First published in Great Britain in 2019

by Electric Monkey, an imprint of Egmont UK Limited

The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN

Text copyright © 2019 Laura Steven

First e-book edition 2019

ISBN 978 1 4052 8862 0

Ebook ISBN 978 1 7803 1824 0

www.egmont.co.uk

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and the copyright owner.

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Hello. Again.

Hello again, my dear pals. Turns out that several of you are actually quite interested in the utter debauchery and chaos that is my life, including but not limited to: international sex scandals, kissing beautiful brown boys, and overzealous eyebrow tweezing. This interest comes as quite a surprise, on account of Ajita telling me roughly fourteen times per day how dull I am, and yet here I am, gallivanting bravely onward, hoping that I haven’t somehow run out of jokes in the two months since my last blog post.

On account of the fact I have the memory span of a pair of oven mitts, and I’m willing to bet a bunch of you guys are in the same forgetful boat, I thought [read: my editor thought] it would be a cool idea to do a recap of what happened last time we hung out.

If I was in any way a skilled author, I would attempt to weave all this seamlessly into the first quarter of the book, but since I’m essentially just copy and pasting my old blog posts into a Word document and adding valuable retrospective insights in square brackets, the weaving seemed like a lot of hard work. So, as ever, I’m taking the easy option, but this also makes it the easy option for you, dear reader, and consequently we now all have more time for the important things in life, like laughing and nachos. Cool? Cool.

1. Things started out pretty normal. By pretty normal I mean I was an impoverished orphan living with my eccentric grandmother Betty and our wiener dog named Dumbledore. You know, the way all classic fairy tales start out.

2. And then the Big Bad Wolf ate Betty and stole her identity. Wait, no, that’s not right. Gimme a sec.

3. Ah yes. My charming little friendship tripod, comprising of me and my best friends Ajita and Danny, was thrown into a tailspin when Danny decided that after eighteen years of watching me poop on FaceTime he was in love with me. A sentiment I did not reciprocate – I was about as attracted to Danny as I am to coffee tables, which is precisely not at all. However, this did not stop him from attempting to buy my affections with all manner of gifts, including but not limited to fancy chocolate, Coldplay tickets, and the classic “please-fall-in-love-with-me-and-suck-my-penis-at-your-earliest-convenience” flowers.

4. Around the same time this unrequited love business was going down, I slept with Zachary Vaughan, a Republican senator’s son, on a garden bench at a party. Oh, also I slept with another dude that night, Carson Manning. He and I are now in a relationship, but that is by the by.

5. Anyway, senator’s son. A few days later, I sent him a nude picture, because I wanted to, which should not be too difficult for you to grasp. Then, along with a candid in-situ photo taken mid-hump on the garden bench, someone leaked said nudey pic online, creating a charming website called Izzy O’Neill: World Class Whore. This is a completely a-okay thing to do, since there are no laws against revenge porn in my state. [Revenge porn: the practice of distributing intimate or explicit photos or video of someone without their consent. Just as an FYI.]

6. Said senator’s son received little to no backlash for said nude picture, because that is the way of high school and also of the world. He also performed a catastrophic cafeteria speech declaring his innocence, which ended up being filmed [because high school] and sent to local media outlets. And since his dad is, you know, his dad, a Republican senator and all-round dick, the footage immediately went viral quicker than, I don’t know, the bubonic plague.

7. The website creator turned out to be Danny. I mean, looking at it all laid out like this, it was pretty obvious all along. But, as you may remember, I am not the sharpest erection in the shed/brothel. Conveniently, it took me roughly the length of one book to figure out my jilted best friend was behind the vicious website.

8. Some other stuff that happened: I accidentally outed my other best friend Ajita and nearly destroyed our relationship forever. But miraculously she forgave me, and together with our new friend Meg we launched a platform called Bitches Bite Back aimed toward calling out all the misogyny and nonsense we face on a daily basis.

9. I signed with a hotshot screenwriting agent in LA after being kicked out of a comedy-writing competition because of the nude pic’s media coverage. Huzzah!

10. And I finally learned to open up about my feelings and stop using humor as a defense mechanism. As you can tell by this super-serious and not at all sarcastic introduction, it’s going great.

So settle in, folks, for we’re about to embark on another awkward (and oftentimes calamitous¹) adventure together. And who knows? Maybe I’ll actually get round to telling you the story about the old folks’ home break-in this time.

To Nic – the most fun-loving, straight-talking, bird-squawking, queen-saving, bigot-slaying, take-no-shit witch-hunter I know

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Hello. Again.

Monday 2 January

Tuesday 3 January

Wednesday 4 January

Friday 6 January

Sunday 8 January

Monday 9 January

Tuesday 10 January

Wednesday 11 January

Thursday 12 January

Friday 13 January

Saturday 14 January

Sunday 15 January

Monday 16 January

Tuesday 17 January

Wednesday 18 January

Thursday 19 January

Friday 20 January

Monday 23 January

Wednesday 25 January

Friday 27 January

Monday 30 January

Tuesday 31 January

Wednesday 1 February

Thursday 2 February

Friday 3 February

Monday 6 February

Tuesday 7 February

Thursday 9 February

Saturday 11 February

Sunday 12 February

Monday 13 February

Tuesday 14 February

Wednesday 15 February

Friday 17 February

Sunday 19 February

Wednesday 22 February

Friday 24 February

Monday 27 February

Friday 14 April

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Back series promotional page

Monday 2 January

7.14 a.m.

The thing about sex scandals is that you never quite get used to your grandmother having seen you naked.

I mean, obviously she’s seen me naked before. She used to bathe me and clothe me and rub baby oil on my butt. But that was a whole year ago! [I did tell you my jokes may have gone downhill.]

You know what I mean, though. Once adolescence strikes, your parents/legal guardians are highly unlikely to see you au naturel, especially if your nipples are of the pierced variety. Unless of course you have a nude picture leaked to the nation, à la Izzy O’Neill, in which case your bare tits and foofer are sort of on display to millions of people, forever and ever until death do us part.

It’s been a month or two since the media got over the whole fandango, and Betty has never ceased to be a supportive angel, but every single morning, without fail, I sit down to breakfast and immediately picture her picturing me. You know. Me. As in, a euphemism for my genitalia.

Which is ludicrous, because if I were Betty I would have immediately poured hydrochloric acid into my eyes had I seen my teenage granddaughter naked. Or as a less extreme solution, just tried to scrub the image from my memory as best I could. [And I’m in luck, because Betty’s memory is not all that great these days. I still remind her of the time she left her keys in the toaster and nearly murdered us all.]

The usual smell of waffle batter – just about to burn around the edges – and the sound of an upbeat pop song fill the kitchen. Betty and I perform our usual routine: she cooks, I make coffee. She sings along to the radio incorrectly. Dumbledore the dachshund loiters without shame. I can almost hear him praying Betty drops some sausage on the ground, but for once he’s outta luck.

It’s see-your-breath cold in here, because we can only afford to have the heating on for a couple hours a day, and it doesn’t make sense to waste our allowance in the morning when Betty’s about to head to work and I’m returning to school for the first day back after the holidays. So we’re both wearing two bathrobes each, to keep frostbite at bay, and Dumbledore is wearing the delightful wizard’s robes Betty knitted him for Christmas. I don’t think he fully appreciates the effort she went through to fashion a Gryffindor badge out of yarn scraps, which is rude, but he is a dog so I suppose we shall let him off the hook on this occasion.

“Looking forward to getting back to school, kid?” Betty asks completely earnestly and without a trace of sarcasm. Does she truly have no idea how traumatic the school system has become? No, because she’s a hundred years old and thinks an Instagram is a unit of measurement used by supermodels when purchasing cocaine.

“I guess,” I say, because I do not have the time nor the energy to explain, yet again, why education is a cruel and unusual punishment for being born. “Although I’ve loved having so much free time to work on my script.”

And it’s true. Having three weeks off school to polish my screenplay to within an inch of its life – with the help of my new agent [!!] no less – has been the stuff of dreams. I almost can’t believe that I actually have to go back to Edgewood and complete my senior year. For a hot minute it actually started to feel like I was a real screenwriter, and polishing scripts was my new normal.

One day, O’Neill. One day.

“You know, you’re going to have to let me read it at some point,” Betty says, scraping cheap sausages around a frying pan. They splutter aggressively, protesting their own low pork content. “You go on and on and on about your script and your agent and how you’re essentially Quentin Tarantino but with better boobs, and yet will you let your dear old grandma read the damn thing? Will you heck.”

[Guys, there is no way I’m letting her read it. My screenplay – a comedic, gender-swapped Pretty Woman with a myriad of distasteful sex jokes – is a whole other level of inappropriate. And no matter how filthy the old bird is, and no matter how much she would find the whole thing hysterical I do have some boundaries. I know. It was a shock to me too.]

A billow of steam erupts from the waffle iron. The kettle whistles just as I’m done scooping instant coffee and sugar into big purple mugs. I pour, Betty scrapes. We’re a noisy but well-oiled machine. A little too well-oiled in Betty’s case. While a good layer of insulation is generally a good thing for an older lady, sky-high cholesterol not so much. So she’s supposed to be cleaning up her diet, but the token punnet of grapes we bought to appease her fascist of a doctor is molding happily on the windowsill.

Nonetheless, I don’t want her to die or anything, so I spoon a tiny bit less sugar into her mug than usual. New year, new Betty, and all that crap. I top it up with enough creamer that she hopefully won’t notice.

But the old bat takes one swig and spits it dramatically all over Dumbledore. His Gryffindor robes are splattered with subpar coffee. He blinks in confusion, then raises a tiny little leg like he’s high-fiving the air.

Betty turns to me, aghast. “What is this crap? I raised you better than this.”

Honestly, there must be three fewer granules of sugar than normal. It’s like a poor-man’s Princess and the Pea reboot.

“Calm down, Hans Christian Andersen,” I retort. “I’ll get you more sugar.”

She just stares blankly at me. “Hans Christian who?”

See? Education is a total and utter waste of everyone’s time.

2.55 p.m.

The singular upside of the whole sex scandal fandango is the absurd surge in subscribers to Bitches Bite Back – specifically our weird, poorly directed sketch comedy. We’re a few hundred YouTube fans shy of breaking 10,000, which is all kinds of bonkers.

Today’s sketch, penned by yours truly, is about an army of sex dolls who become self-aware and seek revenge on their creepy owner, who not only uses them for some Messed Up sexual shit, but also likes to pretend they are his maids, and beats them when they do not adequately complete household chores. Many of his lines are direct quotes from famous politicians, actors and sportspeople who’ve been accused of abuse. He is an amalgam of all the horrible men in the world, and deliberately nameless and faceless in a way that implies he could be anyone. [Social commentary with dirty jokes = my MO.]

Weirdly, no dudes were up for the challenge of playing said Creepy Owner, so I have carefully constructed an understudy out of two trash cans and a trenchcoat.

This time, I’ve written a speaking part in the sketch for our new excellent human pal Meg, who has never acted before but has always shown a massive interest in our YouTube channel. She was actually a fangirl before we became friends, which is all kinds of sweet. Even though she was unsure about participating to begin with, I candidly filmed her chatting to Ajita, and she ended up loving the way she looked on camera – and didn’t hate the sound of her own voice as much as she expected to. So she agreed to be our newest actress, and proceeded to text me five times a day over the holidays asking exactly how a sex doll would pronounce the word “vagina”.

We’ve also managed to recruit most of the girls from theater to play crazed sex dolls, and freshman Fern Fournier – a ridiculously cool French-Japanese girl with awesome stage makeup skills – has agreed to give everyone a Crazed Sex Doll makeover. I did try going to the Mac counter in town and asking if they’d be up for the challenge, but apparently Crazed Sex Doll, while a name of one of their overpriced lipsticks², is not a makeover style they’re familiar with.

So now there are twelve of us on the makeshift set in Ajita’s basement, thanks to the general awesomeness of Ajita’s parents, who not only had a ramp installed so Meg had a hassle-free way of visiting, but who also provided coffee in an industrial-sized vat suitable to power a dozen hellbent sex dolls.

Fern has set up a mini makeup station beside the pool table, and is currently working her magic on Meg – who also loves makeup, and is chattering excitedly about contour palettes. The rest of the girls are changing into matching costumes we cobbled together from the drama department at school.

The only downside of no longer being friends with Danny is the fact he was the sole provider of fancy filming equipment. Ajita managed to find some basic tripods and collapsible reflectors online, but we’re sorely missing the expensive camera and array of microphones. So we’re just having to make do with Ajita’s parents’ DSLR.

Ajita and I are in the process of moving the sofa to make room for an army of sex dolls to assemble. [Another one of my strange sentences that doesn’t give off a great impression if you take it out of context.] From the corner of the room Meg’s girly giggle cuts through the sound of eight sex dolls running lines. Ajita shoots a weird look over to where Meg and Fern are fawning over a new shade of lipstick, then fluffs a cushion slightly aggressively.

“You okay?” I ask as quietly as I can – which is easier said than done when you have the voice of a malfunctioning foghorn.

Jaw gritted, she rearranges a fallen cushion, not meeting my eye. I’m pretty sure if you listen closely enough, you’ll hear the sound of Ajita grinding her teeth down into bleeding stumps. [That was an unnecessarily brutal mental image.] “Yeah. It’s just . . . I don’t know, dude. You could’ve asked me before you wrote Meg such a big part. It’s meant to be our joint sketch show, you know?”

This is not what I was expecting. Like, at all. And to be honest, it kind of rubs me the wrong way. Why would I need to ask her permission to have Meg in a sketch with us? I’ve always written all the material for our skits. Writing isn’t her thing, and she’s never shown an interest in it before.

This level of pettiness is pretty out of character for her, and I’m on the brink of calling her out when something stops me. Something oddly guilt-shaped. Because after everything that Ajita forgave last semester – after I accidentally outed her to the entire world and she welcomed me back into her life with open arms – I have no right to feel mad at her over a tiny niggle like this. So instead of prodding her for an explanation, I say, “Okay. Sorry. Next time, I’ll ask you first.”

At this point Meg comes over to where we’re sitting, pops the brakes on her wheelchair, and asks, “Do I look okay?”

Ajita paints a falsely bright smile on her face, worlds away from the agitated expression of three seconds ago. “Do sex dolls have regional accents?” She says it with the exact inflection of “Is the Pope a Catholic?” as though phrasing a rhetorical question, except in this instance, there is no clear answer.

6.04 p.m.

Just as we’re packing up after a successful afternoon of shooting, Meg wheels over to me, tinfoil choker round her neck and giant grin spreading from ear to ear. I look up from the lens I’m trying to force into the wrong case and return the smile. This was her acting debut and judging by the look on her face she’s hooked.

“Izzy!” she exclaims, breathless with excitement. “This was so, so fun. Thank you so much for letting me be in a sketch!” Her makeup still looks flawless; pillar-box red is so her color.

“Dude, you’re so welcome,” I say. “You were awesome. Like, was this really the first time you’ve ever acted? Or are you actually in a world-famous improv troupe and just wanted to hustle us?” I mean it too. Meg’s got a natural knack for nuance and didn’t overact at any point, which a lot of beginners do. I’m totally writing her a bigger part in the next sketch. With Ajita’s blessing of course.

Speaking of the devil, Ajita re-enters the room from the top of the stairs, clutching half a dozen cans of soda awkwardly to her chest. She tiptoes down the stairs one at a time, like she’s sneaking downstairs for a midnight snack and trying not to wake her parents, and looks more terrified of dropping the soda cans than if they were live grenades. Reaching the middle of the room five decades later, she lays most of them down on the sofa like newborn infants, then tosses one to me. I catch it and hand it to Meg, then catch the subsequent can she hurls my way. We both crack them open simultaneously with an aggressive puh-tsshhhhh, i.e. the most satisfying sound in the world. [With the possible exception of bubble wrap and/or sexual moans. Not that the two are in any way related. Or, you know, they might be. I don’t know your fetishes.]

Ajita taps the lid of her own can with purple-painted nails. “What’re you guys talking about? My impeccable camera skills? Which, BTW, are literally of an Emmy standard at this point.”

“Something like that,” I say.

“Are we really just going to skip over Ajita saying BTW out loud?” Meg snorts, shooting Ajita a playful look. “We all know how inaccurate her spoken text slang can be.”

I freeze for a second. Will this rub Ajita the wrong way? I mean, she didn’t even seem to want Meg here in the first place. But I need not have worried.

“Whatever,” Ajita says, swigging her grape soda. “I still maintain that LMAO should be pronounced luh-mao, like a dish at a Chinese restaurant. Yes, good evening, waiter, I’ll have the pork luh-mao with a side of egg-fried rice, please. That kind of thing.”

Meg giggles so hard her shoulders start to shake, and Ajita looks extremely pleased with herself, licking grape soda off her lips with her freakishly long tongue, which has the potential to look seductive and yet actually just looks like a slippery pink snake is climbing out of her mouth and ravishing her face.

Tuesday 3 January

8.25 a.m.

Waiting for Ajita at our usual halfway-to-school meeting point is borderline life-threatening, on account of the fact it’s colder than the dark side of the moon. I don’t even know if the dark side of the moon is particularly cold, but I’ve always got standoffish vibes from the moon in general, so let’s just assume its temperature is appropriately frosty.

When she eventually arrives, Ajita is all wrapped up in that Rory-Gilmore-meets-Paddington-Bear duffel coat of hers. Without even saying hello, she greets me with an eloquent, “What the fuck is even the point of it being this fucking cold if it’s not going to fucking snow?”

“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.

“Another girl’s nude leaked,” Ajita mumbles. “It’s bad. Oh shit, no, not just a nude. A sex tape. Oh . . . oh fuck.”

Meg goes to turn the laptop to show me, but I gesture frantically, shaking my hands no. “Please. Don’t. I can’t look. I don’t want to.”

“I get it,” Meg replies softly.

“Who is it?” I ask.

“Another senior. Hazel Parker. You know her?”

I shake my head, but then realize her name is familiar. “She’s a cheerleader, right?”

“Judging by the pompoms, I would assume so,” Meg says gravely.

Acid churns in my stomach. “Is it on a blog? Or YouTube?” I remember the World Class Whore website Danny made to publicly shame me, and it’s still so fresh I can feel the sharp pangs of horror all over again.

Ajita shakes her head. “A group chat. They added everyone from school.” Sure enough, one glance at my phone shows a bunch of new notifications from a group chat entitled “Hazel ‘Pompom’ Parker.” After the original video, which I blur my eyes in order not to look at, there are a few dozen comments – mainly from guys, because guys – about the nude. Critiques of her body, her technique, and, inevitably, the eggplant emoji followed by the water squirt emoji. Her friends from the cheer squad have posted angry messages demanding that the chat is deleted or they’ll go to the police, but that just makes me feel even more sick. There’s nothing the police can do when revenge porn is legal.

Oh God. Hazel made some shitty comments online when my garden-bench picture was leaked. Something about how shameless I am, about how dirty my behavior was. And now the same thing is happening to her.

A dark, spiteful part of me feels an iota of satisfaction at the way the world has dealt her revenge, but the bigger, overwhelming part just feels terrible for her. No matter how shitty a person she is, she doesn’t deserve this. Nobody does. Sympathy crests in my chest.

What’s Hazel doing now? Has she seen it yet? Or is she enjoying her last moments of blissful ignorance before her world is turned upside down?

I remember the way I felt when the nudes first dropped. Disbelief, along with roiling nausea and a desperate desire to wake up and find this is all just a bad dream. And the paranoia, sharp and immediate. The feeling that every single person I made eye contact with had now seen me naked, from the principal of Edgewood to the homeless man who sleeps rough on our housing estate. My skin crawls at the memory, as vivid as the day it happened.

No. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.

“Are you okay?” Ajita asks. Her teeth work away at her inner lip. Meg’s eyes are wide and sympathetic. Their pity makes me feel two inches tall.

“Yeah, fine,” I lie. Then, despite my best efforts to bury it deep down in my chest, emotion explodes through me in savage waves, so intense it leaves me gasping for breath.

Anger. White hot, furious. Pure, unfiltered rage, so potent and visceral it makes me feel more wild animal than teenage girl.

Nothing is ever going to change. No matter how well our sex-doll sketches go down, no matter how many chords we strike with the BBB fanbase, this shit will continue to happen to girl after girl after girl.

I grip the table, knuckles whitening like the flames inside me. I want to smash something, want to feel something shatter in my fist. I eye the glass pepper shaker longingly.

“This is going to keep happening as long as it’s legal,” I spit out. “Teenage girls are going to keep having their lives ruined, and if they’re over eighteen, the douchebags who leak their nudes are totally off the hook. It makes me sick that you can ruin someone’s life and face no consequences.”

“Maybe if we keep going with Bitches Bite Back, we’ll make guys see that –”

“No, we won’t,” I burst out, interrupting an alarmed Meg. I pound my fist on the Formica table, cutlery rattling in its jar. “We won’t make guys see anything. We don’t have the scope.”

Ajita and Meg exchange a worried glance. I don’t think either of them have ever seen me like this. Honestly, before the scandal, I wasn’t an angry person. Self-absorbed and immature, maybe, but I’ve never felt this way before. So easily irritated, so quick to erupt. It’s like my blood has been replaced by molten lava, scorching me from the inside out.

The noise in the diner is dimmed by my rage. My heartbeat pounds in my ears as I try to sharpen the anger into a point, try to focus my blistering energy into action.

How can Bitches Bite Back stop this? Writing blog posts and launching forums isn’t enough. We need to take real action. But how? We’re just teenagers. We have no power.

But that isn’t true. I think of the marches organized by victims of school shootings, kids like me who wanted to channel their pain and grief into change. Could we organize a protest maybe? Our town is small, but if enough women and non-awful guys got behind it . . .

No. It’s not enough. Those victims had a clear goal: stricter gun control. Our message would just be: hey, maybe stop being such unbelievable cretins toward young women?

So . . . we should do the same. We should demand comprehensive revenge porn legislation. It’s the only thing that would provide an adequate deterrent for guys seeking to destroy a woman’s reputation. These laws already exist to varying degrees in other states, but the South in general is yet to follow suit. And with far-right senators like Ted Vaughan in office, change is unlikely to happen anytime soon.

Yet a plan is formulating in my mind. I’m aware I’ve been sat in silence for several minutes, and things round the table have gotten a little awkward, so I lay my palms flat on the sugar-dusted table, fingers splayed, and say, “I have an idea.”

“Always dangerous,” Ajita says. “Go on.”

“I think we need to arrange a meeting with Ted Vaughan.”

Meg blinks twice in quick succession, pushing her glasses up her nose. “The senator?”

“The father of the dude you banged on a garden bench?” Ajita adds.

I nod once, solemn as a nun. “The one and only.”

Nothing is ever going to change. Not unless we force it to.

Wednesday 4 January

7.45 a.m.

Despite last night’s wild sequence of events – namely landing a job and experiencing severe second-hand pain on Hazel’s behalf – I leave the diner and walk home in good snuff. [For the uninitiated, this is entertaining old slang for “in a good mood”. I am not sure if you can culturally appropriate Middle Ages England, but if you can, please send the Tudors my apologies.]

We spend the rest of the BBB meeting drafting an email to Ted Vaughan’s office, requesting a meeting to discuss the state’s condemnable lack of revenge porn legislation. We even use words like “legislation”, to give off the illusion of savvy. The BBB email account pings immediately with an auto response: someone will get back to us in three–five business days. The impatient imp who nests inside my skull wants to march down to the office right now and demand they see us this very instant, but I beat down the impulse [geddit?] for once. We all know I’m not fantastic at will power, or generally behaving like an adult in any way, shape or form. So we must consider this show of spectacular restraint a win.

Having a plan makes me feel fierce and determined, rather than angry and helpless. I cling to it like a life raft.

Hazel’s sex tape is the talk of the town. The guy who leaked it – a former jock nicknamed Bakehead on account of his well-documented pot habit – is apparently her ex-boyfriend. He cheated on her, she wouldn’t take him back, so he sent their sex tape to everyone he knew. She filmed it in trust, and that trust was shattered.

Lots of girls have left the group chat in a show of solidarity, but plenty haven’t. The follow-up messages are now into the hundreds. The majority are lewd, crude and skin-crawlingly vulgar, although there are a handful of brave souls who’ve chimed in and called out the guy who started the group chat, labeling him a pitiful bully and a pathetic, immature dick. But those are few and far between. It’s mainly water-squirt emojis.

Carson, God bless his soul, commented saying, “Hey, man, this is uncool. Delete it, right now.” It remains undeleted, but I appreciate his sticking up for Hazel nonetheless – because as soon as he does a few of his teammates follow his lead. It’s nice seeing guys actually call each other on their bullshit, and even nicer when it’s your boyfriend leading the rally cry.

Even Danny – who has abstained from the general internet since I found out he leaked my nude pictures to the entire world – has heard the news, on account of the fact it’s a small-ass town, and you can’t even take a dump without your neighbor speculating over its consistency.

Despite the fact we haven’t spoken in months, he messages me the following:

Hey. Heard about Hazel. Hope you’re both okay.

I sigh and shove my cell phone back in my pocket, breathing in the crisp winter air and vague scent of log fires. I don’t think there is a Pulitzer Prize for uninspiring text messages, but if there were, I think this dry-as-toast attempt would definitely make the shortlist.

In fact, all this text does is stoke my fiery rage. No, neither of us are okay, and it’s all your fucking fault. How dare you massage your own conscience like this.

To be honest, I don’t even care about Danny. I know who the good people in my life are, and he is not one of them. His support, or lack thereof, means nothing to me anymore. [Hold that thought, past me.]

Even though we have a plan of action and having an outlet for my anger is already alleviating its intensity, I’m still dreading school today. I can’t watch Hazel suffer like I did. I can’t go through the stares and the whispers and the laughs all over again. My emotional armor isn’t robust enough – there are chinks and holes from the open fire it endured for months on end.

But I’m an O’Neill. We get by. We always have, and always will. So instead of letting fear and anger paralyze me, I’m going to go into the kitchen, make coffee for Betty and me, and tell her the news about my new part-time job. I’m briefly concerned the excitement will cause her to shit herself right there in the kitchen, so I take a mop just in case. The last thing we need is Dumbledore using a poop as a chew toy. Again.

RIP, couch. May angels lead you in.

3.17 p.m.

School is nowhere near as bad as it has the potential to be, which is probably the first time those words have ever left my mouth/fingers.

Hazel stays home. I don’t blame her. Rumors are flying around about the awful shit that’s happened to her since the tape was sent around. She was instantly fired from her weekend job at Hollister, and her ultra-religious parents have grounded her so severely that she’s not even allowed to be on the cheerleading squad anymore. She’s an honors student, by all accounts, with lofty career ambitions. Does she feel like her future has been snatched away from her, like I did? Like I still do, in my darkest moments?

At least Hazel’s friends seem to be rallying around her. The squad are on a letter-writing campaign – to Hazel’s parents, begging them to let her back on the team, and to Hollister HQ, demanding she get her job back. Carson’s teammate’s mom knows a guy who’s high up at Abercrombie & Fitch, and offers to reach out to him explaining the situation. Baxter and a couple other guys on the soccer team corner Bakehead and threaten to kick his teeth in if he doesn’t delete the group chat. He obliges, thank God, but the damage is largely done. The tape is burned into everyone’s minds forever – and saved to camera rolls all over town. It’s only a matter of time before someone shares it wider.

As a general rule people suck. Hazel’s locker has been adorned with pompoms, flimsy underwear and a strip of condoms. Ajita, Meg and I help her friends hastily tear all of this down and stuff it in an overflowing garbage can, to the soundtrack of many loud “booooooo”s from the assortment of teenage dirtbags around us. The entire time we’re working, chills run up and down my arms, pooling in the palms of my hands. Watching this unfold all over again is like a waking nightmare I can never outrun.

At lunch I take myself away to the restroom and huddle in the cubicle, typing out an email to Hazel using her school address. I remember the way the scandal made me feel so alone, as though nobody else on the planet, much less in this tiny town, could understand the pain of what I was going through. If I can save Hazel from that intensely lonely sensation, it’ll be worth it.

Hey Hazel,

I just wanted to say that I’m so sorry you’re going through this. I know it feels like your entire world is crashing down, like you might die from the shame of it, but I promise it gets better. It really does. People have very low attention spans and will honestly forget about it way quicker than you think. Even if you wind up on BuzzFeed, like yours truly.

If you do ever want to talk to someone who genuinely gets what you’re going through, I’m always here. It’s not that I think I’m the authority on the situation – of course I’m not. I can only speak from my own experiences, and I know everyone is so different. But yeah, I understand what this very specific pain feels like, so if there’s anything I can do just let me know.

Izzy

Look! Not one single trace of sarcasm in the entire two paragraphs! Better text Ajita a dirty joke, stat.

Hey. Why does Santa Claus have such a big sack?

Her reply buzzes almost immediately.

I don’t know. I don’t celebrate Christmas, you culturally insensitive asshole. Xo

Me: Okay, well, the answer was because he only comes once a year, but you’ve kind of ruined the moment.

6.45 p.m.

Betty’s working late tonight, and Ajita is going to some kind of tragic athletics meet with her hideously talented brother Prajesh, so I decide to spend the evening working on my screenplay. My agent just sent me notes on the revisions I did over the holidays, and I’m excited to roll up my writerly sleeves and get stuck in.

However, just as I’ve boiled the kettle for a literal gallon of cocoa, there’s a knock at the door. Carson.

“Hey,” he says, smiling, cute as a button in his pizza place uniform. He’s still wearing the pepperoni-themed baseball cap, even though he hates it. He knows it makes me smile, so he wears it whenever he can. I will never get tired of his sausage. [Yes, this entire paragraph was leading up to that innuendo. Why am I like this?]

“Just finished work?” I ask, leaning in for a smooch. He smells of oregano.

“Nah, I just wear this for kicks,” he mumbles, lips pressed against mine.

Dumbledore dashes restlessly round our ankles. He’s hyper with pent-up energy, since I haven’t had a chance to take him out properly over the last few days. Reluctantly I pull away from Carson. “Hey, I need to walk the pooch. Wanna come? It’s fine if not. If you’ve gotta get home or whatever.”

He bends down to play-wrestle with Dumbledore, who pants excitedly. “Nah. I’ll come with.” The dog immediately rolls onto his back in mock defeat, and wriggles in delight as Carson rubs his chubby little belly.

“Awesome,” I say. “I’ll just grab his wizard’s robes.”

To his credit Carson is completely unfazed by this. He’s immune to my family’s weirdness, which I sort of kind of love about him. [Don’t tell him I used the L-word in a sentence describing him, because I work very hard on my reputation as an aloof sloth-type figure, and don’t want it to be ruined now.]

While we walk to the nearby park, I fill Carson in on both the BBB and the job developments. “Anyway, the combination of the two almost rendered my darling grandmother incontinent. Thankfully she managed to control the situation, which is good, because the last thing we need is a medical emergency.”

“How would that be a medical emergency?” he asks. “Do I even want to know?”

“I meant for Dumbledore,” I explain, shoving my hands deep into my pockets, still clutching Dumbledore’s leash. I watch him waddle ahead of us, little buttocks bouncing up and down, determined to show off in front of Carson. “Speaking of medical emergencies, have I told you about the time I had a tumor in fifth grade?”

His eyebrows shoot up into his beanie. “You had a tumor? How could I not know that?”

I maintain a serious expression. “I mean, it turned out to be a gummy bear lodged behind my uvula. But it could have been a tumor. At least it gave the ER folks a good laugh.”

Carson snorts extravagantly. “You got taken to the emergency room for a malswallowed gummy bear?”

“Firstly, ‘malswallowed’ is not a word, although it should be, so thank you for the entertaining new vocabulary. Secondly, in my defense, it was a fizzy gummy bear. That shit stings. Anyway, the school nurse was convinced I was dying. I wrote my will while waiting for the CAT scan.”

Carson’s dimples make an appearance as he grins. “Oh yeah? And what was on this will?”

“I requested a Viking burial, and left my worldly possessions to a rhino sanctuary I saw on a documentary that day. I’m not sure why I thought a herd of orphaned rhinoceri would have use for my Justin Bieber CDs, but there you go.”

By the time we arrive the park is almost deserted. It’s around midway between my housing community and Carson’s place, and it’s like something out of a post-apocalyptic movie. The swingsets and slides are rusty and worn, and there’s a rocket-shaped jungle gym graffitied with ugly slurs. The sandboxes are equal part tiny rocks and cigarette butts. There’s a swimming bath that hasn’t been used in years, so has been transformed into a charming skate park/drug den hybrid. And yet at this time of year, with the moon shining on the sparkling layer of frost coating the park, it’s weirdly beautiful. And, you know, harrowing.

The whole place is empty, because it’s way too cold for even the most hardcore teenage delinquents. We leave Dumbledore to roam around and do his business. He promptly takes a piss against a Confederate statue. Good dog.

Carson and I pull up a pew on a memorial bench, dedicated to the only properly famous guy from our neighborhood – a celebrated anti-apartheid protester who died in a South African prison. [I’ve always found it ridiculous how the powers that be decided he was only worthy of a bench, not the entire park. I’d give him the entire state, if it were my call to make, which is probably why it is not my call to make.]

“Anyway, at least now we’ll be able to afford pet insurance, with this new job of mine,” I announce merrily. “Dumbledore can eat all the delicious turds he likes. And, hey, maybe I can afford a new toothbrush! Mine has had alopecia for several years now.”

“Shit, things have been so bad you can’t afford a toothbrush?”

I shrug. “I’m used to it. Many apologies that you must kiss this improperly washed mouth of mine.”

Dumbledore ambles back over to us, dropping a carefully selected rock at Carson’s feet and looking up expectantly. He’s a rescue dog – obviously, because how the Dickens could Betty and I afford a pedigree dachshund – and he’s always had a rock fetish. He often carries them home with him in his cheek pouches, like a hamster, and nestles them into his dog bed with him. Bless.

Carson picks up the rock and throws it in the direction of the permanently lopsided seesaw. Dumbledore chases it as fast as his tiny legs can carry him, which is not fast in the slightest. Since it’s pitch dark, finding the same rock again should keep him entertained for a while.

“Man, I had no idea things were ever that desperate.” Quietly he adds, “I wish I could help out more. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t ever apologize for that,” I say, louder than I mean to. He looks taken aback by my belligerence. [Belligerence! Check out that thesaurus usage!] “I just mean you have your own shit to worry about,” I add hastily, softer now. “You shouldn’t have to take care of me too.”

“But I want to. You’re cold?” he asks, watching my leg bounce up and down in a bid to warm up. He takes off his oversized sweater and hands it to me, flashing a strip of toned brown belly skin as he does, and I feel a familiar jolt of longing.

Although maybe I just have a thing for benches at this point.

9.14 p.m.

With Betty not around to crow about water bills I take a longer, hotter shower than usual, before spending the night the way I planned to: editing my screenplay. I mean, right after I finish writing this blog post. And checking social media. And making hot cocoa. The scandal changed many things about me, but not my talent for procrastination.

Finally, after completing the most pointless and unnecessary of tasks, I curl up in my tiny single bed and get to work, throwing my hair up into a messy bun. Instagram girls somehow make messy buns look like the sexiest thing on this earth but I assure you mine just makes me look like I’m wearing a swimming cap, which is not my dream aesthetic. [No offense if you’re reading this, Michael Phelps. Which I don’t know why you would be, but still.]

Friday 6 January

9.51 a.m.

Since I stayed up half the night manically whizzing through script edits – writing in a new character and removing another entirely – I’m glad our first class of the day is drama. It’s the only thing I’m remotely good at academically, and we never have homework because Mrs Crannon is one of those blessed “learn-by-doing” advocates. So I can coast by pretty easily on zero winks of sleep.

We’re studying the script of Guys and Dolls in prep for our midterm exams. Unfortunately studying theater is not just about goofing off on stage and attempting Jazz-era Brooklyn accents. We actually have to write essays on things like narrative arc, which if you ask me is incredibly unreasonable, although as an aspiring a screenwriter it’s probably a useful exercise. So we’re sitting in a circle in Mrs Crannon’s classroom and doing a read-through from the playbook before we start analyzing and breaking everything down.

I’ve been cast as Miss Adelaide, one of the two female leads, while Ajita is a Nepali Sarah Brown, because Mrs Crannon is not one of those absurd people who use “historical accuracy” to justify their racism. She’s also cast a Chinese-American girl called Sharon in the famously white male role of Lieutenant Brannigan. This decision angered Danny greatly, as he’s been relegated to an ensemble part. He’s still stewing about it now. In fact, if he stews for much longer, he’s in real danger of becoming a casserole.

Mrs Crannon has dashed backstage to grab a stack of fur coats to help us get into character, and also because the radiators are broken so the classroom temperature is currently subzero. When she left she told us to start the read-through without her, but of course, as a roomful of lazy/horny teenagers, this is not the course of action we ultimately take, instead opting to chat among ourselves on topics of our choice. For instance, I’m chatting to Ajita about the possibility of lip-syncing my singing parts, because although Miss Adelaide is an alto role, I still cannot hit the high notes without sounding like a meerkat with a softball bat shoved up its ass. Right when I’m doing my very best meerkat-with-a-softball-bat-shoved-up-its-ass impression, much to Ajita’s delight and merriment, Danny chooses this precise moment to come over to us.

Ajita’s euphoric expression takes on a vaguely murderous vibe as she watches him approach, but still the useless shrew does not think to warn me about the incoming douchebag. So I’m still howling “aaaaayyeeeeeee-yeeeeee-yaaaaaaaaahhhhh” when he taps me on the shoulder.

“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.”

“You’re so cute with your siblings,” I say, breath steaming up the air.

“It’s weird, y’know? We don’t have the same dad or anything, but we’re still so tight.”

“You ever talk to your dad?” I watch Dumbledore’s eyelids droop. “You don’t mention him much.”

His body stiffens slightly, but he bends down to disguise it. Picks up more snow, this time a smaller handful. Rolls it into a longer shape. “Nah, never. Ain’t seen him since I was in diapers. Doubt I’m missin’ much, from what my mom says.”

The slightly ethereal snowscape makes me want to talk. Like, properly talk.

“Still,” I murmur, “I know what it’s like to have that weird hole in your life.” The words feel horribly stark and honest against the quiet snow. But they feel right. Cathartic, somehow. I’ve always wanted to talk to Carson about this – this huge thing we share. I feel like it’ll bring us even closer together, having that connection. Truth be told, he’s the only person I’ve ever wanted to talk about it with. Ajita and Meg are amazing, but they can’t ever truly understand what it is to lose a parent.

But Carson just shrugs. “Yeah, I guess.”

He’s obviously not in the mood for Properly Talking, which I get. I’ve spent 99.9 percent of my life in the exact same frame of mind. And yet disappointment surges in my chest. I guess that’s something nobody tells you when they urge you to open up to the people around you. Sometimes the people around you just won’t be in the right place to listen.

So I keep my sentimental thoughts about parents and absence to myself, tucked away somewhere below my ribs.

“Whaddaya think?” Carson asks.

He steps back to reveal his finished sculpture, and I frown trying to make out what it is. Definitely an animal, of some sort, but it’s misshapen and lumpy.

“It’s an alpaca, dude!” he says, looking offended.

“Sorry. I just find its facial expression a little . . . a-llama-ing.”

“Oh my God.”

9.18 p.m.

For some reason my evening shift absolutely drags, despite the fact Betty is also working, which is all kinds of weird. We’re making a point of being overly formal with each other so our serpentine manager cannot accuse us of being unprofessional. I bow every time I see her, and she calls me Madam Hostess O’Neill, Probably One-Millionth of Her Name. I fail to see how we could possibly be any more professional than this.

But still. It. Is. Dragging. I think when you work the long ten-hour shifts they go quicker, because you’re not constantly looking at the clock. You just accept that you’re there for an eternity. But when it’s shorter the temptation to clock-watch is so much stronger, because you’re, like, surely I’m nearly done now? [This is obviously in my expert opinion, having worked a grand total of three shifts in my entire life.]

Also, while I’m peeling yet more potatoes, I cannot stop thinking about Hazel Parker. How is she feeling right now? Is she poring over the lewd comments, examining every inch of her naked body and sexual technique through the lens of public perception? Is she shutting herself away from the judgment of her parents, closing down when her friends try to talk to her about it? Has she stopped applying to colleges? Does she feel like I did – powerless and lost, like her whole future has been burned to the ground? I know how impossible it is to see past something like that. How nothing else seems to matter but the fact the world has seen you naked.

This meeting with Vaughan’s office cannot come soon enough.

Anyway, it’s still snowing outside, and Betty is doing a hilarious Canadian accent for little to no reason, and it’s only forty-two minutes until I can go home and have my knees cleansed by my pubescent dachshund. So all is not lost.