The Fourth Child by Jessica Winter (best classic novels TXT) 📕

In the movie of Grease, all the high school students looked twenty-five except for Rizzo, who looked thirty-five. Sean thought Movie Rizzo was a teacher’s aide who justliked to hang out with kids. “Like Steff in Pretty in Pink,” he said.

“Like Mr. Smith,” Lauren said.

“You’re always talking about that guy, but nobody knows him and nobody cares,” Sean said through a mouthful of chicken, ina tone more observational than critical, and Lauren smiled and pretended to yawn, stretching her arms above her head for enhancedeffect. She felt her muscles opening, her fingers laced and limbering against one another, and remembered daybreak at Abby’shouse, that same embracing joy of belonging. The fake yawn became a real one, and she sat back on the couch, closer to Mom.

“She looks too pure to be pink,” Movie Rizzo said of Sandy. Dad whistled low through his teeth, and Mom laughed.

The phone rang and rang. “Are you going to get that?” Dad asked Mom.

“Let it go. Let’s just have a night,” Mom said.

“What is going to be left of this script once they cut out all the sex stuff for the school play?” Dad asked as a high schoolerlay prone on the bleachers, leering up a classmate’s skirt, while PJ and Sean, repeating the patter of one of the secondarygreasers, yelled, “She puts out? She puts out?!” They continued reciting this for weeks, at any provocation and no provocation at all.

“‘Model of virginity’?” Mom asked. “They’re not going to let anybody say that in a high school production.”

“Are you allowed to come up with your own substitute lines?” Dad asked Lauren, who shrugged.

“Wholesome times infinity,” Mom said. “Master’s in divinity.”

“Cops in the vicinity,” Dad said.

The phone rang and rang.

“Rizzo is a bitter old hag,” Lauren said, to her brothers’ screeching approval. “Even her big musical number is just aboutdissing some poor girl she barely knows.”

Lauren did admire how Movie Rizzo could manipulate the people around her into doing what she wanted them to do, like when she contrived a scene between Sandy and Danny at a pep rally that left both of them feeling confused and down. Movie Rizzo’s biggest problem was that she was always bored, like her boredom was a low-grade illness brought on by being a thirty-five-year-old still in high school, and the boredom made her do things that were impulsive and self-defeating, like climbing down a trellis to meet up with five guys—five!—or throwing a milkshake at Kenickie, or engaging in unprotected intercourse with Kenickie, a character whom Dad thought had some kind of endocrinological disorder. When Movie Rizzo said that she felt like a broken typewriter because she had missed a period, Mom objected, not because Rizzo was possibly pregnant and that would say something about her moral compass and the inappropriately adult themes and situations of Grease, but because “defective typewriter” wasn’t a strong metaphor.

“How many things could ‘I’m a defective typewriter’ mean?” Mom asked. “Aren’t there better typewriter jokes they could comeup with?”

“I got my ribbon in a twist,” Lauren said.

“I couldn’t find any space at the bar,” Dad said. “The space bar.”

“A fight broke out at the Star Wars Cantina and a starship pilot broke a typewriter,” PJ said, as Sean did the splits in ahandstand and PJ knocked him over.

“‘I skipped a period’ is not really a joke, it’s more like a bad crossword clue, where you have to have most of the lettersalready before you can figure it out,” Dad said.

“Yeah, it’s like the feeling when the clue to eighty-five across is ‘See eighty-five down’ and so you look at eighty-fivedown and it says ‘See eighty-five across,’” Mom said.

“Locking in on a punny crossword clue should feel like the teeth of a zipper coming together,” Dad said, steepling his fingers,as lights in their driveway flooded the den windows and reflected off the television set. Nana Dee’s Saab. Dad hit pause onthe VCR as Mom went out the front door to investigate.

“Fuck,” Dad blew through his teeth, peering out the window.

“Mother fuck?” PJ whispered.

When Mom came back, she looked harried and resigned. “We’ll have to finish up movie night another time, everybody,” she said.“Mirela’s having a rough one.”

“I don’t want to keep playing the old lady,” Lauren complained to Mr. Smith after English class.

“Maybe you’re just an old soul,” he said.

“I watched the movie,” she said.

“Don’t go by anything you saw in the movie. Everything gets edited for the school version.”

“Rizzo is a hag, and I’m not.”

“Didn’t we have the same conversation about All My Sons? I’ve told you before: the audience wants to be told what to see.”

“Mr. Smith—” Lauren began. Her hands were trembling.

“Speaking of old ladies, Mr. Smith is what my mother calls me,” he said with a grin. “When class is not in session, you cancall me Ted.”

“But class is in session,” she said.

“Are we not in fact between classes?” he asked. “Does Bethune not lack walls and doors? To be a teacher or a student here now is to stand poised in athreshold space, where convictions blur and identities mingle. Like the balcony in Romeo and Juliet—we are both inside and outside, lending our every encounter a jolt of the uncanny.”

“Real fast—I have something to show you,” Lauren said. Her hands shook so badly that she had trouble unzipping her backpack.The zipper caught on the fabric, and she felt the shuddering in her ears as she worked the cloth out of its teeth. She reachedinto the bag, looked quickly around her, flashed a single tray of birth control pills in front of Mr. Smith just long enoughfor his face to change, and dropped them back inside.

Then she said the line she’d rehearsed in her head a million times. “Unlike a broken typewriter, I’ll never miss a period,”she recited, zipping up her bag and striding away without looking behind her, a small secret smile on her face. She was ina movie walking into her close-up, hitting her mark. She could turn on her heel and cue a popular song. Other students