Laura Steven - A Girl Called Shameless

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.

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.