Chapter 23 Karma Chameleon
KARMA CHAMELEON
Jeremy had tried to reach out to me. I left countless calls hanging in the hall, his tinny voice calling my name through the receiver.
I blanked him outside lecture theatres, in the canteen, and in the café.
And I binned all the notes he’d pushed under my door, stating meeting times and places that I ignored.
But I couldn’t avoid him forever, so as per the instructions on his last note, I sat waiting on a bench outside the library.
I tilted my face to the sun as it warmed my skin and thawed the deep chill in my bones.
The first nice day of the year; all buds and birdsong stirring the campus from its bleak sleep.
Six weeks had passed since Francesca’s departure.
In her wake, she’d left an unbearable hollow, a cold side of the bed, and a constant ache in the pit of my stomach.
But the time and distance had helped me realise that the version of her I was grieving wasn’t real.
I’d been in love with a false persona, duped by desire — the real Francesca was despicable, and she could go to hell.
How thin the line was between love and hate.
There’d been no word from her, not that I wasn’t glad.
A few days after she’d gone, a couple of people from Student Services came by to clear out her room.
When I passed, I peered through the propped door and watched Robert Smith being carelessly torn from the wall.
The sleeve of Francesca’s black hoodie hung from a bin bag dumped in the hallway.
I rifled through it, searching for my bunny slippers, but there was no sign of them.
I resisted the urge to squirrel away her hoodie; nothing good could come from pressing it to my face and inhaling her sweet scent. God, I miss her.
“Trusty! You came!”
I shielded my eyes, squinting in the direction of Jeremy’s voice. He stood taller and walked with more confidence. He’d grown a moustache and wore an Oxford shirt rolled to his forearms, unbuttoned at the neck. The audacious bastard looked happy.
“I’m so pleased to see you.” He sat and moved to pull me in for a half-hug, but thought better of it, his hand hovering for a moment before landing awkwardly on my shoulder. “How have you been?”
“How do you think?” I scoffed.
“God, yeah.” He combed a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry about how everything turned out.”
“No, you’re not,” I said, unable to strain the bitterness from my voice.
He hit me with a wounded look, and for a moment I glimpsed the gangly, goofy guy I’d grown up with. This wasn’t his fault. He was as much a victim of Francesca as I was.
Jeremy leaned in and lowered his voice. “I know it must have been hard seeing Francesca with me like that. I wanted to tell you right from the off, but—”
“When did you start sleeping together?”
Red blotches flushed up his neck and into his cheeks. “Trusty, that’s a bit—”
“When?”
“January.”
Fuck. I couldn’t compose my face, so I covered it with my hands.
“Francesca said we needed to tread carefully with you. She told me that, well… she thought you had a bit of a crush on her and she didn’t want to upset you.”
I dropped my hands, my limbs heavy with indignation, which Jeremy immediately misread.
“Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me. Uni is the time to experiment, you know, when we’re all young, dumb and full of…”
My stomach curdled. “Please don’t finish that sentence.”
“All I’m saying is that it’s cool with me. Hell, if it makes you feel any better, I snogged my mate Barnaby Blake when we were in Upper Sixth — tongues and everything!” He grimaced. “It was very bristly. I don’t know how you girls can enjoy it.”
“Jeremy, I’m gay.”
“You’re young; there’s still plenty of time to figure all that out.”
“There’s no figuring out to do. I’m a lesbian. A dyke… whatever.”
Jeremy raised his eyebrows. “Well, good for you, but—”
“Francesca and I started sleeping together last year.”
He looked at me with a blank expression.
“We were having sex, Jeremy.”
He blinked rapidly, as if his eyelids were trying to power up his brain.
“Say something.”
He slowly nodded his head as if rocking his jammed gears back into motion. The next words that came out of his mouth were not the ones I was expecting.
“I’m taking a gap year.” His Adam’s apple bobbed.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“At the end of term. I’m taking some time out. Francesca and I are going interrailing. We’ll start in Europe, but who knows where we’ll end up.” He ducked his head, his strawberry-blonde hair aglow in the sunlight. “I wish you were coming too, Trusty, but I see how that might be awkward now…”
A fresh wave of jealousy threatened to throw me off balance, but I pushed through it. “What about your degree?” Of all the bloody things to ask him. I imagined Francesca rolling her eyes.
“I’m deferring for a year and Francesca has dropped out; she’s… rethinking her options.”
Silence lingered in the wake of our bombshells.
“And you still want to go away with her after what you’ve just found out?”
Jeremy pushed his lips together as he weighed the question. “Did you ever imagine that someone like me would even get close to someone like her?”
I sighed. “I don’t think she’s who you think she is. I’ve learnt that the hard way.”
He puffed out his lips. “Okay, well obviously I still have a lot to learn about her, but I’ll have plenty of time to do that while we’re larking around Europe. She’s different when it’s just the two of us. I don’t know how to explain it.”
“I do…” I said, as it clicked into place. “She’s a chameleon.”
Jeremy frowned. “Come again?”
“Do you remember covering social chameleons in the Abnormal Psych module?”
“What are you getting at?”
“You’ve seen the way she changes, like how she was at Christmas with your parents. We’d never seen that side of her before—”
“I think she was just trying to impress them. And it worked, they love her.” Jeremy chuckled.
“Exactly. She adapted who she was to impress them. But she does it with us too.” I angled around to face him.
“She’s this vampy goth girl around me and a refined version of herself for you.
And there’s the way she manipulates and twists things.
She dials up the charm, but I’ve seen the mask slip too.
Underneath, she can be so callous and cold. ”
The disturbing revelation fell into place. Francesca had the ability to shape-shift, to become whatever she needed to be to get what she wanted. I was certain I was right and hoped I’d put forward the case well enough for Jeremy to see it too.
Jeremy frowned. “So… sorry, what? You think she’s a psychopath?”
“Yeah.” I released a slow breath and nodded. “Yeah… maybe. I don’t know if it’s exactly that, but there are definitely characteristics of the dark triad—”
Jeremy spluttered a laugh. “Seriously, the dark triad? You sit through a couple of lectures on personality disorders and now you’re trying to diagnose the girl who bruised your feelings?”
I narrowed my eyes. “What? Wait… no, that’s—”
“I understand it must be difficult for you that things have swung in my favour, but—”
“She’s messed us both around. She lied to both of us, played us off against each other, and spent weeks jumping between our beds.”
He held up his hands. “Okay, yeah. I admit I’ve been a little taken aback by that revelation, but I’m not about to ruin a good thing with her by taking the moral high ground.”
I puffed out a frustrated breath.
His brow furrowed. “She obviously wanted to blow off a little steam and needed more than one outlet—”
“Wow. I’m not talking about Francesca’s needs; I’m talking about her nature. She has… issues.”
Jeremy laughed. “Don’t we all!”
“Clearly! But I’m worried for you. I’m telling you to be careful.”
“And I’m telling you, this isn’t good form, Trusty.” He patted my knee and jutted out his bottom lip as he stood up. “Try to be happy for us, eh?”