A Girl Called Shameless. Laura Steven

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.