Girls Don't Fly by Kristen Chandler Read Free Book Online

you going to do after graduation?”
    I shrug my shoulders. Right now I’m concentrating on getting through the morning.
    “I heard Mom say you want to be a dental assistant.”
    “That was Erik’s idea. But Mom and Dad are all set on it. I said I was thinking about it, but I’m not now.” It’s surprising to hear the words out loud.
    “No?” She looks over at me. “You have something else in mind?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “You can tell Big Sis.”
    “Big Sis, would it be possible for you to put your socks inside your drawer?”
    “Don’t change the subject.”
    “What subject?”
    “Are you going to be a topless dancer? Chimp trainer? Politician? What?”
    “I don’t know, really. This guy came to biology and talked about a scholarship contest where you can go on a trip that sounds . . . you know, far away.”
    “Science, huh. I can see that. You could kill things, sterilize them, and then organize them. That’s perfect for you.”
    “I don’t care about science. I want to get out of town. But for me to go they’d have to pick my proposal out of all the others written by the genius kids applying and I have to raise money. A lot of money.”
    “Where do they go?” She’s sitting up now.
    “It doesn’t matter. I’d have to raise a thousand dollars by May.”
    She whistles through her teeth. “Spill it.”
    “The Galápagos Islands.” I’m sorry the moment the words fall out of my mouth.
    “No way.”
    “I’d have to write a research proposal that’s better than Erik’s.”
    “You’d be competing against Prince Charming?” She laughs and then she laughs again. “Now, that’s perfect.”
    I pair my socks. Telling Melyssa is proof of my stupidity.
    She says, “Wow. Do you want to do it?”
    “No.”
    Melyssa adjusts one of my favorite pillows under her rear end. “You only go around once. And the ride ends sooner than you think.”
    I want to get a ride out of this room. I want to be with Erik and tell him how crazy Melyssa makes me, except I can’t because I’m a dumped space-sucker. I say, “I’m not you, Mel. I can’t just be brilliant on command.”
    Mel adjusts the pillow again and then takes it out from under her and throws it at the wall. “No. You aren’t me. But you know what the real difference is?”
    The list of the ways that Melyssa and I are different could fill my journal, and has pretty regularly, since I was old enough to feel inadequate. She won so many awards and trophies in high school, Dad built her a special shelf. When she left I filled it with a vase of dried flowers and a picture of me with Erik at the state fair. I stare at the mound of socks on the floor. Most of them are white but none of them matches. How can I have so many abandoned socks? How does this happen?
    Mel says, “The difference is that I go after things. Even when I make a mess, at least I go after what I want.”
    The irony is painful. Unless Mel’s big dream has always been to be pregnant, not go to school, and live in her old bedroom and not speak to her baby’s father.
    She says, “You should do it, Myra. You’d look great in a bikini and a headlamp. You could be Biology Barbie. Plus it would completely piss off Prince Charming.”
    “I’m not trying to make Erik mad. I just want to go somewhere. Do something.”
    My sister sits up slowly on the bed and crosses her legs under her. Her eyes are lit up like the old Mel, the one who cut my hair off with dull scissors when we were four and six. She says, “You can’t go at this like a kindergarten teacher, Myra. If you do this, you need to win. Make him sorry for every broken promise he ever made to you. Can you do that?”
    “Probably not,” I say.
    “Come on, Myra!” she says, her voice suddenly hard. “Don’t end up like me and Mom.”
    I look up out of my cloud of self-pity. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    She stands up and starts putting away her stuff.
    I wait. “Mel?”
    “What?” she says.
    I wait. Mel