Laurinda Read Online Free PDF

teenager. I thought that if I knew who Johnny Depp’s latest girlfriend was, I would have things to talk about with the cool girls. It never occurred to me that what I knew wouldn’t alter the personality I had – not until I came to that first homeroom and Mrs Abrams sat me next to Melissa for roll call. All year I had nothing much to say to her, because she lived the life the magazines assumed teenagers lived: sneaking out at night to go to parties, lining up to get her CDs autographed and buying the same brand of T-shirt as Kate Moss. She didn’t have to read about it.
    But you, Linh, you managed to make a place for yourself at Christ Our Saviour by watching, not by showing off with try-hard knowledge of popular culture. Your jokes and pranks were good-natured, self-effacing and never pissed people off like some of the backhanded things girls like Alessandra said.
    Do you remember how, before we left for the picnic that morning, we heard Melissa crying in the girls’ loos, refusing to come out? You leaned against the door and quietly told her, “Don’t worry, Melissa, at least you’re really highbrow now, not like the rest of those hussies.”
    She finally emerged from her cubicle, realising you weren’t going to offer her false reassurance like everyone else, but also that it wasn’t that big a deal that her drawn-on eyebrows were half an inch higher than the two pale and hairless half-moons created by her terrible waxing mistake.
    Melissa stood in front of the mirror, cleaning her face and sniffling. After a few moments, you both cackled like crazy. Then she looked at me. “Oh, man, I’m going to miss you!”
    It was really nice that she said that, since you were the one she really liked. Even if it wasn’t true, at that moment it felt good.

W hen I arrived home, our lounge room was packed with new boxes, which meant that Uncle Sokkha had paid a visit. My mother was crouched on the floor, peeling the masking tape from the tops of the boxes. “Wah, who would wear this?” she asked, holding up the sample she was meant to replicate, a very short dark-red skirt with buttons up the front. I did not tell her that some of the girls at Christ Our Saviour would commit unholy acts for a thing like that.
    “Hey, Ma, will you have any of that material left?” I asked.
    “Yes.”
    “Can I have some?”
    “What do you want it for?”
    “I want to make a skirt.”
    “No.”
    “What do you mean, no?”
    “Don’t waste your time.”
    “It won’t be a short one,” I promised.
    “You’ve got better things to do now,” she told me.
    Dad sat on our mustard-yellow sofa, which had been donated to us fourteen years earlier by the Brotherhood of St Laurence. He was looking through the navy folder that Mrs Grey had given us. “Wah!” he suddenly exclaimed. “Look here, Quyen! Look at this!”
    My mother eased herself off the floor and sat next to my father. “One hundred and thirty-five dollars!” she exclaimed.
    They were looking at the uniform list from Edmondsons. “And that’s only the jacket,” said my father. “Look at this skirt!”
    He held up the booklet and showed us the winter uniform, a pleated tartan kilt worn by a smug girl who obviously did not care about having cold legs in winter.
    “Let me see that.” My mother took the booklet from him and put it up close to her face. All the sewing had made her shortsighted. Then she said the five words I dreaded most: “I could make you that.”
    “But where would you get the material?” I hoped to put her off, but knew she would try to find it in the Vietnamese fabric stores. I also knew she would never find an exact match, because the fabric was probably imported from England for $100 a metre. She would pick a polyester tartan in a close-enough pattern, and to get the double buckle belt link at the top of the kilt she would go to Spotlight and find a plastic-painted-to-look-like-metal one. She would have no idea how worlds apart her homemade