What's a Girl Gotta Do? (18 page)

I bit my lip. This wasn't fair. None of this was fair. And I had no idea where it was coming from.

There was a silence, while I gripped Evie's hand. Amber coughed, looked embarrassed, and said, “Okay, so I'm done talking now, Drill Sergeant.”

“All right…so…” Evie took another bite of her sausage. I'd hardly eaten my food – it was probably getting cold. I felt sick. “Lottie Bottie?” Evie said. “It's your turn.”

Half of me wanted to just placate Amber, to smooth over this fight so I wouldn't have to worry about it any more. The other half wanted to demolish her own personality – give HER a little lecture on everything that's wrong with HER… see how she liked it.

Do I roll over or do I fight? With one of my best friends?

I chose a fifty-fifty response.

“I'm sorry, Amber, but I don't agree,” I said, forcing myself to look at her. She didn't seem surprised though. “Megan's seriously upset about something and I think it's really important that she tells someone about it. I'm not trying to frogmarch her to the police or anything – but, like, the other night, to me, that was a cry for help. You don't ignore those.”

“I didn't ignore—” she started, but Evie shushed her.

“Come on, Lottie's talking. And I've eaten the speaking sausage.”

“Thanks, Evie.”

The whole thing felt so forced, and I couldn't believe it had come to this. I couldn't even remember what I'd said in the pub toilets the other night. I certainly hadn't grabbed Megan in a headlock and shouted in her face… Not like Amber was making out.

“I really don't think I came on that strong,” I continued. “I'm not going to force her to do anything – but I am going to encourage her to open up.”

Amber opened her mouth to protest and I lost it then. Totally lost it. I burst into sobs – startling everyone. The rest of the cafe gaped at us. I was so exhausted, so fed up with having to keep it together. I seemed to be making an enemy of almost everyone at college, I couldn't make enemies of my best friends too.

“Can we please not fight?” I begged. “I honestly think it's so unfair, SO UNFAIR, that you're being so harsh with me. I haven't done anything wrong. And I've got enough on, Amber! This project – it's already killing me and I'm hardly halfway through…”

As I wiped away tears, I saw both Evie and Amber goggle at me – their mouths open. I don't tend to cry a huge amount, so I guess it's always a shock when I totally freefall.

“What?” Amber said. “But you seem fine.”

I shook my head miserably. “I'm not fine. It's horrid. It's okay when you guys are there, and the rest of the FemSoc girls. But I have to do a lot of it by myself, in class, with everyone staring at me. Everyone's rolling their eyes, like I'm nuts. And it's exhausting – there are so many bad things! I can't relax for a second. And I know I can't let anything pass, because everyone's looking at me, waiting for me to slip up, secretly hoping I'll fail so they can all jump on it and demolish me…” I thought of last night, and a big tsunami of extra crying hit me. “And now Will's dropped out, so we don't even have a cameraman.”

Their open mouths fell opener.

“What?” Amber said. “He's dropped out? Why?”

Evie was shaking her head. “That's so typical of him,” she muttered.

I nodded. “He quit last night… We went out for dinner, to celebrate the newspaper interview…then…we kissed… and now he's quit.”

Their mouths were like giant holes in their faces now.

“You kissed him?” Amber said.

“Why?” Evie asked. “I mean, like, why? It's Will.”

I shook my head into my hands, pressing my palms into my eyes to stop the crying. I felt so weak and stupid and miserable.

“I don't know. It just happened! You know I've got a soft spot for dramatic liaisons. All this stress must've caused a relapse.” I looked up, right at Amber. “I'm not that strong, Amber. I'm not… I thought maybe I was but this thing is cracking me up. So please don't start a fight with me, not now, not until this month is over. I'll lay off Megan. I don't agree with you, but I'll back off…”

Amber was smiling. Then she wasn't on the other side of the table any more. She was hugging me, getting her scarf in my fried egg.

“Oh, Lottie, you stupid thing. Why didn't you tell us you were finding it so hard?”

I squeezed her back in relief, in huge seeping blisters of relief. We hadn't sorted it, but maybe, just maybe, we could park it for now.

“I didn't realize until last night…then everything went wrong…”

Evie's arms were crossed. “I still can't believe you kissed Will!”

“Yes, I know. I'm a traitor.”

“No wonder he was in such a foul mood in film studies this morning.”

“He was?” Annoyingly I wanted to know. Some part of me inside stood on hind legs, panting for more knowledge. I pulled a face, trying to suppress it. Damnit – that meant I liked him. What was WRONG with me?

“Yes. Even more so than usual. Like, I know he's attractive and everything, Lottie. But seriously, do you think it's a good idea to be with someone like him? With all you're going through?”

“Yes, no! I know! Look, I'm not proud of myself, okay? You know what I can get like. Anyway, if it's any consolation, I pushed him off and called him a prick – does that help?”

The two of them grinned. “Mildly. Kissing him though… I thought you had better taste,” Amber said.

“Oi!” I bashed her with my elbow. “Does lecturing me on my taste in boys mean we've made up?”

She pretended to think about it, putting a finger to her chin, then grinned and hugged me again.

“You've got to tell us when you're hurting,” she said. Which I took as a yes.

“That's the point I'm trying to make about Megan,” I whispered, into Amber's bag. She went a bit stiff, then softened again. I knew then we were okay. The relief flowed through me like hot rain and – for the first time since the weekend – I felt like I had a scrap of fight left in me.

Evie, never wanting to be left out, joined in the hug. We split apart and returned to our breakfasts. My hunger had returned with a vengeance worthy of the Old Testament and I shovelled the almost-cold meat into my mouth with a lot of happiness.

Evie took a sip of tea. “Lottie,” she said gently. “If this project is upsetting you – you don't have to continue it, you know?”

“Yes.” Amber nodded. “We'll have your back – no matter what you decide.”

“It's not like we have a cameraman any more, anyway,” Evie added.

I put my knife and fork down, wiping my mouth with the flimsy paper napkin. “I can't, you guys. We've come so far…it's going to be in this week's newspaper, for God's sake.”

“So?” Evie shrugged. “It's not worth wrecking your health over.”

I chewed the inside of my lip. “Other feminists have put up with a lot worse,” I said. “Like the suffragettes – they got force-fed and jailed…”

And, in the end, it had all been worth it. This had to be worth it. It had to be. And now my friends were back on my side, I had the strength again. Strength to keep going.

“I'm fine, girls, seriously,” I said. “We can just record things ourselves on our phones. Screw Will…I can do this. It's only two and a half more weeks. Just, can you both promise not to get mad at me? At least until this is over? I can't do this without you.”

Evie squeezed my hand again, smiling all warmly, to promise she wouldn't.

Amber, however, was examining the bottle of ketchup.

“Amber?” I prompted. “Are we okay?”

She pulled a face. “Yes, well, I thought we were. But, Lottie, you've gone and nabbed all the ketchup!”

The rest of breakfast-lunch was good – well, after I'd gone up and asked for more ketchup. As we stood to pay though, I noticed the table by the front door. It was littered with tabloid newspapers – the cafe left them there each morning, for customers to read while they were eating.

Today's were typically terrible. Giant boobs on at least two front pages, under the pretence of news. I opened one up, and saw a barely-clothed woman practically on every page.

The girls halted when they saw what I was looking at.

There went the nice breakfast routine.

We didn't need to speak, they knew what I had to do. My stomach twisted in on its greasy contents…protesting
… Don't complain here, I like it so much when you come here.

But a deal was a deal was a deal.

Amber shook my shoulder in a comforting way.

“We've got your back, Lotts. Even if they won't let us come here again – do what you need to do. We're here.”

I let out a deep sigh, hugged them both.

Then I took the papers up to the nice old lady at the counter to complain about them.

thirty

The week went by easier with my two spinster pals by my side. And Megan was really starting to come out of her shell too. Our rule to only call out everything once made college less horrible. By the end of the second week, I'd pretty much honked my horn at every song on the jukebox, started rows with every teacher and, well, had more than a few run-ins with Teddy. He kept up the Gentleman flashmob for two whole days, until Megan had the genius idea of sneakily putting pink glitter in his top hat.

Will avoided me the entire week. I hardly saw him. Just a flash of his glasses one lunchtime, but by the time I looked properly, I could only see the back of his head slinking down the corridor.

I wasn't sure how I felt about what had happened. Gutted we'd lost such a good cameraman, but Megan had a surprisingly good eye. Especially when we spent one boring lunch hour at the newsagent having a honk-a-thon as we went through all the women's magazines.

“Look at this.” Megan pointed at one particularly bad weekly glossy, with her phone in the other hand. “They have an actual article here about this new eating disorder they've invented called ‘Health-orexia'. Because, you know, punning on anorexia is totally fine. Anyway, they've said how awful it is, and how this one woman actually died…but look…” She flipped the page. “Next page…look at this fashion shoot. YOU COULD FIT A THIRD LEG IN THE GAP BETWEEN THIS MODEL'S LEGS!? How is that not totally promoting eating disorders? What hypocrites!”

“Hello, Megan,” I said pointedly, blown back by the volume of her voice. Usually she half-whispered stuff.

She laughed and covered her mouth, blushing. “I'm sorry. You're rubbing off on me.”

“Don't apologize.” I was so happy to see her like this. “And you're right about the magazine.” I honked my horn and then apologized to Mr Keats, the shop owner, who I'd explained my project to. “It's like, dudes, pick a side. You can't be both!”

And we'd laughed, and my stomach had felt warm, with a new friend being made.

On Friday, things felt different.

The moment I walked into college, I felt eyes on me. Many of them. And people had mostly stopped staring after week one.

Evie and Amber both had first period free so I'd had to walk in alone. Which is normally fine, when people aren't staring at me.

What had happened now? What was wrong now? My world-weariness was back in an instant. I just wanted the weekend to come so I could hide – apart from going to Oli's party.

It didn't take me long to find the posters.

I'd forgotten the local newspaper came out on Fridays.

By the looks of the crappy photocopy tacked on the college corridor, good old Dan had given my story an entire page. But that was all I could really tell, as the rest of the photocopy had been altered by “hilarious” graffiti. The photo of me had a moustache and devil horns added – because Teddy
(it soooo had to be Teddy)
had the creativity of a shrew.

The headline had been pasted over too, with the “hilarious” alternative
LOCAL MAN-HATER SHAGS CATS
.

You know, actually? I had to admit that was pretty witty for Teddy.

I ripped the paper down off the wall. But, looking down the corridor, there were loads more. My heart just sort of…died then. It felt like it missed a few beats, and I wanted to lean against the wall and maybe cry. Because, you know what? I'd never been in a paper before. And yes it was only the crappy local, but now my first memory of this would always be that it was Photoshopped to make me look like an idiot and taped all over college.

I walked to my philosophy class – ripping each one down as I passed it, trying to ignore the looks, the whispers, the giggles. When I pushed through the door, Jane and Joel looked up – all pretending they didn't know. Jane smiled and beckoned me over, and I smiled and sat next to them.

“You all right, Cat Shagger?” Joel asked, just as Jane went, “Joel!”

He grinned and leaned back to retie his long ponytail. I grinned back.

“I'm good. Just…erm…sore…those cats can be really scratchy when they're in the mood.”

A few people behind me laughed, alerting me to the fact that the whole class had been listening in and knew everything. I plonked out my books, and kept myself to myself through the lesson. When the bell came, I went to seek Evie and Amber.

They were at our usual table with Oli, who'd moved his chair closer than necessary to Evie's. I waved at them, and they all waved back – Evie the most enthusiastically. She stood up, and waved something over her head.

It was the newspaper.

“You're famous!”

I signalled I'd seen her, then quickly grabbed a Coke from the machine. Lots of people were still looking at me. Some random yelled “CAT SHAGGER!” across the room and a wave of laughter rippled towards me. I felt a bit sick.

I took a deep slurp, the sugar and caffeine hitting my bloodstream, then sauntered over like nothing was wrong.

Evie was practically jumping up and down. “Lottie, you're famous! You're in the paper! I've never known anyone in the paper.”

“Yep, and I'm apparently a cat shagger,” I replied.

“What? Was it you that guy just yelled at?” Evie asked.

“Have you not seen these?” I reached into my bag and took out the collection I'd ripped down.

Amber grabbed one. “Oh my God, no! Who would do this? I bet it was Teddy, that little runt…”

I nodded sadly. “It was definitely Teddy. It's a miracle you guys haven't seen them. I only managed to de-poster the old building.”

Oli coughed – his face turning pink. “Umm, I took these down this morning.” He reached into his backpack, removing a hefty wedge of posters.

I picked one up. “You ripped these down for me?”

Oli turned red, and coughed again into his hand. “Yeah, well, they were all over the art block on my way to graphics this morning. And, well, I didn't think it was very nice, so I took them down and…phmfft—”

I was hugging Oli. I was already round the table, hugging him tight. He was pretty slender, so I'm quite sure I was hurting him.

“Thank you SO MUCH,” I said, finally letting him go.

He'd now turned purple, and when I risked a glance at Evie she was staring right at him, all sorts of longing and goo in her eyeballs. I could totally see what she saw in him. He just radiated goodness – and yes, though it shouldn't matter, he was very good-looking. All cheekbones and angles and green eyes – I mean who really has green eyes in real life? Oli did! He was too…tame for my liking, but I wished I could shove them together. Evie was definitely “well” enough for a relationship now, I reckoned – whatever “well” means. And Oli seemed much better too. I made it my secret mission to ensure they pulled at his upcoming party.

“It's okay,” he stuttered. “Any time…I think it's cool, what you're doing.”

That prompted Evie to get excited again. “Lottie, have you not seen the real newspaper story?”

I shook my head, taking another sip of my Coke and slumping in one of the uncomfortable canteen chairs.

“It's really good! Like,
really
good. I don't know what you said to that journalist, but he's not stitched you up ONCE.”

She dumped the paper in front of me, open to the page I was on. I was on page three – THREE! I looked good in the photo – that was the first thing I noticed because…well…cognitive dissonance. I was holding up one of Megan's amazing posters, and doing the “WE CAN DO IT” pose, from that Rosie the Riveter poster.

The headline was huge, and said:
TOP STUDENT TURNS FEMINIST FREEDOM FIGHTER
, and a smaller headline underneath read,
Schoolgirl Lottie spends a month fighting sexism to highlight how unequal our town is.

“Woah,” I said, “this is awesome.”

I was just about to start reading the actual article when two people arrived at our table. One very excited Megan: “Have you seen? My poster? They've used my poster!”

The other was – unexpectedly – Will.

He sat down next to me, all wound up, radiating energy. “Lottie, have you seen the coverage? It's brilliant! Even more so than I thought it would be.”

I raised an eyebrow and gave him A Look.

“Umm, Will, aren't you supposed to be avoiding me?”

He shrugged it off, fumbling to get out his camera. My stomach did all sorts of things it shouldn't. The fact he smelled incredible didn't help matters.

“I was,” he said, into his camera. “But I'm not any more.”

Evie was smiling. “Couldn't keep away from the glory, could we?”

Will ignored her, and began setting up.

“What are you doing?” I peered at the paper to see what had actually been written about me.

“I want to get a shot of you reading the news story for the first time.”

“Right…” Even though it wasn't very feminist, I started combing my hair with my fingers for the camera. “So, you're back in then?”

“Yep,” he answered, like there was no arguing about it.

“So, are you going to apologize then?”

He looked up at me – right into me. And the intensity of his eyes made my stomach have further quivers. Just a hint of his arrogant grin played on his top lip.

“Are you?”

God, he was good at this! At challenging me, at making me want to do things, despite all my moral objections. Why was power, and people not giving in to you, so annoyingly attractive?

I shook my head stubbornly, and he proper smiled then – like he didn't expect anything less.

“Well then, me neither. Now, come on, let's try to get this in one take.”

I'd forgotten, briefly, why we were all here, what this was all about. But I was snapped back to the present by Amber coughing violently and saying, “Sorry, excuse me, I'm just allergic to all the sexual tension in here.”

I scowled at her. Will's smirk grew smirkier. Evie pushed the paper towards me. “Go on then, read it! It's great!”

Aware that Will's camera was now running, I gingerly picked up the local newspaper and began to read aloud. “A determined schoolgirl has launched a month-long project, promising to call out every single incident of sexism she sees,” I began. I looked up. “That's an okay start, isn't it? Though I'm not sure why he's calling me a schoolgirl? I, like, turn eighteen in a month…anyway…” I turned back to it. “Pretty Charlotte Thomas says she hopes her Vagilante campaign will inspire a new generation of feminists, highlighting just how much girls have to put up with in today's society.” I slammed the paper down. “Pretty?!” I shouted. “Why the fuck has he mentioned that I'm pretty? What's that got to do with ANYTHING?”

Will's voice came out from behind his lens. “You're going to complain about the sexism in a complimentary article about you tackling sexism?”

I slammed the newspaper down again. “Too right I am! What the hell? Seriously?” I looked at it again, found another problematic sentence and jabbed my finger at it. “Oh my God, look here.” I went to read again, this time putting on a silly voice. “‘Lottie, who says she's currently single…' WHAT? Why has he even mentioned that I'm single?” I was turning red with pure rage. This was ridiculous. I kept rereading it to check I wasn't hallucinating due to too much Coke. I scanned the rest of the piece. There was good stuff, stuff I probably should've been really chuffed with – he'd spelled my name right, he'd put a full link to our channel and hashtag, he'd even written a breakout box detailing the history of feminism! And yet, yet, sexist words kept peppering all this good work. I looked right into the lens. “This is really disappointing.”

“Most people would be pleased with that sort of coverage, Lottie.”

“I get that,” I said. “But do you not see how it's ruined? It's like he listened to everything I said and then totally ignored the thing I'm fighting against! Did he think just because he's given my cause all this positive publicity that it's okay to make judgements on my appearance? To tell everyone I don't have a boyfriend? Would I have been put on such a prominent page if I had a face like a baboon's arse with explosive diarrhoea?” Evie winced at that description. “Or would they have shoved me at the back with the announcements? If I was fat would I have even been put in the paper at all?”

Evie grabbed the paper back and checked the copy herself.

“Oh God, you're right. Sorry, I didn't read it properly. I just got so excited that you were in the paper.”

I dug out one of Teddy's doctored versions and held it up to the camera. “At least it's nicer than this one, that's been plastered all over college.”

Will's camera clattered to the table. “What the heck is this?” He stared at it like it was contaminated.

“You mean you've not seen them?” I tried to keep my voice chirpy, though, to be honest, just a glance at one made me want to go to bed for a very long time.

“Who did this?” The veins on his annoyingly fit forehead were bulging, as were the veins on his annoyingly strong-looking clenched fists.

I shrugged, pretending it was nothing.

“Who do you think?”

“Have you told Mr Packson?”

“No, not yet.”

Amber was scrutinizing it now, her eyebrows drawn together. “How does one even go about shagging a cat? I mean, I don't know if it's humanly possible.”

And with that awful mental image in mind, we started to laugh at the ridiculousness of it. I looked at them all, Megan still saying, “Well, I'm sorry, but I'm pretty chuffed my poster is in the paper.” Evie and Oli pretending they weren't looking at each other. Amber sketching a speech bubble onto Teddy's doctored posters that said,
How does one even shag a cat?
And, Will, who'd picked up his camera and put it away – and was just giving me this look. Unashamedly. Like he liked me. Like the being angry at me part was over.