The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls Read Online Free

almost expected to see a paramecium wearing a wig. Who are you supposed to be?
    “Do you think I should part my hair on the other side?” I asked.
    “I don’t know,” my mother said. “Would that make you look different?”
    “It might.” I had a low and irregular forehead. Even Liz had once told me I had the hairline of an australopithecine. I swept my bangs from right to left, but they immediately flopped back into place as if to say, Don’t joke around; we live over here .
    My mother wiped the sweat from her neck. It was hot again. Every day it was hot, as if the weather had been imported from a place where people sewed palm leaves together and used them for clothing. “How’s your knee?” she asked. “Have you been doing your physical therapy?”
    “Yes, on land and at sea,” I said. “I walked through the pool the other day. It was very exciting.”
    My mother sighed. “I’m sorry you couldn’t go on your canoe trip. I’ve probably said that already. I know it’s a terrible disappointment.”
    Of course she was right. It was a disappointment. But it occurred to me, maybe because she’d mentioned it several times, that my mother was at least as disappointed as I was. She had bought me a new sleeping bag and a backpack and hiking boots (she had managed to return everything except the boots) and had been looking forward to seeing me off for the entire summer. She had probably imagined that after forty days of wilderness adventure (followed by aweek at Liz’s grandparents’ farm in Minnesota) I was going to return to West New Hope fit and decisive, like Ernest Shackleton or Admiral Peary. My mother believed in goals and projects and self-improvement. She might have thought the trip would improve me. She might have wanted me to be improved.
    I adjusted my brace. Maybe CeeCee was right about the smell. I detected a subtle mix of eggshell and roadkill and pee.
    “What time are they coming tonight?” I asked.
    “Seven-thirty. Did you finish the book?”
    “Twice,” I said. “It was only around thirty pages.”
    I don’t know why I should write this , wrote the woman in the yellow room. I don’t want to. I don’t feel able .
    Feeling limp, I lay down on the lawn. “Just so you’re warned ahead of time,” I said, “this book club is probably going to be a disaster.”
    “Why’s that?” My mother speared another dandelion.
    “Because, first of all, fifteen is too old to be in a mother-daughter book club. Second of all, the thing about books? They’re made for one person at a time. That’s why they’re small. You can hold them in your hand. Movies are made for groups of people. It’s a different thing.”
    My mother thanked me for this explanation and said that we didn’t have to read simultaneously; the book club was based, instead, on discussion.
    “And third of all,” I said, “Wallis and Jill and CeeCee and I are too different. We’re not the same types of people.”
    “Wouldn’t that make the meetings more interesting?” my mother asked.
    “Actually, no.” I rolled onto my stomach. Deep in the grass, a group of caramel-colored ants was migrating from one ant village to another, probably carrying ant-sized tables, chairs, dishes, pillows, and lamps into their tiny homes. “You’d have to be sentenced to high school all over again to understand it,” I said, “but you can’t force people my age to talk to each other. Bad things will happen.”
    “Why are you staring at the ground like that?” my mother asked. She tugged the bucket of weeds across one of the anthills, wiping out half a civilization. “The book club’s not permanent,” she said. “It’s just for the summer—once a week—and it’ll give you a chance to widen your social circle.”
    This was my mother’s tactful way of pointing out that, since Liz was in Canada and every other able-bodied person in town was gainfully employed, I would probably be spending most of my summer alone. Liz and I had been