“I’m taking credit for that,” I said. “All this philosophizing unlocked your potential.”
He scrawled the answer into the boxes in pen. “Nonsense. I’m just extremely clever.”
“Not clever enough to do those in pencil,” I said, tapping a portion of the page where several answers were angrily scribbled out.
“I have confidence in me,” he said.
I blinked. “Is that a Sound of Music quote?”
“Er, what? Maybe. I don’t know. Yes,” he admitted. “They show it here every year on Christmas. But we watch in secret because Gran thinks Christmas Day should be reserved for prayer and reflection. She was steaming mad one year when she caught us, but Freddie got us off the hook by arguing any movie with nuns in it counts as a religious experience.”
I laughed. “I like him already.”
“Everyone does,” Nick said. “You’ll meet him soon enough.”
Our eyes met. After a beat, I nodded. It was a casual statement, couching an assumption of friendship and permanence. It was also a subtle expression of trust. Nick likes to tell me that’s the moment he knew, but he’s as revisionist as The Bexicon. He didn’t feel a lightning bolt as we sat on the cold ground passing around a Thermos, and neither did I. What I did feel was welcome. Sitting there, thousands of miles from my usual life, I’d been scooped into his.
Chapter Four
Nick’s serious blue eyes stared deeply into mine. “Does it hurt? Do you want to stop?”
He was worried about my comfort, even in the heat of the moment.
“I’m great,” I panted, desperately trying not to stare directly up the Royal Nostrils. “Just another Sunday.”
“That’s what I like to hear,” Nick said. “Your performance is extremely important to this country. No pressure.”
I did feel pressure, but mostly in my brain. Gaz and Nick were undefeated at The Glug, and their streak rested on the newbie’s shoulders. Which were upended in a handstand position, my palms flat on a table that kept me off the ground, while Cilla and Clive held my legs.
Nick straightened and nodded to the adjudicator, a brown-haired guy with a reedy beard and a giant stuffed lemon on his head.
“Right, the Gazholes are set,” said the Lemonhead (which is actually the job’s official name). “And the BeatNicks are ready. Let the finals begin in three, two, one…glug!”
A slim hose was shoved in my mouth, Nick tilted the Pimm’s vat, and I started to drink.
The colleges at Oxford are creative and saucy in their social traditions. Worcester College used to do a Half-Naked Half Hour every Wednesday in the library. In late October, on the day British Summer Time changes to Greenwich Mean Time, Merton College holds a ceremony in which students claim to mend the space-time continuum by walking around backward in formal dress while drinking port. And legend has it that Lincoln College, physically linked to Brasenose College by a locked door, centuries ago barred entry to a Brasenose student who was fleeing a mob; as a faint apology for getting that person brutally killed, Lincoln opens the door to Brasenose for five minutes on Ascension Day during Easter week and serves any incoming students free beer…that has been lightly poisoned with ground-up ivy, because why not.
One could argue Pembroke’s indulgence in insanity, The Glug, also constitutes attempted murder by alcohol. The legend goes that in 1878, a surprise two feet of snow began falling during Pembroke’s traditional Second Sunday Party on the quad (at the beginning, accordingly, of Second Week—celebrating being that much closer to the end of term), and The Glug was invented as a way to get hammered quickly and stay warm enough to continue the outdoor party tradition. It involves teams of five competing elimination-style to see who can guzzle the most from their upended jug of Pimm’s without breaking lip-lock with the straw, vomiting, or passing out cold—like the posh English cousin to a keg stand. Once you tap out, by choice or biology, you then have to pass The Reckoning: a full thirty seconds without falling. It is the kind of insane, irresponsible, potentially fatal activity that is catnip to college kids, and Joss—who’d thrown up three times last year—seemed glad to retire. Lady Bollocks refused to participate entirely.
“Pimm’s is to be sipped. It’s what separates us from the hooligans,” she snapped when she caught Gaz coaching me in the hall. She’d aimed the last word at me.
“Don’t worry about Bea,” Gaz counseled. “She is allergic to fun.”
She also had a point. The Glug was about as regal as a root canal. Fortunately, we sailed quickly through the early rounds, and now we were in the finals.
And really buzzed.
I was the leadoff hitter, so to speak. Despite never getting used to the discomfiting presence of a judge staring at my mouth at close range, I glugged for a solid thirty-one seconds—the record is a superhuman one minute and four seconds—and then passed The Reckoning with ease. I had out-chugged Penelope Six-Names by twenty seconds.
“Suck it, BeatNicks!” I whooped, as Cilla let out a howl of glee. We then performed a triumphant chest bump that ended with me belching involuntarily as we yelped in pain. The Bexicon nailed it again: There was no more delicate paragon of womanhood at Oxford that year than I.
“That was the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen,” Gaz announced, as Clive and Nick about fell over laughing.
“Which part?” Cilla wheezed. “The bumping, the burping, or the mashed boobs?”
“Yes,” Gaz replied serenely.
Nick and I attempted a high five. I swung wildly and missed.
“A classic case of Pimm’s Blindness,” he laughed. “So tragic in one so young.”
“I think it’s more that some of my brain cells just exploded.”
“Try again,” he said, raising up my arm. “If you watch the other person’s elbow at the last second, you’ll never miss.”
We high-fived with a satisfying smack.
“Genius!” I said. “Lacey will love that.”
“No, sorry, it’s a state secret. Very sensitive government information,” he said.
I felt arms wrap around me from behind. Clive lifted me up and whirled me around before setting me back on my feet.
“Clive!” Cilla shouted as I struggled to regain my balance. “Never spin a Glugger until half an hour after The Glug.”
“Now you’ve done it,” Gaz said. “She’ll be too Brahms’d to stand up at the trophy ceremony.”
“Sorry,” Clive said, steadying me. “But that was ace. That record is going down today.”
Unfortunately, Clive had barely gone up when he got penalized for breaking the lip-lock rule. Cilla and Gaz more than made up for it, though, and after the BeatNicks’ best player fell twice during The Reckoning, we’d built an impenetrable lead of more than a minute.
“Go on, Nicky boy,” Gaz said, rubbing together his hands. “Stick it to ’em.”
A terrified-looking guy called Terrance, lean as a toothpick and just as pointy, approached the table. He was an alternate—his older brother had partied too hard the night before—and though Nick’s turn was a formality at this point, Terrance’s team clearly expected its last Glugger to make a massive fool of himself, and the poor kid knew it. He offered Nick a wobbly handshake, and somewhere, Popeye and Twiggy doubtless took deep, meditative breaths as Nick was hoisted upside down…and drank for a pathetic seven seconds.