Pretty Amy PDF
Preview Pretty Amy
Pretty Amy a novel by Lisa Burstein This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. Copyright © 2012 by Lisa Burstein. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher. Entangled Publishing, LLC 2614 South Timberline Road Suite 109 Fort Collins, CO 80525 Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com. Edited by Stacy Abrams Cover design by Liz Pelletier Print ISBN 978-1-62061-119-7 Ebook ISBN 978-1-62061-120-3 Manufactured in the United States of America First Edition May 2012 The author acknowledges the copyrighted or trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction: Band-Aid, Barbie, Big Bird, Birkenstock, Boy Scouts, Cheetos, Chester Cheetah, Chuck Taylors, Civic, Comet, Denny’s, Diet Pepsi, Doritos, Dress Barn, Dumpster, Facebook, Folgers, Gatorade, Gobstopper, Goodwill, Google, Guinness World Record, Hacky Sack, Hi-C, Humane Society, iPod, Kool-Aid, Jell-O, Liz Claiborne, McDonald’s, Miss America, Mountain Dew, My Little Pony, Neighborhood Watch, Pepsi, Pepto-Bismol, Ping-Pong, Play-Doh, Prell, Rolodex, Salem 100’s, Salems, Scrabble, Seagram’s, Smurfette, Starburst, Strawberry Shortcake, Technicolor, YouTube, Ziploc, Zippo. To my parents (who are nothing like the ones who appear in this book) Contents Cover Page Title Page Copyright Page One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine Ten Eleven Twelve Thirteen Fourteen Fifteen Sixteen Seventeen Eighteen Nineteen Twenty Twenty-one Twenty-two Twenty-three Twenty-four Twenty-five Twenty-six Twenty-seven Twenty-eight Twenty-nine Thirty Thirty-one Thirty-two Thirty-three Thirty-four Thirty-five Thirty-six Thirty-seven Acknowledgments One Unfortunately, I am only myself. I am only Amy Fleishman. I am one of the legions of middle-class white girls who search malls for jeans that make them look thinner, who search drugstores for makeup to wear as a second skin, who are as sexy and exotic as blueberry muffins. I am a walking, talking True Life episode. Your high-school guidance counselor’s wet dream, and one of the only girls I know to get arrested on prom night. When my mother dropped me off at Lila’s, rather than running like hell the way I usually did, I sat next to her in our minivan and waited for a speech. The speech mothers give to their only daughters on nights when those daughters are all dressed up and the mothers look all wistful and teary. I assumed she was building up to it, was working through exactly what she was going to say so it would be perfect. I knew from TV that she must have practiced in the mirror, but maybe, faced with having to say all those things to me, she’d frozen up. I could understand that. When I saw Lila peek out to see who was sitting in her driveway, and then felt my phone vibrate with a text that I knew must say, WTF R U DOIN?, I figured I had waited long enough. “So this is it…,” I said. My mother stared at Lila’s small, birdshit-gray house and bit at what was left of her nails. After I’d started hanging out with Lila and Cassie, my mother gnawed at her nails the way a baby sucked her thumb. “…my senior prom,” I continued. Maybe she was overwhelmed. Her little girl was all grown up. Her ugly duckling had finally become a swan. “I don’t want to ruin this for you, so I’m choosing to hold my tongue.” My mother loved using old-time folksy sayings. Hold your horses. The early
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