Uses for Boys Read Online Free PDF

week,” they say. “She had the stomach flu.” Or food poisoning. Or an infection.
     I’m very careful. Nobody ever asks.
    I stare out the window at a bit of bark dust and brush. I stare at the base of a fir
     tree and at the neighbor’s fence and I think about our little apartment in the city.
     My mom’s blue bedroom. Her warm sheets. At night I have the same dream. I dream that
     all the people in the world are racing to a single point on the earth, and when I
     wake up, the buzzing makes me feel like I have to get out of my head. But there’s
     nowhere else to go.
    *   *   *
    My social studies teacher, Mr. Carlson, pulls me aside on the last day of school.
     He was my homeroom teacher too and he knew Joey. Once he gave us a ride home from
     school when we missed the bus.
    “Are you OK, Anna?” he says. He’s looking at me in a way I don’t expect, like he wants
     to know more, and the kids, the kids I’ve gone to school with since grade school,
     push past me in the halls. Nancy Baxter’s yellow ponytail turns a corner.
    I’m not coming back to school. I’ve already decided. I’m supposed to go to the high
     school across the street next year. But I can’t picture it. Maybe that’s the problem,
     I think, looking at Mr. Carlson’s beard. I can’t picture anything.
    Some other kid is waiting to talk to Mr. Carlson. “See you,” I say and no one else
     talks to me as I leave the building and wait for the bus.

 
    nippery slipple
    Five days later, on the day they’re supposed to leave for vacation, I come upstairs
     and find my mom and her boyfriend standing in the entry. It’s early afternoon and
     I’m wearing the stepbrother’s T-shirt with a pair of cutoffs.
    “Why are you still here?” I ask, crossing past them toward the kitchen. My mom is
     looking in her purse.
    “I’m not going to have you just moping around,” she says without looking up. And she
     tells me to get ready. “You’re going with us,” she says.
    *   *   *
    The resort is hot and sticky and full of families from Portland. I carry a stack of
     magazines to the pool and lean back into the sun. I drift. The whole place splashes
     and screams around me. I’m sun-stoned and dreamy when Delmi, a girl who was a year
     ahead of me in middle school, waves herself over and sits down. She reaches past me
     to the pile of pictures I’ve torn out of magazines. She flips through them, pulling
     out a picture of a tall girl in faded jeans stretched out in the sun.
    “I like this one,” Delmi says. She’s wearing a thin green bikini and her family owns
     a house here so she knows everyone, but she seems just as happy to sit with me and
     look at pictures, one hand shielding her eyes from the sun.
    “How long are you here?” she asks. And she asks if I want to come to a party at her
     house tonight. “Everyone will be there,” she says. “Him,” she points at a boy across
     the pool. “Her,” she points at one of the lifeguards. “They’ll be there,” she says.
    “Sure,” I say and we look at another magazine.
    *   *   *
    Delmi’s parents have a collection of schnapps that glisten like lacquer. Peppermint,
     blackberry, sour apple. I choose butterscotch and Delmi makes me a drink called a
     Slippery Nipple. Her stepbrother Todd calls it a Nippery Slipple. He sits down next
     to me on the bar stool in Delmi’s parents’ basement. We’re waiting for the party to
     start.
    He leans over and says it with his mouth tight against my ear.
    “Nippery Slipple,” and his breath is hot and there’s the pressure of his chest against
     my arm. He pinches the tip of my breast and repeats it like it’s my name, Nippery
     Slipple.
    Delmi makes the drink. She reaches for the bottle, pours, and puts it back on the
     shelf. She’s wearing a soft blue T-shirt that falls off her shoulder and then when
     she reaches for the Baileys it slips back. She turns around to look at Todd leaning
     against me.
    “Leave her