Girls and Safetypins

“So he just left?”

Gem took another long gulp from the bottle of whiskey she had nicked from her parents’ liqueur cabinet. 

“Yup. Just packed a bag, got in the car, and hasn’t been back since.”

Gem held out the bottle to Amy, who took it and knocked it back. She shot forward, sputtering. “God, this is disgusting.”

She looked over at her best friend and put on a reassuring smile. 

“It’s been three days, he might still be back.”

Gem scoffed. 

“Doubtful.” 

She looked around herself, feeling the warmth of the Jack Daniels taking a hold on her mind. Her room was a mess. There were clothes strewn all over the floor and half-drank coke cans on her windowsill. She caught a glimpse of last week’s empty pizza box under her bed. 

“Man, I’d kill for a burger right now,”

Amy laughed and passed back the bottle. “Maccy D’s?”

Gem smiled, for what felt to Amy like the first time all night. “You know it!”

“They don’t deliver, though?”

Gem shrugged. “We can walk.” 

Her father hated her being out past dark. Every time she came home late, even if it was just as the streetlights got turned on on her road, she was received with the same lecture about the world being a dangerous place for “girls like her”, and that she should know better than to walk around the street looking like that. 

He wasn’t here to tell her otherwise, though. 

Amy’s eyes widened, and Gem knew she wanted to say something, to make a comment about her actions, but all she said was “Okay, let’s go!”.

“I just gotta pee. Gimme a sec.”

Gem clutched her phone to her chest as she hopped up, nearly tripping over a pair of her runners in the doorway. She quietly closed the door behind her, and sat down on the floor against the wall. She clicked her phone on, praying to see a missed call, or a text, or anything at all that would be her father trying to get in touch, even if only to say goodbye. But there was nothing. 

She sighed and stood up, trying to shake off the trembling in her hands, and release the tightness in her chest. Something caught her eye as she tried to regain her balance, somewhat skewed by the booze. She carefully picked up the safety pin that was lying on the sink. She thought back to last week, when she’d used it to try and fix a skirt on which the zipper had broken.

She popped it open and raised it up to her ear. She pressed gently at first, but it passed through without any resistance, like a knife through butter. She closed it without taking it out. 

What would her father say?

She told herself that she didn’t care. 

She slammed the bathroom door behind her. 

Amy was in the process of raising the bottle to her lips when Gem walked back into the room.

““Are…are you, um, okay?”

Gem smirked at her through the doorway. 

“Of course! What do you say we go get that burger?”

Gem pulled her shoes on over her mismatched socks and trotted down the stairs, promptly followed by Amy. 

Her mother was in the living room watching what Gem recognized to be one of her mother’s beloved crime dramas. 

“Mom?” I’m going out.”

She glanced at the clock on the hallway wall; it was a quarter past twelve at night.

“Okay.” was all that she heard back. 

She stood there for a moment, waiting for her mother to shout something like “Do you know what time it is, Gemma?” or “Where do you think you’re going at this hour?”, but all she heard was that word, “Okay”, ringing in her ears.

They stepped out into warm night air, and Gem swept her hair behind her ear. 

“What the fuck is that?” The noise Amy made was somewhere between a scoff and a laugh.

“What’s what?”

This time she laughed and reached over to touch the side of Gem’s face.

“That.”

“Oh, you mean that. Well, that is a safety pin.”

“What’s is doing in your ear?”

“I put it there.”

“No shit.”

They walked in silence for an hour to get to the golden arches; Gem lived in the suburbs of Dublin, leaving a whopping forty-five-minute walk between her house and the nearest McDonalds. They took the scenic route; Gem wanted to walk, and Amy didn’t seem to notice. If she did, she didn’t say anything. Gem was still tipsy, but there was a bite in the spring air that she was starting to notice, and her ear had started to throb. 

“Gems, I think I’ve got bad news…”

When Gem looked up, she knew what Amy was going to say. The only light visible was that of the big yellow “M” that seemed to never be off, but the rest of the building was dark. Half of the streetlights were broken, or flickering, and there was not a single soul in the parking lot. A renegade trolley was parked crookedly in the middle of the car park, across the divide between two parking spaces. 

“It’s… closed.”

Amy started laughing. “Don’t sound so heartbroken. You’ve got bigger problems than Maccy’s being closed.”

“I...I know… I just… I just wish I didn’t, you know?”

Amy wrapped her arms around her best friend and squeezed.

“I know. What do you say we go back to mine and get your ear cleaned up?”

Gem sniffed.

“I’d like that.”

“You know, your dad’s a jerk.”

“I know.”

That night they walked another hour back to Amy’s house, laughing about stupid things, and talking about burgers and pizza and trolley surfing, and for one glorious night, Gem forgot that the streets were dangerous for girls like her.