A Quiet Kind of Thunder(13)

She shakes her head. ‘No, why?’

I don’t push, even though I know her well enough to be able to determine her emotional state by how many laps she runs on an otherwise ordinary afternoon. ‘Tell me about college, then.’

‘It’s good,’ she says vaguely. She begins to run through her cool-down stretches, electricity fizzing from her joints and fingertips.

‘Just good?’ I prompt.

Tem twists her lip, then shrugs. ‘It’s very different from Windham. Louder. You’d hate it.’ She takes another sip from her water bottle. ‘There are so many people, which is kind of weird. Like, I used to think Windham was a pretty big school, but it turns out it’s not. And because everyone’s new it’s like this big battle to make friends.’

‘You won’t have any trouble making friends,’ I say. Everyone loves Tem.

‘Maybe not, but it feels kind of fake. Maybe it’s just because it’s new . . . I don’t know. I miss you a lot more than I thought I would.’ Her eyes widen. ‘That came out completely wrong. I just meant, I’m always –’

‘I know what you meant,’ I say, half smiling. Tem is always the one who takes the lead, who makes the friends. The needed one. I am the one who needs, the one who misses. ‘How are the classes?’ Tem is studying sports therapy, which she’s been excited about ever since she found out it existed.

‘Well, that’s the other thing.’ Tem’s brow has crinkled. ‘The work seems really hard. I wasn’t expecting that.’

‘Too hard?’

Tem pauses, the water bottle to her lips, her eyes looking away from me. ‘I hope not.’ She takes a breath and then smiles at me. ‘But!’ she says brightly. ‘I did meet a boy of my own.’

‘Ooh,’ I say. ‘Tell.’

Tem pulls out her phone and opens Facebook. ‘Look,’ she begins, and I laugh.

‘You got him on Facebook already?’

‘Of course, that’s what Facebook is for,’ she says, which is true. She hands her phone over to me and I look obediently.

Karam Homsi, the name reads. He looks like a model. Longish wild, dark hair. Brown eyes. A jokey half-smile on his face.

‘He’s amazing,’ Tem says, looking with pure adoration at her phone. ‘He’s taking two extra A levels at the college because his school – St Sebastian’s – will only let him do four. He wants to be a doctor.’

‘Wow,’ I say, because there’s really no other response to that kind of information, particularly when it goes with that kind of face.

‘And he’s so nice, Stef. And not fake nice, or trying-too-hard nice. Just, like, friendly, you know? He came here from Syria when he was nine, and now his life goal is to become a doctor so he can go back and help people.’

‘What’s wrong with him?’ I ask.

She startles. ‘Huh?’

‘What’s wrong with him?’ I repeat. I smile to let her know I’m teasing. ‘No one is that perfect.’

‘Oh.’ She lets out a laugh of relief. ‘Nothing’s wrong with him. He’s just perfect. Honestly, Steffi. I’ve never met anyone like him.’

Tem is my best friend, and I won’t hear a word against her, but this is not the first time I’ve heard these kinds of words come out of her mouth. Tem has what my mother calls ‘an open heart’, which means she falls in love quickly and easily with pretty much anyone, and not just in a romantic way. When she loves, she loves completely – that’s what I’m saying.

When we were kids, she went through a phase where she hero-worshipped firemen. For her seventh birthday she got to visit the fire station and have her photo taken at the wheel of a fire engine, a huge helmet resting over her curls, a gigantic beam on her face. There’s a photo of the two of us, actually: her gap-toothed and grinning under her helmet, me next to her with a serious frown, holding the edge of my helmet so it would stay on my head, my hair too flat and lifeless to hold it up.

What I mean by this is that Tem fell in love with every single fireman she met that day, to the point where she still remembers all their names, even years later – ‘Remember when Sanjay let me try on his coat?’ – and that’s just how she is. Now we’re older, it’s moved on from hero worship to outright please-marry-me love. She got her first boyfriend at fourteen – AJ, fifteen, swaggering tosser – and that lasted for about two months. Her relationships were pretty regular after that: a parade of new boyfriends every few months or so. Each one ‘different’. Each one ‘special’. Each one ‘not like anyone else’.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should say that I have never had a boyfriend. At least, not one that existed outside of the internet. Not one I could touch or kiss or hold hands with. Making the leap from crush to conversation is just too much for me. I blame my brain.

‘How did you meet him?’ I ask. If Karam is taking six A levels in the hope of becoming a doctor, it’s unlikely he and Tem will share any classes.

‘He’s the year above us and he runs a voluntary group at the college raising money for refugees and asylum seekers. I went along because I thought I might meet some, you know, like-minded people, or whatever. Seeing as there didn’t seem to be many in my actual classes.’