Brooklyn Girls Read Free Page B

bank—starts at 6:00 A.M. every day, and she doesn’t get home until past 7:00 P.M. every night. It’s step one in her plan to take over the world. She’s so exhausted, she’s actually kind of gray. And she’s not even hungover.
    “I had fun last night, by the way.”
    “What?” I say.
    She opens one eye, a tiny grin on her lips. “It was a great party. I had fun. Right up until Coco started to do a striptease in the kitchen.”
    I clap my hand over my mouth. “No way.”
    “I carried her up here. Anyway, don’t tell her. She doesn’t remember. I always think it’s better that way.”
    “Oh, I know,” I say. “You never flashed an entire bar your Spanx on Spring Weekend.”
    “Totally. Goddamnit, I wish I’d been wearing a thong that night.”
    We grin at each other for a second, remembering. That’s the Julia I know and love. The girl who works hard and plays hard, too. And the girl who always wants to make everything right. But I can’t tell her what happened with my job and parents just yet. I need to process it (uh, pretend it didn’t happen).
    “Hang on a moment.” Julia narrows her eyes at me. “Bed hair. Panda eyes. And stubble rash. Peepee, you got action last night!” she exclaims.
    “I did not! And don’t call me Peepee!”
    “Have we made up?” coos Angie, peering out from Coco’s room. She wraps her bare leg around the door, lifting one snow boot–clad foot up and down like a meteorology-loving stripper. “Are we all friends again?”
    “Those are my boots,” says Julia. “Why are you wearing them?”
    “Are you planning on skiing soon? I think not.” Angie sashays past us down the stairs. “It’s August. I’ll return them in pristine condition as soon as the house is clear of party debris, okay, Mommy?”
    Julia rolls her eyes and heads downstairs. “Start cleaning.”
    Angie flicks the finger at Julia’s retreating back.
    “Real mature, Angie.”
    “Suck my mature.”
    “I’m hungry.”
    “You’re always hungry. Let’s clean.”
    Somehow, being hungover and giggling with Angie cheers me up and helps squash my what-the-sweet-hell-am-I-going-to-do-now thoughts. She keeps making little moans of dismay at each new inch of party filth, and pretty soon we’ve both got the giggles.
    “When I have my own place, there will be no carpets,” I say. “Carpets are just asking for trouble.”
    “Did anyone lose a shoe? And why did we invite someone to our party who wears moccasins?”
    “Is this red wine or blood? No. Wait. It’s tomato sauce. Weird.”
    “You wanna talk me through the hickey, ladybitch?”
    I catch Angie’s eye and bite my index finger sheepishly.
    “You had the sex? You little minx…”
    “With her brother,” I whisper, pointing at Madeleine’s door. “Bit of an oopsh.”
    Oopsh is our word for a drunken mistake.
    “Oopsh I kissed the wrong dude, or oopsh I tripped and his dick landed in my mouth?”
    I crack up. No one does crass like Angie. She looks like a tiny Christmas angel and acts like a sailor on a Viagra kick. “Or was it more like, oopsh, I’m riding his face and—”
    “Too far! That’s too far.”
    “Sorry.”
    “Don’t tell Jules, she’d just have to tell Maddy, and it’d be a whole thing.”
    “Absolute-leh, dah-leng,” she says, in her best imitation of her mother’s British accent. “You were totally kamikaze last night.”
    “It was August 26. That’s International Pia Goes Kamikaze Day, remember? Crash and burn.”
    There’s a pause. “Oh, dude, I’m sorry. I totally forgot. Eddie.”
    I can’t bring myself to look at her. Only Angie saw me that day, only Angie knows how bad it was. She always calls me a drama queen, but she knows that misery was real. You don’t fake that kind of breakdown.
    “I don’t want to talk about it,” I say.
    Angie keeps cleaning. “Fuck him, Pia. Okay? Fuck him! It’s been four years!”
    I nod, scrubbing as hard as I can. It has been four years since we broke up. And I