I was getting bored. This was a problem. Boredom leads to worrying.
The clashing of the cymbals twitched my brain. The banging of the drum sped my heart. I imagined everyone’s breath coming out into this airless hall. The spent carbon monoxide, the droplets of germs floating through the air after people coughed. My heart started giving the drummer a run for his money.
Most bugs aren’t airborne. Most bugs aren’t airborne.
But most are carried by touch. And it felt like half a million people had touched me in the last half-hour. I pictured the bacteria multiplying on my exposed arms, spreading down to my wrist and up my palms and fingers.
My throat went tight.
Trying my best to hide my inner wobble, I leaned over to Amber’s ear and yelled, “Can we take a break?”
She smiled. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Leaving Jane in a love-struck trance, we elbowed and jostled our way out. My heart thudded the whole time and it seemed to take ages. But eventually we pushed through the double doors into the lobby and were engulfed in calm. There was space. And oxygen. And clean air streaming in from the entrance. I shivered with relief and delight.
“Where’s Lottie then?” Amber asked, her voice a bit too loud, not yet adjusted to the lack of screaming music.
I looked round for her. “I dunno. Probably killing that guy somewhere. Did you see how wet she got?”
“I’m just jealous she had a reason to leave sooner.”
“Music not to your taste?”
Amber winced, making her freckles blodge together on her nose into one brown lump. “No. Not at all. Do you ever worry you’re being a teenager wrong?”
I thought of the last three years. “I KNOW I’m being one wrong.”
“I mean, what’s wrong with finding songs glorifying domestic violence offensive? What’s wrong with finding live music too loud? What’s wrong with a nice cup of tea and a chat?”
I giggled. “You sound like my mum.”
“You see! I’m doing it wrong. But sometimes, like tonight for example, I really don’t bloody care.”
We made our way to the bar slowly, taking our time so we could delay going back in. There wasn’t a queue – just some underage drunk girl half-passed out on a giant cushion in the corner, being forced to drink water by the staff.
“I can’t see Lottie,” I said. “Isn’t that guy buying her crisps?”
“Maybe she’s drying herself under the hairdryers in the bathroom?”
We went back to the toilet. She wasn’t there.
“Outside?” Amber suggested.
The air was even cooler and crisper outside. A hint of autumn winged around me, making goosebumps ripple up my arm.
“Lottie?” I called softly.
Getting a bit nervous, I called again. No answer. What if the posh drink-chucker was actually a psycho and the drink-chucking was an elaborate ploy to get Lottie away from her friends? What if he was killing her right now?
We crunched in the gravel round the car park, towards the church, and my worries were stopped in their tracks.
Lottie’s body was pressed up against the wall. By Posh Boy’s body. Lottie’s face was pressed into Posh Boy’s face. Lottie’s hands were on Posh Boy’s arse. An unopened bag of crisps lay at their feet.
I looked at Amber, who’d spotted them at exactly the same time.
“Looks like she’s forgiven him,” Amber whispered.
“Looks like it.”
We turned away and crunched back alongside the church, which was all lit up in eerie beauty by floodlights.
“Evie?”
“Yes?”
“Would you think I was being a teenager wrong if I said: ‘Can we go home now, please?’”
“No,” I said. “I’d think you were a legend.”
So we sent a message to Jane and an otherwise-engaged Lottie to let them know we were leaving.
Eleven
Lottie was loved up. Since the band night she’d had a heady glow about her, and her phone kept going off. She disappeared some lunchtimes to meet Posh Boy (Tim) in the graveyard and would come back with leaves stuck in her hair. In that time, Ethan had stopped giving me Labrador eyes in sociology and now chatted everyone else up. I’d begun looking forward to film studies instead. Brian’s lack of professionalism made it easier to get to know Oli better – we now traded film recommendations like children trading football cards. And I’d dropped another 10mg on my medication. I was now down to only half a pill. HALF! I used to take three a day, plus benzos, a tranquillizer-type drug that made me sleepy all day.
“You know,” Amber said to Lottie, as we prepared to pay for another breakfast at the dodgy cafe. “You are allowed to talk about Tim. We’re your friends. We’re happy for you.”
Were we? I’d privately been more sad for myself that yet another friend had procured a boyfriend whilst I remained unlovable.
“Yes, tell us,” I said. Jealousy would get me nowhere.
Lottie blushed and ducked behind her dark hair.
“God,” Amber said, with a bit of disgust in her voice. “You’re proper loved-up, aren’t you?”
Lottie went redder and moved the dribbling sauce bottles about on the sticky tablecloth.
She mumbled something.
“What?” we both asked.
Lottie emerged from her hair. “I said, I feel bad talking about it.”
“What? Why?” Amber asked. “Evie and I can handle your gushing, can’t we, Evie?”
I nodded and put my hand on Lottie’s to stop her playing obsessively with the sauce. “Of course we can.”
“But I don’t want to be one of those girls…” Lottie put her head on the table briefly before raising it again. “You know, like Jane.”
Jane had got much worse since the gig. It was like she’d morphed into a mini version of Courtney Love overnight – backcombing her dyed hair, talking loudly in the canteen about wanting to get her nipple pierced. I’d even talked her out of getting matching tattoos with Joel. Tribal ones.
“Lottie, you are nothing like Jane,” I reassured her. “For one, you’ve not blown me off three times in the last week.”
“I know…I know…but I’m scared that if I talk about Tim with you guys then I’ll fail the Bechdel test.”
“The what?” I asked, whilst Amber nodded wisely. “Nah, you won’t. Don’t be silly.”
I was confused. “What’s the Bechdel test?” Was this something else I’d missed from school? Was it a test I was supposed to be revising for?
Lottie saw the panic in my eyes. “Calm down, Evie. It’s not an actual academic test.” She patted my hand. “It’s a feminism thing.”
“Feminism? There’s a test for that?”
Would I pass? I quickly scanned my thoughts and feelings to check them for feminismness. The pay gap makes me cross, and yet I wear make-up. I feel sick whenever I look at the front cover of PHWOAR magazine, and yet I also look at the model’s boobs and feel bad mine don’t look like that. I hate that Jane ditched me for a boyfriend and that Joel is all she ever talks about, and yet, I would really quite like a boyfriend myself…
… My brain hurt.
Oblivious to my inner conflict, Amber explained it to me.
“Have you really not heard of it? I thought you would’ve done it in film studies. It’s like a feminism litmus test for films and books and stuff. Basically, in the eighties, this super cool illustrator who I LOVE called Alison Bechdel realized that all female characters do in fiction stuff like films and books, is talk about men. So she made this simple Bechdel test. And, to pass it, a film’s got to have at least two women in it—”
Lottie butted in. “And they’ve got to have at least one conversation about something other than men. Just one conversation, that’s it. And it’s passed.”