Part 2 – Winter
Sophie
parents’ house to get away from Evan is like trying to escape a dragon by hiding in an ogre’s cave.
Even though I’d made up a vague excuse about being homesick and wanting to see them over Christmas, my parents still lectured me about leaving Audrey’s house and “giving up on important opportunities”. Christmas day is tense and mostly unpleasant.
The rest of the holiday becomes one long lecture about how being homesick is one thing, but ultimately everything I do now will have a domino effect on my life as an adult, and why am I not making more friends at Spearcrest, these connections will one day come in handy, and so on and on, ad nauseam.
In the end, I give them my word to make more of an effort to socialise and network when I return to school, and then things calm down a little. We even manage to last the rest of that evening without Spearcrest being mentioned once.
But for the rest of the holiday, in between what happened with Evan—which I’m refusing point blank to relive or think about or mentally address in any way, shape or form—the crushing anxiety I generally feel around my parents and the week I wasted not being able to work, it’s basically impossible to relax. The only escape is inside the pages of books, but even reading becomes stressful when your brain is trained to analyse every sentence for meaning.
On the last Sunday of the holiday, when I finally return to Spearcrest, I’m actually glad to be back. Even though I’ve brought my stormcloud of worries with me, being here is still better than being back at home. After I’ve unpacked my things and put everything away in its proper place, I pick up my books and head straight for the sanctuary of the study hall, which is blissfully empty.
And end up spending almost an entire hour staring blankly at the pages of my workbooks, crushed by the terrible feeling that I have massively, disastrously fucked up, and that nothing is going to be okay.
After an hour of this, I let my face drop to the desk with a sigh.
Anxiety is pretty familiar to me, but it’s unlike me to be so easily crushed by a defeat or mistake. If there’s one thing I can do, it’s take a punch. But it’s getting harder and harder to get back up these days.
“There she is, I told you!”
I raise my head from the desk and peer around my table lamp. Audrey is striding across the study hall, Araminta in tow. They must have arrived not long ago—Audrey is still wearing her coat and scarf.
“What’s up with the radio silence, Sutton?” she asks as she draws close. “You know a phone is a tool of communication and not just a paperweight, right?”
“I know,” I say, dropping my head back down.
I hear the shuffle of the girls pulling up chairs to sit close to me. An arm wraps around my shoulders, and Araminta’s familiar perfume fills my senses. A warm, floral smell, like cinnamon and jasmines.
“There, there,” she coos.
I laugh weakly. “I’m not a baby.”
“You are a baby,” she says, pulling my head up to rest it on her shoulder and gently stroking my hair. “You are a big sad baby that needs a big hug and a kiss.”
Audrey huddles close and they both kiss my cheeks until I can’t help but laugh and push them away. “You’re such idiots.”
“Idiots? Why?” Araminta says indignantly. “Because we wuv you?”
“Oh God, please stop!” I laugh and sit up, and realise there are tears in my eyes that I hadn’t even noticed. “Look what you’ve done,” I say, rubbing the sleeve of my woolly jumper against the corner of my eyes.
“We can keep this up as long as we need,” Audrey says with solemn determination. “We’ll shower you with love until you’re ready to talk.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” I mumble into my sleeve.
There’s a moment of silence and I look up to see three identical expressions of unimpressed scepticism.
“It doesn’t take a genius to tell something happened,” Audrey says. “Anyone with two brain cells could tell. You look like some tragic Victorian ghost.”
“Hey now!” Araminta hisses. “Do you not remember the briefing outside? We agreed on a delicate, tender approach, remember?”
Audrey looks down. “Sorry.”
“You don’t have to tell us anything if you don’t want to,” Araminta says, brushing aside the strands of hair now stuck to my wet cheeks. “We just want you to know that we love you and that we want to help, even if it means you want us to leave you alone.”
“I don’t want you to leave me alone.”
Audrey smiles. “We know.”
I sigh, tuck my legs against me, propping my heels on the edge of my seat. I take a deep breath and speak half into my sleeves.
“I kissed Evan Knight at his house on Christmas Eve.”
“That’s hot,” Araminta says at the exact same time Audrey says, “Oh God, why?”
“I don’t even know why! I was tipsy—we both were—and he asked for a kiss. He seemed lonely. I guess I was lonely too. I guess also I sort of wanted to. I mean he might be a complete arsehole but it’s not like I don’t have eyes.”
Araminta nods. She’s cut her thick hair into a bob, and the strands curl around her chin and bob when she moves her head in a way that’s both adorable and distracting.
“I know what you mean,” she says. “He’s a walking wet dream. I don’t blame you for wanting to make out with him.”
“How did you know we made out?” I ask, my face flooding with heat.
“You made out with him?” Audrey frowns. “You said you kissed.”
“I did!” I say, covering my red hot cheeks with my palms. “I did, and then I moved away, and then he kissed me. And then we made out.”
“How far are we talking?” Araminta asks, leaning forward, her eyes boring into mine. “Are we talking heavy petting? Under-shirt action? Did you—” she moves back with a scandalised gasp “— did you touch his cock?”
“Oh my god, are you a child?” Audrey snaps at Araminta. She turns back to me, cocks an eyebrow. “Did you, though?”
“I didn’t touch it, no.” I hesitate, then talk very quickly, just to get it out of the way. “But he, um, he went down on me and—god. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I wish the ground would swallow me up.”
There is a moment of suffocating silence as the girls all strive to conceal their shock.
“Well.” Araminta is the one who finally breaks the silence. “Was it good, though?”
If only she knew how good. I barely even know how good—I have strictly forbidden myself to even think about it.
I nod.
“Wow. Fucking hell, Sophe, not what I expected, I have to say.” Audrey pauses and frowns. “So then what happened?”
“So then I tried to fix my mistake. I told him we were both drunk and lonely, and I apologised to him.”
“You apologised? It’s not like you took advantage of him,” Araminta points out.
“But it’s not like I wanted wanted to kiss him, or for him to… well, to do anything—so in a way I did take advantage of him.”
“Oh, please.” Araminta rolls her eyes. “Evan’s fancied you for so long this was probably a dream come true for him.”
I stare at Audrey, agog. “What planet have you been living on? He hates my guts.”
“No, he doesn’t. He’s an arsehole to you, and a complete twat in general most of the time, but he doesn’t hate you. It’s so obvious he’s obsessed with you. He’s like a really childish boy in primary school who throws frogs at the girl he likes.”
“Except we’re not in primary school, we’re almost adults,” I say drily. “If an adult throws a frog at another adult, it’s not a cute crush. It’s weird and creepy.”
“Audrey isn’t defending his actions,” Araminta points out. “She’s just saying his fucked up behaviour isn’t based on hate.”
“Right, but regardless of why he’s an arsehole or his obsession with you,” Audrey presses on. “What happened next? After your… your apology?”
She winces as she speaks the word like it pains her to even say it. I don’t care, I stand by my apology. I actually have the maturity to admit my mistakes, unlike some people I can think of.
Well, one person anyway.
I continue with some hesitation. “Then… then he said he wanted to kiss me and that I wanted to kiss him.”
“Well, I mean it’s not a lie,” Araminta points out.
“What did you say?” Audrey asks.
“I said that it was a mistake and that I like someone else.”
Silence reigns once more. Around us, the shadows of the study hall press in, surrounding the three stunned faces blinking at me.
“You told him about Freddy?” Audrey says finally.
“What, so you like Freddy?” Araminta asks with a frown.
“No, no—I mean, of course, I like Freddy, he’s actually nice to me. But I don’t like him, I just didn’t want Evan to think I kissed him because I like him, because I don’t.”
“But don’t you, though?” Audrey asks more quietly.
“No, Audrey, I don’t. I just… it was weird, staying with him. He baked cookies. We made dinner together. We hung out. It was like in Year 9, when things were okay, and also like having a… it was really nice. I guess I just got confused.”
“Right.” Audrey doesn’t look convinced but doesn’t push it.
Araminta prompts me on. “So then what did Evan say?”
“Nothing. I left. Then the next day I ran away and went back to my parents’ house.”
“Oh.”
The girls all exchange glances.
“So how did that go?” Audrey asks.
I sigh. “As well as you might expect.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
I shake my head. “There’s nothing to talk about. Honestly, it wasn’t that bad. Just more stuff about making the most of my amazing connections, that sort of stuff. Apart from that, it was fine, really.”
“Talk about making connections,” Araminta says with a suggestive waggle of her eyebrows. “You’ve been making connections alright.”
Audrey lets out a bark of scandalised laughter. “Minty! Stop.”
“Networking with a Young King,” Araminta carries on shamelessly. “Networking… with tongues.”
“You’re disgusting,” Audrey says.
But she’s laughing, and so am I. The crushing weight lifts from my chest. Things are still pretty bad, but they don’t seem as hopeless now.
I take a deep breath, letting my lungs fill up properly, and slump back into my chair in relief.
“I feel like the biggest fucking idiot.”
“You’re not the biggest fucking idiot,” Audrey says. “And you know what? I want to celebrate the fact that you finally got some action. It’s been, what? Your first time since you got to Spearcrest?”
I laugh weakly. “No, no, there was that boy at my cousin’s birthday party in Year 11, remember?”
“Oh, God, yes, that boy with the braces who kept texting you after?” Audrey shakes her head. “I can’t believe that was your first time.”
Araminta shakes her head. “And he was shorter than you.”
“To be fair, every boy was shorter than me in Year 11,” I point out.
“That time does not count,” Araminta says with a wince. “It stresses me out just thinking about it.”
“Then don’t think about it,” Audrey says. “Think about Sophie getting some hot action with the walking wet dream of Spearcrest.”
I glare at her, hoping none of them notice how red I’m sure my face has become.
“Seriously, though, Sophe,” Audrey asks more seriously. “What are you going to do now?”
“About what?”
“About Evan.”
“God. Haven’t I done enough? I’m going to do what I should have done to begin with: nothing at all. Stay as far away from him as possible.”
“What about Miss Bailey’s tutoring programme?”
“I’m just going to leave it. I’m sure Evan wants to see me just about as much as I want to see him after the absolute embarrassment of the entire situation, so I’m just going to not go back to his house and hope that he lets sleeping dogs lie.”
“Hmm,” Audrey says dubiously.
“What, you don’t think he will?” I ask, fear rising in my chest.
“Evan Knight doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who would take nicely to rejection, that’s all,” Audrey points out thoughtfully.
“Rejection?” I stare at her incredulously. “It’s not exactly a rejection, is it, though?”
“You two kissed and then he went down on you and then you apologised to him and said you liked somebody else. What would you call that if not a rejection?”
“Um, good manners? I thought I handled it in the most polite way possible.”
The girls all shake their heads. Audrey stands and stretches. “I don’t know how you can be both so smart and so clueless sometimes, Sophe.”
“Yeah, you genuinely concern me,” Araminta says, patting my head. “You’re like a little pretty alien who studied everything about being human but never really got the hang of it.”
“I really love how good you guys are making me feel,” I mutter, packing my books away into my backpack.
“But do you actually feel better though?” Araminta asks, wrapping her arm around my waist and kissing my cheek.
I squeeze her in a hug. “You know I do.”
“Right, well, let’s go back to the dorm,” Audrey says bracingly. “We’ll do our best to help you avoid Evan, and hopefully you’ll never have to see him or speak to him again for the rest of your time here and at the end of the school year you can sail off into the sunset to Harvard and never have to think about him going down on you.”
The girls’ laughter drowns out my thoughts, and even though it’s pretty clear they don’t believe my plan of avoiding Evan will work, I leave the study hall in a much better mood than when I entered it.
After that, we head out to grab some food together, and the girls regale me with stories of their outrageous family Christmases and exotic winter holidays. Later, we all end up cuddling up on the couch in the common room to watch a film.
I don’t think about Evan again until I get in bed that night, and that’s when I remember that tomorrow is Monday, and the first day of the half-term, and I’m on register duty for the assembly. I squeeze my eyes shut, and do my best to not think about it.
And even though I fall asleep pretty quickly, my night ends up full of strange and disturbing nightmares featuring Evan bending me over to spank me with my own clipboard.
