Sophie
my favourite place on the whole campus. I love it more than the corridor of aspens and poplars leading towards the astroturf and tennis courts, more than the austerity of the study hall, more than the Victorian greenhouse on the lower school campus.
The library here has its own building, tucked away from view behind a shield of ancient oaks and tired willows. Inside, it’s all wooden panelling polished by the years, tomb-shaped windows and bronze railings. Three glass cupolas crown the ceiling, huge bronze lights hanging from their centres. Amongst the bookshelves, long desks are set with green bankers lamps.
Here, the smell of leather and old paper permeates the air. A peaceful, contented silence reigns. It’s a sort of oasis in Spearcrest. Even the most obnoxious kids sense the consecration of the library when they enter.
With the winter exams having already started for many subjects, I’m not the only person who’s chosen to spend their weekend in the library. Tucked away in a corner of the Modern History section, I sit across from Audrey, who is also taking History.
We take turns holding our notebooks and quizzing each other about Stalin.
Night is falling outside. The soft gold lights and green lamps keep the darkness at bay. An icy drizzle patters against the windows and the cupolas, the sound filling the air like static. After several hours spent going over dates and details of Stalin’s atrocities, we take a much-needed mental health break.
Audrey takes out a thermos from her bag and pours two tin cups of tea.
“Do you think he actually ever had good intentions?” Audrey asks, passing me a cup.
I prop my chin into my palm and stare thoughtfully into the dark amber tea and the steam rising from it. “I mean, even if he did… does it matter?”
“I think so,” Audrey says. “I think I’d respect someone more if they did something bad with the intention of doing something good. You wouldn’t?”
“I don’t think I would. Your intentions can’t affect others, but your actions can. I think if someone did something bad, I wouldn’t give a shit about their intentions.” I raise a pointed eyebrow. “Especially if the bad thing in question is the murder of millions.”
“I mean, I guess that’s fair, and it’s not like I’m saying those murders would be justified even if he did have intentions. But it would make him a slightly different person.”
I try to take a sip of my tea, but it’s still too hot to drink. “Not to me.”
Audrey laughs. “Everything is so black and white to you, Sophe. I kind of love that about you. I always know where I stand with you.”
I laugh too. Crossing my arms on the table, I lie a cheek against them and close my eyes. “Do you think I’m too judgemental?”
Audrey doesn’t answer straight away, which makes me realise she has to think about it.
“No, not judgemental,” she says eventually. “More like… you have high expectations of others. Do you think people think you’re judgemental?”
“No. But Evan implied that’s the reason I don’t have a lot of friends.”
Audrey scoffs. “What would he know? He wouldn’t recognise true friendship if it slapped him in the face. The Young Kings aren’t friends, they’re more like teenage mobsters.”
I laugh, genuinely amused by the image.
“He said I set the bar too high for sincerity,” I add after a moment of silence.
“So what if you do? Good for you for not surrounding yourself with fake friends. Since when have you been talking to Evan anyway? I thought you’d been working at the café instead of tutoring him.”
“I was, but he made me stop so I could prepare him for the Lit exam.”
Audrey leans forward. “What? You didn’t tell me.”
I rest my chin on my arms so I can look at her properly. “I’ve only been doing it since last week.”
“Since when does he even care about the Lit exam?”
“That’s what I said. But he said if he tanks it then it won’t look good since I was meant to be tutoring him. He said it’ll be easier to keep our deal going if he passes the exam.”
Audrey sits back. “Okay, I get the logic. But why doesn’t he just revise if he wants to pass?”
I sigh. “Because he’s a lazy moron who literally knows nothing. And I mean nothing. He didn’t even know the plot of Hamlet.”
“Hamlet? I thought you were studying Othello.”
“I am. My class is doing Othello and his is doing Hamlet.”
Audrey’s eyes narrow in their nest of long, curly lashes. “So let me get this straight. Not only have you had to do this idiot’s homework, but now you’re basically studying and teaching a text that you’re not even sitting an exam for?”
“Do you understand my frustration?”
“Understand it? I’d be livid if I were you. Why don’t you send him packing?”
“I’d love to. But if he passes then I can go back to working at the café and putting money away for next year.”
“Well, alright,” Audrey says more calmly. “I see what you mean. It’s still annoying, though.”
I laugh quietly. “You’re preaching to the choir, Audrey.”
We lapse into a cosy silence, lulled by the dull rush of the rainfall. Sleep tugs at me, my eyelids growing heavy and slow, like I’m blinking through thick honey. A dull buzz vibrates through the table. Audrey picks up her phone, peers at it, puts it down. She picks it up again, pouts thoughtfully at it, puts it back down.
“Is it him?” I ask, blinking blearily at her.
She’s not mentioned the boy she met over the summer holiday, but it’s clear he’s still on her mind and in her life.
“Mm-hm,” she says, pushing the phone away.
“Are you not going to text him back?”
“He wants to meet over the Christmas holidays.”
“I didn’t even know you two were still in touch.”
It’s a familiar story. Audrey always knows everything about us. She was the first person I told about my secret job, about Evan. And yet it always takes her the longest time to open up to us, to tell us about the things going on in her life.
It takes patience, being Audrey’s friend, but she is worth the time.
“He’s been texting me all term. Now he’s offering to come to London for the winter break. He’s even offered to pay for me to come to Switzerland if I want.”
“Is that where he lives?”
“It’s where he goes to university.”
I watch her, waiting for more information, but she seems deep in her thoughts.
“Well. Are you going to meet him?”
“Is it bad that I really want to?” she asks, finally looking up at me.
“Why would it be bad?”
“Because he’s a rich arsehole, exactly like all the rich arseholes here at Spearcrest. His parents are investment bankers, he went to a private school in France. I’ve spent all these years avoiding the boys here, but how is he any different?”
“Well… what attracted you to him in the first place?”
Audrey pauses to think, reaching absent-mindedly for her hair and pulling on a thick curl that doubles in length when she extends it. Her voice softens as she speaks, taking on a softer hue, soft as the gold and green lights of the library.
“I liked how smart he was, how well-spoken. He speaks with a French accent and he’s a little self-conscious about that. He’s sort of quiet, and a little bit shy.”
“Well,” I say, sitting back in my chair and raising my eyebrows. “He sounds nothing like the boys at Spearcrest. And even if he was, then so what? If you like him, and he likes you, and you want to spend time with him, then why shouldn’t you?”
Audrey gazes at me for a long time. I can’t help but admire her hazelnut-brown eyes, her dark, smooth skin. Her beauty is unlike anybody else’s: a maturity and poise that makes her look older than she is, almost regal.
A smile dawns on her beautiful face, making it more beautiful still.
“Yeah, you’re right… you’re totally right, Sophe.”
She picks up her phone and types out a quick text. When she’s done, she puts the phone away and peers at me with a grin.
“How about you, then? How’s your love life coming along?”
Immediately, my mind is flooded with images of Evan. Evan with his towel around his neck and his bare chest and his hard muscles. Evan slowly sliding off my scarf and coat. Evan standing too close, the cedarwood scent of his cologne curling around me. The sharp line of his lips and the way they crook into that wicked grin of his. His eyes, bluer than winter skies.
His hand around my neck, fingers digging into my skin.
My cheeks burn and I quickly shake my head. Thinking about him like this is a mistake. I should know better.
“What love life? I don’t have a love life.”
“No progress with Freddy, then?” Audrey asks with a little pout of disappointment.
Oh. She was talking about Freddy. I’m immediately red-hot with embarrassment and infinitely thankful Audrey can’t read my thoughts.
“He’s technically speaking my boss,” I explain, “so I don’t think there’s ever going to be any progress, as you put it.”
“That only makes it more scandalous,” Audrey says, waggling her eyebrows. “An illicit workplace romance. This is what rom-coms and erotic novels are made of.”
“Oh, sort yourself out!” I reached over the tablet and grab the book in front of her. “Your brain should be filled with key dates of the Russian Revolution, not this nonsense.”
“There’s always room for both,” Audrey laughs. Still, she reluctantly picks up her perfectly crafted flashcards. “Agricultural developments in communist Russia and Stalin’s use of propaganda to create a cult of personality isn’t quite as sexy as your little adventures with your coffee shop boss, but if we must.”
We resume taking turns quizzing each other and spend the rest of our Saturday night drinking tea and revising. As the evening goes on, the rain doesn’t relent but grows more frosty and aggressive.
By the time we make our way back to the sixth form dormitories, the ground is a mess of sludgy puddles. We run with our backpacks over our heads all the way from the library.
Later, I fall asleep thinking about Freddy, but somehow end up dreaming about Evan.
I spend Sunday in the study hall working through piles of practice exams for Monday’s Maths exam. Although I had every intention of going to the dining hall to buy something for lunch, I end up skipping it altogether.
My chest is crushed by an invisible pressure, a sense that I’m running out of time and that doom is impending and inevitable. I usually get this every time I have exams coming up, but it’s been getting worse.
The study hall slowly empties itself as the afternoon passes, until there’s a handful of us left. We are all sitting apart, and the room is as silent as a tomb. When my phone buzzes from under a pile of books, it startles me so much I jump.
I check it with a frown. The only texts I get tend to be from one of the girls arranging to meet somewhere, or from my parents checking in. I unlock my phone, hoping it’s not the latter.
It’s neither. It’s actually from Freddy.
“Hi Sophie, we’ve been missing you at the café but we both hope your exams are going well. Just wondering if you fancy picking up some shifts over Christmas, it gets pretty busy around that time of year so could do with the help if you’re around. Let me know x F”
The little innocent x at the end of the message somehow feels more intimate than a kiss, and I can’t believe it, but I feel a little flustered. I text back quickly.
“Hi Freddy. I hope I can pick up some shifts but I’m not sure yet. I’ll let you know as soon as possible. Say hi to Jess.”
I hesitate. Should I respond with an x too? His is so casual, so… Freddy. Just soft and kind like him.
But if I add an x… I don’t know if I can pull it off. I’m not soft and kind like Freddy.
“Say hi to Jess. S.”
The S hopefully is casual enough, and it’s not like I have any reason to send Freddy a kiss. Even if Audrey seems to imagine some cutesy workplace romance, I live in the real world. And in the real world, Freddy is just the guy I work for, and I have bigger problems to think about than the way I end my texts.
Like the impending Christmas break, and how I’m going to work out a way to pick up shifts. I usually spend the first week of the holidays at Spearcrest because my parents work that week, so I might be able to manage at first. There won’t be many people at school, and technically we are allowed into town during school holidays.
But the second week, I usually spend with my parents in our small house away from the school. I’ll still be close to the café, but I’ll also be right under my parents’ watchful eyes.
If they found out I was working, I can’t even imagine how disappointed and hurt they’d be. They’ve spent all my life at Spearcrest telling me how hard I have to try, how amazing an opportunity this is, how perfect I need to be to ever compete with the kind of kids I go to school with. If they knew I’d been knowingly breaking the rules, they would be both furious and devastated.
And if they found out I was doing it to earn money, that would be a whole different level.
They’ve worked hard their whole lives to provide for me, to send me to the best school possible. I know how ungrateful they’d think I am if I told them I needed more money. I’ve not even told them I’m applying to universities in the states yet. They think I’m going to Oxford or Cambridge, they have practically already told everyone about it. But I don’t want to escape Spearcrest only to end up somewhere exactly like it.
I just have to find a nice way of saying this to them.
The rest of the afternoon is a write-off. I can barely concentrate on my practice exams. My mind keeps being tugged back towards my parents, towards work, towards the difficult conversations ahead, and beyond that, the uncertain future.
I spend several hours forcing myself to concentrate, but my answers get increasingly worse until I realise I’m doing worse on the practice exams than I was when I arrived at the study hall.
In the end, I pack all my books and leave the study hall, defeat weighing me down. I’ve not had dinner yet, but I’m not hungry. I dump my things in my room and go for a swim, hoping it will release some of the tension building inside my chest.
The pool is empty, half the lights turned off. The water casts shifting dapples of blue light onto the walls and ceiling. Combined with the rush of the rain falling outside the open windows near the ceiling, it makes the pool feel quiet and eerie.
I dive into the water and swim all the way to the bottom. The cold water shocks my system, but my body adjusts quickly. I swim to the surface, breathe, and dip back in. I break into slow, strong laps, up and down, until my body is as tired as my mind.
The sky outside the windows is pitch black by the time I finally take a break, floating on my back on the surface of the water.
I watch the vaulted ceiling, blinking slowly. The glowing blue dapples there tremble and shift ceaselessly, strangely mesmerising. For the first time since receiving Freddy’s text, my mind is quiet.
Then droplets of water splash over my face. I flounder for a second, righting myself in the water as I look around.
My heart sinks.
The last person I could possibly want to see right now is sitting at the edge of the pool, feet tickling the surface of the water.
In my dream last night, Evan wore his school uniform, the tie undone, the crisp white shirt unbuttoned. I was kneeling on marble, and he stared down at me. He held a bottle of expensive champagne, and he tipped it, pouring it down into my open mouth.
His eyes never left mine as I drank, champagne running down my chin and chest. I woke up as shocked and embarrassed as if I’d had the filthiest sex dream, and thanked my lucky star I wouldn’t have to see him until Tuesday.
Of course, my lucky star has never been all that lucky.
If anything—it’s more of a cursed star.
