The Brutal Language of Love Read Online Free Page A

from one of Mrs. Hermann’s cigarette butts. I could tell it was hers from the purple lipstick on the filter tip.
    â€œWhat’s that noise?” Jonquil asked me.
    â€œNothing. I was just sighing.”
    Eventually she gave in and made me an appointment for that week. I sat in a dentist’s chair while Dr. Flay indeed spoke softly in an accent that reminded me of Count Dracula. He dimmed the lights and projected a small red dot on the white wall in front of me, which I was to focus on intently. Meanwhile Dr. Flay stood behind me, massaging my temples and telling me I was getting sleepy, even though I wasn’t. I felt bad for him that he was doing such a terrible job, so I played along, making my eyelids bob up and down when he came around front to see how I was doing. “Thaht’s eet,” he said. “Thaht’s eet.”
    With my eyes now closed, Dr. Flay spoke frankly to me about the state of my body, saying I had three rolls of fat on my stomach, and wouldn’t it be nicer to have just one? He said I had a pretty face, like my sister’s, but that a double chin on a seventh grader was nothing short of heinous. He noted that my thighs squashed together so tightly as to be prohibitive, which I didn’t understand, and then asked me point-blank how I thought I would ever get a boyfriend. I wanted to bring up Jennings then, but I was supposed to be hypnotized and so kept my mouth shut. It alarmed me somewhat that Dr. Flay’s voice was getting closer and closer, so I took a quick peek. He stood directly in front of me with his hand on his groin. I shut my eyes immediately but it was too late; he had seen me. He dropped his accent, gave me my key word (which would remind me of our session and instantly decrease my appetite), and snapped his fingers. I assumed this meant I could open my eyes, and I did. Dr. Flay wished me luck and gave me a bill for fifty dollars, to be paid in cash to my sister.
    On the way home Jonquil and I stopped at a Wendy’s drive-thru. I said hiccup and she said lizard, and we neither overate nor smoked. “Do you think I’ll really get thin?” I asked her as we sat in the parking lot, eating our baked potatoes. Jonquil didn’t want to eat in the dining room because it was nonsmoking and if her key word hadn’t worked, she would have been screwed.
    A section of her long brown hair dipped into her potato, and she tucked it behind her ear, sucking the nonfat sour cream from the ends. “It’s hard to say,” she said. “The data are inconclusive.”
    Jonquil dropped me off at the end of my driveway, then spun her tires on the ice for a couple of seconds, trying to peel out. When I got inside, my mother said my sister had no manners, coming and going like that without so much as a hello, and demanded I agree with her on this point. I did so reluctantly, after which she further demanded my key word. I lied and said it was Sputnik, which we had just learned about that day in social studies. She had taco meat for Old El Paso simmering on the stove and asked suspiciously if I was hungry. I said no and she beamed. It was nice, being able to make her happy for once, so I didn’t bother mentioning Wendy’s.
    I finished my homework quickly, then ran across the street to see Jennings, whose bedroom light was on. His mother, a handsome divorcee who wore high heels and a small brunette hairpiece at the crown of her head, answered the door. “Well,” she said, “don’t you have pink cheeks! The cold agrees with you, Roslyn.” She told me Jennings was in his room and to go on up. I think she thought we couldn’t possibly be making love since I was so overweight and Jennings was sort of handsome, but we were.
    We had been making love since a few months before, when I had beaten Jennings at the spelling bee. I was the best speller in school, while Jennings was second best, and when I got ejected early for