What's a Girl Gotta Do? (15 page)

I smiled sadly. “What happened to make you feel it was worth trying to fight?” I asked, choosing my words carefully. “What made you think it had…a point, I guess?”

She folded the scarf smaller and I wondered if I was going to piss off both my best friends in one evening. “I didn't,” she answered simply. “For a long time I didn't feel there was any point in trying to get better, I was so convinced I never would be better. It seemed too huge, too insurmountable. But then, Sarah – you met Sarah, right?”

I nodded. Sarah was Evie's CBT therapist and the one who invited Amber and me to visit her in hospital.

“Well, Sarah said something one day. She said, ‘You may as well try, Evie. It can't hurt.' And I realized she was right. Yes, trying was exhausting and hard and meant doing everything I didn't want to do and it seemed horribly pointless putting myself through all that if I didn't believe it would make any difference. But then, actually, I wouldn't know if I didn't try. So I started trying. And, yes, for ages it felt useless. But then, day by day, I noticed a few things began to give…”

I perched on the side of the chair, knowing we shouldn't take much longer. It was cold out, and it looked like Amber and Will had successfully manhandled Megan out of the pub.

“Are you having a crisis or something?” she asked, nudging me with her butt. “Is All Powerful Lottie having a blip?”

I shrugged. “Maybe. I don't know. It's just – what Megan's going through is so huge, and so awful, and she won't even talk about it. And I thought today would help but…what's a few hidden tubes of cellulite cream against that?” I found my voice catching and I felt even madder at myself. My tears weren't appropriate here, this wasn't my drama. It was Megan's and I felt like I was thieving it. But I couldn't help it. I felt helpless and distraught by what she was going through. By the fact loads of girls have shitty things happen to them and don't tell a soul.

“Do you remember, earlier this year, when you made us read
The Female Eunuch
for the Spinster Club?” Evie asked.

I nodded.

“Well, I have to admit, I didn't finish it all. It was HARD, Lottie. I only have a few GCSEs, remember? But anyway the bits I read and could understand were really good. And there was this one quote I kept coming back to. Especially when Teddy and his mates were so horrid to us about the jukebox thing. I can't remember the quote verbatim, but it said something about how society can't be changed in a lifetime. That so many people who fight for what's right won't see the results of their efforts before they die.”

“Great – thanks, that's a cheerful thought,” I laughed.

“I've not finished,” Evie said. “But it says, you've still got to believe you're making a difference and place your hope in it. And think about it – think of all the great freedom fighters we've had, and how they never got to see how monumental they were. Martin Luther King, Mary Wollstonecraft, Emmeline Pankhurst… They'd be delighted if they could see how things are now. How much the fires they lit have spread.”

“They'd also be depressed at all the work left to do.”

“God, you're grumpy today!” Evie stood up. “That too. But they did change things. They had hope and belief they would, and they did. And have you thought, maybe all the things we fight against – people like you, me, and FemSoc and all the FemSocs around the country – that maybe we won't see the change straight away, or at all? But we will have left ripples and some people somewhere in the future will be glad for our ripples and inspired to make their own.”

I felt warm for the first time since Megan left the table. “Why are you so wise?” I asked her, looking up in awe.

“Years and years of therapy.”

twenty-four

It took quite some time to get Megan home.

She was exceedingly drunk, even after all the vomming. I was still bewildered as to how she'd managed it without our noticing.

“I'm sorry, I'm so sorry,” she repeated into Will's shoulder.

Will – to give him credit – essentially carried her home, telling her it was fine, even getting her to laugh at herself through the sobs.

Amber and I didn't talk the whole way back. Tension crackled between us and, after initially feeling upset about it, now I felt mad. Why was she being so aggressive?

It was Amber who rang Megan's doorbell and explained everything to her parents while the rest of us shivered around the corner. I peered through a hedge and watched the porch of Megan's house get flooded with orange light as the front door opened. It made Amber's ginger hair look even more ginger. Megan's mum – from what I could see – didn't even look shocked. She just nodded while I watched Amber explain, and then reached out and took Megan's hand tenderly – bringing her in for a hug. Amber waved, then the door closed and she walked back towards us.

“How did it go?” I asked.

Amber, infuriatingly, just nodded and said, “Fine.” Not offering up any more explanation. Well, I wasn't going to ask for one.

Evie's head was tennis-ing from me to her, her to me, chewing her lip – knowing something was up.

“Well, I'm just round the corner.” Amber stretched her arms up. “See you guys at college on Monday?”

I nodded, Evie did too. Will coughed, to remind us he was there maybe.

“You've got your interview with the local paper on Monday after school,” he reminded me.

“That's so cool.” Evie's voice was a bit too cheery to compensate for all The Atmosphere.

“Hopefully…” I said. Amber didn't say anything. Seriously – what had I done?

“Well, good work today, chaps,” Evie said – still trying to be chipper. “I better get back though. You know what Mum's like…”

We all waved and dispersed. Will actually lived quite near me and headed off in the direction I was supposed to, but I felt like being alone, so I walked the wrong way for a while. My chat with Evie had lightened me a little, but I still felt weird and lost and overwhelmed and totally confused about Amber.

I knew I should message her. Get it all out. Make it better. But I was too exhausted. The day's activities – the adrenalin, the week I'd had – it just sort of piled on top of me, making me too weak for any kind of conflict. Even healthy
let's-get-it-out-in-the-open
conflict.

I walked with my arms crossed – keeping my eyes down to avoid any sexism I might inadvertently see. No energy for that either.

Mum and Dad weren't in when I got home. A scribbled note from Mum told me she was at the centre and Dad was at the pub with friends. It was only early evening but it felt later. The night was already black, everyone's curtains closed.

I had so much coursework to do, but I didn't do any of it.

I really should've sent Amber a message but I didn't.

I fired one off to Megan.

Hey, you were so much help today, thank you! Hope your head is all right tomorrow x

A gloom seeped through me – one I wasn't used to. I'm not a sad person. I'm usually upbeat and perky. But this new gloom found me and infiltrated its way through my nervous system, shutting everything down.

Was today worth it? Would it make a difference? Why didn't I have any energy to mend things with Amber? And, at the back of everything, the biggest nagging gloom. Was I choosing The Project over the rest of my life? And if so, what did that mean? Cambridge and getting into it felt so far away in that moment – like a tiny speck on a horizon filled with this project and what it meant and how much energy it was taking from me. Energy that I knew, ideally, I should be saving for Cambridge, saving for my future, giving myself a chance to get into a position where I could really change things.

When my phone buzzed, I jumped on it. Hoping it was Amber – hoping she was making the first move, hoping she had the energy to do what I didn't.

It wasn't Amber.

It was Will.

The footage from today is incredible!

And a tiny speck of gold sparked in amongst the gloom.

I grinned before hitting reply.

WEEK TWO

twenty-five

The local news reporter wasn't how I expected him to be at all.

I'm not sure what I was expecting – but when this young guy, with Prince Charming hair and a cheap shiny suit turned up – I was suitably surprised.

“Hi, Charlie, is it?” He shook my hand aggressively, squeezing so tight the veins bulged out a little.

“Umm, Lottie.”

“Oh yeah, of course.” He made no eye-contact, giving me no confidence that he'd heard my correction. He looked over my head at Will. “And this must be your partner in crime, am I right?”

Will reached out and shook his hand. “Will,” he introduced himself. “Thanks for coming.”

We beckoned him over to the tables we'd set up in the library. I'd agreed it with Mr Packson. The interview would take place at college, as that would be the best place for photos. Also, it gave “Dan, I'm Dan, great to meet you” a chance to get some quotes from the college too. The library was empty, college hours over. A hard day at college over. Megan was pretending nothing had ever happened involving wine or crying. Whenever I tried to bring it up she lurched into an unrelated conversation, or pulled out a new design idea. Amber was still frosty as hell with me, and it made me frosty in return. Why was she choosing the hardest month of my life to suddenly make some kind of point about my personality? Evie – stuck in the middle – had spent the day navigating between us both. Keeping up a hubbub of pointless conversation, making us sit with Jane and Joel, so the extra company could defuse the crackling atmosphere. It was useful. But all I really secretly wanted was for her to whisper over to me, “Amber's being an unreasonable cow, don't worry, you're my favourite.”

But she didn't.

It hadn't helped my mood that Teddy and his mates had come in wearing matching T-shirts with
MENIMIST
emblazoned across them. Or how loudly some girls in the canteen had laughed at them, giving me horrible looks when I honked my horn, and muttering loudly, “She's pathetic.”

So that had been today. Now the journalist was settling himself down across the table. I could smell soured coffee on his breath. He pulled out an old-skool ringbound notebook, flipped it open, took the biro out from behind his ear and levelled me with a smile with underhints of lots of things…

“So, Charlie.”

“Lottie.”

“Yes, of course, sorry. So, Lottie, what gave you the idea to start such an…interesting campaign?”

I suddenly felt nervous. Everything I said was going to be recorded and used, and surrounded by text I didn't write and couldn't control. I had to make every word count.

I ran my hands through my hair, levelled him with my best Lottie stare – the one I knew had people eating out of my hands – and said, “Because I couldn't take it any more.”

His pen started moving across his notebook. “Take what?”

“Any of it. All of it.”

“I see… All of what?”

I took a deep breath and I began to tell him everything. Right from the beginning. But not the van men beginning – the real beginning. I told him about how my auntie on Dad's side always bought me dresses for my birthday – when I hated wearing them as a kid. How I was told I had to wear them, to be polite, and I wasn't allowed to run around and play football with my cousins. How my dad's family still can't get over the horror that Mum and I don't have his surname – thinking Mum somehow tricked him into this, rather than it being their joint decision. I told him how, before I'd even left primary school, I'd get vans honking me when I walked the short journey home because I got boobs early. I told him how ashamed I felt when my body hair appeared – how I knew, without even discussing it, that I needed to get rid of it. I told him how, literally every summer, I feel sick about showing off my body, as it will never be good enough. I told him about how, at my old school, one lunchtime when it was raining, all the boys lined all the girls up in order of who had the nicest arse and none of us even thought to complain about it. That everyone is surprised that I'm smart, because I'm pretty, and you can't be both without people distrusting you. I told him how I'm regularly called a slut and a whore because I've had more than one boyfriend – while, if I was a guy, I'd be a legend or a pro. I told him how I never feel safe walking alone. How at least once a day, I have a conversation where a guy's eyes wander to my chest and it makes me feel dirty. I talked and talked and talked and he scribbled and scribbled and scribbled.

Eventually I ran out, and I said, “And I've been lucky, I live in this country. I've had a relatively undramatic upbringing. Think how much worse it is for other girls… So, one day, I just knew I couldn't take any more. I had to do…something. And making all this stuff just…more visible, so everyone who tries to ignore it can't ignore it any more, is doing something.”

There was a pause while he caught up his shorthand – weird symbols appearing over his notepad.

“Yes, right…wonderful…” he murmured, noting it all down. Then he looked up and grinned. “That was all brilliant, Charlie…”

“Lottie,” Will corrected him this time.

“Yes…brilliant… I mean, I only have three hundred and fifty words to play with, but that was very…colourful.”

I could feel that he didn't get it then and panic set in. He was a journalist, and he didn't get it. I had to make him understand… I had to get through somehow.

“What's it like, being a journalist?” I asked him and he looked up, surprised.

“Aren't I the one who's supposed to be asking the questions?” His grin was quite smarmy.

“I guess. I just wondered. It sounds like such a cool job…”

Will made eyebrows at me, obviously thinking I was off topic. But I wasn't. I was winning him over – I was good at winning people over. And I needed this disinterested man to be on my side.

“It can be cool. It can be a lot of hard work.”

“What's your career aim?” I crossed and uncrossed my legs – leaning forward with apparent interest. “Like, do you always want to work at the
Gazette
?” I wrinkled my nose to show how distasteful I thought the whole thing was – though, secretly, I've always loved our local paper. There's such a charm to it. I always skim through it over breakfast when Mum and Dad leave it out – laughing at the crappy stories like cats being rescued from burning fish and chip shops, residents posing with their arms out in anguish at all the potholes. I felt a mixture of relief that we lived somewhere so safe and undramatic, and yet also stifled and stale that we lived somewhere where literally nothing happened.

“Umm, no. Not for ever,” Dan admitted, mirroring my body language, which everyone knows means you're winning. “I want to work on the nationals.”

An ambition. I could work with this.

I shrugged. “So why don't you?”

He laughed then. “It's not that easy, is it?”

“Why not?”

He leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms up to reveal small sweat patches. He'd apparently forgotten quite quickly it was supposed to be him interviewing me. It must get boring though, always being the one asking the questions, never the one answering them.

“Well, it's very competitive,” he said. “They want you to do shift work. But the pay's terrible, and they start you on nights. But, like, the only way to get up to London is by train and, of course, they don't run through the night. So you have to live in London really.” He sniffed hard. “And, yeah, well, I can't afford to live in London on the terrible pay… I did a few shifts for a national the other month. I slept on a mate's floor, under the dining table. Used my annual leave from the paper as well. Caned it hard… When a job came up I was certain it was mine but…”

“But…” I leaned forward and opened my mouth just a little, ignoring Will who seemed bewildered and annoyed.

“But, well it went to this guy whose uncle worked there. Can you believe it? Of course
I
could. It's very elitist you see, journalism. Everyone helping the same people up, you know? The person who got it had been working there for free for seven months. Seven months! He could afford to work for free that long. He stayed in his uncle's house, rent free of course.”

I blew up my fringe. “That's so unfair.” I sounded suitably outraged. To be fair, I
was
suitably outraged. Though I couldn't help but bitterly think, I bet it's even harder to get a job in the nationals if you're a woman.

“Yes. Totally unfair. But what can you do?” He looked less smarmy and more sad by the second. This was my moment…to make him realize we were the same really… just with different aims.

“You can fight,” I said. “You can stand up to it, call it out. Say it's wrong.”

Dan looked genuinely confused by the notion. “What? I couldn't. I'd never work again. I'd screw up my future.”

I moved my own body away now – playing the space between us. I looked out the window, stuck out my bottom lip. “I'm worried I'm already screwing up my future by doing this project. I don't have time for coursework. My grades are suffering.” They were…they really, really were…I couldn't even think about it, it made me feel so ill. I'd got another B that morning. It was one mark off an A but still… “Lots of people at college are taking the piss out of me. I'm supposed to be preparing for my Cambridge interview but I don't have any time for that either… But if there's something not right in the world, you have to fight. Otherwise, what? You're just saying it's okay that this happens…” I looked back at him, right into his tired-looking watery eyes. “It's really wrong what happened to you,” I said, so sincerely, so heartfelt. “I'm so sorry.”