Read Online Third Girl from the Left by Martha Southgate - Free Book Online Page A

an hour. Her head hurt. She jumped at the sound of the key in the lock. “Sheila?” Her voice shook.
    â€œYeah, it’s me. What’s going on? Why you sitting here in the dark?”
    â€œI just . . . My mama called. She saw one of the movies.” Her voice was tiny as though her throat were stuffed with cotton.
    Sheila sat down next to her. “Not too happy, huh?”
    â€œYou could say that.” They sat in silence, legs touching, for a while. Finally Sheila spoke. “I’ve got some good dope,” she said.
    â€œThat would be good,” said Angela, wiping at her wet eyes.
    â€œCome on, then. Let me just put my stuff down.” Sheila put her packages into her room, and came out clutching a little Baggie. “A cure for what ails you.” She waved it cheerfully. Angela smiled a little.
    Sheila always made a big deal out of putting a joint together. First the picking out of the seeds, then the spreading out the leaves, and, finally, with a noisy, small rattling, shaking out the paper to roll the joint. Angela felt like slugging her. She didn’t want to wait for the smooth absence to take her over. She just wanted to be there.
    She didn’t have any difficulty holding the smoke in her lungs anymore. In fact, she could no longer clearly remember the fear she’d felt when she was faced with that first joint, how nervous she’d been. Now it was all pleasure. She smoked until she couldn’t remember her mother’s call at all. Well, she did, but it didn’t mean anything. What else was her mother going to say? She was her mother, after all.
    Once they were high, they rested on the sofa, their legs entangled for a while, their feet lazily rubbing up and down each other’s calves.
    After a long silence, Sheila spoke. “I got invited to a party in the Hills. All kinds a people gonna be there. Let’s go. I don’t want”—she sighed deeply, rubbing her hands through the back of her hair—“I don’t want to just sit here all night . . . let’s get with somebody. Somebody who can do us some good.”
    Angela nodded, her eyes still closed. “Yeah,” she murmured. “Let’s go.”
    So they moved to the bathroom, together, as though underwater. The air was lined with fur. Felt good against their skin, slow, like they could eat it, like chocolate. Sweet.
    They chose their outfits together, tight and shiny and beautiful. They leaned toward the mirror together, smoothing on gleaming reddish brown lipstick. They both put on big hoop earrings, earrings that twinkled, small spots of cheap light against their brown skin. They put in eye drops to get rid of the red and picked their hair out to its fullest glory. They put on false eyelashes. They were so stoned that it took a long time. One of Angela’s lashes got stuck to her cheek as they laughed helplessly, trying to remove it, then making crooked attempts to glue it onto her eyelid. Finally, they were ready. They fired up another joint that they shared in the car, then had to stop for doughnuts on the way, and then they were winding down the road, out to Bel Air, up to the top of a mountain, Sheila’s little orange Bug putting the road away underneath them, gasping a bit at the difficult turns. They laughed a lot at nothing, that kind of obsessive laughing that takes your breath away and makes your eyes water. They didn’t want to because it made their mascara run, but they couldn’t help it. Everything was just so funny. Sheila drove with her hand on Angela’s thigh.
    Finally, they pulled up at an enormous house, ablaze with floodlights. Cars dotted every inch of gravel around it. What you could see of the roof was flat and angular, punching the night sky at odd angles. Angela wiped at her eyes and finally said, “Whose house is this? It’s fucking huge.”
    â€œIt’s fucking Wilt Chamberlain’s, that’s