Read Online Everything and More by Jacqueline Briskin - Free Book Online
Authors: Jacqueline Briskin
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floated around for nearly a day before he was picked up. He got the Distinguished Flying Cross—but he positively blows up if anybody mentions it. I mean, he keeps flying off the handle. Yesterday I heard my parents talking. They’re worried sick.”
Marylin clutched her notebook to her breasts, dizzy with a sickening urgency to hold Linc, to interject herself between his body and Japanese flak.
“You sure you’re better?” BJ asked. “If you don’t mind my saying so, you look punk.”
“It must be terrible, knowing every day you might have to face enemy fire.”
“He has the Air Medal and the Distinguished Flying Cross!” BJ barked. “They don’t give those medals to chickens.”
“I didn’t mean that he was a coward, BJ. But I know I couldn’t keep forcing myself to risk my life.”
Before BJ could retort, the warning bell sliced like a buzz saw through the other sounds. They bolted toward Room 217.
In class Marylin’s discipline deserted her, and she could not concentrate on her lines. . . .
a few minutes of monstrous, degrading terror
. . . how long had he floated in that warm, shark-infested sea, uncertain whether these waters were his grave? All that kept her from crying aloud was BJ sitting in the next row of desks, BJ, who resembled him and who sat unscathed in this Beverly High drama classroom.
When the final bell of the day rang, she found herself leaving class with BJ. The school’s painted brick walls glowed like rich cream in the afternoon sun while on the street below, carloads of kids honked and waved with frenzied Friday-afternoon excesses. Wasn’t there an irreconcilable paradox between Beverly Hills and the flame-exploding maw of hell that was the war?
She started to walk toward Santa Monica Boulevard with BJ. BJ—proud to be seen with Marylin Wace, who though not one of the school’s true elite, was certainly its most beautiful adornment, and well known, besides, by virtue of her acting—strutted along with her messy black pompadour high, bragging cheerfully about the numerous boys crazy about her, accomplished, adorable paragons who by some fortuitous chance attended other schools. Marylin nodded whenever it seemed obligatory. She did not turn at Charleville. Instead,she continued on with BJ, crossing the two Santa Monica Boulevards.
Here, separating two identically named thoroughfares, lay the Southern Pacific tracks—also used by the trolley line—which sociologically bisected Beverly Hills. To the south of the tracks lay the unhurried business district and quiet streets of apartments and less expensive homes. To the north, on larger lots, stood houses that regardless of size sold for considerably more, a geographical snobbery accepted by every shop keeper when he charged your bill.
BJ understood the class implications of stepping over cinder and steel, but Marylin moved across the few yards without so much as a thought. Not only was she too poor to catch on to the subtleties of class coloration, but her luminous blue-green eyes had a blind spot where such pretensions disappeared from view.
On the north side of the tracks, further buttressing the division, lay Beverly Gardens, twenty-three blocks long, eighty feet wide, a narrow manicured park of lawns, flowerbeds, pergolas, a cactus garden, a lily pond, rose gardens. As the two girls walked along the promenade, which was soft-dappled by the shade of weeping elms, BJ continued her monologue. A khaki truck bearing khaki-clothed soldiers lumbered along Santa Monica, trailing exhaust and wolf whistles.
Both girls waved.
“Listen,” BJ blurted. “How about coming over to the house?”
Marylin hesitated. Her nerves ached for physical reassurance that Linc was not locked into watery depths; however, since for some reason he had kept their relationship a secret, she worried about his reactions if she showed up on North Hillcrest Road with BJ. “What about the Gramophone Shop?”
“Hey, a great idea! I’m
Marylin clutched her notebook to her breasts, dizzy with a sickening urgency to hold Linc, to interject herself between his body and Japanese flak.
“You sure you’re better?” BJ asked. “If you don’t mind my saying so, you look punk.”
“It must be terrible, knowing every day you might have to face enemy fire.”
“He has the Air Medal and the Distinguished Flying Cross!” BJ barked. “They don’t give those medals to chickens.”
“I didn’t mean that he was a coward, BJ. But I know I couldn’t keep forcing myself to risk my life.”
Before BJ could retort, the warning bell sliced like a buzz saw through the other sounds. They bolted toward Room 217.
In class Marylin’s discipline deserted her, and she could not concentrate on her lines. . . .
a few minutes of monstrous, degrading terror
. . . how long had he floated in that warm, shark-infested sea, uncertain whether these waters were his grave? All that kept her from crying aloud was BJ sitting in the next row of desks, BJ, who resembled him and who sat unscathed in this Beverly High drama classroom.
When the final bell of the day rang, she found herself leaving class with BJ. The school’s painted brick walls glowed like rich cream in the afternoon sun while on the street below, carloads of kids honked and waved with frenzied Friday-afternoon excesses. Wasn’t there an irreconcilable paradox between Beverly Hills and the flame-exploding maw of hell that was the war?
She started to walk toward Santa Monica Boulevard with BJ. BJ—proud to be seen with Marylin Wace, who though not one of the school’s true elite, was certainly its most beautiful adornment, and well known, besides, by virtue of her acting—strutted along with her messy black pompadour high, bragging cheerfully about the numerous boys crazy about her, accomplished, adorable paragons who by some fortuitous chance attended other schools. Marylin nodded whenever it seemed obligatory. She did not turn at Charleville. Instead,she continued on with BJ, crossing the two Santa Monica Boulevards.
Here, separating two identically named thoroughfares, lay the Southern Pacific tracks—also used by the trolley line—which sociologically bisected Beverly Hills. To the south of the tracks lay the unhurried business district and quiet streets of apartments and less expensive homes. To the north, on larger lots, stood houses that regardless of size sold for considerably more, a geographical snobbery accepted by every shop keeper when he charged your bill.
BJ understood the class implications of stepping over cinder and steel, but Marylin moved across the few yards without so much as a thought. Not only was she too poor to catch on to the subtleties of class coloration, but her luminous blue-green eyes had a blind spot where such pretensions disappeared from view.
On the north side of the tracks, further buttressing the division, lay Beverly Gardens, twenty-three blocks long, eighty feet wide, a narrow manicured park of lawns, flowerbeds, pergolas, a cactus garden, a lily pond, rose gardens. As the two girls walked along the promenade, which was soft-dappled by the shade of weeping elms, BJ continued her monologue. A khaki truck bearing khaki-clothed soldiers lumbered along Santa Monica, trailing exhaust and wolf whistles.
Both girls waved.
“Listen,” BJ blurted. “How about coming over to the house?”
Marylin hesitated. Her nerves ached for physical reassurance that Linc was not locked into watery depths; however, since for some reason he had kept their relationship a secret, she worried about his reactions if she showed up on North Hillcrest Road with BJ. “What about the Gramophone Shop?”
“Hey, a great idea! I’m
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