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34
That night, a function is held for prospective St. Camford students in the student union. Asbright young things, it is, first and foremost a networking opportunity — which, considering I don’t wish to network with any of the deranged fuckers here, means it is an extraordinary waste of time. We’d been advised of this beforehand by Baxter, with the low-key threat that Lochkelvin students ought to look their best when representing the school on away days. As such, everyone has brought with them clothes that can only be described as smart rather than smart-casual, while I pluck at my black cotton dress and wonder if it’s lavish enough. Screw it. I’d been considering eschewing the rules, anyway, and donning my newThought CriminalT-shirt for the duration. It’s tempting, because I seem to be rewarded with more orgasms that way than wearing a ballgown.
Luke is holed up in his hotel room again, but the other three are rocking black suits — apart from Finlay, of course, who is as usual wearing his purple pleated kilt. Each of them looks dangerously attractive.
Rory casts me a swift, interested glance as he takes in what I’m wearing, from my buckled black flats to the scarlet ribbon I’ve fashioned into a headband. In a low voice, he tells me, “You look like a dancer.”
I frown at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Exactly what I said, and about how I very much miss your dancing.”
It’s true — I haven’t found the inclination to dance this year. Too busy dealing with demons and destinies. If my old dance teacher were to see me now, I believe she’d have a conniption at the decreased flexibility of my movements these days.
At least my lack of dancing has answered something for me: I can live without it, and as such, it’s unlikely I’ll ever pursue it at a higher level. There was a time when that had been a possibility but I don’t have an intense hunger for it anymore, like so many are instructed to have. Out of the hot-house universe of dance, I’m liberated — I’m free to beme, and I’m still finding out who that is. I even wonder if I ever really liked dance in the first place, or if I’d been compelled to do so for my entire life by my mom. But that’s not true, because compelled or not, there have always been instances when dancing was my go-to, the crutch I relied on in the times when I needed tobreathe.
“A little birdy told me these gatherings can get pretty wild. So maybe we’ll see you up and dancing by the end of it.”
“Hah,” I say, utterly po-faced. I have no desire to participate in any more St. Camford nonsense and am only here because it’s more or less obligatory as ambassadors for Lochkelvin. Stay for one drink, maybe two, and then crash at the spare uni accommodation they’ve provided for us.
The student union is lit up in the distance, its large entrance guarded by bored security. As we approach, I’m startled by the existence of a small homeless woman tucked underneath a streetlamp, a handwritten cardboard sign braced by her knees and an old flat cap lying in front of her. A few desolate silver coins are illuminated into whiteness by the shining light overhead.
“That’s weird. I thought they’d somehow managed to eradicate poverty in St. Camford.”
“Eradicate the poor, mair like. I think they just shove them aside when visitors come.” Finlay balls his hands deep in his jacket pockets, as though to suppress his frustration. “Huvtae make the place look good for a’ us rich wankers, after all — because while the rich are free tae exist, the poor surely urnae.”
A line for the student union weaves around the main building and almost reaches the woman. We’re still a small distance away, but in front of us we see a loud group of guys laughing in tuxedos, dunking each other’s heads and generally acting like jerks.
And then their attention is caught by the woman at the base of the streetlamp.
“Look!” one of them brays, pointing at the woman. He has big round cheeks like apples, curly brown hair along a hairline that already seems to be diminishing, and a suit that wears him. “All right, squad, let’s make her day, yah?” And from his jacket pocket, he brings out his wallet, yanking out enough banknotes to make my eyebrows fly up to my hair.
For one shining moment, I’m almost impressed. But the woman’s face doesn’t change. From beneath her lank locks, she regards him as dully as ever.
And I should have known better. Because as the guy waves the notes inches in front of the unresponsive woman — his laughing face less apple-red and now more sweating tomato — in his other hand he carries a lighter. And within seconds, the notes whoosh into flames before vanishing altogether.
My jaw swings open. “What the fuck?”
It’s nothing more than a trick — a mean, nasty trick.
“That’s what you deserve, dirty bitch,” he snarls before giving a mocking laugh, dusting his hands of burned banknotes and ash. “Get a fucking job, you pathetic pleb.” And he spits on her lap, loud and victorious, to the plummy cheers of his fellow tuxedo-wearing wealth-havers.
I’m stunned. Part of me wants to turn and run in the opposite direction. Rory stops me, grabbing my wrist tight.
“I…”
“This is what people are like. If you want the truth of the world, then you have to see people in all their guises, even the parts you don’t want to.”
I’m shaking my head. I don’t want to see. I don’t want to seethis. As we join the back of the line, I stare at the woman beside us, angry tears forming. She doesn’t appear to notice the saliva running down her front — and buried in the line in front of us, the cunts appear to have forgotten the woman already.
“Are you okay?” I ask her, feeling helpless. She doesn’t respond, and for a while I don’t think she hears me.
“It happens,” the woman eventually says in a slurred, slow voice, slow enough to indicate some kind of impediment, as she turns her large owlish eyes over to me. At that moment, pinned by her pinprick pupils, she reminds me so much of my mom that my heart breaks all over again.
Beside me, Finlay nudges me with his elbow. He’s unclasping his sporran and fishing around for something. Finally, he draws out three twenty-pound notes and hands them to me. “Here. Gie it tae her.”
“What?”
“Just gie her it,” he says gravely. “I dinnae need it.”
