UNRANKED BEFORE THE END: Everyone had a rank except me

The boy

AMELIA — DAY TWO

---

I wake up late, and it's my own fault, and it's also everybody else's fault.

My phone has eleven messages on it before seven a.m. A girl from my seminar needs the reading list because she lost hers. A boy I've met twice wants to know if the tutorial moved rooms. Someone from the housing office wants to know if I can cover a shift at the front desk, and someone else a number I don't recognize has sent me a photo of a bus timetable and the words is this the one that goes to the north gate?

I answer them all. I'm already pulling a sweater on over my head while I type with one thumb.

Vanessa is asleep in the other bed, one arm hanging off the side, curls spread across the pillow like something spilled.

I'm careful not to wake her.

---

By nine the campus is doing what it always does. A boy on a bench is reading out loud to a girl who's pretending not to laugh. Someone's bike is chained to the same railing it's been chained to since September. In the quad, a group of first-years are passing a phone around and groaning.

"Read it properly," one of them says.

"Minor atmospheric anomalies," somebody reads, in a deep news-anchor voice, "are expected to cause unusual light conditions across the region this weekend. Scientists say there is no cause for concern."

They laugh. One of them says something about chemtrails. Another says the sky's been looking weird, actually, and someone hits him on the arm and tells him to stop being dramatic.

I smile at them as I pass, because they're being silly, and because it's Wednesday, and because Wednesday is a good day.

I'm running late. I'm always running late now.

---

In the lecture hall corridor, a girl I don't know holds out a pen and says, "Amelia, right? Can I keep this till after?"

"Keep it," I say. "I have about forty."

She beams at me like I've given her something bigger.

A boy in a hoodie stops me at the noticeboard, phone out, schedule open. "They moved this from Tuesday, didn't they? Or am I losing my mind?"

"You're not losing your mind. It's in the west wing now. Second floor."

"You're a lifesaver."

I move on. Outside the seminar room, a first-year in a coat two sizes too big is crying quietly against the wall, and I don't even think about it I stop, and I ask her what's wrong, and she tells me it's her mum, and her scholarship, and a deadline she can't meet, and I listen to all of it.

I take her name. I tell her I'll help her email the office. I tell her it's going to be all right, and I mean it, because I always mean it.

She hugs me. She's crying into my shoulder and I'm holding her up, and somewhere inside me there's a small, tired voice that says: you haven't eaten anything today.

I love being needed. I do. There's a version of me that only exists when someone needs something, and she's the best version, and I don't know who I'd be without her.

I'm just tired.

---

Vanessa is waiting outside my lecture hall with two coffees.

She's got them held up like a trophy, both hands, and when she sees me her whole face , opens, warms and she pushes through the crowd to get to me.

"There you are. I knew you'd be late, so I got you the one you like, and I got you a second one for after, because you're going to be dead by lunch."

"You're a saint," I say.

"I know." She hands me the cup and hugs me, tight, one arm around my neck. She smells like her shampoo and warm sugar. "You look exhausted."

"I am exhausted."

"I know. I can tell." She pulls back and brushes something off my shoulder. "Eat something, okay? Actually eat. Not a coffee. Not a biscuit. Something with a plate involved."

"Okay, Mum."

"Don't call me Mum, it makes me feel old." She tucks her arm through mine. "Come on. I'll walk you."

This is the thing about Vanessa. People think she's just the loud one, the pretty one, the one who talks. She's not. She's the one who notices. Twelve years of friendship and she still knows before I do that I haven't eaten, that my feet hurt, that I'm three seconds from crying in a corridor for no reason.

Every time I decide I'm too tired to answer one more message, she's already answering it for me.

I don't know what I'd do without her.

---

After the seminar I take the long way to the library, down the back corridor by the old labs, where it's quieter and the radiators work.

There's a boy there.

He's coming the other way with a toolbox in one hand and a lanyard round his neck, and he steps to the side to hold the door open for me just like that, without a word, one arm out, the way people hold doors for each other a hundred times a day without thinking about it.

"Thank you," I say, and I don't look up, because I'm rereading a message on my phone.

I get three steps past him.

Then I stop.

Not because of a feeling. Because of a fact.

I've thanked that boy at a door before. I know I have. Somewhere on this campus, in some corridor, he held a door open for me and I said thank you and kept walking, and I never looked up. Not once. And now I'm standing here and I realize I don't know his face. I've been saying thank you to a stranger for months and I've never actually seen him.

I turn around.

The corridor's empty. The door is swinging shut, and beyond it there's nothing but a long gray hallway and the sound of a toolbox clinking somewhere far off.

I stand there for a second, stupid, with my phone in my hand.

Then I tell myself I'm tired.

---

Ashley catches me in the quad.

He comes up behind me at a jog, out of breath, hair falling across his forehead, and he takes my shoulders and kisses my forehead and laughs like he's been looking for me all day.

"Where've you been? I went to the wrong building twice."

"I've been here. Where've you been?"

"Being an idiot," he says. His hand is still on my shoulder. His eyes are very blue in this light, and he's looking at me like I'm the best thing that's happened to him all week.

Then he says, "I'm sorry."

I blink. "For what?"

He doesn't answer. He just holds there. Something in his face goes far away for a second, and his mouth opens and closes, and then he shakes his head and smiles and says, "Nothing. Forget it. I'm just sorry."

"Ashley. Sorry for what?"

"Nothing." He drops his hand. "Come on, I'll buy you lunch."

But I don't move.

Because he said it wrong. There was no joke in his voice. No smallness. That wasn't the apology a person makes for being an idiot or being late or going to the wrong building twice. That was the other kind. The kind people say when they've done something that hasn't happened yet.

He's already walking, and his hands are in his pockets, and he's whistling, and he doesn't look back.

I stand in the middle of the quad with my coffee going cold in my hand.

Why would someone apologize for something they haven't done yet?