Namedropper Read Online Free Page A

can’t threaten me with not getting into college since I don’t want to go anyway. College is for people who want to extend their childhood for as long as possible. Educationreally doesn’t come into it. The only way I get through school is to pretend it’s a set-up for a musical number. As I talk to Treena, or listen to Madame, I am working out where the song is going to come in.
    You know: “I am so enjoying getting to know you …
Getting to know you!”
or “My goodness, we’ve talked so long it’s now the next morning. And what a lovely morning …
Good morning!”
On the walk home from school, I wonder what’s going to inspire that policeman over there to start dancing, or when Frank Sinatra’s going to come careering round the bend dressed as a sailor. It’s never when I expect. Then, back at the house, I put on full makeup and drink coffee because that’s when I know the cameras are really on me.
    â€œGosh,” sniffs Manny, “you look like Ava Gardner today.”
    I scrunch a wedge of dark-brown hair from my cheek and bite my lip. Sometimes I worry I might be really homophobic and then I remember, no, I just hate Manny. “You always say that.”
    â€œNo I don’t. Usually I say you look like Elizabeth Taylor, but today you look like Ava Gardner. There is a Southern fire in your eyes. You look like you’ve just made love to a bullfighter!”
    â€œHow can you say that when you know I just sat through a two-hour math class?” I howl.
    I don’t like the whole “Oh, you know who you look like?” thing. First off, it’s usually not true. When Manny says I look like Ava Gardner, what he really means is, I have dark hair. When he says my mother looked like Rita Hayworth, what he’s trying to tell me is that she had red hair. Or that we haveAlzheimer’s in the family and that’s the kindest way he can think of to say it. I wouldn’t be surprised. My first memory is of my mother giving me cat food and giving the cat my mushed meatloaf.
    If it is true, if you really do look like someone, well, that’s even worse. How terribly sad it must be to actually look a bit like Daniel Day-Lewis, but not as handsome, or something like Isabelle Adjani, but not quite. How could you live with yourself?
    Because Manny is gay, we never had that icky part where I developed breasts and he freaked out and didn’t want to hug me anymore. Instead, he points them out at every occasion: “Stand back, Viva, you’re going to poke my eyes out.” “Even when you were eight years old,” he gushes, “even when you were flat as a board, you were just such a woman!” When I did get a figure, he just went crazy for it, like if I never did another thing in my life, I’ve made him as proud as he could possibly be. He buys me fancy fifties gear—vintage pointy stuff—and takes a lot of care hand-washing them. Not even Treena is wearing a suspender belt under her regulation A-line skirt.
    I’m trying to read over my History notes. The garter belt is making me nervous. I clamp my legs tight together and tug at the grey flannel skirt that scratches my legs. The unnatural fibres of the skirt lap at the tops of my exposed thighs like a one-night stand you don’t want to touch you in the morning. The train clunks gingerly up the line, a supermodel descending the runway in six-inch platform shoes. I place my satchel on my knees and flex my thigh muscles so that any hint ofunderwear is obscured. I’m always convinced that the person in the seat opposite is trying to look up my skirt. It’s usually a seventy-year-old Granny happily ensconced in a book called
World of Crocheting
, but it doesn’t stop me worrying. The world is full of perverts.
    â€œVeeve,” drawled Treena in her MTV VJ accent, an unsettling fusion of Swedish and North London streetspeak. “Veeve, have ya