I turned to Robin, wanting to tell her everything – not only of this moment, but my whole life story, every secret emotion I had ever held in my heart, all the things I couldn’t say – only to find her seat now taken by the boy from the eighth floor, whose name I could no longer remember. Had he told us? I wasn’t sure.
‘How did you get here?’ I asked, reaching for the arms of the chair in an attempt to still the roiling room.
‘The stairs,’ he said, flatly. ‘Have you … Are you drunk?’
‘That sounds like something I am,’ I said, the words nonsense, confused. I felt a burning heat in the palms of my hands, and released the chair from my vice-like grip.
‘Little more than drunk, judging by those pupils,’ he said, leaning in towards me.
I pulled away. ‘It’s none of your business.’
He winced. ‘Ouch.’
‘Sorry,’ I muttered. I looked for Robin, scanning the room for the red glow of her hair. I saw her, back with Andy, who sat on the floor while she straddled his shoulders from the bed above, leaning over him occasionally for a kiss, her hair falling in strings down his chest, his fingers clutching at them, possessively. I felt sick, overwhelmingly sick, and looked down at the space between my knees, where the lines of the carpet curved and swelled like the roll of the sea.
‘Do you want some water or something?’ I’d forgotten I was being watched. I turned to him, slowly, feeling my neck and jaw tense, tongue thick in my throat.
‘Please.’ I felt both brimming with life, and horribly close to death. ‘It’s so hot,’ I said, as he handed me a plastic cup filled with dirty, bruised ice.
‘Sip it,’ he said, not letting go of the cup. ‘Don’t gulp it, or you’ll throw up.’
‘Okay,’ I said. The syllables sounded wrong, almost like a sing-song. ‘Okay, okay, okay,’ I said, impressed by the cadence of the letters. He laughed, took a step back, as though unsure of himself; then paused for a moment, and sat back down, slowly sipping his drink. I felt a swell, another flush of love for the people around me, and, in the moment, this stranger, who had come to me with iced water and kind words. ‘Thank you,’ I said, with what I hoped was a smile.
‘Any time,’ he said. ‘Would some fresh air help?’
‘I’m not … I’m not going anywhere near that window.’ I heard the words slur a little as I spoke, returning with a perfect echo.
‘Oh god, no. You’re absolutely not going near any windows, or sharp edges, or anywhere without childproofing.’
‘I’m not—’
‘I don’t mean that,’ he said, catching my meaning before I could finish my sentence. ‘I just mean you don’t need to worry. You can’t get in much more trouble than you already are.’
He extended a hand, and pulled me up towards him. Grateful to escape, I stumbled with him into the corridor, where the bright lights and lurid posters swam kaleidoscopic above the stained tan carpets and beaten, grey walls. Stumbling down the stairs, I felt the glow of the fluorescent lights, switching on and off rhythmically as though time had slowed to accommodate their usual invisible flicker.
The words on the posters followed me down the stairs – Dance Society Meet next week, Mason Hall, 5pm; Basketball Tryouts Tuesday – shorties need not apply!; Kafka’s Metamorphosis :: Auditions Monday!!! Occasionally I felt a rumble of doubt, the same hot sweat rising from the soles of my feet to my chest, but the feeling disappeared as soon as I had identified it, the memory delirious and fleeting.
As we reached the ground floor, the rhythm of the music echoing from above seemed still as loud as it had been in the dorm room. I put my hands over my ears, my head aching; Tom stopped as we rounded the corner, and put my hands back by my sides. ‘Act normal,’ he whispered, and walked me past the security guard (though the caution was unnecessary, he now absorbed in a tattered paperback with no interest in the activities of the students who occasionally disturbed his reading). I thought of Robin as we left the building. She’ll be fine, I told myself. And then, a little bitterly, she said she’d stay with me, and she didn’t, so it doesn’t matter anyway.
There is something enchanting about fresh air when intoxicated; though remaining steady in it is a skill I have yet to master, even now, when the mood of a long night strikes and I wander these old streets, unseen and unheard, after a night at home sipping a rich wine and, on occasion, taking some strange combination of powders and pills. Nowadays, of course, these are more likely to be opiates or sedatives prescribed by my friendly and dutifully sympathetic family doctor; still, that feeling always reminds me of this night, when the air was hazy and alive with a kind of magic.
Outside, the sky had cleared to black. As I looked up, he steered me around the slick of washing powder and soap thrown from the floor above, and we walked in silence towards the lake, around which student halls were arranged. With hindsight, ‘lake’ is, perhaps, a little too grand: the light of day would reveal it to be little more than a large pond, surrounded by concrete walls on all sides. As we approached, a flock of birds burst into flight, disappearing into the infinite darkness above.
He tucked his hands into his pockets; took them out, as though caught.
‘You don’t say much, do you?’ he said. I felt a sort of pity for him, a painful identification; I didn’t know what to do either.
I shrugged. ‘What do you want to talk about?’
He said nothing; turned and sat on the graffitied park bench behind. I joined him, wondering what I was doing; why I was so eager to follow this stranger into the dark night.
He leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees. ‘How old are you?’
‘Seventeen,’ I lied, feeling ashamed the moment the word left my lips. What was I trying to achieve?
He turned and looked at me, doubtfully. From the tower, a firework sparked and burst, leaving a yellow trail through the sky. I watched as it spiralled, dwindling down, the casing landing with a splash in the dark water. He drew breath beside me, and paused.
‘My girlfriend …’ he began. I felt a pang of loss at expectations I hadn’t realized, or at least admitted, I was harbouring: some midnight kiss, a childish imagining of romance. ‘She’s at Cambridge.’
I looked at him, unsure if I was imagining the note of apology in his voice. ‘How’d you meet?’ I said, the words ringing false, cheerful. We were amateurs reading lines, failing to perform.
‘The usual. Same school, same friends … You know.’ I nodded, solemnly, though I, of course, had no idea. ‘I think she’s probably met someone else, though,’ he sighed.
I gave a non-committal murmur, and he continued, though now – the chill of the night gnawing at my skin, the memory of Robin now an ache – I wanted to go back. I waited as he went on – a lack of letters, calls returned late or not at all – and, finally, gave a dramatic shudder. ‘I’m cold.’
He said nothing for a moment, as though surprised at the interruption; surprised, it seemed, to find me there at all. He blinked, and stood, and I followed. Occasionally he would pause to examine a discarded beer bottle on the ground or one of the dolls I now noticed had been hung from the sparse branches of the trees, which creaked and groaned in the wind. Every time I looked back, he smiled, and I mirrored him, unsure how else to respond. It was as though we were playing a game, the rules of which I – in my intoxicated state, at least – felt myself unable to grasp.
‘Where the fuck have you been?’ Robin hissed as we entered the reception area, where she sat perched on the security guard’s desk, he now a little put out, realizing he was no longer of use.