Looking for Andrew McCarthy Read Online Free PDF Page B

college. She picked up her Strawberry Shortcake doll, inhaled deeply and looked around the room.
    It looked pretty much as the flat had done for her party: covered in peeling old thin magazine posters of the Brat Pack: in particular, her favourite, Andrew McCarthy.
    ‘Oh Andrew,’ she said, as she had done for so many years in her teens.
    ‘What are we going to do?’
    As usual, Andrew stayed entirely schtum. Ellie had never given up, despite the range and variety of questions he’d completely ignored over the last decade-and-a-half, including:
    ‘Should I let Stuart Mannering put his hand up my blouse?’
    (The answer should have been no, and she knew that, but she let him do it anyway.)
    ‘Should I finish my homework or go out and hang around the boys doing wheelies on their BMXs at the bottom of the street?’
    (Ditto.)
    ‘Will I ever meet a nice boy?’
    (Most likely not a pubescent one.)
    ‘Will I ever get over Miles Sampson not being in love with me?
    (Yes. Well, pretty much. As long as nobody is playing Lloyd Cole and the Commotions albums.)
    ‘How do I get the substitute Social Studies teacher to notice me?’
    (Stop trying; it’s working and he might get sent to prison.)
    ‘Am I gay because I really, really like my gym teacher?’
    (No, it’s a teenage occupational hazard.)
    ‘If I wish really hard, will I grow up to get a huge pink apartment like Demi Moore’s in St Elmo’s Fire ?’
    (Yes, if you become a coke whore.)
    ‘Now everyone at school has seen The Breakfast Club sixty-four times, will school become more like The Breakfast Club with everyone breaking down social barriers and revealing their inner selves?’
    (Definitely not, although Stuart Mannering will reveal his entire outer self in biology and get two month’s detention.)
    ‘Will I get to meet John Cusack on a long trip across America?’
    (Perhaps, if you’re six foot tall with long shiny blonde hair.)
    ‘Wouldn’t it be great if I had a really gorgeous lover who died and then came back and made pottery with me?’
    (As yet unexplored.)
    ‘Will you come to rescue me, like you rescued Molly Ringwald?’
    (So far, no.)
    ‘Oh Andrew.’
    She looked at him again. The poster had worn away around his mouth from chaste kisses.
    ‘Where are you, then? The middle-youth of the world needs you.’
    She thought harder.
    ‘Actually, we do bloody need you. Where the hell are you?’
    As she stared at the battered magazine-torn image, a thought began to stir within her. I mean, here, surely was a man with a bit of knowledge about growing up and not playing the adolescent for ever. She stared at it a bit more with mounting excitement. ‘What,’ she wondered, ‘is he like now?’ She pictured him – a little older, not much. With shock, she realized he was only halfway through his thirties and she gulped internally – not that much older than her. Oh my God. If there was one person in the world who understood what she was going through, she suddenly had the utter conviction that it was him. Why she was feeling so bleargh. And why she felt that something was passing her by, but she didn’t know what it was.
    Excitedly, she jumped up and took out her mobile.
    ‘Julia? Where’s Andrew McCarthy?’
    ‘What?’ said Julia. Behind her, someone managedto drop an entire tray of glasses. The bar crowd appeared to think this worthy of a round of applause.
    ‘Look. I can’t really talk. We’re up to H, an I … an I … can’t … motor functions.’
    ‘Julia!’
    She could hear Julia sit up and try and pay attention.
    ‘Is this some guy you picked up on the way over to your dad’s house?’
    ‘No, you know, Andrew . I mean, what happened to him? He just disappeared. He just stopped being famous and disappeared. Maybe he’s dead!’
    ‘Don’t be silly … he can’t be dead … you and him have a date …’
    ‘Yeah, ha ha ha. This is serious. A movie star has disappeared off the face of the planet.’
    ‘That’s not serious. A