In Halls

Dressing Up

"Sophie, I'm serious!"

Sophie's head, framed in my laptop screen, rocked back and forwards as she laughed. She hadn't stopped laughing since I'd started telling her the highlights (and the lowlights) of my uni life journey so far. We were getting ready to go out together, like we always did, except this time we were resorting to virtual methods.

"Scratch marks, Ellen, the scratch marks are still getting me, I can't concentrate!"

"I wish I had your flatmates. They sound awesome. Why didn't I go to an art college?" I grumbled.

"Because you're an idiot. Mate, I am glad you went to your uni otherwise I never would have heard that story," she said. We'd lived in the same town for years now, but she still sounded like a born and bred Londoner. Not a well-heeled commuting financier Londoner, or the kind of posh Londoner that you get in American movies. An average Londoner who grew up in a shitty yet somehow overpriced neighbourhood a few minutes' walk from a dingy tube station.

I ignored her continued laughter, frowning as I held different earrings against my cheek, examining them in the grainy webcam image. It was nearly time for Round Two of Teenaged Strangers Get Drunk Together And Behave Like Idiots.

"I swear, this place is going to so awkward in a couple of weeks, we won't even be able to move. And you'll be there, chilling with a shared takeaway discussing the raw, emotional power of art."

"Chill out, girl, once your course starts you'll meet loads of cool nerdy Biochem students who are just as allergic to fun as you are. You won't have to hang out with your flatmates if you don't want to," she said.

Great. More strangers.

"Yeah, except I already told you one of my flatmates is on the same course as me. And he does swimming. It's like I can't escape."

"You know, if this was a romance..."

Sophie raised her eyebrows suggestively. She was painting her nails, or else there might have been hand gestures.

"Don't even fucking go there," I said, pointing a warning finger at the webcam.

"I didn't even say anything! Come on, Ellen, it's Freshers Week! Why don't you just let your hair down for once and get drunk?"

My hair was down. In fact, in an effort to live up to Tara and Elizabeth, I'd washed it and styled it in large, smooth curves. But somehow I didn't think that was what she meant.

"Sophie, you know this isn't the kind of thing I go in for. Why can't we just go back to school and hang around in the art department bitching about the popular girls like the innocent kids we once were?"

The art department was where we always used to hang out. Over the years, we'd graduated from participating in the lunch time art clubs, to voluntarily running them, to establishing new ones at our sixth form college. The art department was where Sophie had discovered her true creative flair, and I'd discovered that I didn't have any true creative anything. Still, years of drawing practice had made me a dab hand at biological diagrams and pretty revision posters.

"You hated school," Sophie laughed, "Uni is going to be ten thousand times better! We just need to get settled in. With the help of our dear friend Ethan Ol."

"That's exactly what Jason said. Ugh, you guys know how I feel about this stuff."

"Of course Jason said that. My brother is always right and you know it."

Sophie always called Jason her brother. It was kind of a very old in-joke between us. She moved to my town right before the two of us started at the same secondary school, a few years behind Jason. And when she got to school, the only thing anyone ever said to her was "Oh, you must be Jason's younger sister."

By the time she'd had a few weeks of this, eleven year old Sophie was so pissed that she combed the school looking for Jason's actual younger sister. It didn't take her long to track me down. All she had to do was identify Jason, and ask him. She was the first person in school that I told about the whole adoption thing, and about the only one who reacted to it like a normal person. Which I guess made her abnormal. Her abnormality made her my perfect friend, and the fact that she got along with Jason was an added bonus. For years I hoped they would grow up and get married so that she would be my sister in real life. Of course, when we were 15 she broke it to me that he just really, really wasn't her type.

We talked about Jason for a while, and the scary fact that he was going to graduate this year and be released into the world as a Proper Adult, as I pulled my small selection of dresses out of the wardrobe and Sophie blew on her fingernails. I didn't even have enough to see me through to the end of Freshers Week in different outfits. I just wasn't a big party girl.

"Ooh, that's it, that's the one!"

"This black one?" I said. It had an inner opaque bandeau layer, and a black lace layer over the top.

"Sophisticated, stylish and most of all sexy," said Sophie.

I screwed up my nose. I'd bought it for a date with a guy named Derek, who'd turned out to be a bit of a prick. A bit? A fucking massive bell end. The dress didn't have the best memories for me.

"Fuck Derek!" said Sophie. She'd helped me get ready for that date. She knew exactly what I was thinking of.

"I don't know, it looks a bit like Tara's from last night, but less... tassel-y."

"That's why you know it's perfect. Fits in, but distinctive to you. I've seen the pictures, you're hotter than Tara. With that dress on, gorgeous swimmer boy won't be able to resist."

She winked at me.

"Sophie! Get your dirty mind away from me and my flatmates."

She raised her arms theatrically, filling the video chat box.

"I'm just saying I ship you with the hot Latino scientist swimmer like any good friend would, and I think that dress will impress him."

"Sophie! It's not the swimmer boy I'm trying to impress!"

Sophie's mouth formed a shocked O.

"It's not the blondie?" she asked, thinking of the options.

"It's not the blondie," I said, before realising what I was implying. "Stop that, Sophie, that face! I'm not trying to impress any of them, I'm just trying to hang out with them. If you can't be serious, I'm going to hang up on you, we're meeting in the kitchen in like five minutes anyway."