The Ruins of California by Martha Sherrill

Author:Martha Sherrill [Sherrill, Martha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101118023
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2007-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

Neeplus Erectus

It was weird winter weather, day after day of streaming sunshine, nights so cold everybody needed a down jacket at the last high school football game. Not that I went to the game or had any signs of school spirit. I couldn’t have cared less. Besides, it was embarrassing, almost painful, to watch Robbie shouting and jumping around in front of the huddled stadium crowd in her little kick-pleat skirt and purple sweater with a big silver VD in the middle of her chest. I stayed home and watched Serpico, flipping over to The Rockford Files, Chico and the Man, Sanford & Son, and for laughs, Donny and Marie.

I slept late the next morning and was still in bed when our doorbell started ding-donging. Through the open curtains of my bedroom windows, I could see Shelley Strelow standing on our front porch. She was wearing a pair of cutoffs and a T-shirt with studs and rhinestones circling the neckline. Shelley’s mother had gotten the T-shirt in Westwood, where a glitzy old Hollywood look was resurfacing. I guess it was only a matter of time—after five years of brown beads and billowy Gypsy dresses—that tailored jackets and satin and rhinestones would come back.

“Ready for a hike?” Shelley asked as soon as I opened the door. Our hair was the same reddish brown color since we’d mixed powdered henna and water into a stinky vegetal mud and plastered it on each other’s head. We wore it shoulder length, and Shelley had badgered me into getting feathered bangs. After that, she’d pierced my ears. She put a cold apple behind my lobes and just jammed a sewing needle in. I heard the layers of skin popping, and Shelley didn’t even flinch. Not even a little gasp.

“Where is everybody?” Shelley looked around the dark ranch house.

“Out.”

“Out?” She smiled. “Really? For a while?”

“Come on back to my room,” I said. “I’ve gotta change.” On the way I pulled my tank top over my head, wadded it into a ball, and then, arriving in my room, tossed the top in the direction of the hamper but missed. It fell onto a pile of other clothes that hadn’t made it into the hamper either. “Oops.”

Shelley dropped onto one of the twin beds. “The curtain’s open,” she said. “You’re putting on a great show.”

“Oh, yeah!” I yelled out, scooting my pajama bottoms down. “Hey, I’m flashing the street.”

“Look! Isn’t that Kenny Frank—”

“Ha. Ha. Very funny.”

I closed the curtains, and the room grew dark. I yanked my bottoms to the floor, grabbed them with my toes, and flung them in the direction of the hamper. “Oops.”

“You have the best nipples,” Shelley said.

“No I don’t,” I said, looking down. “They stick out.”

“That’s a good thing, you fool,” Shelley said with her trademark acidity. “Mine are so flat. Look.” She lifted up her T-shirt and pinched her thumbs and index fingers together, tweaking her nipples. “This is the only way I get EN—or is it called NE? Unless it’s super cold outside.

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