Those Girls Read Free

ill come on, so I squatted and placed my head between my knees. Alex dismissed herself from the seniors to come over and rub my back as I dry-heaved.
    “Are you sure you’re okay?” She knelt down next to me, still rubbing me like a Yorkshire terrier. I stared at her threadbare, untied, green Converse that were not in uniform. “Maybe you should go home? To the nurse? Something?” she said.
    “And say what? Sorry, I can’t learn today, I’m busy doing my part in the fight against teen pregnancy?”
    “Seems like as legitimate an excuse as any. Next time just use the damn condom correctly.”
    She didn’t understand. I was Catholic, for Christ’s sake. IfAlex got preggers, Nancy Holbrook would probably give her a hug, hold her hand through the procedure, make her matzo ball soup, and tell her she was proud of her for making such a hard decision. Honestly, she’d be so happy Alex finally had a boyfriend she’d probably let him sleep over, make him pancakes in the morning, and restock her medicine cabinet with condoms and edible underwear. I once suggested to my mom that going on the Pill might regulate my period and clear up my skin, and she cried for a week and sent me to confession.
    Alex fed me more Diet Coke and helped me upright, just in time to catch a glimpse of Veronica rolling out of a Lincoln Town Car. Like she was Princess fucking Diana or something. If some heavyweight in a black suit with an earpiece had rolled out behind her, I swear to god she’d have gotten projectile vomit right on her smug, spray-tanned little bird face. She flipped her freshly coiffed and recently highlighted hair and slid on some new sunglasses that, from this distance, appeared to be Gucci, and thus new. I always know when anyone gets anything new, because I have a full mental inventory of all my friends’ and family’s worldly and closetly possessions—and Gucci sunglasses were not in my Veronica registry as of June.
    She frantically began flinging her Tiffany and Cartier–clad wrists from side to side when she saw us.
    “She’s, like, out of control,” Alex mumbled as she snatched the Diet Coke from my hand. Veronica was already skipping her sticky little legs over to us. Alex and I braced ourselves for a deluge of positive energy and some obliviously whorish story.
    “Ladies!” she squealed, then took notice of my green face and crippled stance. “What’s wrong?”
    “Mollie’s having a rough morning,” Alex said, squeezing my shoulder. “We had to go with Plan B.…”
    “Again?”
    Veronica kept talking, but I was in no place to listen to sounds higher pitched than dog whistles and Chipmunk Christmas albums.
    I tuned her out to survey the school yard. Most noteworthy summer transformation awards went to Julie Goldstein, who’d gotten a much-needed nose job, and Margot Swan, who’d lost a solid twenty pounds. They looked good, I guess, but Julie still had that post-op cat-face, stiff-upper-lip thing happening. The swelling would go down, though, and she would undoubtedly be cuter than she was before. Good for her.
    Christ. Had anyone else gotten fat over the summer? The whole boyfriend thing had really wreaked havoc on my ass. I’d spent my entire summer “splitting” nachos and sausage calzones and at the McDonald’s drive-through at three AM . Sam eats like a sumo wrestler training at Walmart, and what was I gonna do? Be the lame barf jars girlfriend that picks at a garden salad with dressing on the side while idly watching him house carb-infused meat concoctions with melted cheese? Doubtful. At least I was puking today—that couldn’t hurt things.
    “So, Friday night?” Veronica said, pulling me back into the conversation I’d been ignoring. She looked at me, her vacant green eyes seeking approval.
    “For her First Week of School party,” Alex interjected.
    “Oh yeah,” I said, already stressed out by the prospect of another one of Veronica’s momentous parties. I changed the subject.