Read Online Invisible Boy by Cornelia Read - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Cornelia Read
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sportsmanship counted: humility trumped
money, wit meant nothing without courtesy, and our loyalty to one another was both absolute and fierce—no matter what.
Ford was one of the “new dorms,” an abrupt trio of skinny, cedar-shingled seventies-ski-lodge towers. It was down the hill
from my own digs in stately Cushing, whose fin-de-siècle stucco had once also housed my mother.
At 9:55 P.M. the green vinyl common-room sofas were still packed with Tab-swilling nicotine-junkies attired in standard girls’-boarding-
school winter leisure wear: Bean duck boots and long underwear
beneath prim-necked calico-flannel Lanz nighties.
I, meanwhile—sockless in flat orange espadrilles—sported a duct-tape-repaired down jacket, somebody’s older brother’s madras-plaid
pants (sold to me cheap for weed money), and a hideously clashing aloha shirt scored over Christmas break from the St. Vincent
de Paul in Salinas.
“You study for Hindley’s bullshit poetry-thing yet?” asked Joan, spotting me a third cigarette.
I leaned in toward the flame of her lighter. “I’m waiting on Astrid. Bitch is late getting back from the city.”
“All-nighter, then.” Joan squinted up at the smoke-wreathed clock.
“How the hell does Hindley expect us to memorize sixty-nine poems in a single weekend?”
“More to the point,” said Joan, “why the hell would you wait until the very last possible
night
to open the damn book?”
“Because I’m an idiot?”
She blew a smoke ring. “You’ll fucking ace it anyway. Like always.”
“Which doesn’t mean tonight won’t utterly
suck
…. I’d pawn my left ass-cheek for a hit of speed.”
“That sophomore chick up in Strong has a whole bottle of her mother’s diet shit.”
“Too broke,” I said. “Story of my life.”
“Boo fucking hoo,” Joan replied, tapping ash into someone else’s abandoned fuchsia Tab can.
“Where the hell is Astrid?” I asked, eyeing the clock again.
“Why do you care? Start without her.”
“That would be the prudent course of action, but it would require knowing where my copy of the actual fucking anthology was.”
“You really
are
an idiot.”
“Indeed,” I said. “The merit of your hypothesis—as cogent summation of my native character—has long since been firmly established.”
“Nobody likes a smart-ass.”
“
Au contraire
, my always-thoroughly-prepared-for-class friend,” I said. “Everyone likes a smart-ass; especially when we fail our stupid
poetry-bullshit English tests so they get to wag their fingers and say, ‘I told you so.’”
Joan tilted her head to peer out the window behind me. “Bet that’s her pulling up right now.”
“Taxi?”
“Limo,” she said. “Stretch.”
I blew a smoke ring of my own. “
Definitely
Astrid. The Venezuelans all signed in early.”
Joan dragged a finger through my vaporous O as it wobbled past. “Lucky bitch. How the hell can she afford limos?”
“Flocks of smitten stockbrokers,” I said, “desperate to have her stay on for just one more vodka-tonic at Doubles, or the
Yale Club.”
No sooner had I spoken than Astrid herself danced through the smoker’s doorway: whip-lean in slender khakis, white tails of
her beau-trophy shirt flaring wide with each twirl.
She was trailing what appeared to be a sable coat along the ash-foul carpet behind her, and high as a ribbon-tailed kite:
Ray-Bans still on, Walkman turned up so loud everyone in the room could hear David Byrne’s tinny “
This
ain’t no party/
This
ain’t no disco” plaint bleeding out from under the headphones.
“Darlings,”
she said, flashing a red box of Dunhills, “who’s got a light?”
“Whose woods these are I think I know…”
read Astrid from her beat-to-shit orange copy of
Understanding Poetry
.
“‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,’” I said.
“By?”
“Frost,
duh
. Like anything else with trees or winter.”
I sat cross-legged on her dorm-room floor
money, wit meant nothing without courtesy, and our loyalty to one another was both absolute and fierce—no matter what.
Ford was one of the “new dorms,” an abrupt trio of skinny, cedar-shingled seventies-ski-lodge towers. It was down the hill
from my own digs in stately Cushing, whose fin-de-siècle stucco had once also housed my mother.
At 9:55 P.M. the green vinyl common-room sofas were still packed with Tab-swilling nicotine-junkies attired in standard girls’-boarding-
school winter leisure wear: Bean duck boots and long underwear
beneath prim-necked calico-flannel Lanz nighties.
I, meanwhile—sockless in flat orange espadrilles—sported a duct-tape-repaired down jacket, somebody’s older brother’s madras-plaid
pants (sold to me cheap for weed money), and a hideously clashing aloha shirt scored over Christmas break from the St. Vincent
de Paul in Salinas.
“You study for Hindley’s bullshit poetry-thing yet?” asked Joan, spotting me a third cigarette.
I leaned in toward the flame of her lighter. “I’m waiting on Astrid. Bitch is late getting back from the city.”
“All-nighter, then.” Joan squinted up at the smoke-wreathed clock.
“How the hell does Hindley expect us to memorize sixty-nine poems in a single weekend?”
“More to the point,” said Joan, “why the hell would you wait until the very last possible
night
to open the damn book?”
“Because I’m an idiot?”
She blew a smoke ring. “You’ll fucking ace it anyway. Like always.”
“Which doesn’t mean tonight won’t utterly
suck
…. I’d pawn my left ass-cheek for a hit of speed.”
“That sophomore chick up in Strong has a whole bottle of her mother’s diet shit.”
“Too broke,” I said. “Story of my life.”
“Boo fucking hoo,” Joan replied, tapping ash into someone else’s abandoned fuchsia Tab can.
“Where the hell is Astrid?” I asked, eyeing the clock again.
“Why do you care? Start without her.”
“That would be the prudent course of action, but it would require knowing where my copy of the actual fucking anthology was.”
“You really
are
an idiot.”
“Indeed,” I said. “The merit of your hypothesis—as cogent summation of my native character—has long since been firmly established.”
“Nobody likes a smart-ass.”
“
Au contraire
, my always-thoroughly-prepared-for-class friend,” I said. “Everyone likes a smart-ass; especially when we fail our stupid
poetry-bullshit English tests so they get to wag their fingers and say, ‘I told you so.’”
Joan tilted her head to peer out the window behind me. “Bet that’s her pulling up right now.”
“Taxi?”
“Limo,” she said. “Stretch.”
I blew a smoke ring of my own. “
Definitely
Astrid. The Venezuelans all signed in early.”
Joan dragged a finger through my vaporous O as it wobbled past. “Lucky bitch. How the hell can she afford limos?”
“Flocks of smitten stockbrokers,” I said, “desperate to have her stay on for just one more vodka-tonic at Doubles, or the
Yale Club.”
No sooner had I spoken than Astrid herself danced through the smoker’s doorway: whip-lean in slender khakis, white tails of
her beau-trophy shirt flaring wide with each twirl.
She was trailing what appeared to be a sable coat along the ash-foul carpet behind her, and high as a ribbon-tailed kite:
Ray-Bans still on, Walkman turned up so loud everyone in the room could hear David Byrne’s tinny “
This
ain’t no party/
This
ain’t no disco” plaint bleeding out from under the headphones.
“Darlings,”
she said, flashing a red box of Dunhills, “who’s got a light?”
“Whose woods these are I think I know…”
read Astrid from her beat-to-shit orange copy of
Understanding Poetry
.
“‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,’” I said.
“By?”
“Frost,
duh
. Like anything else with trees or winter.”
I sat cross-legged on her dorm-room floor
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