Femi steps sideways to look and walks directly into a metal bin with his hip. The impact vindicates my entire afternoon.
‘Femi.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘You walked into a bin.’
‘I brushed past it.’
‘With yourwhole body.’
He recovers his dignity by examining the tote bag situation with renewed commitment. I let him have the moment. We shuffle forward in the queue. Somewhere to my left, a girl is crying into her phone in what sounds like Mandarin, and a bloke in a high-vis jacket is explaining enrolment to a woman who clearly does not work here.
After a minute, Femi says, low, ‘He saidmight see you at the SU thing tonight.’
‘When.’
‘This morning. When you were in the loo at the café. Half eleven. He was two tables away. I thought he was looking at his laptop.’
‘You’ve had this information for three hours and you’ve been sat on it like a hen.’
‘I was processing.’
He huffs out a laugh despite himself. The brick-wall colour fades to rose, to warmth. For a second, I glimpse what Femi’s going to look like in ten years if things go right: someone at peace.
‘Right,’ I say, because Femi looking like that is more than I can handle while my skin’s still humming from a half-second in a lecture theatre. ‘Let’s get your stupid tote bag and then let’s go to the SU and let that ladhappen to you.’
‘You’ll come with me?’
‘Femi. I’m always coming with you.’
He grins, small, grateful, knowing he’s about to talk about this lad in a green polo for weeks, and we move up one place in the queue.
The mirror in the halls bathroom is cracked across the bottom left corner: face or jeans, never both. Schrödinger’s fit. I might look devastating, or I might look like a Lewisham bin bag with cheekbones.
The jeans are the good ones. Black, tight where it counts, and if I lift my arms, the t-shirt rides up enough to show the strip of stomach above the waistband. The chain sits right. Eyeliner: smudged on with my index finger, not too much, enough to make the eyes do that thing.
I check the bag. Condoms, lube, back pocket, same compartment as always. Hasn’t changed since sixth form and prepared, not optimistic.
A Boy Scout if the Scouts had been honest about what camping is for.
Femi knocks. ‘Ready?’
He’s wearing a shirt—an actual shirt, with buttons, like he’s going for a job interview at a nightclub.
‘You look like a supply teacher,’ I tell him.
‘You look like you’re going to get arrested,’ he says, which is fair. Then, trying not to look like he’s trying: ‘Have I got too many buttons done up?’
‘Femi, you’ve ironed this shirt. That’s two more steps than the situation requires.’
‘I just want to look good.’
‘You look like you want to be liked. It’s actually your best weapon. Leave it.’
He fiddles with the top button anyway. Undoes it, redoes it. Looks at himself in my cracked mirror from the worst possible angle.
‘Ewan.’
