The Girls Read Online Free PDF

place, shunted through the perfunctory order of things. Who wanted to make some small protest. The saddest:
Fuck,
written in pencil.
    While I washed my hands, drying them with a stiff towel, I studied myself in the mirror over the sink. For a moment, I tried to see myself through the eyes of the girl with the black hair, or even the boy in the cowboy hat, studying my features for a vibration under the skin. The effort was visible in my face, and I felt ashamed. No wonder the boy had seemed disgusted: he must have seen the longing in me. Seen how my face was blatant with need, like an orphan’s empty dish. And that was the difference between me and the black-haired girl—her face answered all its own questions.
    I didn’t want to know these things about myself. I splashed water on my face, cold water, like Connie had once told me to do. “Cold water makes your pores close up,” and maybe it was true: I felt my skin tighten, water dripping down my face and neck. How desperately Connie and I thought that if we performed these rituals—washed our faces with cold water, brushed our hair into a static frenzy with a boar-bristle brush before bed—some proof would solve itself and a new life would spread out before us.

2
    Cha ching,
the slot machine in Connie’s garage went, like a cartoon, Peter’s features soaked in its rosy glow. He was eighteen, Connie’s older brother, and his forearms were the color of toast. His friend Henry hovered at his side. Connie decided she had a crush on Henry, so our Friday night would be devoted to perching on the weight-lifting bench, Henry’s orange motorcycle parked beside us like a prize pony. We’d watch the boys play the slot machine, drinking the off-brand beer Connie’s father kept in the garage fridge. Later they’d shoot the empty bottles with a BB gun, crowing at each glassy burst.
    I knew I’d see Peter that night, so I’d worn an embroidered shirt, my hair foul with hairspray. I’d dotted a pimple on my jaw with a beige putty of Merle Norman, but it collected along the rim and made it glow. As long as my hair stayed in place, I looked nice, or at least I thought so, and I tucked in my shirt to show the tops of my small breasts, the artificial press of cleavage from my bra. The feeling of exposure gave me an anxious pleasure that made me stand straighter, holding my head on my neck like an egg in a cup. Trying to be more like the black-haired girl in the park, that easy cast of her face. Connie narrowed her eyes when she saw me, a muscle by her mouth twitching, but she didn’t say anything.
    —
    Peter had really only spoken to me for the first time two weeks before. I’d been waiting for Connie downstairs. Her bedroom was much smaller than mine, her house meaner, but we spent most of our time there. The house done up in a maritime theme, her father’s misguided attempt to approximate female decoration. I felt bad for Connie’s father: his night job at a dairy plant, the arthritic hands he clenched and unclenched nervously. Connie’s mother lived somewhere in New Mexico, near a hot spring, had twin boys and another life no one ever spoke of. For Christmas, she had once sent Connie a compact of cracked blush and a Fair Isle sweater that was so small neither of us could squeeze our head through the hole.
    “The colors are nice,” I said hopefully.
    Connie just shrugged. “She’s a bitch.”
    Peter crashed through the front door, dumping a book on the kitchen table. He nodded at me in his mild way and started making a sandwich—pulling out slices of white bread, an acid-bright jar of mustard.
    “Where’s the princess?” he said. His mouth was chapped a violent pink. Slightly coated, I imagined, with pot resin.
    “Getting a jacket.”
    “Ah.” He slapped the bread together and took a bite. He watched me while he chewed.
    “Looking good these days, Boyd,” he said, then swallowed hard. His assessment knocked me so off balance that I felt I had almost imagined