Read Online Two Parties, One Tux, and a Very Short Film about The Grapes of Wrath by Steven Goldman - Free Book Online

homework?”
    She considers this. “You’re right, I should trust you.” I feel a tightness in my chest. That word again.
    â€œI mean, you can see it. I’m not ashamed of it or anything.”
    â€œI think I’d like to see it. You already showed it to Carrie.”
    â€œThat was clearly a mistake. Do you want to see it now?” Do you want to watch it and tell me that there’s no way you would let me show this thing in school, then make me read the stupid book and write the paper?
    â€œNo, I think I’d like to wait so your dad can watch it too. He’s working nights right now, so maybe on a weekend? We’ll make some popcorn, have a film festival.”
    Nothing simple. Can’t just watch a movie. Now it’s a film festival.
    â€œWe could invite your grandmother.”
    Oh, good.
    Chicken—it isn’t just for dinner
    After dinner, the same Carrie who told me there was no way I could show my film in class declares me chicken-shit for even mentioning the possibility of reading the book. It was just a casual statement like, “You know, maybe I’ll try to read
The Grapes of Wrath
after all.” Panic had begun to set in. Carrie’s point was that if you have decided to screw up your social status, your grade point average, and any hope of ever attending a reasonable four-year university, you might as well have the satisfaction of having done it with conviction. It would seem that I now have some sort of moral obligation to fake it.
    I take
The Grapes
to bed with me, but I can’t make it past page 23. No matter what is written on the page, the only word that I hear in my head is “nipples.”
    I really do try not to puke on the carpet
    By Thursday, I am past chickenshit and into a full-fledged panic. I wake up in the morning with an honest-to-god stomachache, complete with mild fever and vomiting. Simply nerves, all psychosomatic, but the vomit is real enough and Mom agrees to let me stay home. My dad, who claims to have a medical degree, looks at me lying there and says simply, “Try not to puke on the carpet.”
    I stay home from school. Mom goes off to work,Carrie to school, Dad to the hospital. I am now too old for anyone to take time off of work and sit with me for something as minor as a migraine (Dad’s conclusion, based on the fact that I have them regularly and they often make me throw up) or the flu (my mother’s theory, because it’s going around) or being a chickenshit wimp (my sister’s more accurate diagnosis). So they leave me sitting up in bed in my bathrobe, with my bedside trash can lined with a plastic bag (just in case), a sick seventeen-year-old who can stay by himself. I may be seventeen, but no one wants to be mature and independent when they feel sick. When you’re sick you want someone to fuss over you, make you chickie star soup (Campbell’s, from the can), prop you up with pillows, and drag the television in from the playroom.
    I don’t get up and drag the television in. I don’t make myself chickie star soup. In a fit of utter despair and self-loathing, I read the entirety of
The Grapes of Wrath
. Not well, mind you, I’m not that fast a reader, but cover to cover if you don’t count eighty or so pages in the middle, which I mostly skip.
    â€œThat’s pathetic” is Carrie’s only comment when she returns at 4:30, M.C. in tow, to discover me on the couch, absorbed in the last chapter.
    M.C. is a little more diplomatic. Tossing her backpack onto the ottoman, she finds a perch on one of the green vinyl stools, plucks an apple from the bowl on thecounter, and smiles at me. “Did you at least enjoy the book?”
    â€œNo. Not really.”
    â€œHow’s your stomach?” asks Carrie, still in the doorway.
    â€œNo more puke.”
    Carrie seems convinced enough to enter the den, but chooses a seat well away from me in case I develop a sudden urge to