Read Online Brooklyn Girls by Gemma Burgess - Free Book Online Page A

of the time running back and forth over the rooftop whenever bees landed on me. Now we’re in Jonah’s beat-up old car, the sun is shining, and I’ve got a basket of hand-labeled Kings County honey jars on my lap.
    “Baby, you’re a fiyaaawork !” sings Jonah along to Katy Perry on the radio.
    “I feel so awake! It’s so much fun to do something!” I say. “I love it!”
    “What’s life usually like for you, princess?” asks Jonah, laughing. “You just sit back and let slaves feed you grapes, or what?”
    “Ah, bite me. This car is disgusting, by the way.” It’s filled with empty food wrappers and smells like feet.
    “This? This is nothing. You should see my apartment. I share it with five other dudes, it’s like a petri dish of disease. The other guys are always getting sick, but not me!” He grins proudly. “Constitution of a Texas buffalo.”
    Ew. Guys our age are so happy to live like pigs. I don’t get it.
    “So, how do you fit in all these jobs around your acting career?”
    “Dude, I wouldn’t call it an ‘acting career.’ I’ve been here six years and nothing’s really happening. Still, I’m having fun. Sometimes I help out my friend’s band, Little Ted. I take acting classes sometimes, the rest of the time I just mess around.”
    “Cool,” I say, though actually, six years of just messing around sounds kind of depressing. “What was your last acting job?”
    “Diesel ad campaign.” He’s trying to sound cool and failing.
    “A TV commercial?”
    “Uh, no. Web.”
    “A Web site campaign? Isn’t that modeling?”
    “No, it was moving image. It was acting.”
    I’m doubtful about this (my motivation in this scene is denim !), but never mind.
    At that moment, my phone rings.
    I stare at the screen for a second, then press silent. It’s my parents. I haven’t spoken to them since the post-party phone-call disaster, and I don’t want to start now.
    A minute later, my phone beeps. A message. May as well get it over and done with.
    My dad starts speaking first. “Ah, Pia, it’s … 2:45 P.M. in Zurich, which makes it 8:45 A.M. in New York, you’re probably still in bed”—No, I’m not, I’m working, I think defiantly—“We’re calling to tell you that we’ll be in New York in October.”
    My mother interrupts him from the extension. “And unless you have a job, a real job, you are coming back to Zurich with us where we can look after you!”
    Then my father interrupts her again. “We will call you tomorrow. Try to be awake and sober.”
    Click.
    I press “delete,” hang up, and sigh.
    Now, I know thousands of girls my age are totally independent from their parents, they’d just tell them to back off and cut all ties.… I don’t want to do that. Part of me still hopes that maybe, one day, the weird estrangement of the past few years will end. After all, they’re the only parents I’ve got. I really want them to be proud of me. Most of the time, I don’t even think they like me.
    I look out the window, lost in thought. Suddenly the sunshine looks kind of bleak. Who am I kidding? I can’t make a career out of goddamn bee-milking. I need a job, a real job … and fast.
    “Today is a special day for lucky guys and gals,” says Jonah in a radio announcer voice. “It’s Food Truck Festival at the Brooklyn Flea! And that’s where you, Pia Keller, will be working! Do you know the Brooklyn Flea?”
    “Of course!”
    Actually, I only went to the Brooklyn Flea for the first time a couple of weeks ago, with Angie and Coco in tow. It’s a gigantic collection of tented stalls selling everything from vintage stuff to design stuff to art stuff to, well, there’s just a lot of stuff.
    Then I pause. “Wait, what’s a Food Truck Festival?”
    “Jeez, you really are new here, aren’t you?” he says. “Food trucks are trucks that drive around the city selling—wait for it—food.”
    “Well, duh,” I say, blushing. “Like ice-cream trucks.”
    “Think