A Girl Called Shameless

“Who knows?” I reply. “I have a feeling the moon is to blame.”

She thrusts a paper cup of coffee into my mittened hand. I smile gratefully and take a sip of scalding peppermint mocha. Because really, is it even winter if you don’t add obnoxious flavorings to your favorite caffeiney beverage?

She readjusts her wooly hat and takes a swig from her own cup as we start dragging our heels in the direction of Edgewood. “Dude, if I haven’t said it before, your beef with the moon is not normal.”

“Yes, Ajita, you have said it before. And I feel like, as a vegetarian, you shouldn’t take beef’s name in vain. By the way, did you know the plural of beef is ‘beeves’? I learned that in the thesaurus Betty got me.”

At this point Ajita’s phone buzzes, and she smiles as she reads a text. And if I didn’t know any better, I could swear she’s tilting the screen away from me so I can’t see who she’s texting. I pray to the peanut butter cup gods that it’s not Carlie, the wannabe Victoria’s Secret model she crushed on last semester. For one thing, the girl voluntarily ate salads of her own free will, which is how I immediately knew she was an ax murderer in disguise. For another, she bitched about Ajita behind her back, and I ended up pouring cold tomato soup over her perfectly groomed head in the middle of the cafeteria. So there’s that.

Ajita and I chatter our usual nonsense for a quarter of a mile or so, but I can tell she’s feeling a little weird too. So I decide to vocalize my own apprehensions. [How thesaurusy is that sentence?]

“Hey. It’s kinda weird how we graduate from high school this year, right?” I say nonchalantly, staring at my feet. My thrift-store Doc Martens – dark red with black laces – are hella scuffed round the edges.

“Right,” she agrees. “And that this is the last time we’ll ever meet up after winter break to remark on the passage of time.”

School is weird. For so many years it feels infinite, like you’ll never be anything other than a high-schooler. It’s so intrinsic to your identity, and while you can imagine what you might do beyond it, it mostly feels like it’ll never happen. And then senior year hits, and suddenly everything you do is the last. The last first day back after summer. The last New Year’s Eve as a schoolkid. And, someday pretty soon, the last peppermint mocha on the walk to Edgewood. It’s exhilarating, but also terrifying. Because school is all we’ve ever known.

I decide Ajita will not appreciate my lyrical ruminations on the circle of life, so instead I just say, “So. What bitchy things are we going to do today?”

Since we started the Bitches Bite Back website a couple months ago, word has slowly started to spread about what we’re doing. Which is shouting, mainly. Shouting about all the things that make us angry, and inspiring other teenage girls to do the same. A whole bunch of shouting. As well as a roster of feminist sketches, we now have a handful of weekly contributors, who write articles and personal essays on an all manner of feminist topics, and our daily hits are now in the high hundreds rather than the low, well, zeroes. We’re actually heading to Martha’s Diner tonight to have an informal meeting about the tech side of things, which Meg is way savvier about than Ajita and me, who mainly project-manage the shouting. [Is that an official job title? Project Manager (Shouting Division)? It should be.]

10.26 a.m.

There’s one reason I am happy to be back in school: Carson Manning.

Even though we’ve been texting and video-calling a ton, we haven’t seen each other in person at all over the holidays. He’s been working like a madman, doing extra shifts at the pizza place to help his mom cover Christmas expenses. His mom’s douchebag of a partner left them in the lurch a few months back, and since Carson is the oldest the onus has fallen on him to pick up the slack and bring in some extra income.

From what I can gather his mom would love to go to work and provide for the kids, but since there are so many of them, the cost of childcare would far outweigh whatever she earned salary-wise. A common catch-22.

So yeah, Carson has been working double shifts most days, and spending whatever limited free time he has with his family, enjoying the holidays as best he can. Which I totally get. But selfishly I’m still super excited to see him this morning.

We haven’t even exchanged gifts yet. We set a ten-dollar limit on account of our severe brokeness, but I think I knocked it out of the park nonetheless.

I mean, I think I did. No matter how well you think you’ve nailed someone’s gift, the moments before you actually hand it over are hardcore nerve-wracking. And you suddenly think, oh my God, I took it too far, they’re going to think I’m a crazy stalker, this is too much, it’s too thoughtful, please can a giant seagull just swoop overhead, nosedive onto my face, and carry me away in its beak. Or something.

Since we don’t have first or second period together, we’ve arranged to meet by my locker for a smooch and a gift-giving ceremony. And I’m kind of . . . nervous? Well, it’s more like anticipation. Either way, the butterflies are real. Except butterflies makes it sound cute, whereas in reality it feels like my insides are being squashed through a colander and made into pasta sauce. Anyone for some fettucine al intestino?

The hallways are even more hubbuby than normal, with tons of other reunions and gossip sessions taking place. I wave goodbye to Ajita, take a drink at the water fountain, rub a stubborn smear of dirt off my Doc Martens, and try to steady myself for seeing Carson again. Honestly, why am I so nervous? He’s my boyfriend. He’s into me. That won’t have changed in the last three weeks. Will it?

Jeez. I was never this insecure pre-scandal.

I’m rummaging around in my locker, looking for a peanut butter cup I know I left here before the holidays, when two arms snake round my waist from behind. “Hey, you.”

And just like that the butterflies melt away, joining my intestines in pasta sauce heaven. [Another strange sentence. I’m not even sure context helps us here.]

I twist round in his arms, and our faces end up startlingly close together. Not that I’m complaining. Because his face is my second favorite face. [Ajita would literally flay me alive if I in any way suggested hers did not occupy the number-one spot.]

He kisses me softly on the lips, smiling as he does, so it’s really more of a bumping together of grinning mouths. A tooth clash, if you will. He smells of acrylic paint and fresh air, like he always does, and his head isn’t as freshly shaven as usual, so there’s a short layer of black fuzz everywhere. I’m very into it.

“Hey,” I murmur in what I hope is a seductive voice, but in reality I probably just sound baked. “Long time no see.”

“It’s been what, a decade?” he asks, and he’s grinning so wide, and it makes me really happy that the sight of my face and the sound of my weird stoner voice is enough to make him do that.

“At least two, I’d say.” I take a deep breath and then add, “So I got you something!”

Except he says the exact same thing at the exact same time, like they do in movies, and it’s all so cringeworthy but I just do. Not. Care. Because all those cheesy romance tropes I used to take the piss out of? Turns out they’re pretty great.

“You first,” Carson says, ever the gentleman. [Or probably just because he wanted to receive his gift first, to judge whether or not the one he got me was better. I see your game, Carson Manning.]

“Okay, hang on a sec.” I reluctantly wriggle free of his half-hug and rummage around in my locker. My hands hit pay dirt. “Found it!” Triumphantly I emerge with the rogue peanut butter cup I’d been hunting down before he arrived.

He gasps extravagantly and claps his hands to his cheeks. “Your last peanut butter cup? I know you’re into me and all, man, but . . . you really like me that much?”

I scoff. “Absolutely not.” I quickly unwrap the cup in under 0.2 seconds, seasoned professional that I am, and shove the entire thing in my mouth before he can protest.

Then, mouth full of claggy peanut butter, I bring out the actual gift, and the butterflies return with a vengeance. The gift is wrapped in tinfoil, because a) do you even know how expensive wrapping paper is? and b) tinfoil saves you money on Sellotape, and c) your gift looks like a spaceship. So it’s a win all round.

He snorts, actually snorts with laughter, and pulls his gift out of his backpack. And wouldn’t you know, it’s also wrapped in tinfoil. Romance, Gen Z style. We’re broke, woke, and unusually innovative when it comes to gift-wrapping solutions.

Plus our presents are also almost exactly the same size and shape. Like. What.

As he unravels the tinfoil on his present my chest pounds. It’s the moment of truth. Is he going to think I’m the ultimate weirdo? Or is he going to be charmed by my lunacy?

The tinfoil drops to the floor, and he squints as he tries to read the handwritten Post-it note I’ve stuck on the front of his gift in explanation. To be fair, since I type basically everything, my handwriting is more akin to ancient hieroglyphics than the Latin alphabet, so it does take him some time to decipher.

What I’ve attempted to write: “To share with Colbie and Cyra”.

Colbie and Cyra are his youngest brother and sister – they’re five and three respectively.

Carefully he peels the Post-it note off the cover of the handmade picture book I’ve made him, and the moment he reads the words on the front cover, he collapses into a fit of laughter.

Where do you hide a poo in a zoo? by Izzy O’Neill and Carson Manning

“Man, that’s hilarious,” he cackles, shaking his head in astonishment.

I had the idea last time I visited Carson’s house before the holidays. Even though there are ten kids living there, and it must be crazy difficult to keep them all fed and watered and clothed, Carson’s mom Annaliese has curated the most awesome collection of kids’ books.

Arranged by age group on the bookshelves in the living room, she’s picked up funny picture books for her youngest, magic realism and middle-grade fantasy for the primary-school kids, a ton of sci-fi for the older teens. She’s even got well-worn book box sets of both Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter.

And honestly, it made me so emotional to see it. Because I never had that. Betty did an incredible job raising me, don’t get me wrong. I’ll never stop being grateful to her for all the sacrifices she made just to make sure I had a good life. But a mini library in my house? I can’t even imagine how cool that would have been.

When I spoke to Annaliese about it, her face lit up. She told me about how a lot of the books were hers from when she was a kid – all the Enid Blyton originals, all the Roald Dahl classics, the full Chronicles of Narnia – and how, over the years, she’s always tried to pick up one book a month from a thrift store. No matter how broke she was, she could always find a quarter somewhere to bring home a new book, even if it meant she went without dinner that night.

Isn’t that the most amazing thing you’ve ever heard in your life?

So while I was agonizing over what I could possibly get Carson for under ten dollars [and also the fact that I didn’t even have ten dollars], I thought . . . why not write a kids’ book for him to share with his siblings?

I bought a landscape A4 notebook with a hard cover and blank pages, did some word art on the cover – as best I could with my non-artistic abilities – and then wrote all the text throughout the notebook. Due to my abysmal handwriting, it took me days to write it all out in neat block capitals with a black sharpie, but, honestly, it looks pretty cool.

Each page is told from the perspective of a different zoo animal who’s done a poo and wants to hide it inside their cage. So it’s kind of educational, because kids learn what every different zoo animal’s poo looks like [because this is the kind of important wisdom the education system neglects to impart], and also interactive, because the kid gets to help the animal find the best place to hide its poo according to its surroundings.

[I know. My brain is weird.]

“I thought you could do the artwork for it,” I say, gesturing to the blank spaces beneath the text I’ve written. “Since I have the sketching ability of a drunk toddler. I mean, I could probably stretch to painting the assorted poo variations, but when it comes to the actual animals and their environments I might be a little challenged.”

Again he shakes his head, and he actually looks a little emotional. He wraps me up in one of his trademark bear hugs, and squeezes me real tight, and all the painstaking hours of dreaming up different voices [and poos] for fictional animals are suddenly worth it.

“I love it,” he whispers in my ear, and for a second my heart flips, because I think he said something else, but then he adds, “And my mom’ll love it too.” Pulling away slightly, he kisses me tenderly on the cheek and says, “You’re the best. How am I supposed to match that?”

He takes a deep breath almost exactly like the one I took before presenting him with the book, and hands over his own tinfoil-wrapped efforts. A wave of excitement hits, but also confusion. This gift isn’t just similar in size and shape to mine – it’s identical.

Frowning in confusion, I peel away the foil to reveal the back of the exact same notebook I bought Carson, except this one is portrait instead of landscape. I flip it over to see the front, and gasp.

Carson has painted over the original plain cover with his own artwork, and OH. MY. GOD.

It’s like a collage, except every single component has been hand-painted by him. There’s the Hollywood hills in the background, an old school movie theater, palm trees, a bucket of popcorn, a ticket stub with the title of my movie on it, a film reel, a director’s chair . . . and me.

I’m right in the center of the painting, clutching a script to my chest. I have huge movie star sunglasses on, but my hair is still the same unruly blonde mess it is right now. The stompy dark red Doc Martens are on my feet, but I’m wearing a sundress in the LA heat. In the drawing I’m smiling from ear to ear, like I am right now, and he’s even matched my slightly wonky front teeth to perfection. But I don’t look as terrifying as I often think I do; I look beautiful. The wild hair and crooked teeth just make me look even more so.

“I don’t know what to say,” I murmur, completely blown away by the effort he’s gone to.

“Do you like it?” he asks, looking shy for probably the first time in his life. “It’s for all your screenwriting notes. For when you inevitably fly to LA to meet a ton of hotshot Hollywood producers about your script.” A funny kind of smile. “Hopefully it’ll make it harder for you to forget me, right?”

“Like I could ever forget you!” I say, with enough force that he knows I mean it despite the jesting tone. I look back down at the notebook, at the broad, colorful brushstrokes and vivid detail. “I love it, Carson. Really.”

And then a nice little silence ensues in which we just . . . look at each other and smile. Then he leans in for a real kiss, and the clamor of the hallway dims. I’m painfully aware of the fact I smell like hours-old coffee, but he either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. His lips are soft and minty, and his warm body presses against mine, and oh. Oh. I desperately want to not be in a public place right now.

Yeah. Being back in school definitely has its perks.

2.36 p.m.

I forgot about the whole inconvenient learning thing you have do. There I am, quite happily daydreaming in math class about what it’s going to be like when I win my Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, when I am rudely interrupted.

“Miss O’Neill, are you listening to me?” Mr Wong seems to be saying from very far away, except he’s not far away, he’s right in front of me, wiggling his wooden ruler two feet in front of my face. [Fortunately, in this instance, wooden ruler is not a euphemism.]

It transpires that I am not, in fact, listening to him. And yet somehow I get the impression that’s not the answer he’s looking for. So I lie. “Yessir, absolutely I am.”

“Right. So you do know how to calculate the circumference of a trapezoid?”

I mean, really. If they’re going to pretend we’ll need all of this shit in the real world, they could at least try and make it believable.

6.01 p.m.

We’re sitting in Martha’s Diner, which still has all its holiday decor up, but please don’t go picturing a charming Santa’s grotto. Giant frosted wreaths hang in the windows, which are all steamed up with sweat and condensation, and an obnoxious tinsel tree stands in the center of the room. Almost every available surface has been assaulted with a spray can of fake snow in a dogged attempt at festive cheer, yet it just makes it look like the ceiling fans have dandruff.

Martha’s is famously shameless in how long it drags out the holidays. I’m pretty sure it’ll all still be here come summer solstice. The staff are still wearing Rudolph ears too. Well, all except Betty, who put hers in the waffle iron in protest, burned them to a fuzzy felt crisp, then played the Forgetful Old Person card. God love her.

Anyway, the diner is still a good place to host a highly feminist business meeting. [Milkshakes and matriarchy, the classic combination.] You just have to look past the slightly unprofessional three-foot-high elf in the doorway, who greets diner patrons with an aggressive and insistent “Happy Holidays!” Only I think its batteries are running low because it sounds more like “herpy her-ler-derrs”. It’s literally a real-life meme at this point. Ajita put him in the meeting minutes under Any Other Business last time, just for the laughs.

I dunk my forefinger into the whipped cream on top of my strawberry shortcake shake, ignoring the relentless drone of “Jingle Bell Rock” playing from the speakers behind our booth. Since she’s the designated minute-taker for this meeting, Meg pulls a pretty floral notebook out of her satchel, which she has completely covered in New Orleans Saints patches. Seriously, the girl is NFL obsessed. She’s promised to teach Ajita and I the rules of football sometime, and while Sportsball™ is not generally my cup of tea, I’m happy to invest in it a little if Meg wants to be able to share her passion with us. We got her hooked on SNL, so I guess it’s only fair.

I watch as she notes down who’s present for the meeting: Izzy O’Neill, Ajita Dutta, Meg Martin, Derp Elf. Meg’s handwriting is all swirly and loopy and makes everything look awesome, except it takes her a million years to do. I want to crack a calligraphy joke at her, but I just don’t know if we’re at the ruthless piss-taking stage of our friendship yet. Even though it’s my way of showing affection, I don’t want her to think I hate her or anything. Cos I don’t. She raises the cool level of our group by a factor of seven, with her sportsball knowledge and all.

“Okay, without further ado, let us begin!” I announce. “Meg, what’s our first order of business?”

She clears her throat theatrically. “At the end of the last meeting we decided the first topic on our agenda this week would be –”

There’s an ungodly clatter from the kitchen, as though Thor has dropped his hammer from a great height, and the swinging double doors burst open. The hostess who’s been serving us all night storms out, tossing her apron over her shoulder dramatically. I mean, aprons don’t weigh very much, and it just kind of wafts to the ground like a poorly made paper airplane, so it’s a bit anticlimactic. But still, I appreciate her penchant for histrionics.

The chef comes yelling after her. “And if you don’t like it, don’t come back!”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” the hostess hisses, practically in Parseltongue, before slamming out the main entrance and huffing down the street. The derp elf bids her farewell completely unironically.

With the exception of our friend Derp there’s utter silence across the entire diner. Like, total quiet. You could hear a centipede fart. [Do centipedes fart? I doth not know.]

The chef, a beady-eyed Bostonian fellow with an igloo of a gut, addresses the rest of us with a healthy dose of both derision and desperation. “Any of you on the market for a part-time hostess gig?”

Silence creeps over the diners like a snowy blanket as the idea forms in my head. With a part-time job Betty and I could finally stop teetering on the knife edge of bankruptcy. We could eat actual literal fresh vegetables, and meat that isn’t part sawdust. I could even start a savings account. Imagine!

And so I rise to my feet. “I volunteer as tribute,” I say, voice clear and confident.

“Er, what?” Chef Man huffs haughtily, folding his arms across his snowdrift of a chest. He looks disgruntled. [Can you be gruntled? Because that’s a highly entertaining word.] “Look, do you want a job or not?”

“Affirmative, sir. Absolutely I do. Very much.”

“Good. You start Friday.”

“Roger that, sir,” I reply, unsure why I’m behaving like an army cadet all of a sudden. Thankfully I resist the urge to salute and/or begin leopard crawling toward the kitchen.

With that he barges back into the kitchen, so forcefully the swinging doors are almost wrenched from their hinges. I sink back down into the chair, blinking with disbelief.

“Dude. That was awesome,” Ajita says, patting me awkwardly on the shoulder. Physical affection is roughly as appealing to her as squatting on a cactus, so I appreciate the gesture.

There’s a faint buzzing in my ears. I assume this is what adrenaline feels like, but as a person who has never participated in sports I cannot be sure. “What in the actual name of fuckery?” I ask, stunned.

“Eloquent as ever,” Ajita congratulates me.

“Seriously. I’ve tried to get a job since the day I turned fourteen. How was that so easy?”

“I’m trying very hard not to make a joke about your mom being easy,” Ajita replies.

“Considering that my mother has been dead for over a decade, I appreciate your self-restraint.”

Honestly, I cannot believe this. I have a job. I mean, there’s every chance I could royally screw up training. This is me we’re talking about. If I lay eyes on a tub of Greek yoghurt, for example, I may just start rocking in a corner due to post-traumatic stress. [This is an in-joke from Book One. If you recall, I accidentally touched my foofer after chopping chilies and had to seek relief in a pot of . . . Well, you get the idea.]

But if I manage not to ruin this gig like I do all other facets of my existence, I might actually have money for the first time in my life. I may actually be able to pay for my own milkshakes, for once. Like, I’m not going to go crazy and stop leeching off Ajita’s Netflix account or anything, but still. Think of the possibilities. A new toothbrush! Bras with underwires! Limitless potential!

“So, where were we?” I ask, not wanting to derail the Bitches Bite Back meeting by turning my entire life round. “Something about website wizardry and . . . corum fodes? Or forum codes, even.” I’m so excited the words are falling out of my mouth like potatoes.

However, at some point between me turning my life round and my potatoey sentence Meg has blanched pure white. Ajita, who’s sitting on the same side of the booth, peers over her shoulder at the laptop screen, immediately beginning to chew the inside of her lip.

“Oh fuck,” she murmurs, horror written all over her beautiful face. “Um, Iz . . .”

Immediately I’m terrified it’s something to do with my scandal. The website has resurfaced, or the nudes have been picked up by another gossip site, or Senator Vaughan is back on his soapbox about family values. Familiar dread blooms in my gut, cramping painfully.

“What is it?” I ask, too scared to even crack a joke about the fact Meg is so tense she looks like she’s trying to pass a kidney stone.