The Carrie Diaries by Candace Bushnell Read Free Book Online

smart. And eventually I ended up hating myself for being with them. It scared me, trying to pretend I was something I wasn’t. I could see how easily it could be done, and it made me realize that was what most of the other girls were doing as well—pretending. If you were a girl, you could start pretending in high school and go on pretending your whole life, until, I suppose, you imploded and had a nervous breakdown, which is something that’s happened to a few of the mothers around here. All of a sudden, one day something snaps and they don’t get out of bed for three years.
    But I digress. Boyfriends. I’ve had two major ones: Sam, who was a stoner, and Doug, who was on the basketball team. Of the two I liked Sam better. I might have even loved him, but I knew it couldn’t last. Sam was beautiful but dumb. He took woodworking classes, which I had no idea existed until he gave me a wooden box he’d made for Valentine’s Day. Despite his lack of intelligence—or perhaps, more disturbingly, because of it—when I was around him I found him so attractive I thought my head would explode. I’d go by his house after school and we’d hang in the basement with his older brothers, listening to Dark Side of the Moon while they passed around a bong. Then Sam and I would go up to his room and make out for hours. Half the time, I worried I shouldn’t be there, that I was wasting precious time engaging in an activity that wouldn’t lead to anything (in other words, I wasn’t using my time “constructively,” as my father would say). But on the other hand, it felt so good I couldn’t leave. My mind would be telling me to get up, go home, study, write stories, advance my life, but my body was like a boneless sea creature incapable of movement on land. I can’t remember ever having a conversation with Sam. It was only endless kissing and touching in a bubble of time that seemed to have no connection with real life.
    Then my father took me and my sisters away for two weeks on an educational cruise to Alaska and I met Ryan, who was tall and smooth like polished wood and was going to Duke, and I fell in love with him. When I got back to Castlebury, I could barely look at Sam. He kept askingif I’d met someone else. I was a coward and said no, which was partly true because Ryan lived in Colorado and I knew I’d never see him again. Still, the Sam bubble had been punctured by Ryan, and then Sam was like a little smear of wet soap. That’s all bubbles are anyway—a bit of air and soap. So much for the wonders of good chemistry.
    With bad chemistry, though, you don’t even get a bubble. Me and Doug? Bad chemistry.
    Doug was a year older, a senior when I was a junior. He was one of the jocks, a basketball player, friends with Tommy Brewster and Donna LaDonna and the rest of the Pod crowd. Doug wasn’t too bright, either. On the other hand, he wasn’t so good-looking that a lot of other girls wanted him, but he was good-looking enough. The only thing that was really bad about him was the zits. He didn’t have a lot of them, just one or two that always seemed to be in the middle of their life cycle. But I knew I wasn’t perfect either. If I wanted a boyfriend, I figured I would have to overlook a blemish or two.
    Jen P introduced us. And sure enough, at the end of the week, he came shuffling around my locker and asked if I wanted to go to the dance.
    That was all right. Doug picked me up in a small white car that belonged to his mother. I could picture his mother from the car: a nervous woman with pale skin and tight curls who was an embarrassment to her son. It made me kind of depressed, but I told myself I had to complete this experiment. At the dance, I hung around with the Jens and Donna LaDonna and some older girls, who all stood withone leg out to the side, and I stood the same way and pretended I wasn’t intimidated.
    “There’s a great view at the top of Mott Street,” Doug said, after the dance.
    “Isn’t that