The Third Child Read Online Free Page B

sex, giving her real pointers from the time she started making out with guys. “Don’t ever breathe through your mouth, no matter how excited you get. If you had onions even yesterday, if you mouth-breathe on him, he’ll be grossed out.” It had been a day like today, but in the dorm at Miss Porter’s. Em had spoken in a low voice, so the other girls would not overhear. “Use body English when you’re kissing.” Em wriggled her body. “It gets them excited. They think you’re hot. But never initiate the next step or they’ll label you a slut. From time to time, you have to say don’t or no but not like you really mean it. It’s pro forma, if you get what I mean.” Then when Melissa knew she had to suckoff Jonah, Emily showed her, using a roll-on deodorant that was about the right shape, demonstrating what to do with her lips and tongue. “Run your tongue around it. Like this.” Without Em, she would have freaked out or made some gross mistake. Emily kept her from making a fool of herself in the savage clumsy world of teenage dating. Emily knew what to do, although she seemed so tiny and demure, Rosemary never guessed what Em was really like.
    “By the way, where’s Rich himself?” Em asked, leaning on an elbow.
    Melissa suspected that Emily had a little bitty thing for her older brother. “He’s on a bachelor party weekend. They’ve gone to the Bahamas, about ten of them. He’ll be back Monday.” It would be a disaster if Emily really did fuck him, but Rich never paid attention to Emily. He liked tall women.
    “Have you got your dress yet?”
    “It’s being altered.”
    “So what’s it like?”
    “Mother calls it dupioni silk. But I have to wear yellow, and I totally hate yellow. Laura’s in white off the shoulder with gold touches. Her mother is in gold. Rosemary is in blue, and us bridesmaids are in shades of blue or yellow. The guys all get to wear black, naturally. The dress isn’t half bad, really, except for the color. Maybe afterward I’ll have it dyed. It’s kind of slinky.”
    “Are yellow and blue Laura’s favorite colors or school colors or what?”
    “It’s got something to do with the color of the walls where the reception is. Don’t ask me. I’d rather wear black. I look thinner in black. I look huge in yellow.”
    “Melissa, don’t be an idiot. You’re not fat. You have a shape, that’s all.”
    “Next to my mother and Merilee, I’m fat. They think I am.”
    “Well, they’re wrong. You don’t look like a model, you look like a cute girl with boobs and a nice ass. So stop complaining. I wish I had your chest.” Emily had been overweight around puberty, when they had first become friends. She had started having sex because she was fat, she said, and that made up for it with guys. She had long since gone on one diet after another till she was pretty thin, but she never did like the way shelooked. They were the same that way. Emily had been invited; that was the only thing Melissa had gotten her way on. She had come a week early to stay the whole time in Melissa’s room. It made the wedding bearable. She had heard Rosemary say to Alison that having Emily there who was after all only a chiropractor’s daughter nonetheless kept Melissa from conspicuously sulking, so it was worth it. Billy liked Emily, calling her a hottie. He kept sauntering around the upstairs with his shirt off to show his tan—he had burnt himself lobster red on the Maryland shore last Sunday—and his muscles, which were all right, but only all right. Billy thought they were better than that. Emily paid no attention. Billy was two years younger and Emily couldn’t care less.
    Emily was curious about Alison. “Does she have a life?”
    “Not that I can tell. She has a couple of girlfriends she sees maybe once a month. She never dates. I’ve never heard her make a personal call.”
    “God, Lissa, she’s like a servant in those nineteenth-century dramas on PBS—like a ladies’