Read A Kick-Ass Fairy: A Memoir for Free Online

laughed so hard that she joined me on the ground, rolling on the lawn as well. We became fast friends, spending what time I was allowed going to the town pool, hanging out at her house, or sneaking down to the creek, where we soon became addicted to Tareyton cigarettes as we shared the secrets of our souls and then laughed ourselves to tears.
    When high school started we would talk on the telephone every day. She always asked the same question, “What should I wear tomorrow?” This was followed by my daily inquiry, “Do I look fatter?” We had pretend boyfriends, George and Harry, until shortly into the school year when I got a real boyfriend, a trumpet player from the marching band named Glen. After football games I learned to French kiss adeptly, though at first I just slobbered all over his face—not that he was much better. Just like band, it was all about practice.
    I thought the Hanover Park Hornets’ Gun Squad was cooler than being in the band, and you could wear a dress uniform instead of the high suspender pants. So, without my mother’s knowing, I started to practice the drills in front of Nancy’s house using her sister’s wooden rifle. One afternoon though—whomp!—the gun hit my octagonal wire-rimmed glasses, popped the lens out, and cut a gash in my eyebrow that bled down my face. Nancy ran to get my mother, who eventually came around the corner hell bent to fury. She dragged me by the ear to the doctor for a butterfly bandage (in lieu of stitches), followed up with the requisite grounding and being held hostage for a weekend of verbal thrashing and chores.
    “Why do you want to be on the gun squad and not play the piccolo in the marching band?” What I wanted or thought didn’t matter. By then all questions were rhetorical except for “Where were you?” while she pointed a finger in my face.
    Throughout the winter I complained of a sore throat. When I was finally taken to the doctor I had a severe case of mononucleosis and an enlarged spleen. The doctor said I was not to go to school for two months, and arrangements were made to send all my schoolwork home. I wasn’t allowed to do any physical activities; we were told that my spleen could rupture. According to my mother, however, “He didn’t say you couldn’t do your chores.”
    Soon after my delayed diagnosis, my boyfriend Glen wound up in the hospital with the other half of the “kissing disease.” I was forbidden to see him, and that was the end of him and me.
    Nancy hung in through my times with a Tom, Chad, a real George, and Bradley, who spanned the next year and a half. She had a few boyfriends as well—one gave her a hickey in the center of her forehead. When my mother saw Nancy and asked her what happened, she didn’t answer. Later my mother snickered, “You kids think I was born yesterday.” As I rolled my eyes, she went on, saying that Nancy was bad news and I was forbidden to see her anymore. I didn’t listen.
    In between boyfriend dramas, Nancy and I practiced line dancing. We howled the songs of Carole King’s Tapestry album, songs of Jethro Tull, Elton John, or Carly Simon’s Anticipation album as we walked to the creek to smoke or to the Jack in the Box in town after school, where I forced her to try a burger with cheese. Sometimes at my urging we stomped on several to-go ketchup packets I had previously thrown on the floor. It was just like bloody firecrackers. Nancy was the “good girl”—the one without the rules. I was the troublemaker, breaking all my mother’s rules and then some.
    Beginning in the fall of my sophomore year I learned to sew. I started by making hot pants, then vests, dresses, and eventually whole outfits, using my babysitting money to buy the patterns and fabric. I also began to excel in school. At the end of a quarter I would share my excitement with my mother, proudly showing mostly As, but of course she would focus on the one B I got in physics. Most of the time, though, thankfully, Mom