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

braid. “We meet here at the school at ten o’clock and carpool over.”
    Jo nodded. Her heart was beating hard. Her mother, she knew, wouldn’t want her at anything like a picket. Her parents believed in equality—at least, that’s what they said. “The Jewish people have been oppressed too much to oppress anyone else,” Jo’s father said. But he’d also moved them away from the old neighborhood, saying it was changing, and Jo was old enough now to understand that changing meant Negros coming in. Then there was Sarah, who said things like Don’t ruffle any feathers , and Don’t stir the pot . Showing up at a picket was nothing if not pot-stirring.
    On Saturday morning, Jo got up early and told Sarah that she was going to the high school to practice her free throws.
    “Be home by four,” her mother said without looking at her, so Jo climbed on her bike and pedaled to school.
    “Didn’t think you’d be here,” LaDonna said, and LaDrea said, “C’mon, you need a sign.” There were about a dozen kids, black and white, with squares of posterboard, using black paint to write EQUALITY NOW and INTEGRATE and LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL . Jo pulled in a deep breath and dipped her brush in the paint. “Is Vernita coming?” she asked as she wrote the word EQUALITY and hoped her hand wouldn’t shake.
    “Pssht, Vernita,” LaDonna said, waving one of the long-fingered hands that let her grip a basketball so easily. “Forget her.”
    Jo rode in the Moore sisters’ 1959 Mercury. She marched in a circle in front of the pool’s chain-link fence as cars drove past. A few would honk in support, but most of them would just look the other way. When it was over, she met Lynnette at the beauty shop, where Lynnie was getting her hair washed and set, teased high in the back, with bangs that curled over her forehead. “What’d you do today?” Lynnette asked as she held a plastic fan in front of her face so the hairdresser’s assistant could mist Elnett hairspray from the crown of her head to the tips that curled against her cheeks.
    “Oh, nothing,” Jo said.
    Sometimes Jo wondered if Lynnette liked her because she was taller and ungainly and less attractive, the ugly duckling to Lynnette’s swan. The two of them did not have much in common. Jo was a strong student; Lynnette struggled, especially in math class. Jo was an athlete; Lynnette would get winded the single time each year that Coach Krantz actually did make her run a quarter mile. Lynnette loved clothes—wearing them, shopping for them, talking about the ones she wanted to shop for and wear next—while Jo just grabbed whatever was nearby and relatively clean. What they shared was a sense of mischief, a love of disruption and fun. Lynnette had gotten Jo drunk for the first time when they were both fifteen, and Jo had convinced Lynnette to cut school sophomore year. They’d climbed into Sarah’s car with the boy upon whom Lynnette had been bestowing her affections at the time, and one of his tall friends for Jo, and driven to a bowling alley, where they’d ordered pitchers of beer and plates of French fries and laughed about their classmates, stuck back at school for a pep rally. Lynnette sighed over Jo’s slender figure—“you can wear anything,” she would say—and Jo was similarly appreciative of Lynnette’s curves, even when Lynnette despaired about her hips and what she claimed was her double chin. Lynnette had taught Jo how to smoke, and Jo had taught Lynnette how to swim, and they told each other everything . . . except for the increasingly frequent daydreams Jo had been having about their weekly sleepovers, a daydream in which, instead of one of her silk nightgowns, Lynnie would come to bed wearing nothing at all.
    “Does he want to go all the way?” Jo asked, careful to keep her voice neutral.
    “He tried to put his hand down my pants, but I told him to forget it.” Lynnette wagged her finger in Bobby’s imaginary face. “I said,