White Lies. Zoe Markham

the other of us did it for Scarlett almost every afternoon when we got back. She was never around. I didn’t see her eat, sleep, or smile. And I couldn’t understand why no one was worried. “Riley” seemed to be all the explanation they needed.

      **

      “What’s it like?” Lilly asked me, when we were up in the dorm after dinner, almost at the end of my first week. I’d somehow come to feel completely at home as a boarder, but still strangely lost as a pupil. “Having a boyfriend, I mean,” she went on. “Like…really having a boyfriend.”

      Rae looked up from her book. “Totally weird question, Lils.”

      “I wasn’t asking you,” Lilly shot back.

      “Why not? I’ve got a boyfriend!” Rae exclaimed.

      “Yeah, I meant…real boyfriends…”

      “Oh, whatever! I’ve—”

      Lilly shushed her with a wave of her hand, and Rae huffed and went back to her book with a: “Fine then.”

      She looked over at me, expectantly, and I squirmed.

      “I don’t really…I mean, I’ve sort of only been out with Jase…”

      “Can I see the photo again?” she asked.

      I handed it over, reluctantly, as Lilly scrutinised it once more.

      “I just…can’t imagine being that close to a boy,” she said. “Like, that close, with no top on, and…”

      “Bloody hell, Lils!”

      “What?” she barked at Rae. “I’m asking a question. I don’t see why I should be embarrassed that I haven’t ever—”

      “Guys,” I interrupted, “I really don’t think—”

      “I’m not, like, asking you to go all Fifty Shades on me,” Lilly pleaded. “But honestly, what it’s like?”

      I wasn’t even one hundred per cent sure what she was asking me. I thought I’d made it pretty clear that we hadn’t…so I assumed she just meant – I don’t know – being with someone. And I was going to cop out of the question altogether, when I stopped and thought about it instead.