Read Online This Beautiful Life by Helen Schulman - Free Book Online

fried. Jake kind of wished he still lived in Ithaca right then. He kind of wished he were right that minute back in Ithaca, on Buffalo Street, going down the hill on his bike. Buffalo Street was so steep you had to be nuts to go down it without your hand brakes on, but Jake liked to; he even liked to close his eyes, which was kind of close to committing suicide, it was such a nuts thing to do. He liked the way the wind felt rushing through his hair, drying off the sweat on his scalp, on his neck, in his armpits, as it flew up his shirtsleeves, billowing out his back like a sail. He liked flying blind.
    Jonas’s mom was going out for the night, but she ordered in Chinese food for them first. “You boys can have whatever you want,” she said. “Jo, there’s money in the money jar.” So they ate spare ribs and egg rolls standing up, screaming at each other over the Xbox. They ate noodles straight out of the cartons, with their splintery wooden chopsticks, no one thinking to grab a plate. It was a good, boring time, until the hours passed and they were ready to go to the party, where there were girls and things could possibly change.
    So they walked up the hill en masse to Olivia’s, running into Arthur Gladstone and his band of freaks on the way. Arthur was old-school punk: dog collar, Sex Pistols T-shirt, boots with chains. It was sort of funny, Jake thought, how there was always a small group of hippies and punks, greasers, too, wherever you went to school. Like once the stuff got in the water it was inevitable that a few kids would be born every year beamed up from another era. In Ithaca there was a guy who’d tattooed every inch of his body, including his entire face. And he was a dad! Jake had seen him pushing a stroller on the Commons, his baby’s cheeks as fresh and white as a pork bun. Did the kid puzzle over all his father’s ink? Or did he just figure, that’s my dad? Maybe Jake’s own offspring would be obsessed with ancient Xbox games and would spend their time sitting around arguing about them, which ones rocked and which ones sucked, the way his dad and his college friends would sit around fighting about Bob Dylan albums. Some of Arthur’s posse didn’t even go to Wildwood—they went to Kennedy, the local public high school, and two of those dudes wore Mohawks. Jake’s six-year-old baby sister wore dog collars and even she knew she was wearing them as a joke.
    â€œCoco has an instinctive, irreverent, jocose flair for the burlesque,” Henry once said, solemnly. “Someday I shall marry her.”
    Dream on, Jake had thought. But he said nothing.
    â€œIt’s not happening,” said Arthur, in dint of a greeting.
    â€œWhat?” said McHenry. “What’s not happening, you fascist fuck?”
    â€œOlivia’s parents decided to go to the country and to bring Olivia, so they can all eat family dinner.” Arthur sneered and spat on the sidewalk. “She’s failing math again.” He was wearing purple eye shadow, and for a minute Jake expected the spit to come out pink and blue, but it didn’t.
    â€œBummer,” said McHenry. He turned to his boys. “Now what?”
    There wasn’t much else to do if there was no party. Jake mentally consulted the express bus schedule. He was a twenty-minute walk from the closest stop.
    â€œDaisy Cavanaugh said we could all come to her place. Her folks are in Cyprus avoiding taxes,” said Arthur.
    â€œDaisy Cavanaugh is in eighth grade,” said McHenry in disgust. “She’s a middle school pig and a slut,” he added.
    Jake didn’t know Daisy Cavanaugh. He lifted an eyebrow at Henry.
    Henry shrugged, his skateboarder’s hair touching his shoulders as they rose. “Aww, she’s all right,” he said to McHenry. “She’s got a nice house,” he said to Jake.
    â€œMcMansion,” said Arthur. “Fucking movie theater in