The Girls from Ames by Jeffrey Zaslow Read Free Book Online Page B

But she stood firm. “I feel lucky to be alive,” she’d tell herself, “and so I need to take life seriously.”
    In the diary she kept all through junior high and high school, she sometimes wondered why she was even part of that group of eleven girls. Some of them were too wild. Their behavior with boys and alcohol didn’t always feel right to her. On too many weekends, the Ames girls were hanging out with guys who seemed to have nothing intelligent to say. She got tired of sitting around, listening to boys brag about drinking too much and throwing up; they called it “the Technicolor yawn,” and thought they were so clever. Marilyn briefly dated one boy who set out to prove how macho he was by cutting the seat belts out of his car. He figured girls were turned on by guys who lived dangerously. Actually, Marilyn thought he was cute for sure, but after too many remarks like that, she knew he was a loser. And that made her question her friendships, too: Why did some of the other Ames girls seem so happy hanging out with dim bulbs like that?
    Marilyn also was unhappy that the other Ames girls weren’t being inclusive socially. Other girls at school didn’t like it. She’d vent about the Ames girls’ cliquishness in her diary. “I hate being identified with them!” she wrote at one point.
    And yet at the same time, she saw something she admired in each of the girls—an open heart or a sense of playfulness or a contagious urge for adventure. She had an ability to notice people’s positive traits. In that respect she was like her dad, who would say he could find the good in anyone. And so she remained with the group, even though at times she’d hold herself off to the side.
    It’s not surprising that she felt closest to Jane Gradwohl, who in her own way, as the only Jewish girl in the group, knew what it felt like to be a bit of an outsider. Jane and Marilyn were part of the eleven, but also in their own two-person orbit. They had met as ten-year-olds in a local theater production of Hansel and Gretel . Jane was cast as Gretel, and Marilyn was jealous and annoyed. She got over it.
    By eighth grade, Marilyn and Jane were confidants. They were a good match, too: Both were a little slower than the other girls socially, a little nerdier, more academic. Like others among the Ames girls, they came from families where matters of culture and the arts were regular dinner-table conversation. ( Jane’s father, the anthropology professor, got his Ph.D. from Harvard; her mom was a social worker.) So Marilyn and Jane, especially, felt comfortable talking to each other about classical music or ancient Greek architecture or silent movies. They sometimes felt like black-and-white throwbacks in a town teeming with Technicolor yawns.
    As their friendship blossomed, they both felt the need to mark their connection. Early in high school, they bought each other a matching star sapphire necklace. One necklace was engraved: “MM Love, JG.” The other read: “JG Love, MM.” They were always trading notes in which they gushed about their feelings for each other. Looking back at it now, they find the mushiness almost embarrassing. Jane has a scrapbook from high school, and glued into it is a Hallmark card Marilyn had picked out for her. Hallmark had written: “Our relationship is so strong because we are completely truthful with each other in every word and thought, and because we trust each other as equals in every aspect of life.”
    They had their own playlist of background music by Cat Stevens, Dan Fogelberg, Hall and Oates, Bread—each song reminding them of a shared laugh or an unrequited crush.
    Marilyn told Jane about the first boy to kiss her on her ear and her neck. “It felt so warm and tingly,” she explained. “I could fall asleep holding him. I really could.” Later, when the boy told her, “I don’t like you sexually, but we can be friends,” she cried to Jane.

    Jane and Marilyn, t hen and now
    There were times