Mrs. Everything by Jennifer Weiner Read Free Book Online

shouted.
    “Maybe she should have been Queen Esther. I didn’t see the auditions, so I can’t say for sure. But what I can tell you . . .” Bethie held her breath as her father pulled her forward, settling his hands protectively on her shoulders, “is that my little girl was fantastic.”
    Mr. Goldfarb muttered some more about favoritism and dance lessons before giving Bethie one final poisonous glare and stomping away.
    “Don’t let him bother you,” her father told her. “You were very good and very funny. Now, who wants to go to Saunders for an ice-cream sundae?”
    It turned out that everyone did.

Jo
    Y ou did not,” Jo said to Lynnette Bobeck as they walked around the track at Bellwood High.
    “I did.” Lynnette sounded smug. “It’s kind of perfect when you think about it. He’s happy, and I’m still a virgin.” It was Monday afternoon in gym class, the last period of the day, and the girls were dressed in baggy blue shorts and white cotton shirts. Normally, Jo would have gotten the story of her best friend’s Saturday-night adventures with Bobby Carver on Sunday, but on that Sunday her mother had woken her and Bethie up early, with her hair tied back with a kerchief and an even sterner-than-usual look on her face. “Spring cleaning,” she’d announced, handing them both a pile of rags and a bottle apiece—Jo got Windex; Bethie got Endust. They’d vacuumed all the carpets and scrubbed the oven, dusting the living room and wiping down the plastic that still covered the living-room couch, and at the end of the day, their father had taken them to the Shangri-La for pork fried rice and spareribs.
    “Did it taste gross?” Jo asked.
    “You don’t swallow it, dummy,” said Lynnette, as they roundedthe bend of the track. For the last thirty minutes, they’d been doing laps under the indifferent eye of Coach Krantz, who coached the boys’ football, basketball, and baseball teams and had little patience for girls. The May sunshine was warm on their bare legs, and every time the wind gusted, it sent a shower of dogwood petals raining down.
    “First of all, it’s got a million calories.” Lynnette was short and busty, with hazel eyes and creamy skin that flushed pink whenever she was excited, and she was always watching her figure. Every time she and Jo went out, either by themselves or on a double date, Lynnette would virtuously order a salad, or the Dieter’s Plate of cottage cheese and a plain broiled burger, and seltzer water to drink. Jo understood that it was her job to order the French fries and an egg cream or a malted for Lynnette to share. Her friend would sneak fries off Jo’s plate or poke her own straw into Jo’s glass.
    “Was there a lot of it?” Jo was imagining an untended garden hose, thrashing and spewing water into the street.
    Lynnette shrugged. “I don’t know. I spit it out.”
    “Where?” Jo asked. “On him?” She was picturing Lynnette and Bobby in the back seat of Lynnette’s father’s Lincoln Continental, with Lynnette’s bra shoved around her neck and Bobby’s pants down around his ankles and his penis bobbing around like a candy apple on a stick. She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Did he do it to you?”
    “Ew!” Lynnette said. “God! Like I’d ever let a boy put his face down there.”
    “You put your face down there,” Jo pointed out.
    “That’s different,” Lynnette said. “Besides, I don’t even think that’s a thing, the other way around.”
    Jo thought that sounded unfair, but decided not to say so. “So how was it?”
    Lynnette pressed her lips together. She was wearing Cherries in the Snow lipstick, and her short, dark-blond hair was carefully curled. Jo sometimes thought that the rest of the girls atBellwood High were like squirrels, plump and sleek and chittering, scurrying this way and that, waving their fluffy tails, racing up trees and down again for no reason at all. She felt like a crow, a big, ungainly misfit, flapping