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

being held for Hello Dolly and I’d be perfect for the lead role. I said I’d think about it just so she’d leave me alone, and she said, “Candy, you’re one of the most talented students I’ve ever worked with. I want you back onstage. It’ll be good for you.”
    Instead of going to Chemistry, I sat in a bathroom stall for all of second period, but not to play over and over those words about me being so talented. The reason I locked myself in the can is that I drank so much this weekend I still felt a little sick. Sick enough to barf twice.
    3 / 5 / 74
    Dear Cal,
    Big college tour today . . . and thanks to the WORST tour guide ever, I hate my life even more.
    6 / 15 / 74
    Dear Cal,
    Shit! This is the second time I’ve asked the question: am I still a virgin? All I know is that I woke up in Bryan Emery’s basement with some of my clothes on and some not and a vague memory of rolling around with a guy who smelled like pot and Slim Jims. Karen was the only one still there—where’d everyone else go?—and she had less clothes on than me.
    “Man, were you wasted,” she said.
    “Like you weren’t,” I said, pulling a squished chunk of Slim Jim out of my hair.
    “Eww,” said Karen as we gathered up our stuff. “Is that what I think it is?”
    We both stood looking at the used rubber.
    “I hope it’s from the guy I was with,” I said.
    “Same here,” said Karen.
    They went on and on to an embarrassing degree, the entries recounting my dissolute ways, and I felt sorry and angry at the girl who wrote them. I stopped reading before I got to my college calendaeiums, knowing they were mostly a robotic rundown of grades and assignments withthe occasional review of a theater department show I should have tried out for, but didn’t.
    Shoving back under the bed the box of notebooks that proved I was eligible for citizenship in Loserville, I trudged upstairs.
    “Listless” would have been an overenthusiastic description of my mood, and after making the huge physical effort of turning on the television, I collapsed onto that on which I was collapsing a lot lately—the couch.
    Ignoring the sweet June day outside, I watched a soap opera in which two well-groomed lovers frolicked on picnic grounds while the spurned, well-groomed former boyfriend lurked in the bushes, flashing his well-groomed senator grandfather’s pistol. I watched another soap opera in which a well-groomed wedding couple took their vows, while the spurned, well-groomed girlfriend stole away in the backseat of the bridal couple’s festively decorated car.
    “Now that’s what I call a honeymoon surprise,” I muttered.
    Interrupting the stories of these philandering, violent, but always well-groomed characters were the deodorant, toilet paper, and floor wax commercials, and I was watching Mr. Whipple squeeze the Charmin when something fluttered onto my lap. It was a ticket.
    “It’s for Heidi Wheaton,” said my grandmother, standing behind the couch. “We’re seeing her tonight.”
    My postcollege social life had whittled away to nothing, and I could tell from her expression that she was waiting for me to resist her invitation.
    Not having the energy, I said, “Fine.”
    “Because if you say, ‘No,’” she began, “. . . oh, okay. Good.”
    We took the bus to the State Theater to see the woman whose publicity trumpeted her as “the funniest woman on the planet!”
    Heidi Wheaton had been the breakaway star on Yuk It Up!, a comedy sketch show, and her ability to play anything from an addled rocket scientist to a larcenous babysitter had won her two Emmys and a wide fan base.
    In our velveteen seats, my grandmother and I sat back in the dark theater and for two hours I forgot how bad I felt about my life. We laughed and nudged one another as Heidi reprised her Yuk It Up! characters and introduced us to several new ones.
    Cool Old MacDonald was a jazz singer whose skat singing involved oinks, moos, and meows. Dottie Dunn was an Avon Lady