The Terrorist Read Free

always trying to touch her hair, which was deep gold and straight as ribbons. Laura would hit his hand away, yelling, “Eddie! Leave my hair alone!”
    Eddie was always asking if they could go out to a pub. Laura’s mother was beginning to say yes to things like that, as long as it was a group and not a date. Laura, for the last two Fridays, had had the unbelievable, completely not-American delight of going to a pub. The boys ordered beer, and Laura stuck to Coke so her mother wouldn’t kill her. The other girl to go along was Consuela.
    Con’s father was with the American Embassy. They were originally from New Jersey, but hadn’t even visited in years. They’d lived in Singapore, Cairo, and London instead. Mr. Vikary had plans for his daughter Con to make a mark in the world.
    All Laura’s friends studied.
    Laura had never met such a studying crowd.
    Not only did they study intensively, they talked about their class assignments, grades, and college goals instead of gossip or dates or basketball games or anything genuinely interesting.
    Laura knew college was out there somewhere, like dessert after dinner, but she was too busy telephoning friends, planning her wardrobe, and thinking about the weekend to consider college just yet.
    Con intended to go to Yale or Princeton and was very concerned with her Extracurricular Activities. She had an immense, appalling list of Extracurricular Activities and she was always in charge of each of them.
    Laura had never participated in an Extracurricular Activity and certainly didn’t want to start now, what with the Thanksgiving dance coming up.
    It was something Laura could not understand. How did people like Con get all this done, anyhow? How did they get a ninety-eight average in trigonometry, and an A plus on their European history term paper, and a Perfect in their Shakespeare tragedy essay, and still be in Student United Nations, the English-American Committee for Better Understanding, the Jazz Band, the Concert Choir, three sports, and never miss a meeting of the London Walk Club?
    The London Walk Club killed Laura.
    These kids would meet one afternoon a week and walk someplace. Perhaps it would be a Super Tour of Westminster Abbey. Or a hike to the British Museum to gaze upon the Rosetta Stone.
    Every now and then, Laura went along because her friends did, and because Con insisted this would look good on college applications. Colleges, she said, liked to know you were interested in everything from Shakespeare to Inner-city Problems Abroad.
    Laura was not interested.
    Laura was interested in a date.
    She was, however, beginning to worry about her own college application. On that blank white page where Con would list 207 Extracurricular Activities, what was Laura going to list? Phone calls. Fashion. Yelling at her little brother. Making brownies.
    Actually, you would have to strike making brownies. It was not possible to bake brownies in England, as neither the ingredients nor the right oven existed, and furthermore Laura had to have a Duncan Hines or a Betty Crocker mix.
    Luckily, for friendship, Con had normal human moments and Con, too, wanted a dark, handsome, romantic date for the dance.
    Laura often thought that when her brother, Billy, grew up, he was going to be the heartthrob of his entire school. You could see in his arms the muscles that were going to come. And his thick, dark hair, which he never combed or brushed after a shower (assuming you could shove him into a shower with the water on in the first place), was going to lie around on his forehead, and girls would want to sweep it away from his flirty eyes.
    However, Billy had a long way to go.
    He had to get out of sixth and finish up seventh and eighth, which anybody knew were the worst years of all humanity. Signs of real life would sprout during ninth, and finally in tenth grade Billy would be a person. By then, Laura would be away at college.
    Still waiting for the 113 (buses with a dozen different routes had