Page 46 of Tricky Girls

Elly must see me looking around. After she hands me my drink, she says, ‘Don’t feel bad if you want to ditch us.’ She sends me a wink. ‘We’re not your keepers.’

‘Not at that point in our relationship?’ I joke, remembering our phone call from the weekend.

‘Taking it slow for your sake. Don’t want to scare you off.’ Taking my hand, she places it over her heart. ‘You’re already my keeper, babe.’

In the end, I don’t need to leave Elly and Haz. We join the hockey horde on the dance floor, as well as some other students I remember from last year’s Varsity teams.

Nic’s there, dancing with some girls from first team. She sees us but doesn’t come over. It makes me feel a bit bad for the other two. I don’t want my presence to drive a wedge between them. I don’t know what her problem is, but Nic clearly feels vindicated in some way.

Later on, I get talking to some of the girls who were at try-outs. In turn, they introduce me to some boys on the guy’s team. They all seem nice, happy to have me in the fold. This should have been me last year but better late than never. I still can’t get off that boat without feeling a pang of anxiety.

One of the boys smiles at me with familiarity. Tommy’s a fresher but some of our modules overlap. I’ve never spoken to him until tonight, but I know he’s creating a super cool app for moth identification for one of his projects, so despite not knowing him he’s always been in my good graces.

‘Congrats on making the team,’ he says to me over the music.

I think he made first team too, the team that whooped the asses of the mainland university last Varsity. They’d beensuch hoolies afterwards that Varsity had almost been banned for good. Despite being the most prestigious university in the country, it’s rare we win the competition. But what we lack in talent, we more than make up for in rowdiness.

Not this year though. This year I’ll make sure we winandset the streets on fire.

Tommy turns out to be a fun time on the dance floor. He requests the dumbest songs, creating for them the dumbest dance moves, Elly matching him move to move. I can’t ever remember having such a fun night out.

If only Nic wasn’t hovering around like a damn Dementor.

She’s there every time I look up, watching from the edges of the dance floor, a beer in one hand and the other in the pocket of her low-slung trousers.

She has that look in her eyes, the one from Halloween. A mix of hatred and fury and a little something else beneath it. Torment, maybe. Despair.

When Tommy leaves for the loos, she follows him with that same look before tracking her eyes back to me. Seeing me watching, she holds my gaze, raising her beer to her lips. I don’t miss the way her hand tremors.

I don’t know how many drinks I’ve had at this point but I’m soundly drunk, my inhibitions a thing of the past. Haz and Elly are for once paying me no mind. I think it’s about time I get to the bottom of this thing with Nic.

But when I turn to find her, she’s no longer there.

Nic

Can’t say I didn’t try.

Getting to Vipers an hour earlier than them, I made it my mission to get as fucked up as I could before they got there.

It dulled the throb a bit, especially with the arrival of the hockey girls who seemed stoked to have me back on the team.

I barely felt a thing when they arrived, watching her flanked by Elly and Haz as they made their way to the bar.

Never seen them so under somebody’s spell. Maybe she really is a witch, not just the play-pretend one from our childhood.

A childhood only I seem to remember.

It was fine. I kept my distance, lost myself in the bottle.

Then Tommy turned up, my mind pulling away from itself as I watched them talk and dance and laugh.

My two demons, bedevilling together.

That roar, the one in my head, it’s screaming now.

And there’s only one place I know that can soothe it.

I don’t think of them, Elly and Haz, as I leave Vipers and cross the island to the shore.

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