AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I know who she is.” Zahara’s tone is half-exasperated, half-amused. “I don’t care what her favourite book is—what I want to know is when you two are finally going to get it on?”
I grimace. “Get it on? They teach you this sort of stuff at your convent?”
She laughs. “Oh no, not at all. There’s no chance I’m going to learn anything inappropriate from a bunch of severely sexually frustrated teenage girls, right?”
When I asked my parents why they didn’t send Zahara to Spearcrest with me, they told me they have no intention of sending their daughter to a co-ed boarding school where “anything could happen”. Their implications were clear, and at the time I’d thought their fears unfounded.
Now, I know for a fact they’re not. Everyone in Spearcrest is having sex, and anyone who isn’t having sex is doing everything but. I’m the only exception, and I get my share of grief for it.
Grief—and, of course, my unimaginative nickname. Bishop Blackwood.
I sigh. “There is nothing for us to get on, as you put it. Theodora isn’t allowed to date, and she seems to be taking that rule very seriously.”
Zahara covers her mouth with her hands. “Ew, Zach, don’t tell me I’m going to be losing my virginity before you.”
I use my copy ofPeter Panto whack her forehead. “Virginity is a social construct, Zaro.”
She kicks my arm and hops off the desk. “That’s not what I’ve been learning at school.”
“Then you need better teachers.”
“Maybe.” She gives me a sly look. “Is having no girlfriend a social construct, too, then?”
“I don’t need a girlfriend,” I tell her in my most dignified tone. “I have a beautiful rival instead.”
“A beautiful rival—yeah.” Zahara cackles. “And a left hand!”
She runs out of the room before I can reply, her laughter echoing behind her.
I would laugh, too, if she wasn’t so tragically right.
It’snotlikeI’mnot used to this kind of discourse. Sharing my social time with the most popular boys in the year means constantly being surrounded by girls. I used to think Evan—the all-American star athlete—and Séverin—the French aristocrat playboy—would be enough to divert most of those girls’ attention, but I learn that there is no accounting for taste.
Some girls prefer the strong and silent appeal of Iakov’s monosyllabism and bruised knuckles, and some prefer the dark edge of Luca’s borderline-sociopathic tendencies. And so of course, I have my own appeal and my own suitresses.
None of them have any appeal to me, though. At the end of Year 11, in a moment of drunken hubris, Luca and Evan made a bet that we, as a group, were going to sleep with every single girl in the year. It was a stupid idea and probably did more to repel girls than it did to attract them.
Unfortunately, it was also filmed on someone’s phone and subsequently widely distributed.
After the summer, when we return for upper school, I half hope the bet is buried and long-forgotten, but I’m quickly disappointed.
Sev, who unwisely proposed to his girlfriend Kayana at the end of Year 11, is now single and mending a broken heart. Evan, still nursing his inexplicable obsession with wanting and hurting his former friend Sophie Sutton, is keen for a distraction. Iakov doesn’t date much, but he always comes back from his summers home in a depressive mood and is probably just craving some friendly human contact.
And Luca, I’m beginning to suspect, is just a cold-blooded animal looking for a smaller creature to sadistically toy with.
In short, my friends begin Year 12 with their A-levels being last on their list of priorities.
“I’m going to put a dent in our numbers for the bet,” Séverin states on our first day back after we’ve all gathered in the centre of the sixth form common room. “We only have two years left here and almost one-hundred-and-fifty girls to get through still.”
“You’re keeping count, are you?” I ask him, making no attempt to disguise the mockery in my voice.
He nods quite seriously. “I still have the list we made on my phone.” He swipes open his phone and pulls up his note app, brandishing his screen in my direction. “See?”
“Let me have a look,” Evan says, grabbing Sev’s phone and peering at it.
Luca takes Sev’s phone out of Evan’s hand and smirks. “Don’t worry, Ev, our little prefect isn’t on there.”
“What little prefect?” Evan asks, but his jaw is clenched, muscles twitching there.
