"Lippman, Laura - Every Secret Thing" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lippman Laura)

The hill to Edmondson was long and gradual. Alice did not know if
there were really ten hills in this neighborhood called Ten Hills, but
there were enough slopes to punish short legs. The two girls did not
have cover-ups, so they knotted their towels high on their bodies, at
the spot where breasts were supposed to hold them. But they had no
breasts, only puffy bumps, which they had started keeping in bras just
this year. So the towels kept slipping to the ground, tangling at
their ankles. Ronnie's was a plain, no-longer-white bath towel, and
she cursed it every time it fell until finally, after tripping over it
for the fourth time, she slung it around her neck, not caring if people
saw her body. Alice could never walk down the street like that, and
she wore a one-piece. Ronnie had a red-and-white bikini, yet she was
so thin that the skimpy bottoms seemed to bag on her. The only curve
on Ronnie's body was her stomach, which bowed out slightly. "Like a
Biafran baby," Alice's mother, Helen, had said. "Oops I'm dating
myself." Alice had no idea what she was talking about, whether it was
good or bad, or even how someone went about dating herself. She just
knew that her mother never said Alice looked like a Biafran baby.

Alice's navy one-piece had a cutout of a daisy on her belly. Ronnie
told her this was queer, and had said this every time she saw Alice in
the suit this summer, which was exactly three times a day-trip to Sandy
Point, another poolside birthday party, and today. "Who wants to see a
brown daisy on your fat white belly?" she had said when Alice's mom
dropped her this morning at the Fullers' house before going to work.

"Vintage," Alice's mother had said. "It's vintage." Ronnie didn't
know what that meant, so she had to shut up. Ronnie liked Alice's
mother and tried to be at her best when she was around. Alice didn't
know what vintage meant, either, but she knew it was good. Her mother
had a whole vocabulary of good words that Alice didn't quite
understand. Vintage. Classic. Retro. New-Vo. When all else failed,
when Alice was balking at wearing something because the other girls
might tease her, Helen Manning would meet her eyes in the mirror and
say: "Well, I think it's exquisite." This was the word that ended
everything, her mom's way of saying, in her gentle way,
Not-Another-Word, I'm-at-the-End-of-My-Patience. Ex-qui-site. The one
time Alice had tried to use it, Ronnie had said: "Who wants zits?"

Yet it was Helen Manning who insisted that Alice play with Ronnie.
Ronnie was a summertime-only friend, an in-the-neighborhood friend, the
only other didn't-go-to-camp, didn't-have-a-pool-membership girl.
During the school year, Alice had better friends, friends more like
her, who read books and kept their hair neat and tried to wear the
right things. Come fall, she was so happy for school to start because
it meant a reunion with these real friends.

Only not this fall. Now that it was time for middle school, a lot of
the girls in their class were going to private places. "Real private
school," Wendy had said not meanly, but a little carelessly, forgetting