Read The Rites and Wrongs of Janice Wills for Free Online Page B

flickered across the screen. Periodically, the host would offer commentary, her breasts bobbing treacherously like floatie devices.
    ANTHROPOLOGIST’S NOTE:
The ancient Greeks linked breasts with distinctly feminine divine powers. But they also told stories of Amazonwomen who cut off their right breasts to better draw back their bows. At Melva High School, breasts were merely associated with “hotness,” “sluttiness,” and whether you wanted to “hit that” — at least according to what I’d overheard in hallway conversations of the masculine variety.
    It occurred to me that whoever won Miss Livermush actually had it pretty good — there was scholarship money at stake. A lot of scholarship money. Winning a scholarship could change my whole life plan. I’d been thinking about applying to colleges I’d heard had particularly good anthropology departments — Harvard, Michigan, UC Berkeley, or even the University of Arizona (where Dr. Aldenderfer taught). But then my mom said, “Arizona? That’s a great school — great for people who live in Arizona, but you know it’s much more expensive because we’re out of state. And I’m sure that the UNC and NC State anthropology departments are excellent!”
    So I was going to apply to the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill in the fall. Maybe I would find a good excuse to email the anthropology faculty ahead of time. (“Dear Dr. So and So, I am an incoming freshman. Please be on the lookout for my forthcoming articles on American adolescence in
Current Anthropology
.…”)
    But maybe if I had some extra scholarship money, I could apply to those other schools too. Go far, far away from Melva — far from the North Carolina state line. Maybe I’d end up theundergraduate anthro star at Berkeley. Or maybe Arizona was exactly the place I’d fit in. There, in the circle of the intelligentsia, I’d become non-awkward and beautiful. I’d befriend all the anthropology professors and grad students. Guys would abound who said things like, “My dream girl would definitely skip cool parties in order to rewatch DVDs of
The Wire
and National Geographic documentaries,” and “Subtitles?! I LOVE subtitles!” I paused for a minute, almost forgetting the Miss Livermush entry form in my hand.
    I also needed a Miss Livermush escort. Didn’t I? Although escorts were not required, it seemed most girls chose to have one. Escorts had no clear-cut role in the pageant itself, but they were listed in the program and counted as your date for the dance afterward. So in that way, it was a big deal: Your date was publicly announced. I saw Jimmy Denton standing before me in his dark jeans and T-shirt…. No, no, no, no. Not even a possibility.
    Then I thought of Paul. Paul might have been willing, but what about The Girlfriend? She’d probably want him to escort her. I didn’t really understand Paul anyway, and apparently never had. There had been the humiliating incident of the Disastrous Almost-Kiss — an incident that had utterly confused me, an incident on which I did not like to speculate because it was too embarrassing, an incident I hadn’t mentioned, even to Margo, because I couldn’t tell if I’d just wildly misread the whole situation. It had happened last year, before The Girlfriend came along.
    THE DISASTROUS ALMOST-KISS (????)
    One weekend Paul and I had gone to his house to eat burritos and watch an old movie. This was not atypical — at least it had not been before The Girlfriend came along in all her legitimate girlfriendness. And that night, it had almost seemed like something might happen, something more than the same old Gal Pal Janice story. I wasn’t sure what to think about it because the possibility felt so strange — Paul, my friend, as Paul, my boyfriend? I had never consciously thought about him that way, at least not prior to that evening. Maybe it was that he’d complimented my hair that evening. Maybe it had been the way his mom had jokingly