Charmed Thirds_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [77]
“Jessie!” my mom sniped. “Don't use that word. It's offensive.” And then she reached for the clicker and switched to HGTV.
My mom's comments reminded me of how clueless I was before I went to college. My mother's parents wouldn't pay for her to go to college, which I'm sure might account for her ambivalence toward funding my education. She, unlike me, wasn't so inclined to pay her own way, for which I can't blame her because it totally sucks. But what's stopping her from educating herself now? Why can't she watch PBS instead of HGTV? See Fahrenheit 9-11 instead of The Notebook? Listen to NPR instead of Lite FM? Why can't she pick up a newspaper? Or read a book in hardcover or hell, in paperback? I'd even settle for a real magazine for Christ's sake, one that doesn't feature suede couches on its front cover, accept American Express, and come with an 800 number.
These are the choices my mother makes and they all say, I CHOOSE IGNORANCE.
Would I be the same if I had never left?
Which, again, begs the question: Why the hell am I still here?
the fifteenth
“Aren't you supposed to be somewhere else?”
Bridget spotted me all sprawled out on the front lawn this afternoon, cooling down. My parents were both out of the house, so I thought I could go for a five-mile run without being pressured to put my not-so-sick ass back on a bus to Port Authority.
“Aren't you supposed to be in New York?”
“I'm convalescing,” I said. “Cough, cough.”
Bridget looked me over in my shorts, tank top, and running shoes.
“It would be easier to believe you if you hadn't, like, just run a marathon,” she said. Her face got serious. “What happened?”
“What do you mean, ‘What happened?'” I replied, shooing away a cicada that had landed on my leg.
“You always fake an illness when you can't deal.”
I didn't bother to argue. Bridget has known me my entire life. She has seen my hypochondria after disappointments including, but not limited to, forgetting to bring in an item for show-and-tell in kindergarten; losing the spelling bee (“Vogue.” V-O-A-G? How could I?) in third grade; standing against the gymnasium wall, forlornly waiting for a boy to ask me to slow dance in seventh grade; finding out about Hope moving away in sophomore year; sucking at the spring track sectionals in junior year; and being cheated on by Len Levy in senior year. If she was bold enough to call out my bullshit, then the least I could do was own up to it when she did.
“I'm just, I don't know, confused about . . .” I hesitated. “Stuff.”
I almost told her about Bastian. But she was so appalled by my hookup with William, I couldn't imagine how she would react to the possibility of me sleeping with a married man.
“I've got some, like, really exciting news!”
I pulled my legs up to my chest. “If it's about Hy's movie, I really don't want to hear about it right now . . .”
“No, no, no,” she said. “That's, like, all caught up in distribution problems. This news is about me.”
“Okay.”
“I got in to NYU!” she said, clapping her hands to congratulate herself. “I'm transferring in the fall!”
I sat up. “Really? I thought things were going well for you out in LA.”
“I hate LA,” she said, sticking out her tongue. “There's no better place than LA for making an aspiring actress give up and become, like, a truck driver.”
“It's that bad?”
“There are hardly any real parts anymore, for shows with scripts,” she said. “I have producers coming up to me all the time and telling me that I'd be just fabulous for all these crappy reality shows, but I'm, like, no way. You have to be retarded if you think that eating, like, snake testicles in a string bikini is going to lead to an Academy Award.”
“Snakes have testicles?”
This gave her pause.
“I don't think so, but you get the idea. Anyway, girls at school tell me I'm crazy to turn down these offers, because they'd do anything to get on TV. But the people on those shows always seem so, like, seriously desperate and starved for attention.”
“Or poor,” I said, thinking about Dexy.
“Whatever,” she said, casually flicking a cicada off