When Everything Feels like the Movies by Raziel Reid Read Free Book Online Page B

imagined him slamming the door shut before I could leave. He ripped off his tie, and I fell onto his chest. His breath was hot. He was bulging. My garter belt snapped as he pulled off my necklace, pearls scattering to the floor. I ran my hand through his finger waves as he pushed me against his desk. A satin heel slipped off my foot. He pulled me onto his lap, and as my legs spread, the seam in my black underwear ripped down my ass crack which he spread open and …
    I never skipped Mr Dawson’s class after that. I’d skip other classes to walk around town and listen to music. I liked walking on the sidewalk, slipping on frozen dog shit, blasting Grace Jones’ Bulletproof Heart . The only problem with skipping class too much was that, when you flunked, you had to go to summer school with all the burnouts and teen moms desperate to get on MTV.
    I sat behind Luke and Madison in Mr Dawson’s class. Their desks were closer together than anyone else’s. I think Madison moved closer to him every class to get him stoned off her knock-off perfume and give him hand jobs under the desk when she thought no one was looking. Didn’t she know there was always a paparazzi up her skirt? Of course she did. That’s why she never wore underwear. I’d watch as her left arm crept under his desk, onto his lap. His ears would slowly turn red. Even if the classroom was full of voices, all I would hear was the sound of his zipper. Madison’s arm moved in slow motion. She was a great Movie Star. She could really act. Sometimes she’d have an entire conversation with Alexis, who sat in the desk on the other side of her, while surreptitiously jerking Luke off. I’d chew the end of my pencil, waiting for Luke’s ears to turn so red blood spilled out of them. When they did, the pencil would drop out of my hand, and my mouth would gape, saliva strung between my top and bottom lips, like his semen.
    When the bell rang for lunch, I stood up and almost brought my desk with me. Angela was waiting for me at my locker.
    “I’m hungry,” she said, barely glancing up from her phone. “And you’re late.”
    “You’re not hungry, you just need a cigarette. And speaking of late,” I smiled, touching her stomach. “Are you pregnant again?”
    “Fuck you,” she laughed. “I just forgot to barf my breakfast.”
    “I see an anonymous source has sold another story about me,” I said, pointing to the “Jude Rothegay is a fudge packer” that someone had written on my locker with a Sharpie. It was fresh and shimmering, like the letters of a marquee. “They’re so obsessed with me.”
    We bumped into Mr Callagher as we walked down the hall. He had a sadistic smirk and was slapping detention slips against his palm.
    “Ah, Jude,” he said when he saw me and, I swear, it was like he wanted to say Judy. “Mrs Whiltman has notified me that Glinda the Good Witch’s gown for The Wizard of Oz is missing. Do you know anything about this?”
    “No idea, Mr Callagher,” I shrugged.
    “Didn’t you storm into my office just before winter break, complaining about casting?”
    “I told you, I have to have one outburst an hour for my reality show. You know, contractual obligations. But I’d never sabotage the school production. I’m way too apathetic to care about a failed-actress-turned-junior-high-school-drama-teacher’s casting decisions.”
    “Mrs Whiltman did cast you as the scarecrow,” Mr Callagher said.
    “Too bad I was auditioning for Glinda.”
    “We’ve been over this,” Mr Callagher sighed. “The school wants to avoid last year’s Chicago backlash. I’m still getting phone calls.”
    “Well, it was pretty stupid to cast Jude as Roxie Hart,” Angela piped in. “Everyone knows he’s heartless.”
    “And on that note,” Mr Callagher said, “Mrs Whiltman has informed me you still haven’t returned your costume or wig!”
    “My mother mistook them for her work uniform,” I said. “But I’ll get them back, I promise. As soon