Read Laura Ruby - Good Girls for Free Online

pressure."

    "Which you'll have before you're eighteen. You're just like him." She smiles at me. "Audrey, I think you can start having a little bit of fun. So you don't get an A

    43 this once. So you get an A minus. Is that really the worst that could happen to you?"

    I can't look at her when I answer. "No. I guess not."

    I go up to my room and throw my knapsack on my bed. I feel sort of itchy all over, and I'm not sure what to do with myself. First I go over to the toothpick village. It is what it sounds like it is, a village built out of tooth- picks and Popsicle sticks. I've got houses, a couple of churches, stores, roads, a windmill, whatever--all painted and mounted on a slab of wood. I started build- ing it when I was nine, right around the time I got sick of Barbies. Every once in a while, I work on something new. It's a totally twisted, pathetic hobby, I know, but I've always loved building things. It's sort of like medi- tation, except for, you know, the toothpicks.

    But today, the toothpick village isn't cutting it--I can't think of a single thing that I'd want to add, and it seems like nothing more than a kindergartner's art proj- ect or a load of firewood. So I sit at my desk. I flick on the computer and the machine hums to life and starts pinging, meaning I've got about four thousand instant messages. I don't even want to read them. I start delet- ing them, but I can't help but see a few, mostly from IM names I don't recognize:

    Instant Message with "sweetyPI567"

    Last message received at: 3:42:10 PM

    44 sweetyPI567: U R such a ho! your dad

    should call his store Sluts R Us!

    Instant Message with "69luvvver"

    Last message received at: 4:19:36 PM

    69luvvver: will u marry me? will u at

    least suck me off????

    Instant Message with "ritechuschik2424"

    Last message received at: 6:10:22 PM

    ritechuschik2424: u do what u want to do

    and don't let any one stop u. its ur

    life. U R not a slut ur just trying

    to have fun. LDS is HOT!

    I've got e-mail, too. A few people helpfully sent me a copy of the picture, just in case I haven't been humil- iated enough. Joelle sends a few ALL-CAPS messages telling me that Ash told her what happened and claim- ing that she will personally eviscerate Luke DeSalvio (unless, of course, I still like him). Then she says that what I need to do is deny absolutely everything and that she'll tell everyone she saw Pam Markovitz or Cindy Terlizzi running around in a blond wig. I erase all the messages, even the ones from Jo. I keep pressing the button till there are no more messages in my in-box, and then I press it a few more times, just to make sure.

    45 My phone rings inside my backpack and I sit there, listening to it buzz. Later, as I'm reworking my paper for Mr. Lambright, it buzzes again. And when I'm doing my calc homework. And again when I'm studying bio. Buzz, buzz, like wasps hitting a window. If they buzz long enough, if they hit hard enough, maybe they'll all die.

    "Audrey?" My mother's voice warbles up the stairs. It must be time for dinner--not that I want to eat any- thing, now or ever. My stomach has shut down, packed up, and left for a vacation. Bye-bye, stomach. It occurs to me that I could actually lose a few pounds by the time I'm ready to eat again, and then I can't believe I'm think- ing what I'm thinking. I must be sick. There's plenty of evidence. Once, when I was about eleven, my mom was asking me what kinds of words kids use in place of swearwords when teachers are around, because she had a kid in one of her books and wanted to have him swear without actually swearing. I told her we called people jerks, losers, and dorks. And I told her that sometimes we went all British, calling people prats and gits and say- ing "bloody hell" with accents that made it sound like "bluddy hill." And then I told her about our very favorite non-swear swearword, one that we recently dis- covered and said all the time. "What is it?" she said.

    "Cocksucker," I told