Life Read Free Page B

glasses, her mouth curiously wide and thin lipped. It was almost comical, a cartoon sketch of a face; and yet somehow arresting. The question, did I frighten you?, was definitely aggressive. Anna admired this: you had to admire a person caught moaning behind a tree who was instantly ready to snatch the initiative.
    “No.” Anna knew she was now expected to get up and go away, but she sat her ground. The girl sat down too, tenting herself in the shawl like a savage in a blanket or a cloak of animal hide. Her bare feet were dirty. The colors of her shawl and skirt were lost in deep twilight, but the skirt seemed to be covered with unraveling machine embroidery, and the tasseled fringe of the shawl was a mess. Someone who did not iron or mend. A hippie, possibly a tree-hugger.
    “Do you often wander around the campus late at night?”
    “Sometimes,” Anna answered coolly. “Do you?”
    “Aren’t you afraid of rapists?”
    “No. Aren’t you?”
    “I’m all right. I can scare people.” She raised her shawl in dark wings and shook out her unkempt locks. “Oooooh! Oooooooh! I was practicing when you came along.”
    Anna nodded politely.
    The strange girl laughed aloud. “Actually, I was masturbating. You yelled out at just the wrong moment.”
    “Well, don’t let me put you off. Go ahead.”
    Silenced, for a moment, the girl started to pick at the skin around her toenails.
    “Are you a first-year?” asked Anna.
    “Nah. I’m a drug dealer. I hate students. I prey on them. I take all their money and ruin their little lives. Are you? You look clean enough.”
    Anna folded her hands around her ankles beneath the neat hems of her jeans. Her deck shoes, blue and white gingham canvas, were very clean. She had cleaned them herself. She wished she had not. “I think you’re a first-year. I think I’ve seen you around.”
    The girl wrinkled her long lip, looking like a very intelligent chimpanzee. She shrugged. “Okay, you’re right. I’m Ramone Holyrod. I’m doing Modern Cultural History. I bet I’ve seen you around too, it’s a small world. But I don’t remember.”
    One of those do-nothing made-up Arts courses, thought Anna the Unmemorable. Just what I would have guessed. “My name’s Anna Senoz. I’m doing Biology.” She noticed that the other girl had said I’m Ramone, not “my name’s Ramone.” As if being Ramone Holyrod was important.
    “Oh, a scientist! ” Ramone Holyrod had the conventional reaction: Anna was disappointed in her. Suddenly she laughed. “Hey, I do know you. You’re a friend of Daz’s, I’ve seen you with her and her boyfriend, and that rich guy, Tim Oliver, and the American Exchange student, whatsisname. He’s in my tutor group.”
    “It’s Oliver Tim. Everyone makes that mistake. His Dad’s family’s Korean, I mean that’s where they’re from originally. I didn’t know Daz had a boyfriend.”
    Ramone rolled her eyes. “You know what our sexual behavior is like. It’s all so fucking hierarchical, teenage sex: alliances and humiliations conferred by who pokes whom, and here we are with no proper hierarchy set up. Therefore nobody wants to go public on who they fuck in case it turns out to be the wrong move. She’s been doing Rob Fowler for weeks. I reckon they’ve both just about decided they’re the right, nice, middle-class, clever-but-not-too-clever rank, because I saw them holding hands today, coming out of his hall of residence. The sly bastard, I hate him.”
    Anna’s blood started running cold and slow.
    “Girl scientists always go for Biology,” remarked Ramone. “It’s a fucking crime. They get better A level results than the boys for everything, but they ’ant got the bottle to go for Physics or Chemistry. I read about it. You have to go for the big idea if you’re into hard science and girls can’t face that. They don’t like the loneliness. And they don’t want to look unfeminine. You’ll never find a pretty girl taking Physics. They stick