The Trouble with Faking

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

“Hi,” I say to the girl who looks like she wants to tear my eyes out. “You must be Charlotte. Damien’s told me all about you.” Not that I was interested in hearing anything about his latest girlfriend. “I’m Andi. Damien’s friend.”

“His friend? How about secret lover?”

I take a step back. “Excuse me?”

“I know he’s been cheating on me. He’s been paying less and less attention to me, and now I find him sneaking around the back of Fuller with his hands all over you.”

“Um, I don’t think that’s what happened.” Despite any wish I might have had to the contrary.

“I know what I saw, so don’t even try to—”

“Charlotte,” I say with as much patience as I can muster. “I am not his secret lover.”

“Don’t lie to me,” she shouts. “My friend saw the two of you together last year.”

“What? Oh, when I flew here for those two days in April? I was visiting my sister. Damien just picked me up from the airport.”

“So it wasn’t you he was sitting on mem stone with?”

“Mem stone?”

“That big block of stone in between Fuller and Smuts!” she yells.

“Oh. Yes, that was me. We chatted for a bit before he dropped me off at my sister’s. You know, just two old friends catching up.”

“Liar!” she shrieks. “I know he’s been cheating on me.”

“Listen up,” I say, rapidly losing my patience. “I have a big problem with cheating, and there’s no way I’d ever be involved in it in any way. Damien and I have been friends for eight years, and if that bothers you, you need to get over it.”

I step past her and her friends and swipe my card to get from reception into the rest of the building. I stomp all the way to F flat before looking at my watch and realising I’m late for the treasure hunt meeting. I turn and hurry back to the upper common room. I open the door and slip quietly inside, but I manage to earn myself several stern looks from a few House Comm members before seating my butt on the carpet beside Carmen.

I remove my phone from my pocket and type a message to Damien. I met Charlotte. She’s lovely. She also thinks you’re cheating on her with me. You might want to have a chat with her.

I put my phone away and pay attention to the treasure hunt instructions. We’re divided into several groups, and each group is given a different clue. We’re all supposed to end up in the same place at the end, of course, but to avoid all groups simply following the lead group, no group will be able to get to the end in the same way. It feels a bit like something I’d be expected to do in primary school, and I’m starting to wonder if the rumours about Fuller being the boring res full of smart, nerdy girls is true. I’m also wondering if the fact that I’m enjoying the idea of this treasure hunt makes me boring and nerdy too.

Who cares?

I take the clue from Carmen and read it quickly. We shout out the answer at the same time—“The bench in reception!”—ignore the few members of our group who roll their eyes at our enthusiasm, and head downstairs, chatting along with everyone else who appears to find this fun.

After hunting down five different clues, we eventually find a folded-up paper labelled ‘Last Clue’ that points us in the direction of Rugby Road in front of Smuts. We head outside, passing a group of girls retrieving a note stuck to the warden’s car and another group of girls huddled around the receptionist’s window. They look at us, then start running. And whether this is officially a competition or not, we all want to be the first to get to the end, so we start running too. Past mem stone and down the steps. It would be enough to terrify any sane person, this hoard of girls giggling and shrieking as they run towards a parked car with a white X painted onto the windscreen.

Carmen reaches the car first and lets out a whoop of joy. The rest of us crowd around her a second later. All the car windows are down, and we peer inside and find bags of marshmallows and slabs of chocolate covering the seats. A sign stuck to the steering wheel says ‘Hot Chocolate on Jammie Steps at 8:30 pm.’

One person says, “Yum,” a second person says, “Really? Is that it?” and a third person suggests we grab all the chocolate and run before the rest of the girls get here.

Then I hear a shout from above us. I look up. Leaning out of a row of Smuts windows are a whole lot of freshmen with brightly coloured balloons in their hands. Another shout, and they all let go.

Shrieks erupt as water bombs hit the car, the road, and the pavement, exploding all over us. We run back up the road with bursting water bombs chasing us all the way. We reach the front door, and I lean against the wall, shaking with silent laughter. My hair and T-shirt are soaked from the balloon that hit my back as I ran, and the girls who hadn’t yet made it to the end of the treasure hunt stare at us from the doorway. One asks, “Do we have to do that too?”

I laugh even harder as Carmen says, “I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure the water bombs weren’t part of the treasure hunt plan.”

“They most certainly were not,” one of our House Comm members says, pushing through the crowd of girls and marching towards Smuts. She doesn’t have to go far, though, because two guys from the Smuts House Comm are halfway across the parking lot, their hands already raised in surrender—although their cheeky grins suggest they’re not exactly sorry about the water bombing. She begins yelling at them about sabotaging her perfectly planned treasure hunt, and they argue that the treasure hunt was lame, and they were only trying to liven things up.

I twist my hair over my shoulder and squeeze the water from it. “I think I enjoyed being attacked by water bombs,” I say to Carmen. “How about you?”

“Eish, my hair’s gonna frizz out on me now, but aside from that, yeah. It was fun. The best part, though, is that we’re now completely within our rights to retaliate.”

“Oh yes. You’re right. Any ideas?”

“We should put evil clown masks on and hide in their rooms and jump out after they’ve gone to bed.”

I blink at her. “You’re a little bit scary, you know that?”

“I’ve been told.”

“Please remind me never to get on your bad side, because I don’t think—”

“Hey, Andi?”

I look up to find Damien walking out of Fuller. “Oh, hi.” I twist some more water out of my hair and glance around to see if Charlotte’s anywhere nearby ready to attack me. “Did you get my message?”

“Yes. We need to talk.”