Joanne Green
PEACH
Joanne Green's stories have appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Writing Aloud, and the anthology Meridian Bound. In addition to writing, she has worked as a costume and puppet designer for productions such as The Muppet Show, Fraggle Rock, and The Great Muppet Caper. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband and two children.
First published by GemmaMedia in 2012.
GemmaMedia
230 Commercial Street
Boston, MA 02109 USA
© 2012 by Joanne Green
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles of reviews.
Printed in the United States of America
16 15 14 13 12 1 2 3 4 5
978-1-934848-72-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Green, Joanne, 1955–
Peach / Joanne Green.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-934848-72-2
1. Teenage girls—Fiction. 2. Proms—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3607.R4329254P43 2012
813'.6--dc23
2012035968
Cover by Night & Day Design
Inspired by the Irish series of books designed for adult literacy, Gemma Open Door Foundation provides fresh stories, new ideas, and essential resources for young people and adults as they embrace the power of reading and the written word.
Brian Bouldrey
North American Series Editor
Open Door
For Tony
Track 1: Beautiful People
Melanie
I used to be ninety percent less cool. A rape thing happened and I sort of freaked out, but now I deal with it better than people who know. Or think they know—think that I put out for Jacob, some dude who tried to be nice to me, and know I had a miscarriage. At St. Ag's, girls stared in stone silence when I'd brave the bathroom to pee. First day back, somebody asked for my autograph! So for sophomore year, I started dragging my ass on the subway to Philadelphia Girls'. Now my friends are intellectuals. In South Philly, everybody talked about sex, liquor, and the Beatles. Here, they talk about sex, drugs, the Velvet Underground, and Albert Camus. We yak in the bathroom about the Human Condition, which Albert Camus was supposed to be big on. Girls brag about their orgasms, and I keep my mouth shut.
Luna Dunkelman is my new best friend. She's far out. We sit on the school wall. This is illegal because perverts from all over Philly park their cars under there and beat off. They get hot if you squeal in horror. Instead, Luna yells, “Hey, pencil dick!” and laughs and laughs at the guy whamming away. They always leave.
Franco was walking by from the boys' school and thought she was talking to him. That's how we met.
Franco is so cool; his hair is almost as long as mine. And he has hair on his chest, really, but my little brother says it's just dirt. When people stare at Franco in his Sergeant Pepper coat and John Lennon glasses, he doesn't hunch shorter like I do. Franco roars, “Take a picture—lasts longer!” and shoots them the finger.
That's what my father was like.
This year, I had to live down Woodstock. Everybody worth talking to in the whole tenth grade went to Woodstock. I want to hate my mom for not letting me go, but I didn't even know about it.
I hate her now. Now, everybody's going to Washington, D.C., for the big Moratorium. Everybody who's anybody is going to help stop the Vietnam War, and have a very cool time doing it!
Me, I'm going to the prom.
| WORLD HISTORYPeach Sweeney | |
| Moratorium: mor · a · to · ri · um— | |
| a formally agreed to period during | |
| which activity is halted. | |
| Kind of like a strike, except instead of | |
| walking off from your job to get more | |
| wages, we want the war to stop! | |
Track 2: We're Not Gonna Take It
The Who
If it was my prom, I could stay home. Or if it was at St. Ag's, I'd have a case to make. My mom's never even heard of the Moratorium. She thinks that some blockhead having a date to his prom is more important than our soldiers and our neighbors, and maybe someday Franco, dying in Vietnam.
I'm not even a date—I'm a cousin! James, Jamesie, is not exactly my cousin, he's my cousin Cookie's cousin. My cousin Cookie's loudmouth mother is related to me; my cousin Cookie's fat father is related to Jamesie. I haven't seen Jamesie in a while—since I freaked out, I don't go to family gatherings. But Jamesie is seventeen, he's a senior, and he needs me for a date?
My mother says, “Don't jump to conclusions, Edith. You don't know what a fine young man he's become.”
I know he's a blockhead.
He has to be. Me and Luna reasoned it out. We flipped through the family photos, and the thing is, Jamesie is not bad looking He's shot up tall. Maybe his voice has finally changed, too. He's kind of cute, if he's your type—an Elvis pompadour with whitewalls around the ears, I swear. Nobody at Philadelphia Girls' would go out with him, but you think he'd be cute at Maple Tree Woods, which is in the stuffy suburbs.
And redundant, Luna says.
| ENGLISHPeach Sweeney | |
| Redundant: re · dun · dant—with | |
| the same meaning as a word used | |
| earlier in a sentence. | |
| The Department of Redundancy | |
| Department—ha! | |
Track 3: I Put a Spell on You
Creedence Clearwater Revival
The thing I can't even tell Luna is that Jamesie used to be my type. When I was in grade school, when I was fifty percent less cool, me and Jamesie used to fool around. We hid out in my cousin Cookie's bedroom, and while she sat, face all sneered up and huffy, me and Jamesie made out.
Jamesie, even if he is a probable blockhead, had this real genius for making out. I was too dazed to feel it then, but now when I'm in my room listening to “Light My Fire,” sometimes I think of him, sliding his hand under my shirt, or slipping his tongue in my mouth.
I'd just die if anybody knew that.
After Cookie's mom and my mom and Jamesie's mother had the whole scene arranged, after I had a knock-out yell-fest with my mother, after I refused absolutely to go, after my mother told me to “be charitable,” after she threatened to get the nuns over to talk to me, after she told me I was grounded forever if I didn't go: Jamesie called me.
My little brother runs by, stares at us standing there, and says, “Want me to get it?”
My mom snaps into action and grabs