Amber pointed again.
“Seriously, Amber, I need protective goggles with you about.”
She ignored me again, too excited. “It’s such a disconnect, isn’t it? They market periods themselves as this horrible frumpy awful thing, and then the stuff we buy to deal with it is all pink and girly and ‘hey, girl, it’s okay, you can still smell of roses and go kickboxing’.”
Lottie nodded. “You’re right. Why not just go the whole hog? Periods suck, why make them scented and flowery? I’d much rather they put tampons in black boxes that came with a free chocolate bar.”
“With little slogans on each one that says stuff like, ‘Blame Eve’ or ‘This is your burden’,” I added.
The others laughed so hard that I didn’t stop feeling proud for ten minutes. Which was fortunate really because, punctual as ever, Amber called our break for cheesy snacks. I watched as they dipped their hands into the bowl of Wotsits, the neon yellow gunk sticking to their fingers. Lottie licked it off eagerly before delving back into the bowl. My stomach lurched. Bile rose up in my throat.
“Do you not want any, Evie?” Amber asked, a smear of orange dust around her lips.
I shook my head. “I’m stuffed, thanks.”
“You sure?” She picked up the bowl and wafted it under my nose. My tummy lurched again, spiralling in on itself, twisting itself into tangles.
“I…I…”
I was saved by her brat of a younger brother bashing through her bedroom door. He was all wrapped up in a post-bath towel, his hair all wet and sticking up on end. He would’ve looked cute if it wasn’t for:
“Amber is a big fat LESBIAN!”
“CRAIG! GET OUT OF MY ROOM.” Amber was already on her feet.
“Lesbian lesbian lesbian.”
“OUT!”
“Ginger lesbian! You never have boys in your room, do you?” he cackled. “Lezzer lezzer lezzer.”
Lottie and I looked at each other hopelessly.
“GET OUT, YOU LITTLE BRAT.”
“At least I don’t have ginger pubes. She leaves them in the bath. GINGER PUBES GINGER PUBES.”
That’s when the bowl flew through the air, sending the Wotsits cascading to the carpet. I ducked. So did Lottie. But Craig was hit right in the face with the bowl. His mouth hovered in an open “o” from shock. Then the howling started.
“MUUUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMY.”
Amber’s stepmum was at the door in a second. When she saw him crying, and the tiny graze above his eyebrow, she went into overdrive. She dropped to her knees. “Oh my God, Craig. Are you okay? What happened?”
He shakily pointed at Amber, who stood, staring at where the bowl had been in her hand. “I didn’t mean to hurt him. It’s a plastic bowl!”
“AMBER. Out here now.”
And she was half-dragged from her bedroom. The door swung shut heavily behind them. We heard yelling. We heard screaming.
Lottie and I didn’t know where to look. We couldn’t even look at each other for a bit. We just stared at all of Amber’s oil paintings, pinned haphazardly to the walls. I didn’t know much about art but they were very good, very Vincent Van Goghy, all swirls and spirals, but a bit darker. There was one in the corner of what must be her mum, judging by the hair. Her face took up only the smallest corner of the canvas; the rest of it was painted black.
“Should we leave?” I whispered as the yelling got louder.
“YOU ALWAYS TAKE HIS SIDE.”
Lottie looked around for means of escape.
“How? We have to get past…them. God, her brother is a brat.”
“Stepbrother,” I corrected.
“EMBARRASSED ME IN FRONT OF MY FRIENDS.”
“Let’s just sit here quietly and hope it goes away,” I said.
We both started playing with our phones.
“YOU CAN’T GROUND ME, I’M SIXTEEN.”
“SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UUUUUP.”
“I HATE YOU. NO I WON’T SAY SORRY. I HATE HIM. YOU HEAR THAT? I HATE YOU, YOU LITTLE GIT.”
My phone beeped and I tapped it quickly, not wanting Amber’s family to hear it.
It was a message. From Lottie.
This is so awkward, I could die.
We both dissolved into hushed laughter.
The argument died down and Craig’s howling quietened. We heard resentful apologies muttered through the wood of the door. When Amber re-entered, her face was pink and her cheeks were all splotchy. The front bit of her hair was matted from tears.
“So, guys,” she said, all breezy, like nothing extraordinary had ever happened in the history of her life. “I was thinking we should each write letters to our local MP, and ask him to cut tax on tampons.”
Lottie and I shared another meaningful look over Amber’s curls and nodded in unison.
“Great idea.”
“Brilliant.”
“Why should we pay tax on tampons anyway?” Lottie said. “It’s a tax on women. It’s not like we want to buy them.”
Amber picked her way through the clothes piles to her laptop, which was hidden by a heap of rubbish.
“Great, I’ll just pull up his address. You guys got pens and paper, right?”
We sat and wrote in semi-contented silence. Amber scribbled eagerly, her biro almost ripping through the page. I felt sorry for the assistant who read her letter. I reckoned a lot of misplaced anger was heading in their direction. She stopped for a moment, and Lottie and I looked up at her, waiting for her to talk about it.
“I’m not a lesbian,” she said, sadly. “If you thought what Craig was saying was true. There’s nothing wrong with being gay of course, but I’m not one. It pisses me off that just because I get angry about women’s rights, and I don’t want to date all the porn-obsessed runts at college, people automatically put me in that box. It’s messed up on so many levels, like it’s not even a bad box to be in…”
“I don’t think you should listen too much to your brat of a brother,” I said, though I felt guilty, because I had wondered a bit about Amber myself.
“Guy thinks it too. He calls this the lezzer club.”
Lottie made an angry sound with her tongue. “But Guy is a moron. Isn’t he, Evie?”
“Umm,” I stuttered.
Amber blew out her breath. “Let’s not get into this. Come on, back to our letters.”
I wasn’t sure what to write. I’d never written a letter to an MP before.
My letter to the MP about periods
Dear Chris Briggs MP,
I know you’re probably very busy, fielding angry letters about bin collections and such – our town is a bit like that. Everyone’s always whinging to each other about the green belt.
I know all this stuff is important and that you have to listen to them to get re-voted in, but I was just wondering if you could put all that aside for one moment? And think about how difficult it would be to make decisions and keep everybody happy whilst your penis was bleeding for four days a month…
My phone beeped and I accidentally scribbled in the margin. It was a message from Guy.
How’s your blob meeting going?
The girls looked up from their letters. “Who is it?” Lottie asked.
I pulled a face, pretending I wasn’t delighted. “Just a message from Guy.”
Amber rolled her eyes. “Message him back saying you’re too busy fighting The Man right now to deal with his shite.”
I read the message again, suppressing a smile.
“You know what?” I said. “I reckon I’d have a lot more time and energy to fight The Man if I wasn’t dealing with Guy’s shite.”
“So don’t deal with it then.”
I shrugged. “I can’t help it. It’s hormones or whatever.”
Lottie gave me an all-knowing smile. “Pheromones more like.”
I began to blush but my cheeks were humbled by Amber’s death stare. “I swear we can’t go an hour without you two talking about boys. I thought my agenda would boy-proof the evening.”