‘Oh my God!’ said Rooney, once I’d finished straightening my hair. ‘You look so nice!’

‘Ah, thanks!’ I said awkwardly. I’m terrible at taking compliments.

Mum and I had gone clothes shopping a couple of weeks ago so I would have things to wear for club nights, and I’d picked out a couple of dresses and a pair of chunky shoes. I put one of the dresses on with black tights and honestly didn’t think I looked too bad, but next to Rooney, I just felt like a child. She was wearing a velvet red jumpsuit – a deep V at the front and flared legs – with heeled boots and huge hooped earrings. She’d piled half her hair up in a messy bun on top of her head, the rest flowing down her back. She looked really fucking cool. I … didn’t.

Then I felt bad because Mum and I had chosen this dress together. I felt a million miles away from Mum and our local shopping centre.

‘Did you go out much back in Kent?’ Rooney asked from where she was sitting on her bed, applying some final touches to her make-up in front of her pedestal mirror.

I wanted to lie and say I was super experienced at clubbing, but there was really no use. Rooney was already becoming acutely aware that I was a shy person and much, much worse at socialising than she was.

‘Not really,’ I said. ‘I … I dunno. I didn’t really think it was my sort of thing.’

‘You don’t have to go out if you don’t want to!’ She patted highlighter over her cheekbones before shooting me a smile. ‘It’s not everyone’s scene.’

‘No, no,’ I said. ‘I mean … I want to at least try it.’

She smiled some more. ‘Good! Don’t worry. I’ll look after you.’

‘Have you been out clubbing lots, then?’

‘Oh, God, yeah.’ She laughed, going back to her make-up.

OK. She sounded confident. Was she a party girl, like so many people I knew back at home? Was she the sort of person who would go out to clubs all the time and hook up with random people?

‘Have you got Find My Friends on your phone?’ she asked.

‘Oh, um, I think so.’

I got my phone out and, sure enough, I did have the app downloaded. The only people I had on there were Pip and Jason.

Rooney held out her hand. ‘Let me add myself. Then if we lose each other, you can find me again.’

She did so, and soon there was a little dot with Rooney’s face on the map of Durham.

She suggested we took a selfie together in our bedroom mirror. She knew exactly how to pose, chin hidden behind a raised shoulder, eyes looking up enticingly beneath her lashes. I put one hand on my hip and hoped for the best.

If I was fully honest with myself, I just wanted to be Rooney Bach.

Sunil met us in the reception area, and it looked like most, if not all of the John’s freshers had shown up to get their first taste of university nightlife. Despite the fact that he’d told us we didn’t have to get dressed up, Sunil was wearing a tight-fit shirt in a bright paisley pattern with skinny trousers. I did notice, however, that he was wearing shoes that looked like they’d been trampled on and dragged through a muddy field, which probably should have prepared me for what I was about to face at the club.

We were shepherded to the club through the cold streets of Durham by Sunil and some other third years. Rooney had already attracted a small crowd of ‘friends’, if you could call them that yet, and I hovered towards the back of her group, apprehensive.

Everyone seemed so excited.

Nobody else seemed nervous.

Most people my age had been to clubs by now. Most people I’d known in Year 13 had frequented the club in our nearest town, which from what I’d heard was a sticky, terrifying hellhole of regrets. But I was the one regretting not having gone with them, now. This was just another example of something I had utterly failed to experience during my teenage life.

The entrance was down an alleyway, and it was free to get in before 11 p.m. They didn’t need IDs as we were all wearing freshers’ wristbands. Inside, it was as if someone had designed me my own personal hell – a tight-packed crowd, sticky floors and music so loud it took Rooney repeating herself three times before I realised she was asking me if I wanted to go to the bar.

I listened to what she ordered so I’d know what to ask for – vodka and lemonade. Then there was chatting, and more chatting, and more chatting. Well, shouting, actually. Mostly people wanted to talk about what are you studying, and where are you from, and how are you finding it all. I started repeating sentences word for word to multiple people. Like a robot. God. I just wanted to make a friend.

And then there was dancing. I started to notice just how many of the songs were about romance or sex. How had I never noticed that before? Like, almost all songs ever written are about romance or sex. And it felt like they were taunting me.

Rooney tried to get me to dance with her, just in a casual, fun way, and I tried, I swear I tried, but she gave up quickly and found someone else. I bobbed along the side of various people I’d had conversations with. I was having fun.

I was having fun.

I was not having fun.

It was nearing eleven o’clock when I messaged Pip, mostly because I wanted someone to talk to without having to shout.

Georgia Warr

HEY how are you this evening

Felipa Quintana

Everything is absolutely fine why do you ask

I may have smashed a wine glass

Georgia Warr

pip . . . . . . . . .

Felipa Quintana

Let me live

Georgia Warr

how come you’re drinking

Felipa Quintana

Because I am the master of my own fate and I live for chaos

Jk our corridor is having a pizza and alcohol night

Btw I think I left my jacket in your room last night?

Georgia Warr

oh no!!! i’ll bring it when i visit you, don’t worry

‘Who you texting?’ Rooney shouted in my ear.

‘Pip!’ I shouted back.

‘What’s she saying?’

I showed Rooney the message about Pip’s smashed glass. Rooney grinned at it, and then laughed.

‘I like her!’ she shouted. ‘She’s so funny!’ And then she went back to dancing.

Georgia Warr

anyway guess where I am

Felipa Quintana

Omg where

Georgia Warr

A CLUB

Felipa Quintana

ARE YOU JOKING

I never thought I would see this day

Baby’s first club!!!

Wait was this Rooney’s idea? Is she peer pressuring you???

Georgia Warr

no i wanted to go haha!!

Felipa Quintana

Okay well be safe!!!!! Don’t do drugs!!!!! Watch out for nasty men!!!!!!!

I hung in there, bobbing, until Rooney wanted to get some fresh air. Well, as much fresh air as you could get in the smoking area out the back of the club.

We leant against the brick wall of the building. I shivered, but Rooney seemed fine.

‘So?’ she asked. ‘What’s your official clubbing verdict?’

I made a face. I couldn’t help it.

She threw her head back against the wall and laughed.

‘At least you’re honest about it,’ she said. ‘A lot of people hate it and still go anyway.’

‘I guess.’ I sipped my drink. ‘I just wanted to try it. I wanted to be a part of the uni experience. You know.’

She nodded. ‘Gross clubs are an important staple of university life, yes.’

I couldn’t tell whether she was being sarcastic.

I was a little drunk, to be fair.

‘I just want … I want to meet people, and … do normal things,’ I said, throwing back the last of my drink. I didn’t even like it that much, but everyone was drinking, and I’d look weird if I wasn’t, wouldn’t I? ‘I don’t have a great track record of doing that very well.’

‘Don’t you?’

‘Nope. I have hardly any friends. I’ve always had hardly any friends.’

Rooney’s smile dropped. ‘Oh.’

‘I’ve never even had a boyfriend. Or even kissed anyone.’

The words just came on out before I could stop them.

I immediately cringed at myself. Shit. That was the thing I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone any more. That was the thing people had made fun of me for.

Rooney’s eyebrows raised. ‘Wow, really?’

She wasn’t being sarcastic. That was pure, genuine shock. I don’t know why I was surprised – people’s reactions during truth or dare on prom night must have been how everyone felt. But it really got to me in that moment. The weird looks. The people who’d suddenly see me as a child, as immature. The movies where the main characters freaked out about being virgins at the age of sixteen.

‘Really,’ I said.

‘Do you feel bad about it?’

I shrugged. ‘Yeah.’

‘And you want to change it? Now that you’re at uni?’

‘Ideally, yes.’

‘OK. Good.’ She turned so she was facing me, leaning against the wall with one shoulder. ‘I think I can help.’

‘O … K …’

‘I want you to go in there and find one person you think is hot. Or a few. More chance of this working.’

I already absolutely hated this idea. ‘Oh.’

‘Try and get their name, or at least memorise what they look like. And then I’ll help you get with them.’

I did not like this scheme. I did not like this at all. Survival Mode was kicking in throughout my body. I wanted to run.

‘Oh,’ I repeated.

‘Trust me,’ she grinned. ‘I know a lot about relationships.’

What did that mean?

‘OK,’ I said. ‘So I just pick a person and … you’ll set us up?’

‘Yes. Sound good?’

‘… Yeah.’

If the university experience was all about bad decisions, at least I was doing something right.

I felt a bit like David Attenborough.

I circled the club on my own, leaving Rooney at the bar, focusing on the guys first. There were a lot of hoodies. Sweat-patches on T-shirts. A lot of them had the same hairstyle – short sides, longer on top.

I kept looking. Surely I’d find someone I fancied eventually. The club was packed – there had to be a good couple of hundred people crammed into this room alone.

And yet, I found no one.

There were guys who were objectively ‘attractive’, of course, by modern-day media standards. There were guys who clearly worked out a lot. There were guys who had fun hair or good fashion or a nice smile.

But I wasn’t attracted to any of them.

I didn’t feel any sort of desire.

When I tried to picture standing close to them, kissing them, touching them …

I grimaced. Disgusting, disgusting, disgusting.

I decided to change tactics and look at the girls instead. Girls are all pretty, to be honest. And they have much more variety in appearance.

But on a basic, physical level, did I feel attraction?

No.

Lots of people had started hooking up already – kissing each other underneath the flashing lights and the love songs playing louder than the voices in our heads. It was a little gross, but it had an element of danger that made it beautiful. Kissing a stranger you’d never see again, kissing someone whose name you didn’t even know, just to feel a little high in that moment. Just to feel the warmth of someone’s skin on yours. Just, for a while, to feel purely alive.

God. I wished I could do that.

But the idea of trying to get with any of these people – no matter their gender – was, honestly, unnerving. It made me feel itchy. Shivery, maybe. It filled my stomach with a weird, horrible dread, and a warning siren went off in my brain. It felt like my antibodies were fighting it off.

What was I going to say to Rooney?

Out of hundreds of students, I couldn’t find anybody I thought was hot. Sorry.

Maybe she could just choose someone for me. God, that would be so much easier.

It would be so much easier if I had someone to just tell me what to do and who to be with and how to act and what love actually was.

I abandoned my search. Tonight I would remain kiss-less. Romance-less. And that was fine. Right? That was fine.

I didn’t know whether I’d wanted it or whether I hadn’t. Honestly, it might have been a little bit of both. Just like with Tommy.

Wanting and not wanting at the same time.

It wasn’t until an hour later that I spotted Rooney again through the blurry, flashing mass of bodies. She was in the middle of the dance floor, making out with a tall guy wearing ripped skinny jeans.

His arms were round her waist. One of her hands was on his face.

It was a picture of passion. Movie romance. Desire.

How.

How could a person reach that point in the space of an hour?

How could she do in one single hour what I was unable to force myself to do in my whole teenage life?

I hated her. I wanted to be her. I hated myself.

It all hit me then, suddenly. The music was so loud I felt like my vision was blurring. I shoved through people to get to the edge of the room, only to find myself pressed up against the wall, which was wet with condensation. I looked wildly around for the door, then started barging my way towards it, and out, into the chilly, empty October air.

I breathed.

I wasn’t going to cry.

Three of the John’s third years were having a conversation in the smoking area, leaning against the wall, including, to my surprise, Sunil.

He was my college parent – I knew he’d help me. I could ask him to walk me back. But as I stepped forward, I felt embarrassed. I was an absolute failure. A child. Sunil turned, glanced at me curiously and I willed him to ask me if I wanted to go back to college and whether I wanted him to walk back with me. But he didn’t say anything. So I just left.

After a couple of hours in the noisy club, the high street’s silence felt like it was echoing around me. I could barely remember the way back to college because I’d been so stressed on the way here that I hadn’t been paying attention to where we’d been walking, but thankfully, I found myself on the cobbled path and walking back up the hill, past the castle, then the cathedral, and then I could see the stone steps of St John’s College.

‘There’s something wrong with you,’ I said under my breath. Then I shook my head, trying to get the thought out. That was a bad thought. There was nothing wrong with me. This was just who I was. Stop thinking about it. Stop thinking about any of it.

I could message Pip and – what would I even tell her? That I was terrible at clubbing? That I could have tried to kiss someone but decided not to? That I was utterly failing at my new start? Pathetic. There was nothing to even tell her.

I could talk about it with Jason, but he’d probably just tell me I was being silly. Because I was. I knew this whole thing was ridiculous.

So I just walked. I kept my head down. I didn’t even know what was wrong. Everything. Myself. I didn’t know. How come everyone else could function and I couldn’t? How could everyone live properly yet I had some sort of error in my programming?

I thought about all the people I’d met in the past few days. Hundreds of people my age, all genders, appearances, personalities.

I couldn’t think of a single one I was attracted to.

I opened the door to college so loudly that the man in the little office gave me a stern look. I suppose he thought I was a drunk fresher. God, I wished I was. I looked down at my dress, the one Mum had seen in River Island and said, Oh, isn’t that perfect? And I’d agreed, and she’d bought it for me, so I could look nice and feel nice during Freshers’ Week. I started to well up. God, not yet, please not yet.

My room was empty – of course it was. Rooney was out there living her life and having experiences. I grabbed my washbag and pyjamas, went straight to the bathroom, got in the shower and had a cry.