by Holly Bourne
Everyone was smiling, nodding. I shook my head. Too confuzzled to speak.
“That’s a good point, Mike.”
“Yeah, I never thought it could be as simple as that. But you’re right.”
“Sorry about your chips, Lottie.” Joel saluted, like I was a soldier. Then they all laughed again.
I caught Jane’s eye, to see if she’d noticed. She shrugged and rolled her eyes at Mike, confirming my outrage.
I didn’t laugh. I didn’t nod. I didn’t agree with the others.
I couldn’t believe it.
That was my point. And my joke!
And Mike was shamelessly passing it off as his own.
What was worse was that everyone was listening to him.
Because Mike had said it.
Not me…
Mike.
And the only reason I could see it being better now than when I’d said it was…because Mike was a boy…
three
By the time the bell rang at the end of the day, I was completely het up. I’d worked through lunch, trying to get through all the extra reading I needed to do to get an A* in English lit. In my own company, I let the festering muck of my morning seep into my entire being.
I felt a mixture of numb, furious and helpless.
I don’t think that is even psychologically possible.
Why did they take more notice of MY point when Mike said it?
Why hadn’t I stood up to those disgusting builders?
Why did stuff like this keep happening?
All I wanted was to go home and reset, but we had a FemSoc meeting. Evie was chairing this one and I knew how nervous she was about talking in front of people. I had to go for moral support. I picked up my books and made my way to the meeting room in the art and photography block. My phone buzzed with another we’re sorry message from Mum. She couldn’t handle it when we fought. It wasn’t in her “ethos” to have “negative energy” with anyone.
Her words…not mine. So not mine.
I didn’t even know what today’s meeting was about. I hadn’t had time to look through the agenda Evie had emailed last night. We hadn’t expected FemSoc to take off the way it had. Last summer term we’d campaigned to get this offensive song removed from the college jukebox. We won – which was great. Half of college hated us for it – which wasn’t so great. But lots of girls expressed an interest in joining and we now had over twenty members. We’d only had two meetings so far this term, but more girls had turned up to each one. And Evie, Amber and I still ran our own private Spinster Club meetings out of college – so we could spend time together, just us.
You can’t adequately share cheesy snacks with twenty plus people.
I pushed my way through the heavy double doors and the hubbub of everyone’s conversations hit me as I stepped into the meeting room. Some of them waved hi as I walked to the front, and I waved back weakly – hardly able to muster the energy. My emotions still swirled around my body, like a vortex had opened up in my guts. The worst thing was that today had felt so ergh…but really…what had happened that was so extraordinary?
Evie was a jangly mess, her normally sleek blonde hair all straggly from running her hands through it. Amber had her arm around her, muttering reassuring things.
I made myself smile. Not wanting to worry them. Not at Evie’s big moment. I plopped my bag on the chair next to them. “How’s the blood pressure?” I asked.
Evie took an exaggerated breath. “Remind me why we decided to make this a public club again?”
Amber wrapped her arm around tighter. “Because it will look good on our uni applications?” she joked.
I shook my head. “Not according to my dad.”
They both made aww shucks sympathy faces – they’d counselled me through many an argument about this with my father.
“And, anyway, it’s public because we want to save the world. And we cannot do that holed up in Evie’s unnaturally tidy bedroom, eating cheese on toast and preaching to just each other.”
“Stop being so reasonable.” Evie’s eyes darted out over the crowd. “You know it doesn’t work on me.”
I smiled sadly. I knew… Evie has OCD – though she’s got it pretty under control at the moment. She got really ill last year, before Amber or I knew about it. I felt guilty for asking her to run the meeting. It was tough being Evie’s friend sometimes. You had to maintain a delicate balance of not pushing her too hard to do things that scared her as it made her feel crap about herself, versus knowing that sometimes the odd nudge helped her grow.
I put my arm around her, so we were all hugging. “You’re going to be fine. You know that, right?”
She smiled. “I just still can’t believe you’re letting someone else talk.”
“Hey,” I said, while she and Amber burst out laughing. “I’m not that bad…hang on…yes, I’m definitely that bad.” I had a reputation for being quite…umm…chatty. Though today all I wanted to do was sit in the corner quietly and mull. My mood had got steadily worse.
The last few trickles of girls came in and the room quietened, sensing the meeting was about to start. I pulled out my notebook and pen and started sucking on the end.
Evie rustled some papers and stood up, readying herself. Amber pulled her chair up next to me. “You think she’s going to be okay?” she whispered. “I saw her wash her hands beforehand…”
The blodge of guilt blodged blodgier.
“I think she’ll be fine,” I said, though not entirely convinced. “She does still do that sometimes. Just as long as it’s not all the time, I guess.”
“You read her agenda?”
I shook my head. “Not had time.”
Amber inched forward – a stray bit of her frizzy red hair tickled my cheek.
“Speaking of being okay, are you okay?” she asked. “We missed you at lunch. And, well, you look upset about something.”
I sighed again and opened my mouth to tell her – but just as I did, Evie coughed to signal the start of the meeting.
“Hey, everyone.” Her voice squeaked with nerves. She coughed and started again. “Hi, everyone.”
The girls, all sitting in rows facing us, quietened respectfully.
“Thanks for coming.” Evie’s hands shook but her voice got stronger with every word. “So, in the last meeting, we decided we wanted to campaign for something. You’ve all put forward some ideas, and I thought today we could run through them and see if we could get a shortlist to vote on? There’s a lot here we could really get our teeth into… Can someone at the back dim the lights, please?”
Someone scuttled to the light switch and plunged us into gloom. Evie clicked a laptop and the big white screen behind her lit up.
“Trust Evie to make it all super-organized,” Amber whispered to me. “I bet you ten pounds she gets out a special pointy stick.”
I smiled in the darkness. “When I hosted the last meeting, the only prep I did was sing ‘Eye of the Tiger’ to myself into the mirror,” I whispered back.
“Think what would happen if we combined the pointy stick with ‘Eye of the Tiger’. I reckon you’ve just come up with an excellent strategy for taking over the world.”
Just as we started laughing, Evie gestured to the screen behind her.
“Okay, girls, here’s the first entry. Sonia put this forward.” Sonia, a short girl with incredibly long, blonde hair, nodded and smiled. “It’s a new aftershave advert that Sonia thinks we should campaign against. Hang on…” Evie fiddled with the mouse to click play. “Right, here it is.” She pointed to it with the handle of her umbrella, which was almost a pointy stick. I would’ve giggled if the video Evie was pointing at wasn’t so completely distressing.
Loud edgy music blasted out as a girl and boy – both insanely good-looking – rolled around on a bed with exposed brickwork in the background. Then the boy flipped himself on top and started pinning the girl’s arms down as he kissed her more aggressively. She laughed, but tried to fight him off.
My heartbeat had already quickened and I felt my insides turn in on themselves. This wasn’t good…this so wasn’t good. Then the boy reached into his jeans pocket and got out some of the aftershave, sprayed it on, and the girl stopped resisting. She started gasping and groaning as the guy kissed her neck and then it faded to black.
There was a stunned silence. A cough the only thing punctuating it as the room digested what we’d just seen.
“Umm, Sonia?” Evie asked. “Do you want to stand up and explain why you think we should use this as a starting point for a campaign?”
She nodded, and stood, tucking some hair behind her ear.
“Yeah, so…I saw this on TV last night and, well, I think we can all agree it’s worrying. I mean it’s essentially normalizing force in regards to sex, even romanticizing abuse and rape in relationships…”
And that’s all I heard before I saw Megan, a new member, stand up quietly and practically run out of the room. Her face was all red and pinched, like she was trying hard not to cry.
I stood up too. Not many people seemed to have noticed, most were listening to Sonia.
“I mean, I’m sure you all know that statistically, girls are more likely to get raped by someone they know – like a boyfriend or an ex. This advert is practically encouraging that. It’s basically saying ‘Buy our aftershave and it will help you abuse your girlfriend – she won’t even mind! She’ll like you pinning her down!’”
Evie had noticed though, and silently nodded at me, encouraging me to follow Megan. So I stood up and pushed my way out to the corridor, looking both ways to see where she’d gone.
I found her in the nearby ladies’ toilets, washing her hands under the tap. Crying.
“Oh, hi, Lottie,” she said, like nothing had happened. Even though her hands were shaking and tears rolled down her face. She stood upright, hastily wiping the evidence of distress from her cheeks.
“Hey. I just wanted to see if you were all right?”
I didn’t know Megan hugely well. It sounds awful, but I knew her more as “Max’s girlfriend”. She’d gone out all through Year Twelve with this guy, Max, from a band we knew called The Imposters. She was in mine and Amber’s art class but never spoke much. She and Max had seemed so in love – I hardly ever saw her without him. So we were all surprised when he’d broken up with her over the summer. Even more so when she’d joined FemSoc, as she’d never expressed an interest when they were together.
Megan still had her hands under the water, even though all the soap was off them. Her dark hair hung over her face.
I stepped closer, seeing that all of her was shaking – not just her hands.
“I’m fine.”
“Megan?” I stepped closer again. “Did something in the meeting upset you? The advert?”
She stood up straight then, looked me right in the eye. Her cheeks were all blotchy and her eyelashes were clumped together with wet mascara. She turned the tap off, shaking her head slightly.
“I’m fine…I’m fine… It’s just…well…that advert… Max…it kind of brought something back.” Her voice broke on the word “Max”, stuttering over his name. “He…he…” She trailed off, shaking harder.
What?!
“Megan, did Max, do someth—”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to cause a fuss,” she interrupted suddenly – her voice strong again. “I must be getting my period or something.”
She yanked a towel out of the towel dispenser, dabbed at her face, dried her hands and chucked it roughly into the bin. It bounced back out again. What was she saying? What had happened to her?
“Megan? I’m sorry if the meeting triggered something…something that happened between you and Max?”
Megan shook her head. “No, you didn’t. It didn’t, I mean. I’m fine. Fine.” She must’ve seen the doubt on my face. “Honestly!”
“Megan?” I found all I could do was just repeat her name. “You can tell me…”
“Nobody will ever believe me anyway,” she said, almost to herself. Then she looked up at me and smiled. She actually smiled. “I might not come to the rest of the meeting, if that’s okay?” she asked, like she needed my permission. “See you in art tomorrow?”
And before I could stop her, or say something, or hug her, or do anything other than stand there feeling confused and sick, she’d breezed out of the toilets – leaving only the sweet smell of the college apple soap behind her.
four
The FemSoc meeting was almost over when I slipped back inside. I’d spent a while sitting on one of the toilets, my face in my hands, trying to digest what had just happened.
Evie was just wrapping things up while Amber scribbled down people’s ideas on the whiteboard.
“Thanks for all your great ideas,” Evie said. “It sounds like we’ve narrowed down what we want to do. We can go through a shortlist at next week’s meeting and vote then. I’m really excited, guys.”
Everyone descended into talking and laughing and there was a fizzing in the air of good ideas.
I stood, still helpless. Amber noticed from across the room and mouthed, “Are you okay?” and I nodded…then shook my head. Amber held up her hand to say give me a minute and I gave her a small smile. Part of me felt broken. I’d had hairline fractures inside me all day, and this meeting, and Megan, had suddenly ripped them into chasms.
Normally I would’ve been the one talking the loudest, getting the most excited, getting everyone else fired up by my enthusiasm. But today, all I could do was picture Megan’s shaking hands. The way her voice had stumbled on the name “Max”. All I could see was those two guys and the way they’d looked at me, and how I hadn’t done anything about it. All I could think was, even if I had stood up to them, it wouldn’t have made a difference anyway.
Nothing makes a difference anyway.
Not to people like them…
So what was the point?
Evie flopped over her desk as people started filing out and I gave her a huge hug.
“You were amazing,” I managed to say.
“Really? My hands are still shaking.”
“Honestly. Totally brilliant. You’re a good public speaker, you could definitely be a politician or something.”
She broke the hug and smiled up at me, looking worried. She could obviously see something in my face.
“I thought you were the one who wants to be prime minister?”
I did this raw odd laugh I didn’t recognize.
“Lottie, are you…?”
Amber bowled over before she could finish, wringing her hands. “Lotts, what’s wrong? Why did Megan leave? I was about to follow her, but I saw you go.”
I let out a huge deep sigh – not sure what to say.
“She was crying in the loos,” I started. “I think that advert was a bit close to home. She mentioned Max. You know? Her ex-boyfriend, in Ethan’s band? She…” I inhaled sharply, Megan’s words cutting through my insides like shards of ice. “She didn’t say exactly, but she implied…she…”
“Go on,” Amber prompted, her eyes all wide.
“Well, she implied that maybe Max had done something to her…sexually… Well, I think that’s what she was implying. She didn’t spell it out. But she was shaking… I think that advert definitely triggered something…”
Evie welled up. “Damnit! I’m so stupid! I didn’t think to warn anyone beforehand what the advert was about… I’m so dumb!” She thumped the table and we all listened to the noise echo around the silent room.
I was trying to think of everything I knew about Megan and Max. They’d seemed happy…although I did find it weird that she followed him everywhere and didn’t talk much. They held hands wherever they went. She wore his hoody all the time. And Max…he seemed nice… He played guitar with this guy we knew called Ethan. He smiled at everyone. He once got up at our college Battle of the Bands and dedicated a song to her. Everyone was shocked when he broke up with her over the summer… I mean…he broke up with her… But now Mega
n was implying he’d done something awful to her… Well not exactly implying… She just couldn’t stay in the room when Evie played that advert. I was guessing. But I also had a horrible suspicion I couldn’t ignore – from the way she ran out of that meeting, from the way she said his name – that he’d done…something to her.
Amber broke the silence and gave Evie a squeeze. “We’re all new to this, Evie. I didn’t think of warning anyone either. And we don’t know for certain anything did happen with Max and Megan.”
“It did,” I insisted, even though I was practically just saying it to myself. “It must’ve done. The way she shook, girls… And she said ‘no one will believe me anyway’. Surely that must mean something?”
Amber blinked a few times, shook her head, like she was trying to dislodge what I was saying. “Well, we don’t know for certain, but, yeah, we’ve learned we need to warn people next time if we’re going to mention abuse in our meetings.”
My mind flashed back to that morning – to those men. The way they’d so obviously felt entitled to me. That my body was theirs to comment on.
And even though it seemed petty compared to everything else, I thought of Mike, and how he’d stolen my point. How he maybe hadn’t even realized it was mine. How it got more acknowledgement regardless. Was that petty? Or did things like that lead to bad stuff happening too? Was it all linked? Did all the horrid little moments where girls got treated like crap somehow create a society where the horrid big moments could happen – like whatever had made Megan’s voice shake in the college toilets?
I closed my eyes and pushed my thumbs into them, liking how the pressure felt.
“Lottie?”
God – if what I’d guessed was true, I couldn’t even imagine how Megan felt. For her not to say anything. To just let everyone carry on thinking Max is some nice guy in a band. My head started banging, like a tiny monkey was inside my brain, smashing the sides in with a hammer.
“LOTTIE?”
I looked up.
“Shit! Lottie, what’s wrong. Are you crying?”
Was I? I stared down at my hands – they were wet. I touched my face. It was drenched with tears. I heaved a sob. One I didn’t even know I’d been holding in.
