Page 68 of Unnecessary Drama

‘Oh, I thought Brooke must have texted you.’

‘I did not text her,’ I say.

‘Brooke, what’s happened to her hand?’ She sounds disappointed in me, like I’m the friend’s parent who let her daughter get out of control. This annoys me more than anything else about the situation.

‘Nothing, a little cut,’ I say, pulling the tweezers out of Lauren’s hand. She cannot operate on herself while drunk.

‘Hi Michelle,’ Tristan calls out. I glare at him, and shake my head.

‘Who’s that?’ Mum says.

‘No one,’ I say.

‘It’s Tristan,’ Tristan says.

‘Brooke is hanging out with Tristan again, Mum,’ Lauren says, her voice emphasising the words ‘hanging out’ so it sounds like Tristan and I are embroiled in some kind of casual-sex scenario.

‘We’re just friends. Tristan is here with his girlfriend,’ I say, still trying to wipe blood from Lauren’s hand.

‘Hi, I’m Kendra, nice to meet you,’ Kendra calls.

‘Hello, dear,’ Mum says. ‘Is this the Kendra that Tristan left you for, Brooke?’

‘Yes Mum, yep, she’s the one,’ I say, as upbeat as possible.

I look around, desperate to steer the conversation in a new direction.

‘We need to stop the bleeding and then irrigate the wound,’ Henry says, looking up from his phone.

‘Oh my god,’ Mum says. ‘What’s happening? How bad is your hand, Lauren?’

‘Mum, it’s fine,’ I say.

‘Who was that talking about irrigating Lauren’s hand?’ Mum says.

‘It was me. Hi, hello, this is Henry?’ Henry says, looking nervous and waving at the phone for some reason.

‘Mum, I’m hanging up,’ I say.

‘Call me back when you have things under control,’ she says.

‘Everything is under control!’ I yell as I hang up. ‘Okay, let me think,’ I say, looking at Lauren’s hand. I actually have no idea how to tell if a cut is deep enough to need stitches.

The music is still going, and everyone is talking over each other, and Penny and Harper are laughing helplessly about something, and Harper is trying to explain to me what’s so funny while still reassuring me that she’s taking the medical crisis seriously, and Jesse has dropped the first-aid kit on the floor and is trying to pick it all up before he thinks I’ll notice.

Lauren touches my arm.

‘I know you don’t trust me, ever, with anything, but I promise, I do know what I’m talking about when I say, this cut will be fine if we clean it and then bandage it, and I don’t need stitches. It barely even hurts! You don’t need to look after me.’

‘It doesn’t hurt because you’re drunk,’ I say.

‘Brooke,’ she says. ‘Just. Trust me.’

I stare into her drunk, mascara-smudged blue eyes.

‘Okay,’ I sigh. ‘But if you bleed to death overnight, you are not allowed to come back and haunt me.’

‘Don’t worry, you are way too boring for me to even consider it,’ she says, poking my cheek with her finger.