So, yes, I’ve been the hetero-female variation of pussy whipped. I wrote to Marcus so much this past year that it was hard to find time to write to you, too. (And while I’m making excuses, I’ll also mention how I actually had to apply myself for the first time in my academic career.) I’d like to apologize, but I won’t, and not just because a lack of contrition provides the very foundation of the Totally Guilt-Free Guidelines. You know me well enough to recognize that I’m in agony anyway because it’s been a loooooooooooong time since I’ve enjoyed more than the—ahem!—figurative effects of my sexually-spellbound condition . . .
Dickwhippedly yours,
J.
To:
[email protected] From:
[email protected] Date: May 31St, 2003
Subject: Poetry Spam #21
furious flutter
awakened hummingbird heart
hello hello love
—Original Message—
From: Joe Mailbiz [
[email protected]]
Sent: May 30th, 2003
TO:
[email protected] Subject: hello Objectify Simmer tenement checklist
roadway hunk mat freudian mischievous buckboard love gubernatorial Snuggle cretin flatulent furbish quantity furious Seventieth controlled con tireless stereoscopy hummingbird lunch mutineer fourth dialysis backlash concur triumphal percussive allotting coxcomb desist copter aforesaid percent income causation frilly incorporate awakened crosslink bleach apollonian Skullcap Suspend betray ethel adjourn inhibition jolly consider fell pride compose foster dope inviolate flutter assuage chock whale Singlehanded Sawtooth condescend Sunshiny connote dehumidify prissy hello
freshman Summer, june 2003
the first
I keep rereading Marcus’s latest haiku, printed out precisely for this purpose. How did he come up with Poetry Spam? Where did he get the idea to turn his junk email into poetry? I marvel at his talent for revealing the hidden beauty in ordinary things.
I miss him and I know he misses me too.
There’s nowhere to sit in Port Authority unless you buy something. I got booted from Au Bon Pain because I stupidly disposed of my $4.00 shot glass of orange juice. The eagle-eyed Garbage Guard informed me that I was no longer allowed to occupy one of the umbrellaed tables. I left, dejected and dehydrated.
I’m now at Timothy’s World Coffee where there are no open indoor umbrellas to bring me bad luck. I’m sitting on a stool, breaking in my new journal, trying to take teeny-tiny sips from my bottle of Poland Spring water just so I can preserve my right to be here. I’m broke, and there aren’t any water fountains for free, germ-ridden refills.
This is bad because I can chug gallons at a time. Accutane sucks every drop of moisture out of my body. I am one large flake of dandruff. The corners of my mouth are split open and bleeding, and I have to spread Carmex beyond my lip line, which makes me look like I’ve spent the morning sucking on a stick of butter. I hope that by the time I see Marcus my lips won’t be so crusty/greasy.
Sahara skin and lips are just two of Accutane’s side effects. According to the information booklet I should BE ALERT FOR ANY OF THE FOLLOWING:
—DIARRHEA, RECTAL BLEEDING
—SEVERE HEADACHES
—NAUSEA, VOMITING
—CHANGES IN MOOD
Well, if suffering from diarrhea, rectal bleeding, severe headaches, nausea, and vomiting doesn’t swing your mood in some direction, nothing will. Because my mood crests and crashes just fine on its own, I went on Accutane only at my mother’s insistence. As a firm supporter of any and all advancements in the cosmetic sciences, she believes that not providing one’s child with flawless skin is akin to child abuse. Accutane cured Len Levy, who was covered in pissed-off, purple pustules back in high school, so it should work for me. My acne isn’t nearly as all-over and angry as his was, but I have to agree with my mother when she points out how my complexion is never completely clear. I always seem to have one knotty cyst somewhere on my face, and when it goes away another takes its place. One after the other after the other.
My daily dose of Accutane is the standard prescription for a person twice my weight. Three squishy yellow pills. This is my third cycle of the drug—the first two times didn’t work—and I feel strangely proud when my dermatologist says that in twenty-five years of practicing dermatology, he has never seen such resilient zits. I’m a medical freak of nature.
I’d like to think that Marcus would call me unique.
Dr. Rosen also says my condition is stress related. No surprise there. Two weeks ago, I wrote four term papers and filled nine blue books over the course of five exams. In the midst of finals, I impulsively (and stupidly) chopped off my ponytail to get rid of my elastic band scalp-ache. The fix-it-up Supercut was supposed to give me a short geek chic bob with bangs, kind of like Jordan in Real Genius. But with my hair’s trademark flyaway frizziness, I look more like Mitch. The only upside to this coifftastrophe is that in my state of scalp-ache-free concentration, I nailed a 3.85 GPA for the semester, which will make my parents happy, though only temporarily so. While my stellar grades help better my chances of post-graduation financial solvency, it does little to relieve my current money troubles. My parents give me minimal fiscal assistance because, in their own words, I made the choice to go into debt by selecting Columbia over my full scholarship to Piedmont. I still stand by my choice, though less passionately now that I have a much better idea of how long it will take to pay Sallie Mae the $100,000 I’ll owe for my BA by the time I graduate. Not to mention the cost of the MA and PhD I’ll have to get if I want my undergraduate psychology degree to be worth anything at all. I’ve only got about half a semester worth of my grandmother’s inheritance left and zero summer money-making prospects because no well-paying employer is willing to hire me, train me, then let me leave for the entire month of July for my incredible, albeit totally unpaid, internship at True magazine. During my salary-free servitude, I’ll be staying in New York with my sister, Bethany (with whom I have nothing but DNA in common), her husband, G-Money (who has earned his nickname through gaining and losing millions on the stock market, yet still having enough spare scratch to buy into a local frozen custard and donut franchise in the hope of taking it national), and my niece, Marin (who is very cute, but has projectile-pooping issues), enduring yet another separation from a boyfriend I haven’t seen or touched for six months, one who lives down the hall from a nudist Buddhist (Nuddhist?) named Butterfly who thinks clothing is oppressive and can’t understand why people think nakedness always has to be sexual . . .
So. Stress? Naaaaaaaaah.
Sitting in the booth in front of me is a cutsey young couple still in the honeymoon phase of their relationship. Or they’re lovers recently reunited. They’re annoying to everyone but each other and haven’t stopped pecking each others’ faces since they sat down. Back and forth and back and forth across the booth, peck and peck. I prefer juicy tongues to these passionless kisses that are as dry as my needy lips.
I just tried Marcus on my cell. Topher, one of his “cottage-mates,” told me he was out “cleansing.” He told me this the way other roommates at other schools would say someone is out partying. Marcus’s world is so foreign to me that I can’t help but feel that the person who inhabits it is a stranger. I love when I reach Marcus on the phone and as he says hello, I can hear the music he’s listening to in the background. That music is the sound of him without me. How he surrounds himself when I’m not there, which is almost all the time.
And will be for three more years.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to:
My agent, Joanna Pulcini, who loves Jessica Darling almost as much as I do.
My editor, Kristin Kiser, and her assistant, Claudia Gabel, for convincing me that I hadn’t succumbed to “Sucky Sequel Syndrome.” And the whole team at Crown—especially Philip Patrick, Brian Belfiglio, and Lindsay Mergens—for truly believing that the follow-up can outdo the first, a
nd busting their butts to make it happen.
Everyone who sent enthusiastic e-mails begging me to WRITE FASTER because they were DYING to find out what happened between Jessica and Marcus. Those messages inspired me to keep it smart, honest, and funny.
The Fitzmorris and McCafferty families, who have served as personal assistants, bodyguards, chauffeurs, PR agents, presidents of my fan club, and so much more.
Collin James, for helping me get outside of my own head for a change.
And Christopher Joseph, for everything he does so I can do what I do.
ALSO BY MEGAN MCCAFFERTY
Sloppy Firsts
Copyright © 2003 by Megan McCafferty
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by Three Rivers Press, New York, New York.
Member of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.
www.randomhouse.com
THREE RIVERS PRESS and the Tugboat design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McCafferty, Megan.
Second helpings: a novel / Megan McCafferty.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. High school students—Fiction. 2. Teenage girls—Fiction. 3. New Jersey—
Fiction. I. Title.
PS3613.C34 S43 2003
813’.6—dc21
2002014097
www.randomhouse.com
eISBN: 978-0-307-42156-2
v3.0
Megan Mccafferty, Second Helpings
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