Page 10 of The Mismatch

Soraya

London, 2014

The scent of cannabis was everywhere.

Soraya wrinkled her nose ever so slightly. In the damp room, one of many in the Victorian ten-bedroomed house, there were at least a dozen people clustered together chatting. The room was sparsely furnished, containing only a double bed, a rectangular mirror, a wooden desk and a tall wardrobe. They were all in different shades of brown veneer that clashed with the threadbare grey carpet. In one corner was an orange traffic cone.

The people who lived in the house only had mere days left on their tenancy agreement, hence the large scale of the party. It appeared people from her university planned to either renew the contracts for their London flats and houses, with the hope of finding a job in the city, if they hadn’t already, like Soraya, or they would move back home. Some, with money she couldn’t fathom having, were soon to leave London to travel the world.

Each room had been set up to play different music. In some, people smoked weed, whilst in others people danced to techno.

She had never been to such a large party before, and until now had never seen some of her classmates outside of seminars either. Different groups mixed together, popular artsy people talked to the sports lads, and those she considered more reclusive and enigmatic grouped together in a corner drinking wine straight from the bottle.

Soraya sat in one of the more chilled rooms, both atmospherically and in temperature. The bed she perched on was lumpy and she had been stranded with a girl she didn’t know well – and didn’t remember her name. She had hoped it would come up in conversation.

It hadn’t.

The girl was white with blonde dreadlocks, a fact that Soraya repeatedly tried to move past.

‘I just don’t want to start the real world. I’m not ready to be an adult, you know,’ the girl was saying. She spoke slowly, her lips curled into a lazy smile.

Soraya had opened her mouth to respond when something caught her eye. In the mirror on the wall opposite her, she could see Magnus entering the room, and he was staring at her. Not straight at her but through the mirror. She quickly directed her attention back to the unknown girl and muttered something non-committal.

‘I know, right.’

‘It’s like, I studied anthropology because I just caresomuch,’ the girl was saying. ‘You know? I want to learn, make a difference, go to other countries, really experience life.Help people. So I guess I do want to start the real world, but not right now.’

‘Yeah, I totally know what you mean.’

Soraya turned her body towards Magnus, but he was no longer looking at her, now engaged in conversation with his friends.

Magnus wore a three-button T-shirt in an ugly shade of green. His muscles strained against the fabric, his skin smooth and hard-looking. She could understand why people would find muscles like that attractive, but it was the cockiness that attached itself to athletic men that ruined everything.

The boys looked like they all played rugby with him, and the girls were white and slender, dressed in crop tops and tight-fitting jeans. They lapped up all the jokes the boys made – Magnus’s in particular – giggling and flicking their hair, and she noticed one of the girls leaning closer to him, touching his arm while she laughed at something he’d said. It was like the girls were houseplants in desperate need of light, and the boys were the sun.

She shook her head, wishing to rid herself of the tragic scene she was witnessing.

‘Urgh,they’rehere,’ the girl said.

‘They … ?’ Soraya began, before turning to find her companion’s gaze fixed on Magnus. ‘Oh, what do you mean?’

‘Nothing. I fucked one of their housemates a few times – he was shit anyway. You know when you have to pretend to come because you just want it all to end? Yeah, it wasthatbad.’ Soraya nodded, as though she knew perfectly well. ‘Anyway, out of nowhere he ghosted me and when I finally managed to get hold of him he used the pathetic “it’s not you,it’s me” excuse. I fucking know it’s not me – you never made me come, you bastard!’

She shouted the last bit, which caused people to turn her way and laugh under their breath. Soraya’s face coloured.

‘Well, he sounds like a knob,’ she said, looking at her phone for an escape. She saw someone had reposted one of the illustrations she posted online. It made her smile, momentarily.

Whilst she would never call herself an artist, Soraya had always drawn, even as a young child. She mainly drew people, animals and plants. The background to her illustrations tended to be pastel-coloured, the outlines of her drawings black and thick.

She was self-taught, so her illustrations didn’t always turn out as she planned. She hadn’t mastered the art of drawing eyes, so always drew them as shaded-in semi-circles, and coined that her ‘style’.

In her art she attempted to reflect the world around her. In her illustrations of women she sometimes drew them in underwear, their stretchmarks on show, their belly pouch hanging proudly. And yet, despite drawing women in this way, and knowing it was normal, she still had hang-ups about her own body.

‘And then Magnus totally fucked over my friend Lucy,’ the blonde girl hissed under her breath. ‘It’s been like six months and shestillisn’t over him. He’s a total fuck boy.’

Soraya’s ears pricked up. She locked her phone and looked at the girl in front of her properly for the first time. ‘Wait … what did you say?’

‘Yeah, you know Magnus? He’s behind you but don’t turn around,’ she said. Soraya squinted her eyes as though trying to recall who he was. ‘Lucy dated him for four months before she found out he was sleeping with other girls. She actually thinks she loved him – though I’m not sure if it was just because he looks the way he does and the sex was really good. I’m not surprised though; if you’ve slept with that many people youhaveto be good. Otherwise, what are you even doing?’