The High Season(9)
She wasn’t just snarky. She made the beautiful more beautiful, too. She’d been a photography major, a useless degree unless you decided to treat pictures like nothing, free to the world. The pictures themselves didn’t matter, only their ability to generate likes and regrams. She had an eye, and filters, and a killer photo app. Thanks to social media, you could build a whole career on people being judgy.
In the folder of wacky useless advice her mom had given her there was one bit that spoke to her: Make your living on the rich. Other than that, it was Wax your bush, A backpack is not a purse, Don’t expect breakfast with a one-night stand.
Thanks, Mom.
As if she’d summoned her by negative vibrations, her phone twinkled. It was Shari.
Did you find out about that spa job got to get out of fla b4 a hurricane blows me away lol
answer your mama doorangel pie you can’t run from family
…Dorie damn fuck this phone I’m driving
…
in other words you were right about everything you were right about Ron
please can I live with you for a while
Live with her? Pinpricks of panic on her skin. She looked around, as if Shari were already there and she needed escape routes.
Ron is out on bale he came by Ritas to see me. Bail! I hid in the bathroom Rita kicked him out she’s brave as shit unlike me lol what a scene
anyways if I could just crash with you until I’m on my feet
…
I looked up the word genuflect its just the same as truckle
in case you don’t get it I’m truckling
keep on trucklin
This was followed by the happy face scrunched into a kiss.
5
Draft Folder
From: Jemma Dutton
To: Olivia Freeman
Subject: Ollie and Jem’s Guide to Survivel Porcupines MOVE SLOW. Use a stick to nudge it toward the sack. Throw a towel over its head then the sack. Then kill it with a LOG.
Remember? That notebook we kept? Fourth grade?
I know it’s been a while. Okay, six months. But. I have a story. It’s so long it requires ye olde email.
But first this. I was packing for the summer bummer. I cleaned for so long yesterday I smelled like beeswax and lemon, and not in a groovy Burt’s Bees kinda way, like a Glade PlugIn kinda way. Anyway I found it wedged in the back of my pajama drawer.
Back when we read The Hunger Games in elementary school? We were totally going to rock dystopia. Teach everyone how to roast a porcupine. Build a solar still.
We turned it in for our English project, and we got sent to the school psychologist. Remember?
Well, guess what. I live in dystopia now. All your fault for moving to Iowa or Idaho or wherever. Meret surfaced. Jaws. Dun-dun. And I got dragged along for the ride. With teeth.
I wanted to say you were right.
Meret. Long story. It’s a Tolkien, it’s Twilight, it’s Game of Thrones without the thrones just the games. This is why I’m resorting to that old-timey parental communication method, the EMAIL. If this summer continues to Suck So Bad, soon I’ll be buying STAMPS, and you’ll be checking that thing called a mailbox that your mom uses.
I know you said Meret would drop me because she always picked out a girl and groomed her like a pedophile (yes I totally remember you said that) and then dropped her after she blew up some teeny thing into a major betrayal.
I was so funny. She said. I was so pretty when I blew out my hair. She said. She was jealous of me. She said. Let’s both work at the farm stand this summer so we can meet hot summer guys. She said.
She said
She said
She said
On and on. Until the voice in my head was Meret’s voice. Creepy possession thing!
Get to the story, you are saying.
First I could tell that she must have realized that working at a farm stand would mean, you know, work. And she started talking about tennis academy, and how she didn’t want to go but her mom totally wanted her to and she hoped the job wouldn’t conflict with that if her mom made her go.
So I knew she was going to drop out of the working thing.
Which she did. Leaving me with farm stand job alone with Annie Doyle who now hates me because I dropped her for Meret. It’s going to be a long summer.
So first this happened. We were hanging at Saffy’s house. Remember Mrs. Rubner, who gave Saffy probiotics in kindergarten? You should see their pantry, it’s a whole freaking cabinet of potions! So Saffy says, I had the sex talk with my mom. And we said, Well, that’s kinda late, since Saffy and Nick had done the deed on New Year’s Eve. Yeah, Saffy said, but here’s the thing, she kept calling my vag a mayflower. And we just lost it. We were on the floor. Mayflower! We peed.
Saffy said the trouble with your first time is that even if you think you know what to expect, you kinda don’t, because all of a sudden there’s this thing coming at you and it’s not stopping, and you’re like, whoa. And Meret said, I hate surprises. She wants to lose it with someone she doesn’t care about, someone experienced, like a college guy or even older, because if you pick someone you really like you can really make a loser of yourself (which was a dig at Saffy since she followed Nick around for a month and then he broke up with her) and he shows your sexts to his friends (yeah, another dig). And how are you going to be any good at it if every guy has been watching porn since he was eleven? Her point was, get it over with and get some experience. Right?