Read Online Beautiful Girls by Beth Ann Bauman - Free Book Online
Authors: Beth Ann Bauman
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cartoons. The week before when they found out I hadn’t won they both cried, but it was Daffodil who sobbed, huge tears running down her blotchy face, her whole body heaving. Maybe she had wanted me to pave the way for her. “You like Inggy, right?” I’d said, holding her hand.
“Not anymore.”
“But I get to ride on the float, too.”
“So what?” she sobbed.
I hoped they’d change their minds, and I kept a lookout for their pompomed hats as we rolled along. There was so much noise—“Deck the Halls,” the clapping and cheering, Santa and his ho ho ho’s. Kevin McSweeney leapt out of the crowd and ran alongside us, gaping up at Inggy. I looked for Ben but didn’t see him until we passed the hardware store, where he and a couple of his friends were sitting on bags of fertilizer. We both waved, but I couldn’t tell if we were waving to each other. “Ben,” I heard myself whisper. “Ben.” What if he’d been meant for me and me for him?
Up ahead on the sidewalk Connie waved to Pamela Zlotkin, who stood on the front of our float,and I wondered if they liked each other. I wondered if Pamela had sat in Connie’s warm kitchen on the chair with the blue polka-dotted cushion next to the radiator, the chair I always sat in. Connie saw me and blew a kiss. I blew one back and turned and stared in her direction long after we passed.
Then I saw my sisters, hiding behind a mailbox in front of the savings and loan and watching for me. As the float glided toward them, they pushed their way into the street and stood there wide-eyed while I waved like mad. “That’s my sister!” Daffodil shouted, pointing at me. Both Dorrie and Daffodil looked as if they were waiting for something to happen, and I too almost expected something to happen then, but the float coasted on indifferently like a cloud through the sky, and I lost them in the crowd.
The air was still and calm and cold. I’d heard it would snow later tonight, the first snow of the year. It was only supposed to be a light dusting, but I hoped it would be enough to cover the town in a clean sheet of white.
All of a sudden we stopped short. I stumbled, nearly stepping on Inggy’s tiara, which landed by my feet. It was hard to see what was happening so I climbed up the little staircase to Inggy, carrying her crown, and saw that up ahead a car had rear-ended a police cruiser at the intersection of Maple and Main, causing everything to come to a stop. Inggy inchedover and I shared the folding chair with her. “You’re not crying, Dani, are you?” she said.
“I’m not crying,” I said. She slung an arm over my shoulder and pulled the bag of corn chips from under her cape. That’s all I wanted then, to sit beside Inggy, eating corn chips and watching the standstill up ahead.
In front of us, the ladies’ auxiliary put down their banner and lit cigarettes. Pamela Zlotkin still stood on her corner of the float, waving to a crowd that wasn’t paying attention while the two other girls hunched together in their billowy white velvet capes and seemed to be reading each other’s palms. I wondered what they saw there.
EDEN
L ET’S CALL OUR COUPLE A DAM AND E VE SINCE THEY’LL be visiting paradise. Both Adam and Eve are accompanying their mothers on a cruise from Africa to India and the islands in between. Four hundred passengers board the ship in Kenya. Adam and Eve haven’t met yet, and they don’t notice each other as they roll their suitcases along the Marina Deck in search of the elevators to their respective cabins, which they’ll share with their respective mothers. Soon—not today—they’ll meet. They’ll learn they both live on the East Coast; that they both have high metabolisms; that they’re both easily exasperated by their mothers; that they’re both flirty yet wary.
Adam is a hippie who teaches junior high and has two children by two different women and lives in thePine Barrens of New Jersey, where he has an outhouse and fruit
“Not anymore.”
“But I get to ride on the float, too.”
“So what?” she sobbed.
I hoped they’d change their minds, and I kept a lookout for their pompomed hats as we rolled along. There was so much noise—“Deck the Halls,” the clapping and cheering, Santa and his ho ho ho’s. Kevin McSweeney leapt out of the crowd and ran alongside us, gaping up at Inggy. I looked for Ben but didn’t see him until we passed the hardware store, where he and a couple of his friends were sitting on bags of fertilizer. We both waved, but I couldn’t tell if we were waving to each other. “Ben,” I heard myself whisper. “Ben.” What if he’d been meant for me and me for him?
Up ahead on the sidewalk Connie waved to Pamela Zlotkin, who stood on the front of our float,and I wondered if they liked each other. I wondered if Pamela had sat in Connie’s warm kitchen on the chair with the blue polka-dotted cushion next to the radiator, the chair I always sat in. Connie saw me and blew a kiss. I blew one back and turned and stared in her direction long after we passed.
Then I saw my sisters, hiding behind a mailbox in front of the savings and loan and watching for me. As the float glided toward them, they pushed their way into the street and stood there wide-eyed while I waved like mad. “That’s my sister!” Daffodil shouted, pointing at me. Both Dorrie and Daffodil looked as if they were waiting for something to happen, and I too almost expected something to happen then, but the float coasted on indifferently like a cloud through the sky, and I lost them in the crowd.
The air was still and calm and cold. I’d heard it would snow later tonight, the first snow of the year. It was only supposed to be a light dusting, but I hoped it would be enough to cover the town in a clean sheet of white.
All of a sudden we stopped short. I stumbled, nearly stepping on Inggy’s tiara, which landed by my feet. It was hard to see what was happening so I climbed up the little staircase to Inggy, carrying her crown, and saw that up ahead a car had rear-ended a police cruiser at the intersection of Maple and Main, causing everything to come to a stop. Inggy inchedover and I shared the folding chair with her. “You’re not crying, Dani, are you?” she said.
“I’m not crying,” I said. She slung an arm over my shoulder and pulled the bag of corn chips from under her cape. That’s all I wanted then, to sit beside Inggy, eating corn chips and watching the standstill up ahead.
In front of us, the ladies’ auxiliary put down their banner and lit cigarettes. Pamela Zlotkin still stood on her corner of the float, waving to a crowd that wasn’t paying attention while the two other girls hunched together in their billowy white velvet capes and seemed to be reading each other’s palms. I wondered what they saw there.
EDEN
L ET’S CALL OUR COUPLE A DAM AND E VE SINCE THEY’LL be visiting paradise. Both Adam and Eve are accompanying their mothers on a cruise from Africa to India and the islands in between. Four hundred passengers board the ship in Kenya. Adam and Eve haven’t met yet, and they don’t notice each other as they roll their suitcases along the Marina Deck in search of the elevators to their respective cabins, which they’ll share with their respective mothers. Soon—not today—they’ll meet. They’ll learn they both live on the East Coast; that they both have high metabolisms; that they’re both easily exasperated by their mothers; that they’re both flirty yet wary.
Adam is a hippie who teaches junior high and has two children by two different women and lives in thePine Barrens of New Jersey, where he has an outhouse and fruit
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