4. girl overboard
6410 / 50000
I'm not quite sure about this part; Pandora is really hard to write. Also, this was going to be longer but I've decided to split it, so the second half of this (from a different character's PoV) will be up tomorrow.
4. girl overboard
Pandora.
1106 words
The song ends and Pandora stops still, feeling dizzy as she watches the room spin. Lots of people are watching her--Pandora's an ace dancer; she always clears the floor because no one can compete, except maybe Doug, and he doesn't tend to show up at these sorts of parties--but she finds Thomas's face in the crowd and he's smiling, looking proper lush and lovely. She walks over to him and gives him a kiss, but she pulls away quickly because she's feeling a bit gloopy and weird from all the bopping around and she doesn't want to throw up all over him. That would be well embarrassing.
She tries to find the bathroom, but she's never been in this house before--doesn't even know whose it is, she just followed Effy here like usual--so it takes her a couple of tries to find the right room. The first door she tries she walks in on a couple of people lying on a bed and snogging, and she nearly apologises and rushes out before she realises it's Emily and Naomi.
"Hi!" she says, and waves madly when it takes them a while to realise she's there. "Good party, eh? Whizzer!"
"Get the fuck out of here, Panda," Naomi says.
"Oh! Sorry, sorry. Looking for the bathroom," she says, backing out of the room, and she tries the next door on the left. It's the actual bathroom this time, which is just as well because Pandora suddenly feels even more sick, what with Cook surfing Effy right up against the sink.
"Jesus, Panda," Effy says, and Cook turns around, surprised at first but he breaks into a grin when he sees her.
"All right, babes," he says, but he stops smiling when Effy roughly shoves him off. "'Scuse me," he says, but Effy ignores him.
"Fuck off, Cook," she says, staring straight at Pandora, and he zips his fly with a disgruntled look and buggers off.
"I need to throw up," Pandora says, and Effy just nods. Neither of them moves; the contents of Panda's stomach seem to be keeping down, and she doesn't want to lean over the toilet if she doesn't have to.
Eventually Effy says, "Panda..." but Pandora interrupts her before she can start on with whatever excuses or whatever she has to say.
"What are you doing with him?" Pandora says, the words all bursting out faster than she can keep track of them. "I thought you were done with wankers, that's what you said, but Cook's a wanker and you were doing sex with him. I don't get you, Effy."
Leaning against the sink, Effy shrugs and fishes a cigarette out of her bag and lights it. After a moment she pulls out another cigarette and offers it to Pandora, but Pandora doesn't want anything from Effy except maybe a flipping clue.
"It's no big deal," Effy says. "It's just sex."
"But that's stupid, Eff. Sometimes you're stupid. Sex that's meant to be no big deal always becomes a bigger deal than sex that is a big deal."
Effy looks at her sharply and flicks the ash off her fag. "It's not your boyfriend I'm fucking, so I don't see why you care."
"But he's not your boyfriend either." Panda's starting to get teary, and that always makes Effy look at her pityingly. "He makes you go all sad and crumpled and I don't like it, Eff, I don't like it."
Effy says nothing; she doesn't even look at her, instead stares up at the ceiling, but when Panda looks up too there's nothing interesting there, so Effy's probably just avoiding looking at her. After a while Effy shrugs and says, "Do you still like him? Is that it?"
"No," Pandora says quickly. "I'm in love with Tommo, silly."
"Right," Effy says. "That's why you spent months fucking Cook, is it?"
"This isn't about me," Panda says quietly, and she sits down on the edge of the bathtub, eyes fixed on the floor. "Just 'cause I'm a useless thicko who surfs the wrong boys doesn't mean you should, too."
Sitting down cross-legged on the floor, Effy looks up at Panda, saying nothing until Panda meets her eyes. "Hey," she says in a soft voice, "you're right. I'm not happy with Cook."
Pandora nods and says, "What about Freddie? You were all googly-eyed over him. For a bit, anyway."
"Freddie didn't make me happy, either."
"Oh," says Panda, and she tries to smile because she thinks Effy needs it. "Well, maybe you'd be happier if you were just by yourself, you know. Mum always says that abstinence makes the heart grow fonder."
"I think you're a bit mixed up," Effy says, smiling for the first time.
"Probably," Panda admits. "I usually am. But you could still try it."
Effy shrugs, looking all sad again. "No one's happier alone, Panda."
She might be right; after all, Pandora's much happier now she has Thomas than she ever was when she was just some weirdo and no one wanted to make the monkey with two backs with her. But even though being with Thomas is ninety percent ace, half the time it's a bit weird and sad, no matter how hard they pretend that everything's marvy.
"We should do something fun," Pandora says, trying to perk up. Whenever she starts to get sad she pretends that she's happy, and if she acts happy long enough then it's almost like she is happy, and that makes her forget what she was sad about.
"Like what?" Effy says. "I've got some of my mum's new pills, but they don't have much of a kick."
"No, silly, proper fun, like the sort of fun you have when you're a kid."
"We weren't friends when we were kids," Effy says, and Pandora wonders if Effy ever had proper fun when she was younger or if she was like this since she was a baby.
"I know, but that doesn't mean we can't do something now. We should, dunno, go to a theme park or something. Forget about stupid boys. Alton Towers is proper mental, once on a school trip there I ate so much candyfloss that I threw up when I was on Nemesis and all my sick was blue."
"You're really selling it, Panda," Effy says, but she has a bit of a smile on her face, and that makes Pandora properly smile in return.
"It'll be fun, promise," Panda says. "We can bunk off and go tomorrow."
"All right," Effy says, and she stands up, offering Panda her hand and pulling her up too.
"Hos before bros," Pandora says. "Whizzer!"