Zachary
of freedom between the end of GCSEs and the start of A-levels, I read Peter Pan.
It’s better than I imagined it would be, but reading it is nevertheless a joyless task. I annotate it obsessively, scrutinising every line for insights into Theodora’s mind.
By the time I finish the book, the fore-edge is a dense forest of tabs.
Amongst the forest, the red tabs reign supreme—they are the tabs I used to denote passages regarding James Hook.
In the drunken mist of that evening in the woods—the search for Theodora amongst the trees, the heavy drinking afterwards, egged on by my friends, then glimpsing her gliding fey-like away from the bonfire in a flutter of feathers and skirts—one memory stands out among the rest.
Theodora’s pretty smile emerging from the shadows to tell me she had a childhood crush on James Hook.
It was the first time Theodora ever told me something conversational, pointless—personal. Every time I speak with Theodora, it’s to debate or argue or discuss. She never just tells me things about herself. I could teach an entire curriculum of Theodora’s debating style, her oracy, the words, terms and arguments she favours, the philosophers and historical figures she draws inspiration from.
But if I were to sit down and write a list of facts about her, I wouldn’t even get past the basics. I have no idea what month her birthday falls in, what her favourite colour might be, or if she likes animals. She might be a single child, or she might have many siblings—I would never know.
So this unexpected reveal about Hook isn’t just a random fact. It’s a precious nugget of knowledge, a treasure I never hoped to gain. And now I have one, I want more; I want a treasure chest full of glittering nuggets of information.
I re-read Hook’s death scene several times over.
Irrational anger fills me with every quote. Quotes like “That passionate breast no longer asked for life” and “Not wholly unheroic figure” seem to taunt me. Tragedy and dignity, elegance and despair—this is my impression of the death scene. Is that what appeals to Theodora?
I re-read the chapter, angrily seeking signs of myself in Hook.
Zahara enters the library—which is more of a mixture of a home office and a lounge but gets its nickname because it’s furnished floor to ceiling with bookshelves filled to the brim. She’s home from Sainte-Agnès, the private girls’ school she’s attending in France, although she’ll only be home for a few days before she goes off to some summer camp.
Every time I see her, she looks less like the little girl of my memories and more like a stranger.
She’s taller now, graceful as a dancer, dressed in the preppy style of a private school girl. Her hair is long, well past her shoulders, a nimbus around her head, then looser curls down her back, the black streaked with warm shades of caramel and russet.
“I thought I’d find you here,” she declares. “What are you reading now?”
I lift my book to show her the cover. Her eyebrows shoot up. “Peter Pan? Didn’t think that would be your cup of tea.”
“It’s not,” I tell her, snapping the book shut. “Do you think Hook is an attractive character?”
She smirks. “I suppose—dangerous man, tragic figure… that hook. Every girl loves a villain.” She perches herself on the leather-top surface of the enormous desk and frowns down at me as I let my head roll back into the desk chair. “What is this about? Homework?”
“No, not homework. There’s this girl in my year—it’s her favourite book.”
“Oh, Theodora?” Zahara gives me a pointed look and rolls her eyes. “You can just say her name, you know. It’s not like you ever talk about anybody else.”
“She’s the girl who keeps tying with me for top of our classes.”
“I know who she is.” Zahara’s tone is half-exasperated, half-amused. “I don’t care what her favourite book is—what I want to know is when you two are finally going to get it on?”
I grimace. “Get it on? They teach you this sort of stuff at your convent?”
She laughs. “Oh no, not at all. There’s no chance I’m going to learn anything inappropriate from a bunch of severely sexually frustrated teenage girls, right?”
When I asked my parents why they didn’t send Zahara to Spearcrest with me, they told me they have no intention of sending their daughter to a co-ed boarding school where “anything could happen”. Their implications were clear, and at the time I’d thought their fears unfounded.
Now, I know for a fact they’re not. Everyone in Spearcrest is having sex, and anyone who isn’t having sex is doing everything but. I’m the only exception, and I get my share of grief for it.
Grief—and, of course, my unimaginative nickname. Bishop Blackwood.
I sigh. “There is nothing for us to get on, as you put it. Theodora isn’t allowed to date, and she seems to be taking that rule very seriously.”
Zahara covers her mouth with her hands. “Ew, Zach, don’t tell me I’m going to be losing my virginity before you.”
I use my copy of Peter Pan to whack her forehead. “Virginity is a social construct, Zaro.”
She kicks my arm and hops off the desk. “That’s not what I’ve been learning at school.”
“Then you need better teachers.”
“Maybe.” She gives me a sly look. “Is having no girlfriend a social construct, too, then?”
“I don’t need a girlfriend,” I tell her in my most dignified tone. “I have a beautiful rival instead.”
“A beautiful rival—yeah.” Zahara cackles. “And a left hand!”
She runs out of the room before I can reply, her laughter echoing behind her.
I would laugh, too, if she wasn’t so tragically right.
not used to this kind of discourse. Sharing my social time with the most popular boys in the year means constantly being surrounded by girls. I used to think Evan—the all-American star athlete—and Séverin—the French aristocrat playboy—would be enough to divert most of those girls’ attention, but I learn that there is no accounting for taste.
Some girls prefer the strong and silent appeal of Iakov’s monosyllabism and bruised knuckles, and some prefer the dark edge of Luca’s borderline-sociopathic tendencies. And so of course, I have my own appeal and my own suitresses.
None of them have any appeal to me, though. At the end of Year 11, in a moment of drunken hubris, Luca and Evan made a bet that we, as a group, were going to sleep with every single girl in the year. It was a stupid idea and probably did more to repel girls than it did to attract them.
Unfortunately, it was also filmed on someone’s phone and subsequently widely distributed.
After the summer, when we return for upper school, I half hope the bet is buried and long-forgotten, but I’m quickly disappointed.
Sev, who unwisely proposed to his girlfriend Kayana at the end of Year 11, is now single and mending a broken heart. Evan, still nursing his inexplicable obsession with wanting and hurting his former friend Sophie Sutton, is keen for a distraction. Iakov doesn’t date much, but he always comes back from his summers home in a depressive mood and is probably just craving some friendly human contact.
And Luca, I’m beginning to suspect, is just a cold-blooded animal looking for a smaller creature to sadistically toy with.
In short, my friends begin Year 12 with their A-levels being last on their list of priorities.
“I’m going to put a dent in our numbers for the bet,” Séverin states on our first day back after we’ve all gathered in the centre of the sixth form common room. “We only have two years left here and almost one-hundred-and-fifty girls to get through still.”
“You’re keeping count, are you?” I ask him, making no attempt to disguise the mockery in my voice.
He nods quite seriously. “I still have the list we made on my phone.” He swipes open his phone and pulls up his note app, brandishing his screen in my direction. “See?”
“Let me have a look,” Evan says, grabbing Sev’s phone and peering at it.
Luca takes Sev’s phone out of Evan’s hand and smirks. “Don’t worry, Ev, our little prefect isn’t on there.”
“What little prefect?” Evan asks, but his jaw is clenched, muscles twitching there.
Luca ignores him, scrolling through the list with a vicious smile on his pale face, his grey eyes sharp as knife blades. “So many names missing from our illustrious list. Are we calling dibs on anyone, gentlemen? Or is every girl game this year?”
Luca has one type: girls his friends want. It’s the reason Evan would never in a million years admit he was checking for Sophie’s name on the list, the reason why Sev and Iakov both shrug at Luca’s question.
“Blackwood?” Luca asks, his playful tone hiding a dangerous edge. “I see Theodora’s name is still missing from the list. Are you claiming her?”
“She’s not an object or a territory, so no, I’m not claiming her.”
“You’re right.” There’s a glib smile on Luca’s pale face. “It’s not like she’d ever sleep with you anyway.”
He’s purposely misconstruing the meaning behind my words, but Luca likes nothing more than to provoke others. And I’m not so foolish as to fall for his artless manipulation.
“She’s not sleeping with anyone,” Iakov replies before I can. “Her father’s got a bounty on the head of anyone who touches her.”
I look up sharply, meeting Iakov’s dark eyes. He’s just spent the summer in Russia, where Theodora’s father lives. Of course, Russia is a large country—the largest country in the world—but I wonder if the world of the ultra-wealthy is as small there as it is here in England. I want to quiz him on whatever he knows, but not now, not here.
Besides, knowing Iakov, he might just have been joking. It’s almost impossible to tell with his deadpan tone and neutral expression.
I drop his gaze and find Séverin looking at me with narrowed eyes. Seizing his phone out of Luca’s hand, Sev speaks with sudden authority.
“Theodora’s off-bounds.”
Luca raises his eyebrows. “Why?”
“If Zachary isn’t sleeping with her, none of us are,” Sev responds with a shrug. “I’m just being realistic.”
“If she’s off-bounds,” Evan says, slapping me on the arm in a gesture of sportsmanly support, “maybe this year you can set your sights on someone you actually stand a chance of sleeping with.”
I shake my hand and shrug his hand away with a grimace. “That’s not happening.”
Evan blinks—as if he, of all people, should be confused with the concept of having your heart irrevocably set on one person.
“What do you mean?” he asks.
“I’m not setting my sights on anyone. Theodora is the only one worthy of my desire. I couldn’t set my sights on anybody else if I tried. She and I are fated somehow. Anything else would be doomed by principle.”
My friends all stare at me without speaking as if I just spoke in a language completely foreign to them. Luca finally breaks the silence with a mocking snicker.
“If she’s your fated soulmate then why aren’t you two together yet?”
I shrug. “We’re seventeen. Life is long.”
“Fucking hell,” Séverin blurts out. “You’re already the only virgin left in the group and now you’re telling us you’re willing to wait until you’re an old man because of fate—what the fuck even is fate anyway?”
If I cared at all what they all think of me, I would perhaps bother explaining myself. But when I look at their faces, I find myself overwhelmed with indifference. Sev’s and Evan’s mouths droop open in child-like confusion, Luca’s is twisted in a derisive smirk.
Iakov alone, sitting a little away from us, seems utterly unconcerned.
“It’s his dick,” he says. “He can do what he likes with it.”
His blunt words of wisdom seem to shake Evan and Sev out of their state of stupefaction. Sev sighs and turns back to me.
“And what if you can never have her?”
It’s a good question—one I’ve thought of often, alone at night in my bed, hard and tense with frustration and desire and despair.
“Then life is going to hurt like a bitch.”
