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Page 44 of The Chemistry Test

Cam

What a week. Well, almost a week. After everything that happened with Penny on Friday, I ended up spending a few days at home.

I knew my dad would be in all weekend anyway.

He wanted to build a new chicken coop, so I figured a second set of hands wouldn’t hurt.

And then, right on cue, Callie’s health took a nosedive when I got back on Tuesday morning, half an hour before my Genetics seminar.

I was obviously gutted for her, but I was also pretty thankful to have a valid excuse not to go.

I’ve been checking my phone since Friday, expecting an apology or at least something from Penny.

But she hasn’t said anything. Not a single word.

Although I did see a new disclaimer added to her CTY poster in the student support building about how she can’t guarantee anonymity, and some advice people can follow to help protect their identity if they so wish.

Which is all well and dandy for them – and for her.

But obviously for me, it feels like rubbing salt in a wound. Too little too late.

It’s Wednesday evening now and I’m still thinking about her as I make my way over to Rover’s. So much so, that for a second, I think the girl ahead of me is her. Except a guy’s giving her a piggyback and there’s no wheelchair in sight.

I keep walking, slowly closing the gap between us.

They’re walking ridiculously slowly, as though the walk itself is their destination.

I know that sounds cliché, but there’s no other way to describe the way they’re strolling along as if we’re on a Hawaiian beach and not in dreary Kent in November.

I take a piece of gum out of my pocket and try not to stare even though I’m headed in the same direction as them.

I’ve been trying to match their pace the whole time, but the gap between us is still getting smaller.

When I’m just a few metres away, the notes of the girl’s voice get clearer, and she drops a hand from the guy’s neck to pull down her dress. That’s when I catch sight of it. The blue string bracelet.

Oh.

I know who it is straight away. The only other person in the world with a ratty, yet somehow endearing, bracelet like that. Delilah. Right here in front of me for the very first time.

I put my hood up, just in case she turns and sees me.

Twins tell each other everything, right?

So she probably knows about me. In her eyes, I’m the guy that didn’t hear her sister out.

Who left her when she looked like she was about to pass out.

Fuck that. I can’t stand to be seen as someone like that, so I make sure I’m not, veering into the darkest part of the path, in the shadows of the old oak trees.

I’m still trying to look away from them so we don’t accidentally make eye contact when the guy says her name.

I stop.

Huh?

‘Penny, you’re strangling me again.’ He laughs, as she loosens her hands around his neck.

‘Sorry!’ she squeals, holding on tighter with her legs instead. My instinct is to tell her to be careful. Her hip or pelvis (or whatever the hell that is) already looks like it’s popping, and – dare I say it – not in a cute way.

But I don’t. It’s not my problem anymore.

Clearly. And now it’s been confirmed, it’s so obvious it’s her.

She’s even wearing the coat with the fluffy hood she took to Wales with us.

The one she wore back to front in the hire car so Tabby could snuggle up in it on her final drive with us.

Fuck . I bat my eyes to clear them. She may have another guy in a literal chokehold, but her figurative ones are ten times worse.

I turn off at the next trail, leading to a random accommodation block. I’d have to cut through a lightly wooded area to get back to an actual footpath, adding another fifteen minutes to the route, just to get back to where I was.

I consider my options. From here, it makes more sense to head somewhere else, so I text Ryan and George to meet me at the small Wetherspoons off campus, both on WhatsApp and iMessage.

They’ll know which one I mean. It’s within walking distance for me and shouldn’t make much of a difference to them since they’re heading down from the house.

I’m fairly early, so they wouldn’t have left yet anyway – plenty of time to see my text. If I wasn’t so pissed off, I’d call them, but it’s not going to happen anytime soon. The reason I came straight from the library in the first place was to grab a drink by myself before they turned up.

Now, we’ll probably all get there at the same time.

I’m not happy about it, but realistically, it doesn’t really matter.

The most important thing was just getting away from Penny.

She might’ve been heading back to her flat, but in the direction we were heading, she also could’ve been en route to Rover’s. And I sure as hell wasn’t up for that.

We get a table at the back, where it’s a bit quieter.

The whole pub is pretty low-key, being on the outskirts of town, but I still can’t risk being seen by any fans tonight.

It’s not exactly a common thing anyway, but it would be just my luck for it to happen this evening.

And I’m obviously not in the mood for it.

The pair of them slide into the booth first so I can sit facing the wall. They know the drill. As long as we get a seat where I can have my back to the room, I don’t tend to get spotted. Plus, it means they usually get the comfier seats.

We order three pitchers of Long Island Iced Tea through the app, and as we wait I think about how much I want to share with them. They know something’s up, but they don’t even know about the original Penny saga yet, let alone whatever the fuck I just saw.

‘My little brother thought this was actual iced tea but with alcohol when I first mentioned it,’ Ryan says, putting in two straws.

George shrugs, doing the same. ‘A good guess.’

Then, they turn to me, expectantly. ‘So, what’s up?’ Ryan prompts.

I want to get them up to speed quickly, but honestly, I don’t know where to start.

It’s not like they need to know everything either, so I fill them in on the main stuff first. Like the pre-printed seminar notes, the wheelchair wheelies and I guess how close we’d got in general. Or how close I thought we’d got.

‘There we were feeling sorry for you these past few months,’ George says, laughing. ‘Meanwhile, you’ve been out on the pull all along!’

Ryan raises his glass to me. ‘Hats off to you, mate. Only you could get a girl by not showing up to class. And then swooping in and saving her – oversized glasses and all – like a real-life Superman.’

George is looking at me, equally impressed. ‘That was a top-tier move – SuperCam to the rescue! Then what happened?’ he asks, as if the story’s only going to get better from there.

Ughhh. I somehow didn’t anticipate this sort of response. Or this conversation. I thought I could just gloss over the early stuff, but now, as they start questioning the minor details and making me backtrack, I realise how little I’ve actually told them about any of this.

And by the time I’ve explained everything about the website and how I found it, we’re already on our second pitchers, so I call it a night on that front. The bit about whatever the fuck I saw before we got here will have to wait.

The waitress brings over three more jugs as we near the bottom of our current ones – The Godfather for me and Blue Lagoons for them.

‘Are you absolutely certain she knew it was you?’ Ryan asks, tipping the glass to get to the bottom.

‘Yeah. I only asked her two questions,’ I say, wiping my glasses with the bottom of my shirt. ‘I asked if it was her website – and it is. And I asked if she knew it was me.’

‘Did she say when she found out, though?’ George presses. ‘Because it’s not as bad if it was more recently.’

‘No, she didn’t say. I assumed she’d just always known.’ Which, knowing her and the way she pieces things together, seemed logical before.

But now, with both of them questioning it, I’m not so sure. And if she didn’t know until more recently, I wonder when she figured it out.

The first thing that comes to mind is when I told her about Gran on the plane, although if that was it, she’s a better actor than me, as I didn’t suspect a damn thing at the time.

Or it could’ve been around the time she got paired up with me for the poster.

There was a definite shift in her there, which could’ve been because she’d just found out and was feeling guilty.

Although I’m not overly convinced about that one, either.

The only thing I can be certain of is that she knew before me. And she let me find out for myself. Which is so wrong.

The ice in the pitcher is making me cough, so I put it down for a minute to think out loud. ‘Although even if she did only just find out, she still should’ve mentioned it sooner. She let me spend the whole night there.’

They both whoop and cheer at that, completely missing the point. For god’s sake. I don’t think I’d have avoided that response even if we hadn’t started drinking yet. A night with a girl, no matter the circumstances, is still a night with a girl to them.

And I can tell it’s not sounding as bad as it felt in the moment, as they’re still looking for every possible excuse that would resolve it all.

But in my circumstances, it is bad. And I need them to agree with me. ‘After what happened with that American girl, I just don’t know who I can trust,’ I say, a surefire way of summing up what’s really at stake here. And why it matters. Maybe not in general so much, but for me.

Being in the public eye, I can’t afford to give people the benefit of the doubt in case I get it wrong.

‘I know, mate,’ George says, his voice slurring around the edges. ‘But Penny’s not that girl. And not all people are bad. Maybe you just need to talk to her?’

‘I wish it were that simple,’ I say. I feel like they’re not getting it, and to be honest, I can’t blame them. It’s not their fault they don’t have all the info. I pretty much have to tell them the rest of it now. They won’t get it otherwise.

I try to set the scene of what I saw earlier. How she was on a guy’s back. Hands wrapped around his neck and everything.

‘Wait, not even in her wheelchair?’ George says, looking perplexed. ‘How does that even happen?’

Ryan shakes his head. ‘I don’t get it either. That’s like choosing to go out without your legs, surely?’

‘Whole new meaning to getting legless on a night out,’ George cackles, before turning to me. ‘It is okay to say that, right?’

I don’t even try to respond. I can tell it’s the drink talking now. There’s no way they’d be more caught up on the wheelchair thing and making stupid jokes about it than the fact she was with another guy if they were sober.

It’s not even the joking around I’m annoyed about, I know they’re just trying to make light of a shitty situation.

But I’m not in the mood for making light of anything right now, let alone explaining that while it’s not explicitly ableist per se, it’s just not that funny.

Tomorrow, when we’re all in a better frame of mind, I might say something about it.

But for now, I head to the bar to get us all some chips.

I need to clear my head, even if just for a minute.

And when I look back over, they’re still talking shit together, happy as Larry.

I wish I’d gotten here earlier like I originally planned to.

I really could’ve done with that extra drink.