What's a Girl Gotta Do?

by Holly Bourne

  “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.

  With all of them around me, my team, my crew, the pain from that morning lessened. I knew it would come back. But, for now, we just all laughed. And I felt like I could get through the afternoon – which was a start…

  thirty-one

  We got ready for Oli’s party at Amber’s house.

  “Now…” I sat Evie down so I could apply her eyeliner for her. “Here’s what you need to do. You get there, tell him his birthday present is outside, take him down an alleyway, then shove your tongue into his mouth.”

  She winced so much she messed up the perfect cat-flick I’d created.

  “Lottie, no! I am more romantic than you.”

  “Megan? What do you think?”

  I heard her giggle behind me. “I think only you could have the confidence to pull that off.”

  I grinned, and licked the end of a cotton bud to wipe off the wonky bit. “How is that not romantic anyway?” I asked Evie.

  She eyed the cotton bud. “Please don’t put your spit on my face.”

  “Oops, sorry, I forgot.” I went and got a fresh one, dipping it carefully into eye-make-up remover this time.

  Evie saw the guilt on my face. “Sorry. I just…you know…” She looked up at Megan, who was suitably confused. “Oh, I have OCD,” she explained. “I’m all right, but I’m not the biggest fan of germs.”

  “A year ago I would’ve loved to have heard that,” Evie said, smiling beneath me, the brave wonderful guru that she is. “But I’m getting better at being open about it.”

  “To be honest,” I butted in. “I don’t think people without OCD fancy my gob on their face.”

  Megan winked. “Will does.”

  I wiped up the smudge and climbed off Evie to get mascara. My heart did this annoying flutter when Megan mentioned his name but I pushed it back where it came from. It was nice to have Megan here – she’d agreed to come after I’d found out The Imposters had a gig somewhere else that night.

  “I think Will would snog himself if he could.” He definitely would as well. In fact, I was sure he’d kissed himself in the mirror at least once. He’d actually been round mine till late the previous night. The newspaper article had got him super excited, and he’d wanted to edit my response to it right away. We’d spent the night sprawled on our stomachs – refreshing the newspaper’s website. My story, by ten p.m., had become their most viewed article.

  “This is the start, Lottie,” Will’d kept saying. “This is the start.”

  Hits on our channel had doubled too
, and kept climbing. By the time it got to midnight we were practically asleep, in semi-spoons on my bed, lazily refreshing the counter. We hadn’t kissed again. But we also hadn’t had another fight…

  I hadn’t looked at the views today though. I honestly, really, wanted a day off. I’d hardly left the house all day, sleeping in late, and then trying to get all my art coursework done to keep Dad off my back. I’d pulled a few late nights and he’d noticed the light on under my door when he got up to go to the loo once. There’d been another Talk.

  “Will would definitely snog himself…” Evie paused. “I bet he’s tried to suck himself off,” she added thoughtfully.

  My mouth dropped open.

  “Evie!”

  She looked up, all innocent. “What?”

  “It’s just…I never…” Rude things didn’t come out of Evie’s mouth, like, ever. She was insanely well-mannered, and hardly ever swore.

  “Megan, did this just happen? Did you just hear what I heard?”

  Megan had actually put her hairbrush down in shock. “I heard.”

  “What? He blatantly has!” Evie protested.

  I dropped the mascara. “We need to tell Amber about this. Instantly.” I climbed off her lap and went for the bedroom door.

  “You can’t!” Evie called after me. “She’s videotiming with Kyle.”

  “He needs to know this too.”

  I bashed out of Amber’s door and followed her voice to her dad’s bedroom. He and Amber’s stepmum were both out, and had taken her bratty little brother with them.

  I heard an American accent floating through the door and smashed through it excitedly.

  “Guess what!” I announced to the back of Amber’s head. “Evie just said something DIRTY!”

  “Hang on,” Amber said. I took that as an invitation to come crashing alongside her, and waved madly into her computer.

  “HI, KYLE. YOU’RE LOOKING VERY AMERICAN TODAY!”

  There was an exceedingly good-looking boy on Amber’s screen – all white teeth and strong of jaw. Kyle – who was used to me invading their private video conversations by now – smiled, showing off more white teeth and waved.

  “Well, hello, Lottie.”

  “CAN I TELL YOU WHAT RUDE THING EVIE SAID?”

  At that, Megan and Evie appeared at the door. Megan holding herself up against the door frame with laughter, Evie with only one eye done. “Hey, it wasn’t THAT rude.”

  Amber and Kyle managed to share a look between them, even while thousands of miles apart.

  “What did she say?” Amber pulled them both in so Kyle could see them too.

  I could see Evie turning bright red on the tiny square of us at the bottom of the screen. “She said Will was so in love with himself, she thinks he’s probably tried to give himself oral sex.” I waited for a reaction. When I didn’t get enough of one, I yelled, “SHE USED THE PHRASE – SUCKING HIMSELF OFF.”

  “What?” both Kyle and Amber said at the same time.

  “Have you been drinking?” Kyle asked.

  Evie nodded, all ashamed of herself. “Just some wine… and well…some more wine.”

  We’d shared three bottles between us getting dressed. It was mostly, well, entirely, my fault. I’d stolen them off my parents, from their huge store under the kitchen sink, and had had almost a whole bottle to myself.

  Kyle’s all-American smile beamed at us through the internet connection. God, Amber was lucky. Okay, so her gorgeous hunk of a boyfriend lived thousands of miles away, but he was still one gorgeous hunk of a boyfriend. “You wasters,” he laughed. Then he spotted Megan, who was barely in the frame in the corner. “You must be Megan,” he boomed in his deep voice. “Amber’s been telling me all about you.”

  “Hi.” Megan blushed instantly, as Kyle really did have that effect on people. “Nice to meet you. Does this count as meeting you?”

  “I think so. How d’ya do?”

  Amber snorted. “Kyle, you really do say the most American things sometimes.”

  “What?” He lifted up his arms and I tried not to look because you shouldn’t really fancy your friend’s boyfriends if you can possibly help it. “Who’s Will anyway, Lottie?”

  “Lottie’s new conquest,” Amber answered. “He’s the cameraman for this project I was telling you about.”

  Kyle nodded. “Oh yeah, Lottie. Amber said. That sounds awesome.”

  Did I mention Amber’s gorgeous hunk of a boyfriend is a gorgeous FEMINIST hunk of a boyfriend?

  “THANK YOU,” I yelled. Because I always get a bit excited in the presence of Kyle. “And Will is NOT my conquest.”

  “He so is,” Amber said.

  “Definitely is,” Evie agreed.

  “Completely is,” Megan added.

  “He’s not!” Though part of me liked them ribbing me about him, it made everything more real. But it couldn’t be real. He was so argumentative.

  Kyle looked unconvinced. “I think the lady doth protest too much,” he said, in the worst British accent the world has ever known.

  “Kyle!” Amber waved her finger at the screen. “We’ve had words about that accent.”

  Evie, Megan and I eventually decided to leave them and returned to preening ourselves. Amber, when in America, had been educated by Kyle in the wonders of country music and had brought back loads of new bands for us to listen to. We were currently obsessed with one in particular called the Dixie Chicks and played one of their albums for Megan. Though they had this one song called “Goodbye Earl” where they murder their mate’s abusive husband that I skipped past. We flicked our hair, and poured more wine and sang along at the tops of our voices.

  I was quite drunk.

  I don’t drink to get drunk usually. Evie, and particularly Amber, were way worse than me. I usually only had two, to feel all warm and buzzy, but then would get excited by whatever was happening and forget to drink any more. But everything had been so nuts – I just wanted to forget and be in the present, to have fun to…whoops, I’d just knocked Amber’s precious face powder onto the carpet with my arse.

  “Shit,” I stumbled about, trying to get all the powdery bits back in.

  Evie was at my side. “She’s going to kill you!” She and Megan bent down to help me. “This is the pricey one, the only shade pale enough to match her face.”

  “Shut up and help me hide the stain with a cushion.”

  It was easy enough, hiding stains in Amber’s room – this stain just blended into all the other pre-existing stains. Amber was famously a slob – her room always decorated with half-eaten sandwiches, drying plates of oil paints, empty crisp wrappers. We’d just scattered a scatter cushion over it when Amber emerged, her eyes all pink.

  “You okay?” I stood up to hug her, feeling guilty about the powder, though not guilty enough to tell her.

  “Yeah,” she said, her voice a bit snotty. “It’s just…well…shitty…I miss him.”

  “It must be so difficult. I miss his arms already and I only saw them a few minutes ago.”

  Amber pulled back, grinning. I mentioned Kyle’s arms a lot. To be honest, they were A-MAZ-ING. “Honk yourself, you perve.”

  “Argh, okay then.” I dug around in my bag to pull out my trusty horn. I tripped over a pile of clothes as I tooted it, yelling, “Men shouldn’t be objectified either, not even with arms like Kyle’s.”

  We all laughed. Amber picked up the wine bottle, complained at how little was left, and emptied the rest of it into the plastic beakers she’d brought up from the kitchen. She drained hers and wiped her mouth.

  “Have you seen how many hits the videos are getting? I was just telling Kyle, and we checked. Lottie, it’s well over ten thousand.”

  My small intestine twisted in on itself. Though maybe it was my large, I had no clue which intestine was where. This was a good thing! A Good Thing. So why did I feel only dread?

  “Really?” I feigned interest. “Do you have any more wine?”

  Amber’s face screwed up. “
Aren’t you excited? I mean, this is good news! The word is getting out there.”

  I nodded vigorously. It made my head swim. “Yeah, it’s great. I just fancy a night off, you know?”

  Evie, who was moussing her hair upside-down in a doomed attempt to give it more volume, whipped her head back up. “I thought the whole point is there is no night off?”

  I nodded again. Oww. Whoosh whoosh whoosh.

  “I know. I get that. If I see anything, I’ll call it. That’s the point. But, like, I also want to have fun, you know? Hey! You know what we’ve not done in ages?”

  “What?” Megan asked, as Amber and Evie shot each other a look – one that probably suggested they were worried about me, but I’d forgotten the thought the moment I’d started having it…

  “Just hung out and not talked about feminism.” I was gabbling. “Let’s do that soon! Just, you know? Chill out. Eat some cheeeeeeese.”

  “But, Lottie, the whole point of this project is we talk about feminism,” Amber said. She and Evie were DEFINITELY giving each other a look now. Megan looked a bit lost, her expression the one you get when you realize you’re not as close to a group of people as they are to each other.

  “Yeah, well…it would be nice to, you know? Just have a night off…nothing…forget it…Amber, do you have any wine?”

  I wasn’t sure what I was saying. What I was doing. Amber, maybe reluctantly, I couldn’t tell, went and stole some cherry brandy from the back of her dad’s drinks cabinet. And I had two shots. Maybe three…well four…when the others weren’t looking. Are you supposed to do brandy in shots? I just felt…tired…of feminism. I know. If you’re tired of feminism, you’re tired of life – or maybe that’s just London? And I never thought I would be. I always had such a fire in my belly – burning burning burning, oww, well, maybe that particular part of my stomach was the brandy…but now I just wanted to not care. I had feminism fatigue. Hey – that’s cool! Alliteration! I freaking LOVE alliteration. And, oh, where are my shoes? Is it really time to leave already? God, it’s cold outside. Good thing I’m forced to wear these thick tights – to cover up my hairy legs.