Summary: I was fifteen, a freshman at Spenser. Tyler and I shared our first dorm room. We also shared our first girl. - song-fic, one-shot, Reid POV
This idea has been in my head for a long, long time. Now, eight years after seeing this movie, I'm still writing about it.
The song is "The Freshmen" by Verve Pipe. It would be best if you read the lyrics.
Disclaimer: I do not own the Covenant or it's characters.
The Freshmen
It was two years ago today, when she died. I don't remember birthdays, anniversaries, or assignment deadlines but I will remember that day for the rest of my life. I was fifteen, a freshman at Spenser. Tyler and I shared our first dorm room.
We also shared our first girl.
I met her at Nicky's one night when Tyler had stayed in to study. She told me her name was Anna and I just knew from the dip in her shirt and the height of her hem line that she was my kind of girl. She had long, dark hair with thick curls that she wore loose down her back. Her skin was a golden, light brown, a shade most girls could only achieve through fake tanning. We spent a serious amount of time on the dance floor, grinding to the newest rap song. We exchanged names, but I ended up making out with a different girl in the parking lot. High school was still new then and I enjoyed getting to know everyone.
By the time I got back to the dorm Tyler was already asleep. I crawled into bed and woke up around noon the next day. It was just another weekend to me. I didn't know at the time that Tyler had gone out to the local coffee shop with some other friends. A lot of the upperclassmen went there on weekends to ride out their hangovers and gossip about the night before.
It turns out Tyler met Anna for the first time that morning. She was at the coffee shop and they were introduced by a mutual friend. The story, which she told me months later, was that Tyler had barely spoken to her. They sat at the same table and talked about classes for a few minutes before he moved to sit at a booth with friends from the swim team. She told me that she originally perceived him as too polite, too conservative.
Tyler said he didn't pay her much attention at first. Since it was only the second week of school, people were still getting acquainted. Cliques hadn't formed yet and everyone was in the super friendly stages of socializing. People were still hiding their vices and their quirks. It also meant everyone was still trying to show off. Tyler was good at that, but he liked to take a subtle, too-cool-for-this-shit approach.
I preferred to be loud and bold. It was the first time I'd lived away from my family's supervision. People knew me and I liked it that way. The four of us made the varsity swim team, easily surpassing the upperclassmen's records. We were changing, swiftly developing into the types of men that girls and women of all ages stumble after. People started calling us "The Sons of Ipswich". We were powerful, we were special, and I felt like I could do anything.
Lyrics
The second time I met Anna, we were both sitting in the provost's office, waiting for our individual reprimands. I had come to school wearing a Bud-Lite shirt, breaking dress code with alcohol paraphernalia. She had shown up for class hung-over or drunk, depending on which rumor you believed. We joked and flirted in the waiting area until she was called first. As she leaned over to grab her bag, I got a clear view right down her shirt to her lacy red bra. She looked up at me through her eye lashes, a wicked grin on her lips, and winked.
Now, as I lay in bed this morning, thinking of her, I wonder why I remember our first meetings with complete clarity, yet other significant encounters are blurred and hazy. I learned in psych class, sometime last year, that our minds choose to remember significant events, although they don't seem important at the time. But retrospection is too difficult, even now.
Lyrics
I try to think of the day we spent on the Cape, when the freshman class took a trip to Wellfleet. Tyler, Anna, and I were in the same group, forced to follow some random adult chaperone as we toured the ecological sites along the beach. Despite being supervised I loved having a day off from classes and enjoyed running around in the sand, chasing girls with clumps of seaweed.
Anna was walking along the shoreline alone when I approached her from behind and tossed a strand of kelp over her shoulder. She screeched and turned, chasing after me – the opposite of most girls who ran away from me. I ran back, passed Tyler, and Anna chased us both to the other side of a jetty behind a wall of rocks. We shared a bottle between the three of us. I laughed when Tyler coughed after the first sip, even though he shot me an angry look.
Forty-five minutes later we were all laughing and making jokes, Tyler and I wrestling in the sand. By the time the chaperone found us we were a muddy mess. But Anna was perfectly put together, having remained high above us, perched on a rock. She calmly told the teacher we had been searching in the tidepools and explained that we lost track of time. Back at the bus, I saw Caleb send me a reprimanding look and I happily ignored him, feeling superior in my concealed intoxication and thinking that he would geek out if he ever tried to break the rules as much as we had.
Lyrics
Anna and I had sex for the first time after the Freshmen Formal. We didn't even go together; I went with a cheerleader and she went with someone from the public high school. We got drunk on the spiked punch and made out under the bleachers. She initiated it, giving me a hand job that I barely managed to keep in check before we went back to her dorm room and finished. It wasn't romantic and it wasn't sweet. But it was long and it was good. I remember thinking that this was what sex was supposed to feel like. By that time I had been with a couple of girls and it had all been sloppy, quick, and awkward.
I made sure to have sex with someone else soon after that. I had already watched other friends get hooked on girls, ones they said were "different". Anna was different, but I was determined not to get attached. Other people wanted relationships. They wanted something special. I wanted to have fun. So I went out to Nicky's the following night and coaxed a random girl into the backseat of her car. It was so easy.
Sometimes, Anna would sit near me in class and I was hesitant, wary of her presence. I often brushed off her comments, did little to acknowledge her. But she was always happy to chat with Tyler. They were in the same art class or something. By the end of the fall semester I was slowly working my way through the field hockey team, so I had plenty to keep me occupied. But at least once or twice a week I'd flirt with Anna at Nicky's or study hall, and several times we finished in the bathroom or an empty classroom.
In a rare moment of intuition, it was Pogue who first realized that Tyler and I were sleeping with the same girl. We were at a house party after finals. The three of us were refilling our cups in the kitchen. Caleb was attentive to his date, Tyler was off somewhere and Pogue was shitfaced, having drunk away the bitterness of one of his (many) breakups with Kate. He had walked in on me and Anna in the bathroom of Nicky's the previous evening. She barely batted an eye, cackling at my startled expression and coolly putting her top back on.
Pogue was chugging a beer as Tyler approached us, his clothes disheveled and his hair rumpled. Pogue patted him heavily on the back, raising his glass in mock salute, "Tall, blond and stacked?" he joked.
And Tyler responded, sipping a beer, "Short, brunette and yea, stacked" he grinned, "Round two, same girl from last week."
I was about to comment, to hassle him for doing a repeat when Pogue asked, "Oh that one? What's her name? Hana?"
"Anna," Tyler corrected. I glanced at Tyler strangely after that, just as I saw Anna descend the staircase in the background through the kitchen door. Pogue caught my odd look and stared between Tyler and me for a moment, his eyes focusing.
Then he burst out, "You two are fucking the same girl!". Beer came out of Tyler's nose and Pogue doubled over, uncharacteristically laughing out loud. Even Caleb chuckled a little at the realization. I stared at Tyler as the pieces shifted into place. I vaguely remember her mentioning him a few times over the past several weeks. And Tyler had been talking about a girl he enjoyed seeing in some of his classes. I never paid close enough attention to any names.
My expression passed from shock to anger. Tyler saw the change and responded in a way that infuriated me, if only because it was the most aggressive action I'd ever seen him take. He took another sip of beer, looking at me over the rim of the cup and then said, "Well, it looks like it was all me tonight, have fun with the field hockey team". And he walked back into the center of the party.
I shut my eyes against the memory. It's passed noon now and I can't stay in bed any longer. I roll over, my feet on the floor and grab a pair of sweats and a clean shirt. I look across the room at Tyler's empty bed. Sighing, I leave the room and walk down the hallway, down two flights of stairs to the girls' floors. I pause at the door but with a slight push it opens easily, unlocked.
Two girls live here now, their clothes and books spread across the surfaces. Thankfully, they aren't in the room, but I know I'm not alone. I walk quietly over to the bathroom, seeing that the door is closed. I open it slowly, not surprised to find Tyler on the other side, lying on the floor and holding a half-empty bottle of Captain Morgan's.
His eyes are open, glazed and wet, but he doesn't look at me or move to acknowledge my presence. I look away, feeling like I'm intruding but at the same time I step forward and sit down with my back against the cold bathtub. I close my eyes and hold my head in my hands. After a moment I reach for the bottle, but Tyler moves it to his other side. Today we aren't friends. And we aren't sharing.
Lyrics
After the party that December, Tyler and I had kept our distant. We only hung out together in groups and we didn't talk about girls anymore. We both knew, even though we never asked, that each of us was still seeing Anna occasionally. Without permission, without even making her presence known, she had come between us.
It didn't bother me too much; I refused to allow it. I was coasting through the school year, making a place for myself. Everyone – students, teachers, administrators – knew my name and I settled easily into the top ranks of the social pecking order. Of course, so did Caleb, Pogue, and Tyler. In the back of my mind, I knew we'd always be standing next to each other. The Covenant would keep us together. I would never have to choose, not really.
But then she chose for me.
It was April vacation when she told me she wanted to be with Tyler. She listed all the reasons I already knew – he was more responsible, less likely to cheat on her, more likely to call when he said he would. What angered me was that she had so quickly morphed into one of the many robotic girls at school who all wanted the same thing. I had liked Anna because she was different – she didn't want a boring, monogamous relationship with half a dozen rules and list of sanctions.
I was angry, yelling at her. Telling her she had changed. That I didn't care who she dated because I didn't want to be with her anymore. I blamed her for the rift in my friendship with Tyler. I didn't understand why she was suddenly choosing now to pick sides. And I didn't know what that would mean for me and Tyler. I didn't know if we could ever be friends again. I called her a slut, even though I knew she wasn't. I told her I didn't care what happened to her, even though I did.
That was the last thing I ever said to her.
Lyrics
I look over at Tyler again, watching him stare at the opposite wall, and I see her, lying on the bathroom floor. It's a false image, since I'm not the one who found her. It was her roommate, Stephanie, who finally opened the bathroom door that morning to find Anna unresponsive, having swallowed a dozen pills. Tyler and I were walking up the staircase, heading back to our room after a swim meet and sharing a few jokes during an uncommon moment of amicability.
We stopped short when we saw the EMTs outside Anna's room. We both saw Stephanie crying, being comforted by the Headmistress. We saw the gurney as it was carried from the room, a black body bag on top. There was a small crowd at the opposite end of the hall, where some of the teachers were trying to hold back the curious students.
Tyler wouldn't move. I had to pull him out of the way when the EMTs approached the stairwell. People were staring at us and I could see Stephanie glancing at us while she spoke to the Dean. I had to drag Tyler from the hallway, past the eyes of classmates and up two more flights of stairs to our room. Once inside he lost it in a way I had never seen before. He started swearing and breaking things and yelling.
Lyrics
"Shit Reid!" he yelled, his hands pressing against his temples and his face blanched with fear. "Shit, shit shit". I remember thinking the roles were reversed. I was the one who made expletive outbursts. I was the one who threw books across the room. But I was standing stock still. I could barely breathe.
Lyrics
Tyler continued ranting. At some point Pogue and Caleb came inside the room. I vaguely remember Caleb locking the door, his eyes going black to cast a silencing spell. I was aware of Tyler turning his anger on me, throwing random items towards my corner of the room. "You have no idea how bad this!" He yelled. "She was a person! She was a person and now she's fucking dead!"
Lyrics
Less than two hours passed before our parents came and accompanied us to the police station. They wanted to ask us about our relationships with Anna. We learned quickly that she had overdosed on pain killers. The police didn't talk to us for long and let us leave. The case was simple and an official statement by the town and school board quickly followed.
Tyler didn't speak to me after we got back from the police station. He was quiet and distant. Pogue and Caleb seemed to be around more often, despite the stares and gossip that started in school. I remember being secretly grateful that Caleb didn't dish out one of his unnecessary lectures. Although I never thanked him or Pogue for their support, I needed it then.
Her funeral was held several days later. There was a memorial service at school. That day I learned that she had an older sister and two younger brothers. She used to go home once a month to visit them. She had wanted to study photography in college. I had never asked. Her favorite color was red and she loved dancing.
The photography class printed some of her photos and displayed them. It was the first time I had ever seen her artwork. I was in two of the photos, one of the entire swim team and one of me and Tyler, sitting on the beach during the Cape Cod trip. The picture was taken from above, angled down at us as we both faced the ocean. That evening Tyler got on a plane and didn't come back for a week.
Lyrics
For a short period of time, while the rumors were still fresh and her dorm room door was still covered in hearts and flowers, I tried to keep my head down. There was an expectation that the students would mourn her. I had never known someone who died before. Death was new to me. I didn't know how I was supposed to respond. So I kept quiet.
But that didn't last long. I returned to my rowdy, outspoken self, but louder and more reckless. I started using more than I should and I challenged the tolerance of more teachers with bad behavior. In contrast, Tyler spent the rest of the year on autopilot. He did everything that was expected of him, nothing more.
I slide down, my head resting on the tile floor, legs sprawled. Looking back now, I see how we each feared for different things. I was afraid of the fall – losing my status in the school and being ostracized for my relationship with her. Tyler was afraid of something else, a darkness that he wallowed in for a while. I was angry at him for making me feel responsible, for punishing me with his silence.
Lyrics
But somehow, over the summer months that followed and the past two years at school, we got through it. Slowly we began talking again. It started with a few manipulative social engagements from Caleb and Pogue. Then it was family functions and our parents' harsh reminders that the Covenant bound us together whether we liked it or not. At first it was more for appearances, and then it was easier than being angry. Now, it's helpful because we can both pretend.
It's almost funny, when I think of the long-term affects her death has on us. It's not the friendship between us that suffers now, but our relationships with other people, specifically romantic relationships. Tyler barely touches girls now while I surround myself with shallow exploits. His guilt became fear, mine became apathy.
I know he still blames me. I know he thinks that he could have saved her, if he'd been the only one. And when he clears his throat and speaks, without turning his head, I know he's been waiting two years to say:
"She was pregnant," his voice is hollow. "She told me I was the father."
I know that, too. As I lay there watching my best friend break down from the memory, I wonder how he reacted to that news. Was he silent, the way I was? Did he yell or scream? Did he cry, like I never did? Was he paralyzed with disbelief or fear? In that moment did his mind display images of all the things he had to lose? Did it matter? It was Anna who lost the most in the end.
"I know," I look at Tyler, forcing myself to be as strong as him, "She told me that, too."
This time Tyler's gaze turns sharply to mine, assessing me, wondering what my words mean. I stare back; I have no answers. We had both played Anna, treating her like a shiny toy and easily disregarding her feelings for our own enjoyment, our petty adolescent competition. But she played us too, in a way.
Our first year of high school was supposed to be fun and easy, low stress, low accountability, low impact. For a time it was. I remember feeling like royalty freshmen year; I was standing at the center of my own tiny and self-obsessed world. We both were. Until Anna swallowed those pills and we were each force-fed a cold taste of reality that poisoned our bliss. We weren't kings living a glorious lifestyle. We weren't ruling the school with our good looks and last names. We weren't in control of anything. We were merely freshmen.
Lyrics
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-LeFay