The Interestings Read Online Free PDF Page A

dropped her off at her own teepee did he leave her. Jules went inside and stood getting ready for bed, pulling off her T-shirt and unhooking her bra. Across the teepee Ash Wolf was already in bed, encased in her sleeping bag that was red flannel lined, with a repeating pattern of cowboys swinging lariats. Jules intuited that at one point it had probably belonged to her brother.
    “So where were you?” Ash asked.
    “Oh, Ethan Figman wanted to show me one of his films. And then we started talking, and it just got—it’s hard to explain.”
    Ash said, “That sounds mysterious.”
    “No, it was nothing,” said Jules. “I mean, it was something, but it was strange.”
    “I know what they’re like,” Ash said.
    “What what are like?”
    “Those moments of strangeness. Life is full of them,” Ash said.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Well,” said Ash, and she got out of her own bed and came to sit beside Jules. “I’ve always sort of felt that you prepare yourself over the course of your whole life for the big moments, you know? But when they happen, you sometimes feel totally unready for them, or even that they’re not what you thought. And that’s what makes them
strange.
The reality is really different from the fantasy.”
    “That’s true,” Jules said. “That’s just what happened to me.” She looked with surprise at the pretty girl sitting on her bed; it seemed that this girl understood her, even though Jules had told her nothing. The whole evening was taking on various exquisite meanings.
    A first kiss, Jules had thought, was supposed to magnetize you to the other person; the magnet and the metal were meant to fuse and melt on contact into a sizzling brew of silver and red. But this kiss had done nothing like that. Jules would have liked to tell Ash all about it now. She recognized that that is how friendships begin: one person reveals a moment of strangeness, and the other person decides just to listen and not exploit it. Their friendship did begin that night; they talked in this oblique way about themselves, and then Ash began struggling to scratch a mosquito bite on her shoulder blade, but she could hardly reach it, and she asked Jules if she could put some calamine lotion on it for her. Ash yanked down the collar of her nightgown in back, and Jules dotted on some of the bright pink fluid, which had the most recognizable odor imaginable, appetizing and overbearing at the same time.
    “Why do you think calamine lotion smells like that?” Jules asked. “Is it the
real
smell, or did some chemists just come up with this random smell for it in the laboratory, and now everyone thinks it’s what it actually has to smell like?”
    “Huh,” said Ash. “No idea.”
    “Maybe it’s like pineapple Lifesavers,” Jules said.
    “What are you talking about?”
    “Well, they don’t taste like actual pineapple at all. But we’ve gotten so used to it that we’ve come to think that that’s the
real
taste, you know? And actual pineapple has basically fallen by the wayside. Except maybe in Hawaii.” She paused and said, “I would give anything to try poi. Ever since I learned the word in fourth grade. You eat it with your hands.”
    Ash just looked at her, and began to smile. “Those are kind of weird observations, Jules,” she said. “But in a good way. You’re funny,” she added in a thoughtful voice, yawning. “Everyone thought so tonight.” But it seemed as if
funny
was a distinct relief to Ash Wolf. Funny was the thing, other than calamine lotion, that she needed from Jules. Ash’s family and her world were high-test, and here was this funny girl who was amusing and soothing and
touching,
really, in her awkwardness and her willingness. Nearby, the other girls in the teepee were having their own involved conversation, but Jules barely heard anything they said. They were just background noise, and the central drama was here between herself and Ash Wolf. “You definitely make me crack up,” said