The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club Read Online Free

because you can’t be my friend if you don’t smoke, and chose to flick the butt of her cigarette in a very cool fashion to let the man know that she was a sexy, right-on chick.
    Krysti is normally very good at this and can flick her butt to unnatural and awe-inspiring distances, much farther than either one of us can spit. I’ve seen her do it. In this instance, however, the butt propelled through the air in a slight, delicate arc and hit the man of desire square in the crotch. It lodged itself like a magnet in between two inconspicuous folds of material and still, miraculously, remained lit.
    Sensing imminent danger, Krysti immediately swatted at the man’s genital region to save his member from the burning ash, though he only understood this maneuver to be a spontaneous, sexually expressive act.
    Kim, of course, was no help. She still looked foxy rolling around on the ground, laughing like a Pretty Friend does, with tears streaming out of her eyes. Her mascara, naturally, did not run.
    Krysti was left alone to explain to the ex-potential suitor that she had lunged for his penis only because it was easier than knocking him down and rolling him in the dirt once he burst into flames.
    And as Krysti told me this story, I understood why I would never be the Pretty Friend. It was evident in my laugh, as soon as the pig snort escaped when I tried to take a breath. It was a
Hee Haw,
barnyard-donkey snort, one that sucked in all the mucus from my nasal cavity and shoved it in a river down my throat, causing me to cough so hard that I puked right then and there in the bathroom sink.
    What a waste, I thought, all of that perfectly good vomit.
    It just might have been worthwhile if there had been a man around.
    Aw, hell. If a man
had
been around, he would have looked at the puddle of puke, leaned down to wipe it off his shoes, and then, quickly and politely, asked for Nikki’s phone number.

Suckers
    It was 1976.
    I remember the orientation in sixth grade when the boys went with the gym coach and the girls went with the school nurse into separate rooms and learned about male and female private parts and how to spawn. It was one of the darkest days of my life when that nurse, Mrs. Shimmer, pulled out a maxi pad that measured the width and depth of a mattress and showed us how to use it. It had a belt with it that looked like a slingshot that possessed the jaw-dropping potential to pop a man’s head like a gourd. As she stretched the belt between the fingers of her two hands, Mrs. Shimmer told us that becoming a woman was a magical and beautiful thing.
    I remember thinking to myself, You’re damn right it had better be magic, because that’s going to be what it takes to get me to wear something like that, Tinkerbell! It looked like a saddle. Weighed as much as one, too. Some girls even cried.
    I didn’t.
    I raised my hand.
    “Mrs. Shimmer,” I asked the nurse cautiously, “so what kind of security napkins do
boys
wear when their flower pollinates? Does it have a belt, too?”
    The room got quiet except for a bubbling round of giggles.
    “You haven’t been paying attention, have you?” Mrs. Shimmer accused sharply. “Boys have stamens, and stamens do not require sanitary napkins. They require self-control, but you’ll learn that soon enough.”
    I was certainly hoping that my naughty bits (what Mrs. Shimmer explained to us was like a pistil of a flower) didn’t get out of control, because I had no idea what to do if they did. Maybe that’s why Mrs. Shimmer said that girls should stay away from horseback riding when it was “their time.” I could see how a horse could really get spooked with a wild and whipping pistil coming at them, wagging like a cobra with an appetite for death.
    “And stay out of the water!” she added. “No swimming, especially in oceans! You could easily pollute a public pool, and if you even set foot in the ocean, fish from miles around will pick up the scent!”
    She then reiterated the