Would You Read Free Page B

should make it an early night except that Mom says I should be in early, meaning I'm staying out late. But nobody has any ideas for what to do anyway, so tonight is going to bite.
    Claire's in front of the only full-length mirror, and I'm waiting, barely. She's not even dressed and she's
loitering;
just to make me insane.
    “Have you seen my black thingy?” she says.
    “What black thingy?”
    “You know, my
black
thingy.”
    She leaves the mirror to look again in the closet, in the drawers, on the floor, under the bed.
    I examine myself while I watch her in the glass.
    “With straps,” she says, “The one I got at Sheba's Thrift. I've been planning to wear it all week.”
    “Meh.” I'm noncommittal. “Where are you going, anyway?”
    “Party at Terry's. You?”
    “Nowhere. Ding-Dong to start.”
    “Did you take my black thing? Did you wear it to Audrey's and leave it there? 'Cause if you did, I'll kill you.”
    “No, I did not wear it and leave it at Audrey's,” I say.
    “ 'Cause she'll cut off the bottom or change the straps or something, and it's the one thing that I—”
    “Claire, shut up. It's not at Audrey's.”
    “Well, where is it, Nat?”
    I go into the bathroom, shrugging. I wish I had a party to go to.
    The light is better in here for makeup. My hair is good tonight; skin too, for a change. What a waste.
    Claire comes in and gives me a hip check so she has room over the sink. She's wearing a white V-neck shirt and her haircut from before the prom still looks so good.
    “You look nice,” I say, not saying she looks too gorgeous for words. I squelch my vile, bitter envy. Her life is going to explode. She's going away!
    “ Joe-boy better be worried about the swarm of boys waiting for you at school,” I say.
    Her eyes meet mine in the mirror. “I'm breaking up with him tonight.”
    “What? But he adores you!”
    “Mmmm,” she says. “If by
adore
you mean
behave like a bloodsucking leech around.”
    “Does Kate know?”
    “This has nothing to do with Kate. He's been kind ofbugging me. He's all morbid about me leaving. He's acting clingy and annoying and …
and young.
I want to have my summer without all the stress of saying goodbye. And then I want to just leave, you know?”
    “Wow,” I say. “He's not going to like this.”
    “I'll be gentle,” she laughs.
    “What's the point of no curfew,” I say, “if there's nowhere to go? This town is
so boring!”
    Claire grins at me and uses Dad's voice. “An intelligent person is
never
bored.”
    I punch her shoulder and she punches me back.
    “Ow!”
    “Gotta go,” she says. “Joe's waiting.”
    “For the last time,” I say.
    “Mwa!” She goes.
    “Bye.”
    Poor Joe, I'm thinking.
    I pull off my gray sweater and untuck her black thingy from my jeans. It looks great. But she doesn't have to know that.
DQ
    We're sitting in a row on the concrete divider between the Dairy Queen parking lot and the Cosmos Launderama parking lot. Zack just got off work, but too late to catch the late movie. Nobody really wants to go anyway. We usuallywait for Twofer Tuesdays. We still have about an hour until it's dark enough to go pool-hopping.
    Carson is on a roll. “What if someone told you the world was going to end? What would you do in the last three days before the end?”
    “Is your source a credible one?” asks Zack. “Or counter-factual?”
    “Christ, Zack! Let's say the world is going to end. What do you do with the time left?”
    “I'd go skydiving,” says Leila.
    “I'd tell everyone what I really think of them,” says Audrey.
    “Oh, like you don't do that already?” Carson has been the recipient of many an Audrey earful.
    “I think I'd sit really still,” I say. “And watch everybody else flip out.”
    “Lame,” says Carson.
    “Okay, what would you do?”
    “I'd have sex, of course. With twenty or thirty different girls, and no fear of STDs ’cause the world is going to end anyway.”
    “And where are you going to find