Mrs. Everything by Jennifer Weiner Read Free Book Online Page A

her wings, perching on a power line, sending all the squirrels running. At five foot eight, she was taller than almost all of her female classmates and a not-inconsiderable number of the male ones. Her body was unfashionably narrow-hipped and angular, with long legs made strong from years of running up and down basketball and tennis courts and barely enough bosom for a B cup. On the basketball court, or with a tennis racquet in her hand, Jo was graceful enough, and that was the place where she felt most comfortable. She’d become friends, or at least friendly, with three of the Negro girls who were the team’s starters. LaDonna and LaDrea Moore were seniors, identical twins, shorter than Jo, wiry and quick, with freckled, medium-brown skin, French-braided hair, and mischievous smiles that reminded her of her old friend Frieda. Vernita Clinkscale, whose family had moved to Detroit from North Carolina the year before, had a twangy Southern accent and was almost six feet tall, with skin lighter than Jo’s, straight, shoulder-length black hair, and a gold cross on a necklace that she kissed before making her free throws.
    Negro kids made up less than a quarter of the high school’s population, and the unofficial rule was that they sat by themselves at lunch, but the rule was relaxed somewhat for teammates, and so sometimes, when she and Lynnie didn’t have the same lunch period, Jo would sit with the basketball starters. She’d listen to Vernita moon over her boyfriend, who still lived in North Carolina, and to LaDrea and LaDonna, who went to the church where Aretha Franklin’s father was the preacher and had met Aretha herself and Rosa Parks. Rosa Parks had moved to Detroit after her arrest for failing to move to the back of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and had spoken at the Moore family’s church. “She said, ‘People thought I wouldn’t give up my seat because I was tired,’ but that wasn’t true,” LaDrea said. “She said . . .”
    And here her sister chimed in, “ ‘The only tired I was, was tired of giving in.’ ”
    “Wow.” Jo tried to imagine being brave enough to do what Rosa Parks had done, to get herself arrested and put in jail. “I bet she’s glad to be up here and not down South.”
    The three girls exchanged a look. “What?” Jo asked.
    “You think it’s better here?” LaDrea asked, eyebrows raised. “Ask me how many white people live in my apartment building.”
    “Or on our street,” said LaDonna. “Or how many go to our little brother’s school.”
    “Um . . .”
    “None. Zero. That’s how many. Detroit’s just as segregated as any place down South. The only difference is, it’s not against the law.”
    Jo bit a carrot stick, remembering the feeling of her mother’s hands on her shoulders, her eight-year-old bottom being pushed onto the plastic slipcovered couch. Birds of a feather must flock together. “That isn’t fair,” she said.
    The girls exchanged another look. LaDonna rolled her eyes. LaDrea sucked her teeth.
    “Can we change the subject, please?” Vernita asked. “Ya’ll are making my head hurt. And you know we’ve got to run suicide drills this afternoon.” She leaned forward, so that her cross gleamed in the fluorescent light, and pointed at the lemon bar Jo had brought from home. “You planning on eating that?”
    Jo handed over her dessert. She was thinking about Mae and Frieda. “It isn’t fair,” she said again, but the bell rang, and everyone got up to throw away their trash and get to class.
    Later, after practice, LaDrea approached her in the locker room. “You know,” she began, “if you’re serious about doing something . . .”
    “I am,” said Jo.
    “There are pickets every Saturday at Crystal Pool, on Greenfield and Eight Mile. Crystal Pool’s segregated. A bunch of us go.” She looked at Jo, her expression neutral. She was holding abasketball tucked against her hip, and a lock of hair had worked its way out of her