Free Asking for It by Louise O'Neill Page A

important—’
    ‘Oh my God, are you still angry with me because of what happened earlier?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘About what happened earlier.’ She lowers her voice. ‘The FatBooth thing.’
    ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Ali, I haven’t thought about that since. I was about to score with Jack when you—’
    ‘I know, and I’m sorry,’ she cuts in. ‘But I didn’t know what to do.’ She opens the door into the dated bathroom, the bath, toilet and sink a matching avocado colour, a scuzzy wool mat on the white lino.
    ‘Jesus,’ I say when I see Jamie collapsed over the toilet seat, heaving, but there’s nothing left to throw up, only a trickle of bile dribbling through her lips.
    ‘I know,’ Ali says. ‘What should we do? Should I call her parents?’
    ‘No,’ I say quickly. Jamie’s mam will have a nervous breakdown if she sees Jamie like this. ‘What happened to her? She was fine the last time I saw ye.’
    ‘She scored with Colin Daly.’
    ‘So?’
    Ali turns her head towards me and says out of the side of her mouth, ‘He tried to have sex with her, and when she said she didn’t want to, he said that he had heard from Dylan Walsh that she was a sure bet.’ Jamie moans when she hears Dylan’s name, dry-heaving into the toilet again.
    There’s a knock on the door.
    ‘There’s someone in here,’ I call out but they knock again, more urgently.
    ‘We said, just a minute ,’ Ali snaps, and Sean Casey answers uncertainly, ‘Is everything OK in there?’
    ‘Shit.’ Ali steps over Jamie’s legs to get to the mirror, pulling her make-up bag out of the navy quilted handbag. ‘Do I look all right?’ She applies more bronzer to her overly tanned face, smooths down some flyaway hairs at her centre parting.
    ‘Sorry, Sean,’ she calls out, and I step in front of her.
    ‘You are not leaving me alone to deal with this, Ali.’
    ‘Please, Em. I’m begging you. Please do this for me. It’s Sean.’
    ‘And I was with Jack.’
    ‘I never ask you to do anything for me,’ she says, and we both know it’s the truth. ‘But I’m asking you now. Please?’ She hesitates. ‘I really, really like him, Em.’
    He doesn’t like you, I want to tell her. He wants to be with me.
    ‘ Fine ,’ I say, and she squeals, gives me a massive hug and rushes out. I bolt the door after her and sit on the edge of the bathtub. Ali had the presence of mind to tie Jamie’s hair into a ponytail, so at least I don’t have to hold it back. I check my phone, sending Maggie a Snapchat, taking a selfie and posting it on Instagram, snorting when Matt Reynolds comments on the photo asking for a tit pic. After one violent retch that sounds like it might burst the lining of her stomach, Jamie wipes her mouth, then gets to her feet unsteadily, holding on to the toilet for balance.
    ‘Do you need help?’
    She bends over the sink, splashing her face with water. Standing up straight, she looks at me in the mirror. Her face is blotchy, her eyeliner smeared halfway down her cheeks.
    ‘What do you care?’
    ‘Jamie—’
    ‘You said it would be better.’
    ‘Jamie, I—’
    ‘It’s not better, Emma. It’s not better.’ Her breath is rasping in her throat. ‘You said, you said . . .’ She can barely get the words out through her tears. She looks such a mess, and there must be something wrong with me, because I know I should feel sorry for her, but all I feel is disgust. Look at yourself , I want to tell her. You’re ruining your make-up. Do you even care? I try to shush her, telling her to ‘Come on, J, you need to calm down, this isn’t the right place for this’, but she ignores me, sitting on the toilet seat, her head in between her knees so all I can hear through her wails is ‘. . . you said . . . you said that if I . . . Dylan . . . you told me to . . .’
    ‘Come on. Stop it.’
    ‘But you told me—’
    ‘It’s happened to loads of people. It happens all the time. You wake up the next morning, and you regret it