Read Online Puberty Blues by Gabrielle Carey - Free Book Online Page A

till Wednesday of every week, we talked about what we did on the weekend and after Wednesday, talked about what we were going to do the next weekend. Which was exactly the same as the last.
    Every home science lesson, Mrs Simmons would be up the front talking about sautéeing onions and washing the glasses first, and all the surfie chicks would be up the very back in a whispering cluster.
    â€˜I went down Garry’s on Friday night …’
    â€˜Yeah? You allowed?’
    â€˜Bloody oaff. It’s unroole down there. There’s a snooker table and a pool … Garry’s gunna teachme how to play …’ Giggle giggle.
    â€˜Yeah. Garry’s really good to ya.’
    â€˜â€¦ and there’s a caravan out the back with two beds in it … hee, hee, hee … and we just got so drunk last Sat’dy night on Brandivino.’
    â€˜Deadset?’
    â€˜Yeah, it was unroole.’
    â€˜Wadja Mum say?’
    â€˜Nuffin’. She never knew.’
    â€˜Yeah, you’re really lucky Garry wouldn’t take advantage of you in a situation like that.’
    â€˜Mmmm … It’s his birfday this weekend. Gonna cook him a cake. In a heart shape. Pink, ya reckon?’
    â€˜Oh perf …’
    â€˜ You girls up the back! What could you be talking about now ?’
    â€˜Cooking cakes, Miss.’
    We all invariably got sent out into the corridor but it didn’t matter ’cause we just carried on the conversation out there. That’s all we did at school: talk about the weekends. And our weekends meant boys. We talked about them behind our text books in maths. Running around the oval in PE. In a big group on wooden seats at lunchtime. On the way home in the bus. And when you got home, you’d ring up your girlfriend when you were supposed to be doing your geography essay—to talk about them.
    â€˜Guess what?’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Didja hear about Trace?’
    â€˜Nu.’
    â€˜Johnno dropped her.’
    â€˜Deadset? Why? They’ve been goin’ round together for heaps.’
    â€˜She was two-timin’ him last Friday night with Deak.’
    â€˜Oh, what a slack-arse. She’s gonna get a bad name.’
    â€˜Yeah, reckon. Johnno found out and dropped her.’
    â€˜Moll.’
    The boys could screw as many molls as they liked during the week. No one cared very much about that. We all thought they were dogs. But if any of us girls ‘got it off’ with another boy, we were immediately dropped. We learnt to fuck just enough not to be called slack or tight.
    â€˜What about the ring?’
    â€˜She’s keepin’ it.’
    â€˜Oh what a weak act.’
    â€˜Yeah reckon. That’s what Kim told her. Now Dave wantsa go roun’ with her.’
    â€˜Deadset? What about Cheryl?’
    â€˜Oh, she’s gonna crack … Hey don’t tell Trace I told ya but.’
    â€˜Oh, okay. Didja hear about Frieda Cummins? Small moll …’
    â€˜Ssshh, hang on. Mum’s coming … Ah … Does rice grow in the Riverina?’
    â€˜ What? ’
    Â 
    There were a lot of molls where we grew up. They grovelled around with their pants off under the bowling-alley—in the dark and dirt and spider webs; in the cold, damp caves at Cronulla Beach; in the prickly lantana bushes down the paddock and on the grotty banks of the Georges River behind the Ace of Spades Hotel.
    If you were overweight, pimply, a migrant, or just plain ugly, you couldn’t get a boyfriend. If you couldn’t get a boyfriend, there were two options. You could be a prude or a moll. Being a prude was too boring. If you were a moll, at least people knew who you were. Like Frieda Cummins. She was fat, untanned with red hair and freckles. To make it worse, she was a Pom. Most of her time she spent flat on her back.
    Gang bangs usually happened on rainy days, or when the surf was no good. The boys were bored. They