Brooklyn Girls Read Online Free PDF

all looking at me, all thinking how stupid I am. I want to look smart, I want them to remember me. Oh, God, the pressure. “And I’m looking for a job … I mean, I’m looking for a career  … that, uh, I can love.”
    What a stupid thing to say, Pia. “That’s what I … that’s what … I’m … yeah.”
    Shut up .
    Dave sits back down, making a little “Yikes!” face that he probably thinks I can’t read. In the soul-crushing moment of silence that follows, I feel a shame so strong, it’s painful.
    Seconds later, they swivel back to their laptops. I am gone, forgotten, an irrelevant blip in their day. Another dumb graduate who can’t string a sentence together.
    At the elevators, I try to smile as I grasp Bridget’s boneless hand.
    I’ll never get a job.
    I’ll never make any money. I won’t be able to pay the rent for Rookhaven, not that it’ll matter, because my parents will turn up and force me to move to Zurich with them, and get a boring-as-hell job, and I’ll be alone, forever, for the rest of my life.
    As the elevator doors close, I suddenly feel like the air is being sucked out from around me. I fall against the wall, trying to catch my breath. Oh, God, please no, not a full panic attack, not now. …
    Then my stomach lurches and my face tingles and I know exactly what’s going to happen in about three seconds.
    I’m going to puke.
    I press every button and the elevator lurches to a halt on the fifth floor, and I run out, frantically looking for a bathroom sign. Where is it, oh, shit, I’m going to be sick, I know it, I know it.…
    A split second later, I throw myself onto my hands and knees, vomiting in an empty umbrella basket in front of an office doorway. It’s an acidy, watery gush that I can’t control, and when it’s all out, I wipe my mouth with the back of my jacket arm and lean my forehead against the wall, panting with relief.
    Why, hello, anxiety vomit. We meet again.
    At least it wasn’t a full-blown freak-out. I haven’t had one of those in a couple of years, and not a really big one since, yep, you guessed it, August 26.
    I look back down at my puke basket. I can’t leave that here for someone else to clean up, right? It’s gross.
    Five minutes later I’m walking as confidently as I can out of the building onto Broadway, carrying a stolen umbrella basket of puke.
    So.
    Another stunning success of a meeting.
    Yay me. Way to go.
    As I always do when I’m in Manhattan, I look up, between the buildings reaching into the sky over my head. Have I mentioned that I love big cities, and New York most of all?
    I do. The people, the traffic, the noise, the bars, the restaurants, that indescribable and chronically over-referenced buzz .… I love knowing that something is always going on, right around the corner.
    I was born here, but we left when I was a little kid. So I never had that chance to own New York the way people who are born-and-bred do. I’ve never owned anywhere, really. I never belong.
    I walk down Broadway, looking at all the people rushing past with cool faces and occupied minds. How did they get to where they are today? What do they have that I don’t? Why does everyone else seem so calm about this whole adulthood thing? All I feel is panic, a tight flutter in my chest at the thought that I might not be able to do what everyone else finds so easy.… I might not be able to make a life for myself, a real life. Ever.
    Maybe I should focus on what I want my life to look like, I muse, as I drop the stolen basket of puke into a garbage bin. Positive visualization, right?
    I want to work hard, love my job, and be good at it. I really do. I want to earn my own money. I want a home (walk-in closet a must) of my very own, that no one can take away from me, and I want to keep my friends forever. Oh, and I want to date gorgeous guys, and one day do the whole marriage-babies thing, and so on and so forth.
    How do I get from here to there? I’m jobless, penniless, and