s for real, then? Like, she actually means it?’
‘Well, she clearly didn’t mean to take a photo of you and then send it to you, but, yeah. I think it’s safe to assume that she wants your body.’
I laughed and felt a little flickering glow inside me, like someone had switched on the central heating in my stomach. ‘Do you reckon I should message her back?’
Rita rolled her eyes. ‘No, obviously don’t message her back, Luke, you idiot. The poor girl’s probably mortified. She’s probably buried under three duvets, crying her eyes out as we speak. And what would you say, anyway?’
I thought about it. ‘Dunno. “Thanks for the message” or something.’
Her eyes rolled back the other way. ‘“Thanks for the message”. Brilliant. You might as well punch her in the face and be done with it.’ She took a sip of tea. ‘How do you know this girl in the first place?’
‘Well, we went to school together, actually. But we didn’t really know each other then. We met properly last week. I sort of said I’d go to that quidditch thing with her at Freshers’ Fair.’
‘Oh yeah. Why didn’t you go, again?’
‘I just . . . forgot.’
She made a face. ‘Right, well . . . You should probably apologize. And make up a better excuse.’
‘Yeah. I guess.’
‘Do you actually even like her?’
‘I mean . . . I hadn’t really thought about it before. But now . . . yeah. I sort of think I do.’
Rita groaned loudly. ‘So when she’s just a random girl from school you don’t give her a second look, but as soon as she accidentally informs you that she wants to jump your bones, you’re suddenly in love with her. Men are such predictable twats, honestly.’
I didn’t bother arguing with that, because, to be fair, she had a point.
She finished her tea and plonked the mug down on Arthur’s bedside table. ‘Well, this has all worked out perfectly for you, hasn’t it? You like her, she thinks you’re the hottest boy on Earth . . . I mean, it’s all good by the sounds of it. You’ve not got a girlfriend or anything, have you?’
I thought about Abbey, who I hadn’t heard from in more than a week now; the longest silence between us in almost three years. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I haven’t.’
Rita shrugged. ‘There you go, then. Say sorry for being a dick about the quidditch, and then, I dunno . . . Ask her out, or something.’
Suddenly we heard the tinkle of keys outside, and the door was kicked open. Arthur stood in the doorway, holding a massive cheese sandwich and frowning hard at us.
‘You know I could report you to the police,’ he said, chucking his keys on the desk. ‘You have broken into my property. You are literally criminals.’
‘Oh, come on, Watling,’ said Rita. ‘Your room’s like the living room. It’s a communal space.’
‘It is not a fucking communal space!’ Arthur yelled, jabbing his stinking sandwich at us. ‘This is my actual, private, personal room! What if I was in here doing something actually private and personal?’
‘What, like weeing in the sink?’ Rita smirked.
‘No. Like romancing a girl, or something.’
Rita clicked her tongue against her teeth. ‘You won’t be romancing anyone now that you constantly stink of brie.’
‘Wrong, actually, Maurita. I’ll be romancing sophisticated French women who appreciate once-in-a-lifetime supermarket deals.’
They grinned at each other, and not for the first time I wondered why they weren’t a couple. They seemed pretty much perfect together. But then, me and Abbey had seemed pretty much perfect, too. How the hell are you ever supposed to know if you’re right for someone?
I stood up. ‘I’ll leave you two to it.’
‘Are you going to initiations?’ Arthur asked, eagerly. He’d become weirdly obsessed with the football initiations. He thought they’d be some kind of mad combination of freemason ceremony and Satanic ritual. Maybe he was right.
‘No, they’re next week. I’m going back to my room. Need to do some reading.’
‘Are they all right then, that football lot?’ Rita asked.
‘Yeah, they seem cool,’ I said. ‘Why?’
‘No, nothing. Just, we had that Will Barnes on the corridor below us last year. Do you remember, Arth? He seemed like a bit of a . . .’
She tailed off and just let the sentence hang there, unfinished, in the air.
‘He seems all right to me.’ I shrugged.
She smiled. ‘No, yeah. I’m sure he is. I don’t know him, to be fair.’ Arthur flopped down in his swivel chair and she said: ‘By the way, Arth, you’re not gonna believe what Luke just got sent.’
Arthur turned to look at me but I headed for the door. ‘You can fill him in, Rita. I’d better do this reading.’ I clapped Arthur on the shoulder as I left. ‘You got a note about the cheese, by the way. First of many, I reckon.’
‘That cheese is the best thing that’s ever happened to me,’ he said, stiffly.
I went back to my room and tried to read Ted Hughes’ Collected Poems, but I couldn’t stop my brain flicking back to Phoebe. Rita was probably right: I probably was a predictable twat. But knowing that Phoebe liked me had made me feel totally different about her. Maybe I’d even liked her all along, but I hadn’t realized it. Maybe I’d forgotten what liking someone new actually felt like.
To be honest, it felt pretty good.
PHOEBE
‘Honestly, this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.’
I genuinely couldn’t think of anything more awful. I couldn’t think of anything else full stop. I was trapped in it, like a hamster, running away as fast as I could but not realizing I was stuck in the plastic wheel.
Negin reached out and touched my arm gently. ‘Phoebs, do you know you’re rocking?’
‘It’s probably PTSD setting in,’ Frankie said from the kitchen floor. She had crumpled into the foetal position when I’d showed her the message, and oscillated between sympathetic nods and helpless laughter ever since.
Negin reached over to my phone. ‘Don’t touch it,’ I screamed, and snatched it off the table.
Frankie dissolved again. Her whole body was convulsing in hysterics. ‘You know Negin touching your phone isn’t gonna make it worse, don’t you? I mean, let’s be honest, nothing could make . . .’
I let out a loud groan–wail hybrid. ‘It is the second week of uni. How can I have done this? Oh god.’
‘You are pretty epic.’ Frankie threw her legs in the air above her. ‘Your love life is like fucking . . . dynamite.’
‘I don’t have a love life,’ I shouted.
‘You do. Luke Taylor bailed on you. And then guinea-piggate with Will and now . . .’ Negin kicked her quite hard and she trailed off. ‘Sorry. I mean, better to have loved and lost than to have loved and then . . . accidentally confessed your love via text message.’
Negin tried to fake-cough her way out of a laugh, and kicked Frankie again.
‘This is your fault anyway,’ I yelled at Frankie. ‘You were the one who said Luke Taylor wasn’t hot.’
Frankie sat up straight and screamed back at me: ‘Yes, but at no point did I make you send a photo of him . . . to him!’
I took a deep breath. ‘I still feel sick. My whole body is boiling and my face is really itchy.’
Negin leant in and squinted. ‘Yeah, I didn’t want to mention it but you have got a kind of . . . rash.’
‘What?’ I jumped over Frankie and looked at myself in the toaster. My face was covered in massive red blotches, and they were spreading down my neck.
‘Accidental Text Rash!’ Frankie bellowed through her fingers.
‘You need to calm down,’ Negin said. ‘It’s just stress.’
‘My face is burning,’ I screamed, and started jumping up and down.
‘OK, OK.’ Frankie sprang up, ran over to the sink and started chucking the dirty pans out on to the floor one by one. The crashing reverberated around the kitchen. She turned the tap on.
‘What should I do?’ I turned to Negin.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Are you a doctor or not?’ I screeched.
‘As I have said a thousand times, I won’t be a doctor for seven years.’
Frankie was beckoning me to the sink. ‘OK, the plug is fucked so just do it quickly.’
‘I feel like I’m on fire.’ I stared at the water.
‘Just do it,’ Frankie shrieked.
I put my face close to the sink, took a deep breath and closed my eyes. ‘I can’t,’ I shouted, just before Frankie plunged my whole head into the freezing cold water. The shock of it hit me hard but it felt kind of calming. I couldn’t really hear anything except my heartbeat and the water in my ears.
I gasped from the shock as I pulled my head out.
Frankie threw her arms around me. ‘I feel like I fucking baptized you.’
‘Er . . . What are you lot doing?’ Connor was standing at the door looking very confused.
Negin handed me a tea towel with old bits of pasta stuck to it.
‘We’re just . . . daring each other to . . . dunk our heads in water,’ she coughed.
‘Nice one.’ Connor ran over to the sink and plunged his face into it. Then he stood up and shook himself out like a dog. ‘Yes!’ he roared.
‘This is one of the strangest days of my life,’ Negin said, and put the kettle on. Becky walked in. If she thought it was odd that there were two people drenched in water she was too polite to say.
‘Tea?’ Negin said to her, and she smiled.
‘Do you want to get dunked in water, Becks?’ Connor asked amicably.
Becky shook her head. ‘I’ve got loads of work to do, and I’m going out later.’
‘Fair play.’ Connor nodded.
‘Can I tell them?’ Frankie said. ‘D Block circle of trust.’
‘You’re not even in D Block!’ I screamed. I was starting to shiver uncontrollably but I didn’t feel like my face was burning quite as much.
‘Phoebs took a picture of a bloke and wrote underneath it that he is and I quote . . .’ Frankie made speech marks with her fingers. ‘“The hottest boy on earth.” Then she sent the picture to him by mistake.’
Connor held his hand up to high five me. ‘Phoebs. You are a banter legend. I think that is fucking brilliant. If he doesn’t like ya, who cares, move on, and if he does, he’ll make a move now for sure.’
‘He has a girlfriend,’ I said.
‘We don’t know that,’ Negin pointed out.
‘Anyway, whatever, I know he doesn’t like me.’
‘How?’ said Connor. ‘You’re hot, Phoebs, and you’ve got good chat. Trust. I don’t shit where I eat, but if I did, I’d be well up for it.’ He winked at me. Weirdly, it made me feel a bit better.
‘When did you send the message?’ Becky sounded genuinely concerned.
‘Like, two hours ago,’ I said. ‘Honestly, this is the end for me and blokes. And technology. No men, no technology. Full stop.’
Becky took a sip of tea. ‘Well, he might message you back.’
‘Seriously,’ I wailed. ‘What am I actually going to do?’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ said Frankie. ‘Just avoid Luke Taylor at all costs.’