Practical Jean Read Online Free Page B
Author: Trevor Cole
Dooley, even though Tina hadnât really earned one. So nice of you to attend . Tina, who owned the home accessories store Tinaâs Textures, was on the committee for the Kotemee Business Association and made a point of knowing the this and that of everyone in the Main Street Business District. By tomorrow she would know who had gotten a card and who hadnât, and Jean just did not need the trouble.
The next minute Jean was approaching Douglas Avenue. Nobody on the thank-you list lived on Douglas; if she had wanted to, Jean could have driven straight by it. Normally she probably would have. But today she found herself making a right turn and stopping the car in the crook of the road, in front of Cheryl Nunleyâs old house, number 242. After a while, she turned off the engine.
Of all Jeanâs friends, Cheryl had been the one most like her. Not in her artistic inclinations; Cheryl had scant few of those. But she was a girl who worked for her marks, who dressed neatly, about a year behind the trend, who preferred not to keep people waiting, who tittered rather than laughed out loud, who liked a treat once in a whileâsomething with pastryâand who usually dated boys too shy to ask out the girls they really wanted.
So Jean had always been comfortable around Cheryl. Nothing chafed. Whether it was their opinion of American Graffiti (really wonderful) or Richard Dreyfuss (weirdly cute) or Home Ec. teacher Mrs. Woodenshantz (scatterbrained) or girls who smoked (disgusting), she and Cheryl agreed so much they might have been astrological twins. They never treated each other cruelly to gain favor with someone else. They stood together at dances watching Dorothy Perks get the best boys. They were each otherâs reliable backup plan, in case something more exciting fell through.
And on the matter of sex, well, if expressions of horror were a badge of identity then Jean and Cheryl belonged to the same anti-sex club. Oral sex: gross . Doggy-style sex: gross . Putting it in your butt: nobody really did that except in places like New York but, anyway, just gross . True, in some part of Jeanâs mind the thought of Ash Birdy doing some of those things, the first two anyway, didnât seem so bad. He was seventeen and had a jutty chin and thick, scrunchable sideburns and Jean could imagine being married to Ash one day and letting him do those things if he wanted to. But that one day was meant to arrive in the future, not suddenly in Dorothyâs basement. So when Ash got his fingers under the elastic of her panties and started nudging into her hairs, Jean was so startled she squirmed and pushed his hand away and Ash got mad and left.
He ignored Jean after that, just as if sheâd moved away or dropped dead. Which was awful. For a while Jean went over to Cherylâs every day to cry about how rotten Ash was, and Cheryl, like a good friend, always agreed. But about four months after that night in the basement, Cheryl and Jean were alone on Cherylâs porch eating Peek Freans Digestives. And it was strange because Cheryl was acting as if she wasnât hungry. Usually she loved Digestives because even though they were cookies it seemed like they were almost good for you and you could eat as many as you wanted. But Cheryl was just fiddling with the cookie on her plate and crumbling little bits off the edge, and Jean had to ask:
âCheryl, is something wrong?â
She said nothing, didnât even look up, so Jean knew something was wrong and thought maybe Cheryl was mad at her. For what she couldnât imagine, unless it was forgetting to say something nice about the turquoise barrette in Cherylâs hair. That seemed like such a petty thing to be mad about, but Jean thought that was probably it. Cheryl could be a little sensitive sometimes; it was one of the few things about Cheryl that wasnât so great.
âI forgot to say,â began Jean, âthatâs a really
The next minute Jean was approaching Douglas Avenue. Nobody on the thank-you list lived on Douglas; if she had wanted to, Jean could have driven straight by it. Normally she probably would have. But today she found herself making a right turn and stopping the car in the crook of the road, in front of Cheryl Nunleyâs old house, number 242. After a while, she turned off the engine.
Of all Jeanâs friends, Cheryl had been the one most like her. Not in her artistic inclinations; Cheryl had scant few of those. But she was a girl who worked for her marks, who dressed neatly, about a year behind the trend, who preferred not to keep people waiting, who tittered rather than laughed out loud, who liked a treat once in a whileâsomething with pastryâand who usually dated boys too shy to ask out the girls they really wanted.
So Jean had always been comfortable around Cheryl. Nothing chafed. Whether it was their opinion of American Graffiti (really wonderful) or Richard Dreyfuss (weirdly cute) or Home Ec. teacher Mrs. Woodenshantz (scatterbrained) or girls who smoked (disgusting), she and Cheryl agreed so much they might have been astrological twins. They never treated each other cruelly to gain favor with someone else. They stood together at dances watching Dorothy Perks get the best boys. They were each otherâs reliable backup plan, in case something more exciting fell through.
And on the matter of sex, well, if expressions of horror were a badge of identity then Jean and Cheryl belonged to the same anti-sex club. Oral sex: gross . Doggy-style sex: gross . Putting it in your butt: nobody really did that except in places like New York but, anyway, just gross . True, in some part of Jeanâs mind the thought of Ash Birdy doing some of those things, the first two anyway, didnât seem so bad. He was seventeen and had a jutty chin and thick, scrunchable sideburns and Jean could imagine being married to Ash one day and letting him do those things if he wanted to. But that one day was meant to arrive in the future, not suddenly in Dorothyâs basement. So when Ash got his fingers under the elastic of her panties and started nudging into her hairs, Jean was so startled she squirmed and pushed his hand away and Ash got mad and left.
He ignored Jean after that, just as if sheâd moved away or dropped dead. Which was awful. For a while Jean went over to Cherylâs every day to cry about how rotten Ash was, and Cheryl, like a good friend, always agreed. But about four months after that night in the basement, Cheryl and Jean were alone on Cherylâs porch eating Peek Freans Digestives. And it was strange because Cheryl was acting as if she wasnât hungry. Usually she loved Digestives because even though they were cookies it seemed like they were almost good for you and you could eat as many as you wanted. But Cheryl was just fiddling with the cookie on her plate and crumbling little bits off the edge, and Jean had to ask:
âCheryl, is something wrong?â
She said nothing, didnât even look up, so Jean knew something was wrong and thought maybe Cheryl was mad at her. For what she couldnât imagine, unless it was forgetting to say something nice about the turquoise barrette in Cherylâs hair. That seemed like such a petty thing to be mad about, but Jean thought that was probably it. Cheryl could be a little sensitive sometimes; it was one of the few things about Cheryl that wasnât so great.
âI forgot to say,â began Jean, âthatâs a really
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