We downsize to a little cottage near the beach. I buy a new outfit for school and I’m lookin’ preppy. I meet some girls in the lunch line and they circle around me like I’m some kinda’ prom queen. They don’t know where I come from and they don’t know where I’ve been. I dig into grades and the pecking order. I get a job at Herbie’s Chicken Shack so I can buy more of those magic preppy clothes. I learn how to steal from Filenes’s.
I steal for my friends.
Ruth’s life cannot be saved. She wants to check out. She stares out the window biting her fingernails till they bleed. Then she goes for her toenails. I say ‘whatever’.
Olman drinks even more. Not as many people to entertain.
But I still think it’s a good move, at least for bro and I. We are on our way up and they are on their way down.
I’m one of 3 best friends. The writer, the cheerleader and the artist. We sneak out of our rooms and meet under trees. We sing together like girl groups. We fry our bodies in the sun. We break into abandoned houses and pretend we own them. We spend hours on make-up and clothes and we Indian leg wrestle. We invent our own language.
We do nothing without each other’s permission.
They are my family.
I steal for my friends.
Ruth’s life cannot be saved. She wants to check out. She stares out the window biting her fingernails till they bleed. Then she goes for her toenails. I say ‘whatever’.
Olman drinks even more. Not as many people to entertain.
But I still think it’s a good move, at least for bro and I. We are on our way up and they are on their way down.
I’m one of 3 best friends. The writer, the cheerleader and the artist. We sneak out of our rooms and meet under trees. We sing together like girl groups. We fry our bodies in the sun. We break into abandoned houses and pretend we own them. We spend hours on make-up and clothes and we Indian leg wrestle. We invent our own language.
We do nothing without each other’s permission.
They are my family.
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