Читать книгу Peach - Joanne Green - Страница 6

Track 1: Beautiful People

Melanie

I used to be ninety percent less cool. A rape thing happened and I sort of freaked out, but now I deal with it better than people who know. Or think they know—think that I put out for Jacob, some dude who tried to be nice to me, and know I had a miscarriage. At St. Ag's, girls stared in stone silence when I'd brave the bathroom to pee. First day back, somebody asked for my autograph! So for sophomore year, I started dragging my ass on the subway to Philadelphia Girls'. Now my friends are intellectuals. In South Philly, everybody talked about sex, liquor, and the Beatles. Here, they talk about sex, drugs, the Velvet Underground, and Albert Camus. We yak in the bathroom about the Human Condition, which Albert Camus was supposed to be big on. Girls brag about their orgasms, and I keep my mouth shut.

Luna Dunkelman is my new best friend. She's far out. We sit on the school wall. This is illegal because perverts from all over Philly park their cars under there and beat off. They get hot if you squeal in horror. Instead, Luna yells, “Hey, pencil dick!” and laughs and laughs at the guy whamming away. They always leave.

Franco was walking by from the boys' school and thought she was talking to him. That's how we met.

Franco is so cool; his hair is almost as long as mine. And he has hair on his chest, really, but my little brother says it's just dirt. When people stare at Franco in his Sergeant Pepper coat and John Lennon glasses, he doesn't hunch shorter like I do. Franco roars, “Take a picture—lasts longer!” and shoots them the finger.

That's what my father was like.

This year, I had to live down Woodstock. Everybody worth talking to in the whole tenth grade went to Woodstock. I want to hate my mom for not letting me go, but I didn't even know about it.

I hate her now. Now, everybody's going to Washington, D.C., for the big Moratorium. Everybody who's anybody is going to help stop the Vietnam War, and have a very cool time doing it!

Me, I'm going to the prom.

	WORLD HISTORYPeach Sweeney
	Moratorium: mor · a · to · ri · um—
	a formally agreed to period during
	which activity is halted.
	Kind of like a strike, except instead of
	walking off from your job to get more
	wages, we want the war to stop!