Best to Laugh: A Novel by Lorna Landvik Read Free Book Online

people didn’t want to come home to a dark house. Just in case he was home, I stripped to my underwear in the shadows and slipped into the water, slicing through it in long quiet strokes, thinking of the evening, thinking of the melodrama of Maeve’s story, of my own.

7
    H ERE’S SOME GOOD ADVICE: don’t read your old diaries when you’re depressed. Earlier that summer I had holed up in my bedroom doing that, and believe me, you can’t win: the bright and cheery entries will make you wonder why you don’t feel like that anymore, and the sad and whiny ones will make you think nothing changes.
    5 / 12 / 68
    Dear Cal,
    Dad gave Grandma a box of chocolate-covered cherries and we drove out to Aunt Pauline’s for lunch. I didn’t want to go because I had a stomachache.
    I hate Mother’s Day.
    2 / 24 / 69
    Dear Cal,
    One word for the Nokomis Jr. High Talent Show: Huge Success! (Okay, two words.) Miss Lindblom asked me to emcee and it was so much fun! When Dale Ferguson walked off the stage after forgetting the words to “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay,” I said, “I guess he fell in.” The audience cracked up. And when Carla Dierks and Paula Peterson came out to dance in their little leotards, a bunch of boys started to whistle and I pretended to crack a whip and said, “Settle down, animals.” And not only did I get to emcee, I got to close the show! Paul Dahlquist and I sang “If I Had a Stammer.” With Paul’s good guitar playing and my okay Bob-Dylan-as-a-stutterer impersonation, we got a standing ovation!
    6 / 4 / 70
    Dear Cal,
    Finally, FINALLY, at the ripe old age of fourteen, I got my period! Grandma had given me a box of pads when I was eleven years old and it was starting to seem like I’d never need them, and besides, my friend LeAnn Jerdy and I used most of them up making houses (mostly igloos) for our Troll dolls and sleeping bags for Ken and Barbie.
    I stayed up late, surprising Dad when he came home by giving him a big hug. He was so surprised he hugged me back, but it didn’t take him long to let go and say, “What’s this all about?”
    “Oh, I just wanted you to know I’m not a hermaphrodite like Charlotte said I was and today I turned into a woman!” That’s what I wanted to say—it was sort of momentous news after all—but in the end, all I could say was, “Nothing. Good night.”
    10 / 1 / 71
    Dear Cal,
    We had a Laugh-Off Assembly at school for April Fool’s Day, and the sophomores RULED. Tom Schmitz dressed up in a gray wig and a baggy dress and sang “Folsum Prison” in an old lady voice. Matt Triggs dressed up in a blonde wig and shorts and a tank top and did a cheerleading routine. I dressed up in a man’s suit and tucked my hair up into a hat and gave a speech called, “What I Expect from You Brats.” The first big laugh came right after I introduced myself as Mr. Welby (our school principal). Afterwards, Mr. Welby came up to me and said he didn’t know whether to be flattered or suspend me!
    7 / 29 / 72
    Dear Cal,
    Debbie Hutchinson said I wasn’t supporting the team. Peggy Brendan said I made the rest of them look dumb. “No,” I thought, “you did that all by yourselves.”
    The thing is, I’d already done it last year; the stupid fundraiser in which we took turns washing cars, or standing on the corner of 46 th & Hiawatha, waving signs and hollering “Support Roosevelt’s Swim Team! Support the Teddies!” I didn’t mind doing any of that; what I did mind was the “uniform” we’d been told to wear—cutoffs (“the shorter the better!”) and bikini tops. I didn’t like all the guys honking their horns and whistling and how we were all giggly, spraying each other with hoses or how Bonnie Anderson would lean over a car and practically smash her boobs against the windshield while the guy inside sat with his tongue (I hope that’s all) hanging out.
    So I dressed in my dad’s old uniform, the kind he wore before he got promoted to foreman; a one-piece