‘Femi. I’m capable of multitasking.’
On the bus to Fallowfield, I press against the glass and watch a city I didn’t ask for slide past in the drizzle: terraced houses, a Greggs, another Greggs. A betting shop sandwiched between the two Greggs was like a cry for help.
Dinner. Unpacking. Whether I’m staying in this city or running home. Sensible thoughts for a sensible first day.
Instead, I close my eyes, and he’s there. Burned in.
Controlled, precise. Completely unaware.
The bus hits a pothole, and my bag slides off the seat. I catch it, zip still done up. Everything is packed, still ready to leave.
The quad at half two on a Tuesday in October has the energy of a train station that doesn’t go anywhere. Freshers drifting between the registration tents and the Students’ Union, holding paper forms, looking for buildings they can’t find, tripping over their own lanyards. Grey light. A wind that exists only between the Arts Building and the library and has, according to Femi, its own name in Mancunian folklore.
We’re in the queue for free tote bags, apparently. I’ve stopped asking what else. Femi heard and locked onto it like treasure. ‘Free is free, Ewan.’ Fine. I’m here for the queue, not the tote. The queue gives me a reason to stand in a public place and not be in my room with the stain overhead.
Four hours since the lecture. Still can’t slow my pulse to a civilian rhythm. Every time I close my eyes, the half-second comes back: that hand on the lectern, how his gaze swept the back row and went straight through me like I was furniture. Two hundred freshers and I wasn’t even a blip.
I keep my hood up and try to look bored.
Femi’s halfway through a story about his mum’s reaction to him moving to Manchester, ‘she cried twice, Ewan, once about the weather and once about the lack of good yam,’ when his voice trails off. Just stops. Mid-yam.
I look at him. He’s gone very still.
‘Femi?’
‘Don’t turn round.’
‘Femi what the fuck.’
‘Don’t turn round, Ewan, I’m serious. Just…’
I turn round.
A lad walking past the queue, unhurried, carrying a green coursebook and a KeepCup and the self-assurance of an older student. Tall, open face, wide smile aimed at the middle distance.
He clocks Femi as he passes. Slows, half a beat, not quite a stop.
‘Alright.’
‘Alright,’ Femi says. Voice a whole octave wrong.
The lad grins like that amused him, tips the coursebook in a half-salute, and carries on towards the library. Gone. The interaction fits one breath.
Femi turns back to the queue and pretends to be interested in the tote bags again. His neck is the colour of a brick wall.
‘Femi.’
‘Don’t.’
‘Femi who was that.’
‘Nobody. A lad, second year. He’s in the economics society thing on the noticeboard, I think I saw him on there.’
‘Youstudied the noticeboard.’
‘I looked at it, Ewan. It’s a noticeboard. People look at them. That’s the whole function of a noticeboard.’
‘You memorised a second year’s face off a noticeboard. Then pretended you’d never seen him before when he saidalrightto you like he knew you from somewhere.’
