A Girl Called Shameless

“Another girl’s nude leaked,” Ajita mumbles. “It’s bad. Oh shit, no, not just a nude. A sex tape. Oh . . . oh fuck.”

Meg goes to turn the laptop to show me, but I gesture frantically, shaking my hands no. “Please. Don’t. I can’t look. I don’t want to.”

“I get it,” Meg replies softly.

“Who is it?” I ask.

“Another senior. Hazel Parker. You know her?”

I shake my head, but then realize her name is familiar. “She’s a cheerleader, right?”

“Judging by the pompoms, I would assume so,” Meg says gravely.

Acid churns in my stomach. “Is it on a blog? Or YouTube?” I remember the World Class Whore website Danny made to publicly shame me, and it’s still so fresh I can feel the sharp pangs of horror all over again.

Ajita shakes her head. “A group chat. They added everyone from school.” Sure enough, one glance at my phone shows a bunch of new notifications from a group chat entitled “Hazel ‘Pompom’ Parker.” After the original video, which I blur my eyes in order not to look at, there are a few dozen comments – mainly from guys, because guys – about the nude. Critiques of her body, her technique, and, inevitably, the eggplant emoji followed by the water squirt emoji. Her friends from the cheer squad have posted angry messages demanding that the chat is deleted or they’ll go to the police, but that just makes me feel even more sick. There’s nothing the police can do when revenge porn is legal.

Oh God. Hazel made some shitty comments online when my garden-bench picture was leaked. Something about how shameless I am, about how dirty my behavior was. And now the same thing is happening to her.

A dark, spiteful part of me feels an iota of satisfaction at the way the world has dealt her revenge, but the bigger, overwhelming part just feels terrible for her. No matter how shitty a person she is, she doesn’t deserve this. Nobody does. Sympathy crests in my chest.

What’s Hazel doing now? Has she seen it yet? Or is she enjoying her last moments of blissful ignorance before her world is turned upside down?

I remember the way I felt when the nudes first dropped. Disbelief, along with roiling nausea and a desperate desire to wake up and find this is all just a bad dream. And the paranoia, sharp and immediate. The feeling that every single person I made eye contact with had now seen me naked, from the principal of Edgewood to the homeless man who sleeps rough on our housing estate. My skin crawls at the memory, as vivid as the day it happened.

No. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.

“Are you okay?” Ajita asks. Her teeth work away at her inner lip. Meg’s eyes are wide and sympathetic. Their pity makes me feel two inches tall.

“Yeah, fine,” I lie. Then, despite my best efforts to bury it deep down in my chest, emotion explodes through me in savage waves, so intense it leaves me gasping for breath.

Anger. White hot, furious. Pure, unfiltered rage, so potent and visceral it makes me feel more wild animal than teenage girl.

Nothing is ever going to change. No matter how well our sex-doll sketches go down, no matter how many chords we strike with the BBB fanbase, this shit will continue to happen to girl after girl after girl.

I grip the table, knuckles whitening like the flames inside me. I want to smash something, want to feel something shatter in my fist. I eye the glass pepper shaker longingly.

“This is going to keep happening as long as it’s legal,” I spit out. “Teenage girls are going to keep having their lives ruined, and if they’re over eighteen, the douchebags who leak their nudes are totally off the hook. It makes me sick that you can ruin someone’s life and face no consequences.”

“Maybe if we keep going with Bitches Bite Back, we’ll make guys see that –”

“No, we won’t,” I burst out, interrupting an alarmed Meg. I pound my fist on the Formica table, cutlery rattling in its jar. “We won’t make guys see anything. We don’t have the scope.”

Ajita and Meg exchange a worried glance. I don’t think either of them have ever seen me like this. Honestly, before the scandal, I wasn’t an angry person. Self-absorbed and immature, maybe, but I’ve never felt this way before. So easily irritated, so quick to erupt. It’s like my blood has been replaced by molten lava, scorching me from the inside out.

The noise in the diner is dimmed by my rage. My heartbeat pounds in my ears as I try to sharpen the anger into a point, try to focus my blistering energy into action.

How can Bitches Bite Back stop this? Writing blog posts and launching forums isn’t enough. We need to take real action. But how? We’re just teenagers. We have no power.

But that isn’t true. I think of the marches organized by victims of school shootings, kids like me who wanted to channel their pain and grief into change. Could we organize a protest maybe? Our town is small, but if enough women and non-awful guys got behind it . . .

No. It’s not enough. Those victims had a clear goal: stricter gun control. Our message would just be: hey, maybe stop being such unbelievable cretins toward young women?

So . . . we should do the same. We should demand comprehensive revenge porn legislation. It’s the only thing that would provide an adequate deterrent for guys seeking to destroy a woman’s reputation. These laws already exist to varying degrees in other states, but the South in general is yet to follow suit. And with far-right senators like Ted Vaughan in office, change is unlikely to happen anytime soon.

Yet a plan is formulating in my mind. I’m aware I’ve been sat in silence for several minutes, and things round the table have gotten a little awkward, so I lay my palms flat on the sugar-dusted table, fingers splayed, and say, “I have an idea.”

“Always dangerous,” Ajita says. “Go on.”

“I think we need to arrange a meeting with Ted Vaughan.”

Meg blinks twice in quick succession, pushing her glasses up her nose. “The senator?”

“The father of the dude you banged on a garden bench?” Ajita adds.

I nod once, solemn as a nun. “The one and only.”

Nothing is ever going to change. Not unless we force it to.

Wednesday 4 January

7.45 a.m.

Despite last night’s wild sequence of events – namely landing a job and experiencing severe second-hand pain on Hazel’s behalf – I leave the diner and walk home in good snuff. [For the uninitiated, this is entertaining old slang for “in a good mood”. I am not sure if you can culturally appropriate Middle Ages England, but if you can, please send the Tudors my apologies.]

We spend the rest of the BBB meeting drafting an email to Ted Vaughan’s office, requesting a meeting to discuss the state’s condemnable lack of revenge porn legislation. We even use words like “legislation”, to give off the illusion of savvy. The BBB email account pings immediately with an auto response: someone will get back to us in three–five business days. The impatient imp who nests inside my skull wants to march down to the office right now and demand they see us this very instant, but I beat down the impulse [geddit?] for once. We all know I’m not fantastic at will power, or generally behaving like an adult in any way, shape or form. So we must consider this show of spectacular restraint a win.

Having a plan makes me feel fierce and determined, rather than angry and helpless. I cling to it like a life raft.

Hazel’s sex tape is the talk of the town. The guy who leaked it – a former jock nicknamed Bakehead on account of his well-documented pot habit – is apparently her ex-boyfriend. He cheated on her, she wouldn’t take him back, so he sent their sex tape to everyone he knew. She filmed it in trust, and that trust was shattered.

Lots of girls have left the group chat in a show of solidarity, but plenty haven’t. The follow-up messages are now into the hundreds. The majority are lewd, crude and skin-crawlingly vulgar, although there are a handful of brave souls who’ve chimed in and called out the guy who started the group chat, labeling him a pitiful bully and a pathetic, immature dick. But those are few and far between. It’s mainly water-squirt emojis.

Carson, God bless his soul, commented saying, “Hey, man, this is uncool. Delete it, right now.” It remains undeleted, but I appreciate his sticking up for Hazel nonetheless – because as soon as he does a few of his teammates follow his lead. It’s nice seeing guys actually call each other on their bullshit, and even nicer when it’s your boyfriend leading the rally cry.

Even Danny – who has abstained from the general internet since I found out he leaked my nude pictures to the entire world – has heard the news, on account of the fact it’s a small-ass town, and you can’t even take a dump without your neighbor speculating over its consistency.

Despite the fact we haven’t spoken in months, he messages me the following:

Hey. Heard about Hazel. Hope you’re both okay.

I sigh and shove my cell phone back in my pocket, breathing in the crisp winter air and vague scent of log fires. I don’t think there is a Pulitzer Prize for uninspiring text messages, but if there were, I think this dry-as-toast attempt would definitely make the shortlist.

In fact, all this text does is stoke my fiery rage. No, neither of us are okay, and it’s all your fucking fault. How dare you massage your own conscience like this.

To be honest, I don’t even care about Danny. I know who the good people in my life are, and he is not one of them. His support, or lack thereof, means nothing to me anymore. [Hold that thought, past me.]

Even though we have a plan of action and having an outlet for my anger is already alleviating its intensity, I’m still dreading school today. I can’t watch Hazel suffer like I did. I can’t go through the stares and the whispers and the laughs all over again. My emotional armor isn’t robust enough – there are chinks and holes from the open fire it endured for months on end.

But I’m an O’Neill. We get by. We always have, and always will. So instead of letting fear and anger paralyze me, I’m going to go into the kitchen, make coffee for Betty and me, and tell her the news about my new part-time job. I’m briefly concerned the excitement will cause her to shit herself right there in the kitchen, so I take a mop just in case. The last thing we need is Dumbledore using a poop as a chew toy. Again.

RIP, couch. May angels lead you in.

3.17 p.m.

School is nowhere near as bad as it has the potential to be, which is probably the first time those words have ever left my mouth/fingers.

Hazel stays home. I don’t blame her. Rumors are flying around about the awful shit that’s happened to her since the tape was sent around. She was instantly fired from her weekend job at Hollister, and her ultra-religious parents have grounded her so severely that she’s not even allowed to be on the cheerleading squad anymore. She’s an honors student, by all accounts, with lofty career ambitions. Does she feel like her future has been snatched away from her, like I did? Like I still do, in my darkest moments?

At least Hazel’s friends seem to be rallying around her. The squad are on a letter-writing campaign – to Hazel’s parents, begging them to let her back on the team, and to Hollister HQ, demanding she get her job back. Carson’s teammate’s mom knows a guy who’s high up at Abercrombie & Fitch, and offers to reach out to him explaining the situation. Baxter and a couple other guys on the soccer team corner Bakehead and threaten to kick his teeth in if he doesn’t delete the group chat. He obliges, thank God, but the damage is largely done. The tape is burned into everyone’s minds forever – and saved to camera rolls all over town. It’s only a matter of time before someone shares it wider.

As a general rule people suck. Hazel’s locker has been adorned with pompoms, flimsy underwear and a strip of condoms. Ajita, Meg and I help her friends hastily tear all of this down and stuff it in an overflowing garbage can, to the soundtrack of many loud “booooooo”s from the assortment of teenage dirtbags around us. The entire time we’re working, chills run up and down my arms, pooling in the palms of my hands. Watching this unfold all over again is like a waking nightmare I can never outrun.

At lunch I take myself away to the restroom and huddle in the cubicle, typing out an email to Hazel using her school address. I remember the way the scandal made me feel so alone, as though nobody else on the planet, much less in this tiny town, could understand the pain of what I was going through. If I can save Hazel from that intensely lonely sensation, it’ll be worth it.

Hey Hazel,

I just wanted to say that I’m so sorry you’re going through this. I know it feels like your entire world is crashing down, like you might die from the shame of it, but I promise it gets better. It really does. People have very low attention spans and will honestly forget about it way quicker than you think. Even if you wind up on BuzzFeed, like yours truly.

If you do ever want to talk to someone who genuinely gets what you’re going through, I’m always here. It’s not that I think I’m the authority on the situation – of course I’m not. I can only speak from my own experiences, and I know everyone is so different. But yeah, I understand what this very specific pain feels like, so if there’s anything I can do just let me know.

Izzy

Look! Not one single trace of sarcasm in the entire two paragraphs! Better text Ajita a dirty joke, stat.

Hey. Why does Santa Claus have such a big sack?

Her reply buzzes almost immediately.

I don’t know. I don’t celebrate Christmas, you culturally insensitive asshole. Xo

Me: Okay, well, the answer was because he only comes once a year, but you’ve kind of ruined the moment.

6.45 p.m.

Betty’s working late tonight, and Ajita is going to some kind of tragic athletics meet with her hideously talented brother Prajesh, so I decide to spend the evening working on my screenplay. My agent just sent me notes on the revisions I did over the holidays, and I’m excited to roll up my writerly sleeves and get stuck in.

However, just as I’ve boiled the kettle for a literal gallon of cocoa, there’s a knock at the door. Carson.

“Hey,” he says, smiling, cute as a button in his pizza place uniform. He’s still wearing the pepperoni-themed baseball cap, even though he hates it. He knows it makes me smile, so he wears it whenever he can. I will never get tired of his sausage. [Yes, this entire paragraph was leading up to that innuendo. Why am I like this?]

“Just finished work?” I ask, leaning in for a smooch. He smells of oregano.

“Nah, I just wear this for kicks,” he mumbles, lips pressed against mine.

Dumbledore dashes restlessly round our ankles. He’s hyper with pent-up energy, since I haven’t had a chance to take him out properly over the last few days. Reluctantly I pull away from Carson. “Hey, I need to walk the pooch. Wanna come? It’s fine if not. If you’ve gotta get home or whatever.”

He bends down to play-wrestle with Dumbledore, who pants excitedly. “Nah. I’ll come with.” The dog immediately rolls onto his back in mock defeat, and wriggles in delight as Carson rubs his chubby little belly.

“Awesome,” I say. “I’ll just grab his wizard’s robes.”

To his credit Carson is completely unfazed by this. He’s immune to my family’s weirdness, which I sort of kind of love about him. [Don’t tell him I used the L-word in a sentence describing him, because I work very hard on my reputation as an aloof sloth-type figure, and don’t want it to be ruined now.]

While we walk to the nearby park, I fill Carson in on both the BBB and the job developments. “Anyway, the combination of the two almost rendered my darling grandmother incontinent. Thankfully she managed to control the situation, which is good, because the last thing we need is a medical emergency.”

“How would that be a medical emergency?” he asks. “Do I even want to know?”

“I meant for Dumbledore,” I explain, shoving my hands deep into my pockets, still clutching Dumbledore’s leash. I watch him waddle ahead of us, little buttocks bouncing up and down, determined to show off in front of Carson. “Speaking of medical emergencies, have I told you about the time I had a tumor in fifth grade?”

His eyebrows shoot up into his beanie. “You had a tumor? How could I not know that?”

I maintain a serious expression. “I mean, it turned out to be a gummy bear lodged behind my uvula. But it could have been a tumor. At least it gave the ER folks a good laugh.”

Carson snorts extravagantly. “You got taken to the emergency room for a malswallowed gummy bear?”

“Firstly, ‘malswallowed’ is not a word, although it should be, so thank you for the entertaining new vocabulary. Secondly, in my defense, it was a fizzy gummy bear. That shit stings. Anyway, the school nurse was convinced I was dying. I wrote my will while waiting for the CAT scan.”

Carson’s dimples make an appearance as he grins. “Oh yeah? And what was on this will?”

“I requested a Viking burial, and left my worldly possessions to a rhino sanctuary I saw on a documentary that day. I’m not sure why I thought a herd of orphaned rhinoceri would have use for my Justin Bieber CDs, but there you go.”

By the time we arrive the park is almost deserted. It’s around midway between my housing community and Carson’s place, and it’s like something out of a post-apocalyptic movie. The swingsets and slides are rusty and worn, and there’s a rocket-shaped jungle gym graffitied with ugly slurs. The sandboxes are equal part tiny rocks and cigarette butts. There’s a swimming bath that hasn’t been used in years, so has been transformed into a charming skate park/drug den hybrid. And yet at this time of year, with the moon shining on the sparkling layer of frost coating the park, it’s weirdly beautiful. And, you know, harrowing.

The whole place is empty, because it’s way too cold for even the most hardcore teenage delinquents. We leave Dumbledore to roam around and do his business. He promptly takes a piss against a Confederate statue. Good dog.

Carson and I pull up a pew on a memorial bench, dedicated to the only properly famous guy from our neighborhood – a celebrated anti-apartheid protester who died in a South African prison. [I’ve always found it ridiculous how the powers that be decided he was only worthy of a bench, not the entire park. I’d give him the entire state, if it were my call to make, which is probably why it is not my call to make.]

“Anyway, at least now we’ll be able to afford pet insurance, with this new job of mine,” I announce merrily. “Dumbledore can eat all the delicious turds he likes. And, hey, maybe I can afford a new toothbrush! Mine has had alopecia for several years now.”

“Shit, things have been so bad you can’t afford a toothbrush?”

I shrug. “I’m used to it. Many apologies that you must kiss this improperly washed mouth of mine.”

Dumbledore ambles back over to us, dropping a carefully selected rock at Carson’s feet and looking up expectantly. He’s a rescue dog – obviously, because how the Dickens could Betty and I afford a pedigree dachshund – and he’s always had a rock fetish. He often carries them home with him in his cheek pouches, like a hamster, and nestles them into his dog bed with him. Bless.

Carson picks up the rock and throws it in the direction of the permanently lopsided seesaw. Dumbledore chases it as fast as his tiny legs can carry him, which is not fast in the slightest. Since it’s pitch dark, finding the same rock again should keep him entertained for a while.

“Man, I had no idea things were ever that desperate.” Quietly he adds, “I wish I could help out more. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t ever apologize for that,” I say, louder than I mean to. He looks taken aback by my belligerence. [Belligerence! Check out that thesaurus usage!] “I just mean you have your own shit to worry about,” I add hastily, softer now. “You shouldn’t have to take care of me too.”

“But I want to. You’re cold?” he asks, watching my leg bounce up and down in a bid to warm up. He takes off his oversized sweater and hands it to me, flashing a strip of toned brown belly skin as he does, and I feel a familiar jolt of longing.

Although maybe I just have a thing for benches at this point.

9.14 p.m.

With Betty not around to crow about water bills I take a longer, hotter shower than usual, before spending the night the way I planned to: editing my screenplay. I mean, right after I finish writing this blog post. And checking social media. And making hot cocoa. The scandal changed many things about me, but not my talent for procrastination.

Finally, after completing the most pointless and unnecessary of tasks, I curl up in my tiny single bed and get to work, throwing my hair up into a messy bun. Instagram girls somehow make messy buns look like the sexiest thing on this earth but I assure you mine just makes me look like I’m wearing a swimming cap, which is not my dream aesthetic. [No offense if you’re reading this, Michael Phelps. Which I don’t know why you would be, but still.]

Friday 6 January

9.51 a.m.

Since I stayed up half the night manically whizzing through script edits – writing in a new character and removing another entirely – I’m glad our first class of the day is drama. It’s the only thing I’m remotely good at academically, and we never have homework because Mrs Crannon is one of those blessed “learn-by-doing” advocates. So I can coast by pretty easily on zero winks of sleep.

We’re studying the script of Guys and Dolls in prep for our midterm exams. Unfortunately studying theater is not just about goofing off on stage and attempting Jazz-era Brooklyn accents. We actually have to write essays on things like narrative arc, which if you ask me is incredibly unreasonable, although as an aspiring a screenwriter it’s probably a useful exercise. So we’re sitting in a circle in Mrs Crannon’s classroom and doing a read-through from the playbook before we start analyzing and breaking everything down.

I’ve been cast as Miss Adelaide, one of the two female leads, while Ajita is a Nepali Sarah Brown, because Mrs Crannon is not one of those absurd people who use “historical accuracy” to justify their racism. She’s also cast a Chinese-American girl called Sharon in the famously white male role of Lieutenant Brannigan. This decision angered Danny greatly, as he’s been relegated to an ensemble part. He’s still stewing about it now. In fact, if he stews for much longer, he’s in real danger of becoming a casserole.

Mrs Crannon has dashed backstage to grab a stack of fur coats to help us get into character, and also because the radiators are broken so the classroom temperature is currently subzero. When she left she told us to start the read-through without her, but of course, as a roomful of lazy/horny teenagers, this is not the course of action we ultimately take, instead opting to chat among ourselves on topics of our choice. For instance, I’m chatting to Ajita about the possibility of lip-syncing my singing parts, because although Miss Adelaide is an alto role, I still cannot hit the high notes without sounding like a meerkat with a softball bat shoved up its ass. Right when I’m doing my very best meerkat-with-a-softball-bat-shoved-up-its-ass impression, much to Ajita’s delight and merriment, Danny chooses this precise moment to come over to us.

Ajita’s euphoric expression takes on a vaguely murderous vibe as she watches him approach, but still the useless shrew does not think to warn me about the incoming douchebag. So I’m still howling “aaaaayyeeeeeee-yeeeeee-yaaaaaaaaahhhhh” when he taps me on the shoulder.