Read loose for Free Online Page A

girl. I am sharply aware of the moles on my arms, the way my leg fat spreads if I sit to pull on jeans. The other girls, already in cliques, chatter away, every once in a while stealing glances my way. I push the dirty gym clothes into the locker and duck out, avoiding eyes. It is in this vulnerable state, making my way back toward the other buildings, that Amy stops me.
    “Did you just start here?” she asks. She looks at me with sharp brown eyes. She is bigger than me, both in stature and in height, and I feel vaguely intimidated. I recognize her from campus. She’s a grade ahead of me.
    I nod.
    “Why?” she asks.
    “Why?” I’m confused.
    “Why are you coming here for tenth grade?” She keeps her gaze steady. “Did you just move?”

    •
33 •
    L o o s e G i r l
    “I got in trouble,” I tell her. “My dad made me switch schools.”
    Amy’s eyes open wide, intrigued. “What did you do?”
    I shrug. “I had a party and people stole stuff.” Amy smiles slightly and seeing her amusement, I keep going, embellishing. “And there were boys. I did some things my dad didn’t like.”
    Now Amy’s smile fills her face. “I know what that’s like,” she says.
    I smile too.
    From then on, Amy and I spend most of our time together. On weekends we take cabs into Manhattan and search for bars that won’t badger us for our fake IDs. Our aim is simple: We’re looking for boys.
    Most nights, Dad sleeps at his new girlfriend’s, leaving Amy and me free to do what we want. Amy calls her mother, telling her she’ll be sleeping over. I can tell from Amy’s brief silence that her mother begins to protest, but Amy always cuts her off.
    “I’ll be fine, Sheila,” she says, annoyed, and she rolls her eyes at me. I shake my head, feigning understanding, but the truth is I am amazed by the way she talks to her mother. She even calls her by her first name! I would never have the guts.
    Nights that Dad is home, he watches me carefully as I emerge with Amy from the hallway, both of us wearing miniskirts and too much makeup. He knows he shouldn’t trust us. But I can tell he also kind of likes it, even after that whole lawsuit thing last year. He likes that I try to be pretty, that I’m even becoming pretty as I get older, and he likes that I want to party. It reminds him of who he used to be when he was a teen, when he was popular and carefree, not a divorced dad raising two girls by himself. He has stories, like the one from when he was seventeen and working at Jan’s Ice Cream Parlor with his friend Les. Whenever thirteen- or fourteen-year-old girls visited, they told the girls to sit tight while they prepared a special treat: two scoops of vanilla ice cream, a carefully carved banana, whipped cream, and chocolate sprinkles for pubic hair.
    “Here you go,” my young father said. “Virgin’s Delight, made especially for you.”

    •
34 •
    A H o u s e w i t h N o M e n The girls erupted into giggles. They held their spoons this way and that, trying to work at the ice cream.
    My father and Les winked at them. “What’s the matter? Don’t you like it? Is it too big for you?”
    They giggled some more.
    I can tell by the way he talks that he misses those days.
    Tyler is another story. Tyler stays in her room with the door closed.
    I think it bothers Dad that he doesn’t understand her the way he does me. She’s too much like Mom, with her interest in art and all things alternative. She even looks like her, dark-haired and small. I avoid looking at her door as I pass, not wanting to think about the way she isolates herself all the time. It’s her choice, I tell myself. She could be going out and having fun if she wanted to. No one’s making her sit around with her fantasy figurines, waiting for Mom to call.
    “Where are you going?” Dad asks when I head for the front door.
    His cigarette sits in an ashtray on the coffee table, swirling smoke into the air.
    “To the city,” I say. “I told you.”
    “I