21 Proms Read Free Page B

are actually pretty small, like Shetland ponies’, so maybe being hung like one isn’t really something to brag about. She wonders how old Molly Ringwald was when she lost her virginity for real. Like, was she still a virgin when she played Andie in Pretty in Pink ? She seems bitchier in that than she does as Samantha in Sixteen Candles . When she’s Claire in The Breakfast Club she just seems confused, which makes sense. First she was a virgin — Sixteen Candles — then she was thinking about maybe not being a virgin anymore — The Breakfast Club — and then she wasn’t — Pretty in Pink . Or maybe she’s just a really amazing actress, which actually goes without saying.
    3. Brooke is so bored. She’ll do anything to not be this bored. Her housekeeper, Ana, is living with her while the family is away, but Ana would rather watch reruns of The Apprentice and eat spray cheese on Triscuits all day than play Hearts with her. Besides, Brooke is sixteen, she can amuse herself. Of course, she’s basically housebound, due to her illness, but her Central Park West apartment building is big enough — surely there must be someone to hang out with. Like maybe the boy in 1C? Mum is always complaining about the families in the ground-floor apartments, which apparently are rent-controlled. Probably his family doesn’t have enough money to go snowboarding in Switzerland. Probably they have a Christmas tree with presents underneath it. But he probably doesn’t have a prom, either — most schools in the city don’t. Maybe he’ll want to come to her prom.
    4. She knocks on the door to 1C, which faces th e b uilding’s laundry room. She didn’t even know the building had a laundry room because her family’s washer/dryer is in their apartment, off the kitchen. Not that she’s ever used them. Ana does all the laundry. Twice a week it appears in her drawers, neatly folded and smelling clean.
    Brrrring! The doorbell sounds exactly like the in-between-periods bell at her school. An excessively fat woman answers the door, draped in something that could be called a dress, but could also be some sort of bathrobe-like garment. A caftan? It is black, with shiny silver piping, and was not made by Carolina Herrera.
    â€œYou want my son?” the woman asks in a thick Slavic accent, her fleshy lips frowning beneath her mustache. “ Lazy , so lazy! He listens to iPod all day.”
    Brooke doesn’t know what to say to that since she’s been watching Pretty in Pink all morning, trying to figure out if the hair dye she ordered from drugstore.com to match Molly-as-Andie’s would come out looking right, or if it would turn her blondish-brown hair irreversibly magenta.
    â€œI wondered if maybe he wanted to come upstairs?” she asks boldly. “I’ve been sick and I can’t go out.”
    The woman disappears down a narrow corridor, leaving Brooke standing in the half-open doorway. The apartment smells like boiled lentils and Bounce. The boy comes down the corridor toward her. He’s darker and shorter than she remembered him, but he has this amused-by-life look that she likes. She won’t be shy with him.
    â€œHey,” he says. “I’m Taylor.” He laughs, like he knows his name is stupid; his parents just named him that to fit in with their environment.
    She smiles. “Want to do something?”
    5. They don’t even talk in the elevator but she can’t stop smiling. She doesn’t even care that she has little scabs all over her face and hands. Actually, she h as lit tle scabs all over her body, but in her jeans and white J.Crew turtleneck sweater, he can’t see them. He can see how much she looks like Molly Ringwald, and he knows the scabs will heal. They sit in the den, on the floor, with their backs against the sofa, eating Pringles, drinking ginger ale, and watching The Breakfast Club . He makes the