Laura Steven - A Girl Called Shameless

“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.