A Girl Called Shameless. Laura Steven

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