Teen Angel by Sonia Pilcer Read Free Book Online Page A

all?”
    “Shit,” Sonny said, continuing to cough.
    “Yeah,” Dot added.
    “Why don’t you give up?” the Gooch said, blowing a ribbon of smoke out her nose.
    Sonny crushed her cigarette on the ground.
    Every morning they hung out in front of Humboldt in the few minutes before the bell rang. It was the high point of Sonny’s day since she got to be with the Teen Angels and everyone knew she was one of them. They talked loudly about who got knocked up, arrested, and who was going to get his ass kicked, as all the faggots, eggheads, creeps, putzes, morons, and other non-Teen Angel lowlifes passed by. Red-nosed, breath steaming, they rubbed their hands, clenched their asses, and jived each other to stay warm. They never entered the building before they had to.
    ‘That’s a boss skirt,” Sonny said to the Gooch, just to be nice.
    “Alexander’s. 145th Street,” she said. “I stole it Saturday.”
    “Well, it’s nice anyway.” The Gooch stole all the time, not just when everybody else was doing it. So she had the best clothes.
    D.B. joined them. “Hey, you wanna go to Crystal’s tomorrow?”
    “When?”
    “She said we could have a party at her house tomorrow afternoon. Her mother’s started working and her brother won’t be around so she said she’d give me the key.”
    “Terrif.”
    “Okay!”
    “Hey Miguel,” D.B. called. “You think you can come?” He turned around and gave her such a look of total longing that it was pathetic. Miguel, known as T.D.H. because he was tall, dark, and handsome, was also 33 rpm slow. D.B. wore his I.D. bracelet, which meant they went steady. She jiggled it noisily.
    “PLAY BALL!” Steve shouted. If he lost some weight, grew his hair, and kept his hand off his fly, he could almost be human. “Wecan’t concentrate with all that goddamn flap!” He missed the ball and had to go to the Jack box, which meant he was low.
    “If you don’t know what to do with your ball–”Sonny taunted.
    “I know what to do with my ball,” he answered. “I just have to find someone who’ll do it. How about you? You got the biggest mouth around.” He made a farting noise with his mouth.
    “Bet you can’t do that with your mouth,” Sonny said,
    “Why don’t you go
zits
a blackhead on your ass.”
    “Why don’t you sit down and take a load off your mind.”
    “PLAY BALL ALREADY!” Ruben shouted.
    “Did you hear about this guy who wants to take a shit,” Steve said, holding the ball. “Well, he goes into the bathroom and opens the door of the first stall. Some pig has crapped all over the seat. ‘I ain’t gonna sit on that seat,’ he says. So he opens the second stall door and it’s even worse. ‘Somebody must have had diarrhea real bad–”
    “HEY DIARRHEA MOUTH!” Ruben interrupted. “Are we gonna tell jokes or finish the game?”
    “Anyway,” Steve continued, “so this guy opens the door to the last stall and is relieved to find that the seat is clean. So he pulls down his pants, and just as he’s about to sit down, he looks into the bowl and there’s–”
    “A real mean shit,” Miguel said.
    Sonny giggled. “A dinosaur with a hernia.”
    “Your mother,” the Gooch muttered.
    “There’s a pair of eyes staring up at him. Well, you never saw a guy leave a bathroom so fast. He passes the attendant and tells him. ‘Oh don’t worry about that,’ he says. ‘That’s just Sonny Palovsky. Everyone shits on her.’”
    They all cracked up. Even Sonny couldn’t help it. “That’s about as funny as a basket of dead babies with pins in their eyes,” she said. Then turning to the girls, she asked, “You mean you’re all cutting out of school tomorrow to go to the party?”
    “Well, all of us except anyone who’s goody-goodying it,” the Gooch said. “Hey Rube, you coming?”
    She ran her tongue over her lips like she was licking salt off a potato chip.
    “Maybe,” he said, slamming the ball into Steve’s box and getting him out