Read Online American Girls by Alison Umminger - Free Book Online

It’s not just for ugly people anymore.”
    â€œIs that what you’re supposed to say?” Dex nearly spit out his doughnut. His third doughnut.
    â€œOf course not, but they should, right? I think they need to rebrand the herp, not make prettier commercials for some drug. I mean, it’s just mouth sores on your ass, right? There are worse things in the world. It needs a better name. You’re the writer. Suggestions?”
    â€œAss pox?”
    â€œAt least that sounds edgy,” Delia said. “‘Herpes’ sounds like something a really dirty Muppet would get.”
    Around Dex, my sister was a little less fake, a little more like the Delia I grew up with, goofy, even. She said that she’d met him when they were both stuck in line waiting to see the opening of Three Girls to the Left, a gag-worthy romantic comedy about a sports reporter and a wannabe cheerleader who keep meeting each other at the same basketball games. I’m not even kidding. Delia had three lines as “Bitchy Cheerleader,” and Dex had worked on one of the rewrites. They were both ashamed to be seeing the film in the first place, since the party line in LA is that no one ever watches their own stuff. I imagined them as two chimps who’d caught each other looking in the mirror and decided it was awesome . At any rate, Dex bought Delia some Twizzlers, and she knew she liked him because she ate half the pack, even though she made sure to let me know that she wound up with a stomachache later that night. All of this I had learned on the elevator ride to Dex’s apartment, though she swore she’d told me before.
    â€œAre we allowed to talk like this around your sister?”
    â€œPlease,” Delia said. “She’s fifteen. It’s the new thirty-seven, in case you haven’t kept up.”
    â€œI have heard of herpes.” I tried to be deadpan, and got a real smile from Dex.
    â€œSpeaking of,” she said. “Gotta get the children home.”
    â€œI don’t wanna,” I whined. “Please, can I stay with you guys? Please, please, please?”
    â€œI lied. Fifteen is the new two and a half. I haven’t seen my man in a month. Look homeward, little angel.” She pointed toward the door and Dex didn’t object.
    â€œI’ll see you tomorrow,” Dex said. “We’re gonna be running buddies this summer.”
    â€œBut…”
    Delia had already opened the door, but she waited for a moment. “But what?”
    I wanted to say, But what about the note? What about the fact that you’re going to leave me in some house where someone’s branding you “Whore” in their shaky, serial-killer handwriting and taping it to your door? I am not a whore and would prefer not to be confused for one in your absence. I don’t know how to tell a sex maniac Sorry, come back later, because I’m pretty sure that sex maniacs are kind of like impulse shoppers—in a pinch, they’ll take whatever happens to be around.
    But I wasn’t supposed to have seen the note, and I would have bet real money that Dex wasn’t supposed to know about it, so I was just going to have to double-lock the doors, sleep with a phone by my head, and accept my fate.
    â€œBut nothing,” I said.

 
    5
    When we got back to Delia’s house, my mom called. She still phoned me every night, mostly to remind me about something she’d left off her laundry list of complaints: to tell me that my dad was going to have my head when he got back from Mexico, to ask me if I had a job yet, to bore me with more Internet blather about the importance of taking responsibility for my actions. She always signed off by reminding me that I wasn’t on vacation, that she hoped I knew that I still had a paper to write. I was ready to tell her that I was going to be researching the Manson murders instead of working on my project, just to see if I could hear