Cool Girls Don't Cry

A short story about rebellion and peer pressure. Go to andrewhenleywriting.wordpress.com for more of my work.

Abigail and Leanne ran the school. They weren’t the Queens, or the plastic princesses, they were the mafia. Things were done their way, or it was the last thing you did. Even the staff were in their pockets. The married head teacher had slept with Abigail, and her silence was worth a lot of skipped detentions and passed exams. Their office was the girls’ toilets in X Block, near the science labs. They were not us be used as toilets. Everyone knew this. Everyone it seemed, except little Emily Navy.

 

Before Emily, only two people had ever gone into Abigail and Leanne’s office. The first was a boy, a year older than Abigail and Leanne, who was pushed in by his mates for a joke. He was pushed out 30 seconds later, doubled over with his hands on his crotch. He missed a week of school. The second was a girl, platinum blonde and then-Queen Bee. She went in to tell Abigail and Leanne on behalf of all the girls, that is was unfair for the two of them to take up an entire bathroom. She came out in tears, and the next day stopped wearing makeup and grew the platinum out of her hair to a natural dull tone. The stories were enough to stop anyone else trying to use Abigail and Leanne’s office, mafia HQ, as a toilet.

 

But Emily was desperate. Maybe Abigail and Leanne would be in class. Emily would be late if she went all the way to the C Block toilets, and she might just pee herself before she got there anyway. Emily opened the heavy pink door and ran inside.

 

Abigail and Leanne were not in class. Abigail was sitting in the dry sink, Leanne standing next to her. Both of them were smoking. Between them they had a normal amount of hair, but the majority belonged to Abigail. Leanne had a short ginger bob, Abigail’s bottle black, piled high and leopard spotted with blonde as it fell down her shoulders and back. Emily’s was straight, and a boring mix of smoothness and knots in a so-so brown colour.

 

Their smoke shrouded the room in mist like an enchanted forest. It didn’t smell like the other toilets in the school. That was probably because for the four years Abigail and Leanne had been at the school, no one had used them as toilets. Leanne was the first to notice Emily. She stubbed her cigarette out on the mirror, looked at Abigail and nodded towards Emily. They both stared at her.

“Um, I really need to pee.”

Abigail smiled and pointed to one of the stalls with her cigarette. Emily ran in, shut the door and sat down. She first felt relief as she allowed herself to pee, then embarrassment as she realised Abigail and Leanne could hear her. The school mafia were listening to her pee. She repositioned herself uncomfortably, until she was sitting at an awkward enough angle to hit the bowl of the toilet rather than the water.

 

Emily finished, flushed and opened the door. Abigail and Leanne were leaning on the door frame, one either side. Emily’s heart raced in pulsating thumps that she could feel in the back of her head. She suddenly felt faint and dizzy.

“Weren’t you scared about coming in here?”

Leanne asked her with a thin smile. Leanne’s lips were thin and pale; Emily doubted she’d be able to see them at all if it weren’t for Leanne’s Tudor white makeup.

“I’m sorry. I’ll go. I just… really needed to pee.”

“Relax. We don’t care,” Leanne said.

“Yeah. You seem pretty cool anyway.”

Abigail blew a stream of smoke in Emily’s face. It was supposed to be playful, but Emily still coughed and spluttered like her dad’s old Honda.

 

Emily didn’t feel ‘pretty cool’. She wore standard black school pumps, white high socks, a knee length grey skirt �" not black, that was against school rules �" and had her red school tie the appropriate length, pushed up to her fastened top button. Abigail and Leanne were ‘pretty cool’, and they looked nothing like this. Abigail was wearing a pair of off white Nike Air Max’s, Leanne had clunky Doc Martens. Abigail had tennis socks on, Leanne was wearing skin coloured tights with a crisscross black pattern. All of the above were strictly forbidden by school rules. Leanne’s black shirt was on the threshold of acceptable, Abigail’s at least three inches higher. Leanne’s tie was long and loose, it hung down her chest like a pendant. Abigail wore hers very small, but tied in a huge knot. Neither had their top button fastened. In fact, Leanne’s wasn’t even there. It looked like it been torn off. Emily couldn’t tell if Abigail’s eyelashes were fake or just heavily mascaraed. Her purple eye shadow had the bright hue of several layer’s work. Leanne wore less makeup, just an artificially white face with a solid outline of eyeliner around both eyes. Emily wasn’t sure of the school rules on makeup, so she wore none.

 

Leanne pulled two cigarettes from the box in her top pocket and Abigail lit them with a blue lighter that was tucked into the waistband of her skirt. Leanne put one in her mouth, took a drag and handed the other one to Emily. This was against the rules. Her hand shook as she grabbed it. She inhaled and her mouth and lungs flooded with poison. She gasped. It tasted horrible, but her cheeks tickled with rebellion.

“There. You’re one of the girls now.”

“The cool girls?” Emily asked. It was a distinctly uncool question.

Abigail laughed and asked her name.

“Emily”

Leanne handed Abigail a thick black marker pen. Abigail bit the top to pull it off, and hovered the pen over a patch on the wall where ‘A_BI’ and ‘L_EA’ were written, then wrote ‘E_MZ’.

“One of the cool girls,” Leanne laughed.

 

Emily worried this was part of some elaborate, cruel joke. But it wasn’t. Abigail and Leanne took Emily to parties and clubs. She didn’t feel like she belonged there, but she enjoyed them all the same. Abigail and Leanne looked after her, and she got to meet lots of interesting people. Lots of boys. Maybe there was more to life than the rules.

 

One of these boys wore a beanie and bow tie. He played the accordion. Emily like him. His name was Samuel, never Sam. One night at a club, Emily finally felt brave enough to talk to Samuel. He was cool, but he seemed nice. He bought her a drink and took her into the girls’ toilets. In one of the stalls, they kissed with a teenage lack of skill or inhibition. Emily was two years younger than Abigail and Leanne and had never experienced anything like it. She felt happy and free. One of the girls.

 

Samuel’s hands were in Emily’s hair and she felt good. Then they were on her hips and she felt sexy. Then they were on her breasts and she felt uncomfortable. She pushed him away as they went between her legs.

“What’s wrong? Don’t you wanna be like Abigail and Leanne?”

 

The question was less rhetorical than intended, as if a bell had chimed within Emily’s head. Did she want to be like Abigail and Leanne? She worried that not be mafia dons forever, with the entire world wrapped around their fingers. She was right to worry. Abigail’s life will come down to three things; a one night stand, a broken condom, and post-natal depression. Leanne becomes an alcoholic who falls off the wagon and gets trampled by horse.

 

Back in the now, Samuel’s hands were all over Emily, like an entangled squid.

“Don’t you wanna be like Abigail and Leanne? They fucked their way around your whole school, sometimes both of them at the same time.”

He laughed at his own wit and ripped Emily’s shirt.

 

Emily sat alone in the stall and cried. Now she was one of the girls. The cool girls.