The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls Read Online Free PDF Page B

what?” CeeCee’s mother asked.
    “When you talk about me like I’m not even here.” CeeCee reached for the carrots. “Or like I’m some kind of pet.”
    Her mother brushed a crumb from her lap, sending acascade of bracelets tinkling down the length of her arm. “A pet?” she asked.
    “You start talking to somebody else’s parent, and then you point at me”—CeeCee gestured toward her mother with a carrot stick—“and you say, ‘We’re having such trouble with ours these days. Just look at her over there: she’s such a problem. I wish she wouldn’t poop in the yard.’ ”
    “I didn’t know you were pooping in the yard,” her mother said. “You should have told me.”
    “Mine’s acting surly today,” CeeCee went on. “And she doesn’t eat. I think she’s bulimic.” She chewed up a carrot, then opened her mouth and caught the slimy orange debris in a napkin. She turned to Jill’s mother, who seemed both confused and fascinated, as if she were watching a play and had begun to realize she was in the wrong theater.
    “Does yours do that?” CeeCee asked.
    Behind them, the screen door creaked open. Wallis had crossed the sea of dry grass at the back of the house, and stood on the bristly welcome mat with a sleeve of crackers in her hand. “I’m here for the book club,” she said.
    The six of us turned toward her. Wallis wore thick black plastic glasses and a button-down shirt and loose khaki shorts like an archaeologist’s. She had a buzzing monotone of a voice, scratchy and low. If a bear could be trained to talk, I thought, it would sound like Wallis.
    My mother opened the door and thanked her for the crackers.
    “My mother couldn’t come tonight,” Wallis said, stepping onto the porch. “She’s working on something and saidwe should go ahead without her. She sends regrets.” Wallis blinked and looked at each of us, her face washed clean of all human expression, and then sat next to me. She clutched a library copy of “The Yellow Wallpaper” in her hands.
    Our order of business: to discuss book number one, which every student in Ms. Radcliffe’s class had to read, and then decide—in consultation with the AP English list—on our next four choices.
    “Whatever we decide to read should be short,” Jill said. “Some of us are working this summer. At least one of us is.”
    Jill’s mother added that it was important that we consider diversity.
    We all looked at Jill. She was adopted and Chinese; her parents were white.
    My mother suggested that we could narrow our choices by limiting ourselves to books written by women. “ Pride and Prejudice is on the list,” she said.
    Wallis asked whether we were limiting ourselves to novels or if we could also include nonfiction.
    “I always loved Black Beauty ,” Jill’s mother gushed.
    “Animal cruelty is always inspiring,” CeeCee agreed. “But I don’t think Black Beauty counts as nonfiction, unless the horse wrote it.”
    My mother suggested Pride and Prejudice again.
    “You’ve already read that,” I said. “You’ve probably read it a dozen times.” My mother was obsessed with Jane Austen. Only a few hundred years kept her and Jane from being friends.
    Finally we decided that, based on the list, each of us would write down the titles of four different books—written by women—that we wanted to read.
    In the meantime, in an effort to discuss “The Yellow Wallpaper,” we veered into a meandering conversation about Vincent van Gogh and his missing ear, then listened to Jill tell a story (she claimed it was true) about a woman with some sort of dream disorder who had chewed through a wooden bedpost in her sleep.
    Anyone who gnawed through a wooden bedpost, CeeCee said, probably deserved to be locked in a yellow room.
    “Adrienne?” Jill’s mother asked. “You’ve been quiet over there. What did you think of the book?”
    I looked at the paperback in my hand. I found it almost impossible, after I’d just finished