Sophie
Spearcrest begins with a vengeance. In between revision sessions, extra classes, coursework deadlines and looming exams, there’s no time to worry about anything else. The tutoring programme ends early in the term, and all of our extracurriculars are suspended for good.
The stress and pressure of the exams throughout our year group have escalated so much that even the students who normally seem unaffected by schoolwork are slowly beginning to cave in. Araminta, the perpetual optimist, has been planning her escape in case she fails her exams. The clouds of girls who normally follow the Young Kings around the school with breathless laughs and silken hair have dissipated. Students who spent their entire time at Spearcrest projecting careless insouciance don’t seem so insouciant now.
Even the Young Kings themselves seem to have disbanded, split apart by their different classes and exam schedules. I catch a glimpse of Zachary coming out of his Lit classroom one afternoon with a gaunt face and haunted eyes. Séverin Montcroix seems to spend an inordinate amount of time in the Art studios even though he’s not even studying Art.
One afternoon, I even catch Luca Fletcher-Lowe, his face a map of fading bruises, sitting in the corner of the library with a thunderous frown on his face, bent over textbooks.
After spending my school career feeling like I was in a different world to everybody in Spearcrest, it’s as though exams have now brought everybody into my world. A world of endless revision, non-stop nail-biting and anxiety dreams.
And now, as well as the crushing workload and the looming exams, I have something else to worry about.
Avoiding the distraction that is Evan has become sort of a full-time job because he seems to be everywhere. In the study hall when I’m working through Maths past papers, in the library when I’m trying to do my background reading on Austen, in the dining hall when Audrey drags me in to forcefully remind me to eat.
Every time I see him, my mind is flooded with memories of our bodies together, his mouth on me, his words. It’s the last thing that should be on my mind.
The night before my first exam, I stay in the library so late I lose track of time. My eyes are teary with tiredness, and after wiping tired tears off my revision cards for the third time, I decide to call it a night.
I stand up to return my books to the shelf cart and look around. The top floor, where I’ve been sitting all night, is empty and plunged in shadows, the only light source the banker’s lamp on my desk and the faint bronze glow of the lights rising from the lower floors through the polished wooden railings.
I’m not one to spook easily, but in all my years at Spearcrest, this is the first time I’ve seen the library empty. The eerie silence seems to follow me through the book aisles and down the stairs as I make a hasty escape from the top floor, my heart beating slightly faster than it should. I emerge into the soft lights of the second floor and breathe a slight sigh of relief, happy to be free from the lurking shadows.
Then I turn the corner towards the next staircase and go crashing into another lurking shadow. I jump back with an embarrassingly high-pitched gasp, and a strong pair of arms grab me to settle me.
“Whoa, Sophie!” I look up to see Evan’s wide eyes staring back at me. “You scared the shit out of me!”
I push his arms off me with a glare. “What are you talking about? You scared the shit out of me! What are you even doing here?”
He gestures at himself: he’s wearing a baggy white vest and black running shorts, a blue towel around his neck. His hair is dark and curly with sweat. “I was coming back from a run, I just thought I’d check to see if you were here.”
I stare at him. “A run? Why on earth are you running at this time of night?”
He shrugs. “Probably the same reason you’re here at this time of night.”
“You’re on a run to revise for a History exam?”
“I’m on a run because I’ve got an exam tomorrow and I’m too stressed to sleep.”
“Oh.”
Then the silence from upstairs, the soft, velvety silence of late night and old wood and dim lights, settles between us. It coils around us, shutting us away from the real world and locking us into each other’s presence. I realise this is the first time we’ve been alone together since that night at his house, and my heart stops beating as if it’s just been turned to marble.
Evan swallows, his throat shuddering. His cheeks are flushed, his lips wet. His gaze is dark and glittering, fixed on me. There is an unspeakable expression on his face: something hungry and reckless and a little wild. He steps forward with a sharp intake of breath.
“Evan—” I start.
But he’s already crossing the space between us, sweeping me into his arms. Mine curl around his neck of their own volition before I even realise what I’m doing, and then I’m pinned against a wall, pressing him closer. He kisses me hard, hungrily, urgently and I open my mouth to him like a blossoming flower starved for sunlight.
I kiss him back just as hungrily, surprised by my desire, my fingers curled into fists in his hair. He hitches me higher against him, my thighs around his hips, so that my head is tilted down towards him, and for a second I pause to stare down at him, stunned by the naked desire on his face. I take his face in my hands and kiss his open mouth so deep and slow my entire body aches.
His hands reach under my shirt, the glide of his skin on mine so sensual it sends shudders rippling through me. His fingers find the curve of my breasts, the tightening bud of my nipples. He pinches his fingers closed over it with a cruel grin, shocking a small, hoarse cry out of me.
“Is somebody still here?”
The distant voice brings me back to reality as surely as if I’d been tossed into ice-cold water. I shove Evan away from me, almost strangling him with the collar of his own shirt as we spring apart.
A door opens somewhere on the lower floor and footsteps approach. I hastily straighten my jumper and lean over the balustrade to see Mr Eckles, the campus security guard. I look back up, still breathless from Evan’s kisses, but Evan hasn’t looked away from me for a second. His chest is rising and falling rapidly, his cheeks flushed, his gaze dangerous.
“Just putting my books away, Mr Eckles!” I call out, a hint of desperation sharpening my voice.
Evan’s eyes darken and he steps towards me once more. I push him away and make my escape. I run all the way from the library to the girls’ dormitories like the final girl in a horror movie and immediately head for the showers.
When I finally climb into bed, my phone lights up.
“I want you so fucking much. Just so you know, it’s your fault if I fail my exam tomorrow.”
I bury my burning face into my pillow and take several deep breaths before picking up my phone.
“I think it’s best if we stay away from each other until exams are over. Wouldn’t want you to fail every exam. Goodnight x”
Then I slip my phone under my pillow and go to sleep, even though I know full well I’ll wake up feeling much more tired than I do now.
is over and done with, I enter into a sort of high-functioning panic mode where everything is sharpened and heightened and intense. Each following exam is a shock to the system. Sleep becomes little more than just an extended period of closing my eyes.
The second English Literature paper is my final exam. By that point, I’m running on pure adrenaline, so when Evan appears from behind a bookshelf and strides towards my desk on the top floor of the library the night before the exam, I look up at him with my most belligerent frown.
“Go away.”
He raises a shiny copy of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, holding it up like a shield as he approaches me with cautious steps.
“Are you revising for Lit?”
“What else would I be doing?”
He lays his book down on the desk and pulls up a chair facing me. “Let me revise with you.”
“Absolutely not.”
He freezes halfway through sitting down, giving me the worst attempt at puppy eyes. “Oh. Really?”
I let out a deep, pointed sigh. “Fine. Sit down. If you mention even a single thing that’s not related to Persuasion, I will get you kicked out of the library permanently. Don’t think I won’t.”
“I know better than to not take your threats seriously,” he says, hurriedly sitting down and pulling out his battered notebook from his bag.
I avert my eyes, disgusted by the clear mistreatment his book and notes have endured. After a while, we begin swapping questions and revision notes, and tentatively quizzing one another, making notes of areas we both need to revise. We’re working quietly when Evan breaks the silence
“What I don’t understand,” he says, frowning at his copy of Persuasion, “is why she doesn’t just tell Wentworth how she feels.”
I look up from my notes and raise my eyebrows at him. “How could she possibly? Think about it. It was her fault she let him go, her fault she listened to the wrong people, her fault she gave up what she wanted.”
“Well, she really is a fucking idiot,” Evan mumbles.
Still, he makes a note of what I just told him. I pick up my book, peering at him over the pages and watching him as he writes.
“Why?” I finally ask.
He looks up and gives a rueful sigh, as though he’s become the living embodiment of Anne Elliot herself. “Because she wasted all that time for nothing, absolutely nothing. All that time she spends suffering, she could have been with him. But she just ruined everything for herself and then was too paralysed by her own mistake to do anything about it.”
I put my book back down. “Aren’t you being a little too hard on her? She was young and she fucked up. It happened. So what? Should she pay for this mistake for the rest of her life?”
He looks up suddenly, a frown on his face. “Isn’t that what you’re making me do?”
I glare at him. “You’re not Anne Elliot.”
“I know I’m not. She accepts defeat way too easily. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m willing to fight for what I want, even when the odds are against me.”
My heart is beating much too fast for a conversation about a Jane Austen book, which this conversation is rapidly moving away from. I sigh and look back down at my book.
“Don’t knock Anne,” I tell him, a little more calmly. “She ends up getting what she wants in the end.”
Evan seems to relent, too, because he brushes his hand through his hair in that sheepish way of his and mutters, “Only because Wentworth is kind enough to forgive her.”
I sneak a glance at him, but his gaze is fixed on the pages of his book. I hesitate, then say, “Yeah, well… I doubt Wentworth would have forgiven her if he wasn’t head over heels in love with her the whole time, even while he was angry at her.”
Evan looks sharply back up and stares at me. I stare back at him, blinking slowly. His eyes narrow.
“I don’t get it,” he says quietly. “Are we still talking about the book or are we talking about us?”
“There is no us.”
“Right. Right, yes. But there could be. Right?”
“Evan.” I cross my arms and lean forward, to make sure I’m looking him dead in the face before explaining this to him. “You’re not Anne. You just want something you can’t have exactly because you don’t have it. The moment you do, you’ll move on.”
“Don’t you think that if it was that easy to get over you, I would already have?” There’s a desperate edge to Evan’s voice. “It’s not like I’ve not tried, Sophie. But even when I’m not thinking about you, you’re still there, on the edge of my thoughts. And when I close my eyes I just see you and your hair and eyes and your stupid frown you always have like an angry librarian who disapproves of everything and everyone. I want you so much I feel constantly empty, even when I have everything I want. At Christmas, I wasn’t happy because I wasn’t alone. I was happy because I was with you. Just because I’m not like you, because I don’t get excited about university and a job, doesn’t mean I live completely aimlessly. It’s just that anything I imagine for my future feels worthless if you’re not there to share it with me.”
I’m so lost for words all I can do is stare mutely at him as he speaks, then he stops and we just stare at each other, my heart in my mouth.
“I don’t know what to even say to that,” I mumble.
“Then don’t say anything. I just wanted you to know. Besides, you said that if I spoke about anything other than Persuasion, you’d have me kicked out of the library.”
We fall back into silence, and leave soon after, ushered out by the librarian who tells us the teachers are using the library for a staff twilight session. I sheepishly bid Evan goodbye, but I make sure to text him when I get back to my dorm.
“Good luck with the exam, Anne. x”
“Haha. Thanks, Wentworth. Good luck to you too. Love you x.”
