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

being the unpretty slut. These traits came through evenin the sanitized school version of Grease, although it got rid of the sex jokes and jeering puns and Rizzo’s pregnancy scare. “I can’t sing,” Lauren said quietly.“And I can’t dance. And I definitely can’t do them at the same time.”

“I doubt that.”

“You didn’t come to the first rehearsal,” Lauren said. There would be weeks and weeks of rehearsals. “And you barely let metry out. That’s why you don’t know that I suck.”

Mr. Smith sighed, and put his hand on Lauren’s back. In the usual places, rubbing up and down in the usual rhythms, covering the usual distances. His hand on her back was apologizing for being so tough on her, but also it was underlining, with feathering fingers and knuckle-presses, that he was so tough on her in class and in rehearsals because she was different, she was special, he had higher standards for her, and anyway they had an understanding. His head was low and leaning intohers.

“Sing for me,” he said. He took her hand with his free one.

She looked at his hand on hers and did not say anything.

“Come on, try me, sing.” A cooing whisper. His coffee breath. “What’s the song? I know you know it. Everybody knows it. Itwas a big hit when you were a baby.”

Lauren laughed and shook her head, and her hair brushed against his cheek.

“You’re the one that I want, doo, doo, doo, honey,” he whisper-sang.

Lauren laughed again. Her whole body laughed like a seizure, like his tuneless croon was tickling her sides.

“You’re the one that I want, doo, doo, doo, honey.”

A knot in her side tightened as if it were about to pop open. She forced herself to stop laughing and pulled her hand away.“I’m gonna go now.”

As she stood up, his hand on her back held its position in space, caressing down her spine and landing on her ass. “Excuseyou,” he said as she maneuvered past her chair and then his.

“Oops, sorry,” Lauren said, her hair falling in her eyes as she shambled to the door. Stitch and Rajiv were in the hallwaytrying to do the splits, and she was relieved that they hadn’t seen her in there and she was hopeful that they wondered whyshe was in such a hurry, why she was so flushed and happy.

 

The Bethune auditorium. Another rehearsal. Lauren sang a line of her solo, “Look at Me, I’m Sandra Dee,” raised a hand, then she was supposed to go to the next line and the next hand motion, but she saw her hand still suspended in air, a beat too late, and tried to move it to where it was supposed to be, and as she did that she forgot the next line of the song. “Ugh!” she exclaimed, stamping her feet in frustration. The girls looked away. The boys licked their lips and stared. Her shame and embarrassment were a confession to Rizzo’s shame and embarrassment. Rizzo was messy, and Lauren made a mess of playing her. She was stumbling through the worst version of her real life while a smooth fictional production swirled around her, elegant and vigorous as a ballet. She was an isolated lyric. Rizzo’s song was about pretending to hate a perfect girl, but the whole thing was a front for hating herself. Eye-rolling and jealous and so ugly. Negative energy. Sour and stinking.

Mindy said, “You know what, Lauren, let’s not worry about the dance steps for now. Okay? You can just stand still and concentrateon this important song—let the others worry about the dancing.” Lauren hated Mindy, too, for trying to be kind, for lettingthe effort show.

“Lauren is a Method actress,” Andy Figueroa said. “You run lines with her and you catch an STD.”

“I hear herpes gives you two left feet,” said Brendan Dougherty, in a strangulated duh voice, like Lauren wasn’t worth the effort of a proper joke. Scattered laughter.

“Jesus, Brendan,” said Claire, shielding her eyes with one hand. She wasn’t defending Lauren so much as protesting her owndiscomfort. Before Grease, Lauren had seen Brendan as a pretty void, flat as a poster of a boy-band heartthrob on Danielle Sheridan’s bedroom wall.It turned out that he was a person, too.

“Guys,” Mindy said in an admonishing tone, but she wasn’t a teacher at Bethune, so she had little authority, especially whenMr. Smith wasn’t around. Or what authority she did have derived from how likable she was. The boys would think Mindy was likableso long as they also thought she was fuckable, but that could go wrong if the boys started to get an inkling that Mindy herselfalso thought that she was fuckable.

Lauren was too incompetent to be fuckable. Mingling with the sour and the stink was a scent of pity, the close air of a funeral. Something had died. Lauren stared at her sneakers, which were bolted to the stage. She watched herself wielding a chain saw, slicing at the section of stage her feet were bolted to, carving out two snowshoe-sized wooden blocks, clomping out of the auditorium atop her great big stage clogs, and throwing herself into Lake Erie. Except wood floats, she thought. Even her fantasies of erasing herself were incompetent.

“Lauren dances like she just shat her pants,” Brendan said.

“Yeah, yeah,” Andy said, revving up, “and she’s moving around real careful so—”

“—so it doesn’t run down her leg!” Andy and Brendan yelled together, and they fell all over themselves laughing.

“You guys are fucking assholes,” Julie fumed at the two boys, and this was what brought tears to Lauren’s eyes. Of all of them, she was maddest at Julie,with her rich pirouetting voice. Julie’s pity gave the taunts their meaning. Inside herself, Lauren ripped a chunk of thestage off her feet and dashed her head against it.

 

After rehearsal she locked herself in a stall in the bathroom farthest from the auditorium, behind the studio art workshop.She sat on the edge of the toilet hugging herself, eyes closed, humming to cross out Brendan’s voice, Andy’s voice.

Nevermind was about the