Uptown Girl

Lucy & Alfie

Lucy sat in the midst of a dirty, dusty, testosterone filled room full of shouting and drunk men from the east side of London. She sat with her hands clasped in her lap with wide blinking eyes trying to look like she wasn't scared of this new sort of people she found herself surrounded with. Her best friend from childhood, Marnie was next to her, shouting and cheering on her boyfriend who was currently in the ring in front of them in a boxing match. Lucy had never seen such a thing before. Men hitting each other until they were blue and bleeding for money? It was such a shocking truth to see it that she found herself studying the shiny new shoes she'd worn under a pastel dress that would most certainly need to be scrubbed after she got home.

Marnie had always been the adventurous one. A real opposite to Lucy's cautious and sheltered life. Lucy often wondered why they were friends at all, except for having grown up next to each other, they were quite different. But Marnie's father had earned his wealth off the labor of his own back, not being born into it like Lucy's parents. The linger bit of East End wisdom she'd received from him as she grew up was apparent with the way she blended in. The differences didn't seem so strikingly obvious until they'd ventured into womanhood together. Marnie was a mess of anger and hormones, staying out late, smoking and playing cards and flirting with every boy that looked her way. Lucy had, up to this point, been well behaved and meek. Taught by her father to be a prim and proper lady and a well-to-do gentleman would come and ask for her hand and all she would have to worry about were babies and keeping a home. But with the recent passing of her father, causing her to question everything about her own wants and desires with being left to own devices. Her mother now too busy trying to tie up loose ends from his sudden passing. Lucy found herself full of compulsive emotions and behaviors that were so unlike her that she wasn't sure what to make of it.

With her mother working and taking care of her siblings, she found herself wanting to escape. She was angry at her father for dying and leaving them. Angry at her mother for not stopping it somehow. For giving attention to the little ones exclusively and forgetting her as she was the oldest. Filled by the usual teenage urges, she found herself having more and more in common with Marnie. Marnie was her guide to the other side. Her window into how the other half lived. And currently, she was showing her that a woman could in fact scream and spit and hit just like a boy.

"Come on now, Lucy, get up! You have to scream for him or he won't win!" she shouts close to her face, jerking her up as she went back to her shouting for her East End boyfriend Jack. "Loosen your damned knickers girl, you're being such a posh little cunt right now." she laughs and shoves Lucy's arm.

"Marnie!" she gasps at first, but soon a giggle follows the blush in her cheeks for hearing such language.

"Stop making me look bad and if you don't look so bloody out of place maybe we can find a boy to put up with you!" she laughs.

"Okay." she mumbles, taking a deep breath, then proceeding to cough on the smoke in the air. She uses her rage, that kind that lies within every teenager, ready to burst at the most inconvenient of times. She thinks about how she wanted to rebel, to break free of how she'd been living, to be more like Marnie, so boastful and full of vigor. She wanted to be wild and free, a new person entirely.

She begins clapping, watching the fight and trying to piece together the bits she'd been informed of by her friend as she lets her muscles loosen, trying to take in the energy of her surroundings. A little "Woo!" escapes her as she giggles at herself as the two boys go to their corners of the ring. Marnie's Jack had his back facing them, but that didn't stop Marnie from screaming. The other boy who was facing them, a dark gingery lad with a strong nose and lean arms, a tattoo on his arm, sits and pants, being spoken to by the older men surrounding him. Instead of watching Jack she found her eyes on the other boy.