A Girl Called Shameless

“Hey, Iz,” he says as woodenly as, I don’t know, a didgeridoo.

My skin bristles at the use of my old nickname. Shouldn’t he have lost nickname privileges when he systematically ruined my life?

“Daniel,” I say coolly to illustrate the point in my patented passive aggressive manner.

He’s wearing that ancient Pokémon T-shirt I got once him. It’s been washed so many times that the Pikachu’s face is vaguely haunting. “You didn’t reply to my text.”

“Didn’t I?” I reply, milder than a chicken korma, even though the mere sight of him is enough to send me into a rage-induced coma. [Does that rhyme? Should I abandon screenwriting to pen profound and poignant poetry? Rupi Kaur makes it look very easy.]

“Uh, no.” Danny scratches a tiny scab on his upper arm, and the top layer comes away. He winces as poppy-red blood blooms in its place. GOOD. BLEED, DOUCHEBAG. [I did warn you about the rage.] “Anyway, just wanted to say that I’m here. You know. If you need anything. Which you probably don’t. But, uh, yeah.”

“She’s fine,” Ajita butts in. “Carson and I have her back. Anything else?”

At the mention of Carson’s name Danny’s benign demeanor is shattered. He stands up straighter and injects some venom into his voice. “Right. Fine. Sorry for wasting your time then.” And he flounces away again. I’m trying to think of something funny to say about flouncing, but I’m tired as hell. Maybe one day I’ll stop hating Danny as much as I do right now, but that moment seems very far in the future indeed.

“You know, sometimes I think I might miss the guy,” I mutter to Ajita, who’s staring viciously at Danny’s back as he walks away. “But then I remember his personality and think better of it.”

12.59 p.m.

Holy guacamole and for the love of nachos! We’re grabbing lunch in the cafeteria when all three of our phones ping with an extremely exciting email notification at the same time. I immediately drop mine into the bowl of soup in front of me.

We got a meeting with Ted Vaughan’s office! A political staffer is going to sit down with us next week to discuss our concerns. Gahhhhh! We genuinely did not think this would happen. I’m literally already nervous.

Part of me is glad we’re not meeting with Vaughan himself. After everything he’s done since the photo emerged of me banging his son on a garden bench – all the high-and-mighty speeches about family values and degenerate youths – I don’t think I’d be able to resist launching across his desk and tearing out his esophagus with my bare teeth.

Anyway, I’m distracted from the nerves somewhat by the rescue mission we must now perform to recover my phone from its oniony fate. Ajita fishes it out the bowl with her bare hands and I rinse it off in my cup of water, which is admittedly not the wisest move but you remember the thing about me not being the sharpest erection in the shed/brothel?

Thankfully Meg produces a bag of dried rice from her purse, and we shove my phone into it for the foreseeable future. When I enquire as to why on earth Meg was carrying said bag of rice around with her to begin with she merely replies: “I’ve been friends with you for, what, three months now? And this is the fourth time you’ve dropped your phone in soup.”

She has a point.

2.04 p.m.

Phone now successfully resuscitated, we’re leaving geography class when Carson crops up behind me and squeezes my shoulders. I jump a little, like I’ve received a mild electric shock, but soon relax when I see it’s him. [For some reason I’m more easily startled since the sex scandal. I have no idea why, but it’s like I’m constantly just a tiny bit on edge.]

He’s wearing his hyperactive puppy expression in full force, and opens our conversation with, “So is it just me, or is Mr Richardson even more Peru-obsessed than usual?” [Context: our geography teacher once trekked Machu Picchu, and not a single class goes by without some kind of reference to his journey of a lifetime. Like, if anyone can find a way to relate glacier formations to the Temple of the Sun, it’s him.]

“Do you think we should tell him it’s highly offensive for a white man to dress as an Incan emperor?” I ask. Not that he’s done this yet, so attached is he to his staple uniform of plaid shirts and beige chinos, but give it time.

Carson laughs his smooth, easy laugh. “You all set for diner training tonight?”

“Think so,” I say, just as a bubble of nerves pops in my belly. “Just picked up some plain black pants at a thrift store, and they’ll provide me with a couple shirts. So I think I have everything I need uniform-wise.”

We stroll toward Carson’s locker, where he’s picking up books for math. “You’ll be great.”

I slip my hand into his and give it a grateful squeeze. “Thanks. Although as a bona fide slacker in all things, I’m marginally concerned at having to perform actual manual labor. Do my limbs even work that way?”

He laughs and drops my hand so he can enter his locker combo. “You’re no slacker, O’Neill. Just selective in what you spend your energy on. However, they do know you gotta be fed every half-hour else you turn into Medusa incarnate, right?”

I shove him playfully, and he shoves me back, and then I’m squealing as he grips me in a bear hug and pretends to eat my shoulder, and oh God we’re one of those obnoxious couples everyone hates but I just don’t care because it’s so fucking nice.

In all seriousness I’m actually excited to start work at the diner. Betty and I are no strangers to being poor. We’re not. Things that other people take for granted – things they consider necessities, like batteries for the TV remote – are luxuries to us. And to be fair I’ve never known any different, so it doesn’t bother me that much. We get by.

For me and Betty what it comes down to is this: we’ve always managed to stay afloat, and that’s all that matters really. But now, with me working too, maybe life will be better than just staying afloat. Maybe we’ll be able to go out to the movies, or get takeout from the fancy Chinese restaurant uptown. The thought makes me fizz with excitement. It really does.

I mean, I’d even resigned myself to being poor forever. Poverty is a cycle, by design. Let’s take shoes, for example. Reasonably wealthy people can afford to buy a decent pair of shoes made from leather or, I don’t know, dragonhide, which will last them a few years. But the lower working class cannot. We buy cheap, terrible shoes made from awful materials and stitched together by exploited southeast Asian kids. And they fall apart within months, and we have to buy more cheap terrible shoes because we need shoes, damn it, and we end up spending way more than the wealthy middle-class people ever did. All because we couldn’t afford the initial upfront cost of a $100 pair of shoes. So we stay poor, because we’re forever using our only slivers of disposable income plugging the shoe-shaped holes in our lives. It’s impossible to ever save money, to ever work yourself out of the poverty pit. Because shoes.

Anyway, “shoes” is starting to not sound like a word, so I’m going to move on. TL;DR, bring on my first ever shift.

3.42 p.m.

The perks of spending half my life at the diner and being bought overpriced milkshakes by Ajita is that training is actually pretty straightforward. I already know the menu inside out, and also the price list, because that’s what happens when you have no mullah. You look at the price before the actual item.

Anyway, it transpires that the only thing I really need training on is the till system, but as a digital native who’s grown up with intuitive technology skills, it’s a breeze. So after three and a half hours of training, now I’m sitting in the back wolfing down some chili cheese fries. Betty never mentioned the free food! This changes everything. In fact, I might never leave the diner. I was here all the time anyway – at least now I’m getting paid for the privilege.

Once I get off break, I’m going to be shadowing another hostess just to get a feel for how she manages her section of tables, and I’ve also been charged with taking down the Christmas decorations when it gets quieter later. Part of me will be sad to see the derp elf go. He really does bring a certain level of festivity/insanity to proceedings.

Do we think anyone will notice if I leave him front of house to play hostess while I hide in a corner and work on my screenplay? If you strain extra hard, it does almost sound like he’s saying, “May I take your order?” instead of “herpy herr-lerr-durrrssss”.

Although if you don’t strain quite hard enough, it more resembles “herpes her like dicks”, so that’s perhaps a bit of a gamble. Back to the drawing board we go.

7.24 p.m.

So I’m crouched behind the tinsel tree, trying to find the best way to dismantle its clunky base, when Ajita and Meg arrive in the diner, greeted by the increasingly dogged drone of the derp elf.

The petulant third-grader inside of me is all, “RUDE! How dare they hang out without ME? I hope they both break out in hives!” And the even more petulant second-grader inside of me is all, “How dare Ajita give me shit for inviting Meg to act in our show, then betray me like this?”

In any case, even though they must’ve come in here to pay me a visit, they don’t see me wedged under the tree with my ass crack on display to every Google Earth drone in the state. Nor do they appear to be looking for me particularly hard. Instead they just park up in a booth nearby and chatter away about what burgers they’re going to order.

“I feel like you can’t go wrong with a chicken mayo,” Meg says. “I mean, usually I would posit that any and all lettuce has been summoned to this earth by Lucifer himself. But you can’t beat a bit of crunchy iceberg in a southern fried chicken burger.”

“Fair point,” Ajita agrees. “On behalf of vegetarians everywhere, I accept your stance that lettuce is the devil’s work. In fact, I believe every vegetable on this earth, up to but not including the humble potato, is just plain arrogant. Like, they know they’re nutritious. They know they’re better than you.”

I feel a sharp pang of . . . something. Maybe FOMO [Fear Of Missing Out, if we have any grandmas in the house], but I don’t know, it’s a little more than that. Why is this bothering me so much?

8.52 p.m.

Lol, never mind. Period just started. As you were.

9.04 p.m.

After I clear up the tinsel debris and whizz through the rest of the decoration removal, and obviously stop and say hey to Ajita and Meg for as long as possible without being hung, drawn and quartered by my manager, I head back to the kitchen with several buckets of potatoes to peel and leave in water for tomorrow, which is a great relief. I’m irritable and exhausted and my feet hurt from pounding hard tiles, so to be in a quiet corner of the kitchen alone is a blessing from above. Literally if you asked me whether I would rather have sex or peel vegetables right now, I would be elbow deep in potato skins before you’d even finished your sentence. [Does “elbow deep in potato skins” sound vaguely rude to you? Or am I just delirious at this point?]

Seriously, though, I have all new respect for Betty after just one shift. If my eighteen-year-old body is struggling by the end of a ten-hour shift, how must hers feel?

This is all just reinforcing the fact that I can’t possibly go to college come fall. I need to stay in this sleepy little town and work in the diner every day, so that Betty can finally retire in peace. I can write screenplays on my days off, or on my dinner breaks, or in the small hours of the morning while the rest of the town sleeps. Like some sentimental hipster type.

Oooooh, I might go full Romantic poet à la Samuel Coleridge. I mean, I’m not sure he moonlighted as a pancake chef, but he had the right idea. Do we know anyone who can hook a girl up with some opium?

10.59 p.m.

Sweet angel Carson Manning meets me after my shift to walk me home. He even brings me a leftover pizza from his own shift. A customer unfathomably ordered Hawaiian pizza, on account of the hallucinogens they were clearly under the influence of, then came to their senses and amended their order to the hugely preferable pepperoni pizza. But not before the chef had already put the first pizza in the oven. So now I have the original Hawaiian pizza in my possession, and I’m too hungry to shun the presence of pineapple on the world’s greatest food. [Well, world’s greatest food apart from nachos. Omg, are nacho pizzas a thing? If not, can we make them a thing? Who do I have to call to make this happen?]

“So how’d it go?” he asks as we walk side by side back to my apartment. He’s still in his pizza-themed polo shirt, though he’s thrown on a hoodie and a beanie hat to keep his noggin warm.

It’s still super cold out, but not too cold for me to practically inhale the first few slices of pizza. Carson holds the box open for me like it’s a silver platter while I cram fistfuls into my mouth.

“It was all right, I guess,” I say through a mouth of pineapple atrocity. “Angela seemed largely unimpressed by my character as a whole, but I think as long as I steer clear and mind my business, it’ll be fine. Plus, free food, so. Not too many complaints. Which is strange, because you know how much I enjoy the act of complaining.” I lick my fingers wolfishly.

As we keep walking through the frosty night silence blooms between us. And, as usual, my default reaction is to fill it with a joke or a story – anything to avoid awkwardness.

“So Ajita and Meg came by tonight,” I start, crunching through a pizza crust with more vigor than is strictly necessary. “Ajita had some interesting sentiments regarding the inherent arrogance of vegetables, though she made some allowances for potatoes. Your thoughts?”

As he always does, he considers this statement with utmost sincerity. “I concur, man, I concur. Like, have you even seen a parsnip? Ain’t no more high-and-mighty vegetable than a parsnip.”

I fumble in the box for another slice of pizza, and am mildly astonished that I’m down to the last piece already. My eating talents never fail to amaze me. “But you will concede that potatoes are, by and large, the humble champions of the vegetable arena? You know, in modesty terms.”

“I don’t see that they have a choice, my dude,” Carson says, shaking his head in mock sadness. “After all, intense modifications gotta be made to the humble potato in order to make it worth eating. Roasting, mashing, frying. A sorry state of affairs, man, and certainly nothing to brag about.”

My bad mood is evaporating with every step. I think part of me has always worried that I’d never find a guy whose sense of humor was as compatible with mine as Ajita’s. Like, what if you only get one soulmate, and my best friend is mine?

And yet every single second I spend with Carson reminds me that I’ve somehow hit the jackpot, and my boyfriend makes me laugh just as much as my favorite pal does. [Please hide the flaying equipment from Ajita. She is not above torturing me for the above statement.]

11.34 p.m.

Betty is asleep when I eventually get home, snoring like a manatee with a head cold. Although Carson offers to stay and hang out for a while, I can tell he’s just as wiped as I am, and looks pretty relieved when I give him a get-out-of-jail-free card. So we bid each other farewell at the gates, knowing we won’t get to smooch again until school on Monday.

This weekend marks a full two days of back-to-back shifts for both of us, and I’m already ready to drop at the mere thought. And also still feeling a little homicidal from earlier. Currently fantasizing about impaling Angela on a broomstick. [As Ajita suggests, my murder fantasies have definite Count Dracula vibes these days. Vlad the Impaler: the role model you never knew you needed.]

Still, I’m so nearly finished with the final screenplay edits, and I want to get the polished version to my agent before she inevitably realizes I am a fraud and drops me, so I decide to spend the next few hours putting in some more work.

My eyes sting with tiredness as I fire up my laptop. I consider making hot cocoa, but everything aches and the thought of doing anything physical, anything at all, is enough to make me give up and resign myself to a cocoa-free writing session.

Dumbledore curls up in my lap, sensing my exhausted, periody, done-with-the-world mood, and gently licks my knee as a means of easing the fury. This probably sounds gross, but in all honesty I will take any comfort I can get right now, even if it means having my stubbly legs moistened by a tiny canine tongue. I try not to think about the fact he’s probably just having a good suck because my skin tastes of diner grease and sweat. Yum.

At first, doing a round of dialogue polishing is like trying to get a post-rigor-mortis corpse to perform a limbo. [Good grief, my imagery is dark in this post. Send in the nuns, for I require a cleansing.] Usually I read dialogue aloud to myself to get a feel for what sounds natural and what sounds clunky and jarring, but since I don’t want to wake Betty, I have to settle for a low mumble, which does absolutely nothing to illuminate the subpar sentences. Le sigh.

After twenty minutes of quasi-productivity, I rub my sleep-deprived eyes and blink at the screen through the bursts of kaleidoscopic light caused by pressing my fingers into my eyelids with too much vigor. [Anyone else used to think they were the only ones who could do this? Or did I just suffer from snowflake syndrome as a child?]

My phone vibrates under the pillow, and I pull it out. A reply from Hazel Parker. The lump of defective muscle in my chest – commonly referred to as a heart in normal homo sapiens – twinges as I read.

Hey. Thanks so much for reaching out. It means a lot. Kinda feels like my life is over now, you know? I wanted to be a doctor. No med school will take me seriously after this. My parents won’t even look at me. I can’t stop crying. Can we meet? My friends have been awesome, but they don’t really get it :(

I do a funny little whimpering noise, and in the ultimate show of disrespect Dumbledore glares irritatedly up at me, furious that I dare interrupt his knee-sucking bliss, then leaps off the bed and makes a point of humping my stuffed teddy collection, looking me straight in the eye the whole way through. [Honestly, that dog has such an attitude problem at the moment. Total angsty Order of the Phoenix vibes.]

Swallowing the stubborn ice cube bobbing in my throat, I fire off a reply to Hazel, saying I’m more than happy to meet up outside of school and talk her through everything. Then I bury my face in my pillow and resist the urge to scream, digging my fingernails into my palm until hot crescents are burned into my skin.

The rage ebbing and flowing through me for the last few days won’t leave. I’m angry, angry for Hazel, angry at Danny, and angry at myself for not being to stop this happening again. And, to top it all off, my sausage dog is penetrating the ear of my favorite teddy bear.

After I regain a normal breathing rhythm, I turn my attention back to the screenplay, but the fury is like a dam for my creative energy. I can’t think past the scalding adrenaline, the uncomfortable edge it gives my heartbeat. The screen blurs. My pulse thuds. There’s an acrid, bitter taste in my mouth. Even as the least active person in the northern hemisphere, I have the sudden urge to throw something, to smash a plate, to punch a wall. Anything to let out some of this jagged energy.

Sunday 8 January

10.46 a.m.

After a long-ass Saturday spent working in the diner – thankfully without any major run-ins with Angela, the woman single-handedly keeping the town’s tanning salon afloat – I spend the rest of my Saturday night finishing up the remainder of my screenplay edits and sending them back to my agent.

I will literally never get tired of saying “my agent”. In fact, I may just start directing any and all enquiries I do not want to address myself to my agent instead. Izzy, would you please clean the burger-sauce spillage on Table Twelve? See my agent. Izzy, what’s the square root of an octagon? See my agent. Izzy, woof-woof-woof? See my agent. [That last one is Dumbledore asking me to take him out for a walk, in case you are not fluent in dachshund.]

This morning I treated myself to a lie-in until roughly nine thirty, at which point my darling grandmother decides to blare her 90s rap classics CD at full volume. I shit you not, the woman still has a CD player. I think Thomas Jefferson was the leader of the free world when she first brought it home. In fact, allow me to recount a charming conversation that took place roughly two weeks after she purchased it from a pawn shop for $1.50.

Me: Did you like the Ice Cube album I got you?

Betty: Mmmm, yes, very good.

Me: You didn’t listen, did you?

Betty: Well, I didn’t like to say anything, but . . .

Me: ???

Betty: It didn’t fit.

Me: What didn’t fit?

Betty: The CD you got me. It didn’t fit in the CD player.

Me: What are you talking about? All CDs are the same size??

Betty: Not the one you got me. It’s fat and has square edges.

Me: . . .

Turns out the crazy old bat hadn’t even taken it out of its case. She thought the case was the CD. I despair.

Anyway, the long sleep must’ve paid dividends in terms of melting away my anger, because I’m actually feeling refreshed and full to the brim of ludicrous jokes this morning. The last week has sapped my comedic energy somewhat, like a laughter leech. But now I’m back to best and ready to perform patronizing wildebeest impressions at the drop of a hat. [If you’ve never seen my patronizing wildebeest impressions I feel bad for you, son. I got ninety-nine problems but a gnu ain’t one? No, I don’t know what I’m talking about either.]

1.24 p.m.

Carson and I take Dumbledore for another walk in the park, except now that there are more than a few inches of snow on the ground, Dumbledore cannot actually touch the ground through said snow. He just kind of sinks into the powder with a disgruntled yelp. So really, a more accurate sentence would be “Carson and I take Dumbledore for a carry in the park.” I tuck him under my arm, dressed in his wizard’s robes, and he admires the view from a great height.

We reach the park and I wipe the snow from a bench, taking a seat with Dumbledore in my lap. He lies on his back and demands, with his eyes, that I tickle his tummy at my earliest convenience.

Carson begins immediately making a snow statue, compacting snowballs together to make . . . something. Really, it just looks like a pile of snow in a weird shape. Not that I don’t have full trust in his artistic abilities or anything.

“So how’re things going at home?” I ask Carson, Dumbledore squirming in creepy ecstasy.

“Not bad, not bad. Oh man, did I tell you Colbie’s super into basketball now?” He pounds snow into another tight ball and places it carefully. “Always stealing my jersey. Caught him checking himself out in the mirror while wearin’ it, even though it was down to his ankles. Five years old, man, and already thinks he’s the next LeBron.”

“That’s adorable. Has he ever, you know, played basketball?”

“Details.” Carson smirks, green hoodie making his eyes look even darker, and I honestly want to smooch his face off. “I’m savin’ up for one of those mini hoops for his bedroom wall. With the inflatable balls and whatnot. He’ll lose his shit when he sees it. Man, I can’t wait.”