From the Publisher: “Set in Pittsburgh in 1992, Wasted Pretty is about a girl determined to protect her body, her future, and her heart…”
About the Author: Jamie Beth Cohen writes about difficult things, but her friends think she’s funny. Her writing has appeared in TeenVogue.com, The Washington Post/On Parenting, Salon, and several other outlets. Her debut novel, Wasted Pretty (Black Rose Writing), is a coming-of-age story about a sixteen-year-old girl who faces wanted and unwanted attention when she inadvertently goes from blending in to standing out. She tweets at @Jamie_Beth_S.
Chapter One
Every Pittsburgh summer starts like this. Hundreds of people swarm Flagstaff Hill in Schenley Park and wait for the sun to go down so the movie can start. But every summer is a little bit different.
This summer, instead of hanging out on blankets with girls from the lacrosse team, Meredith and I sit at a table under the movie screen facing all the people. A very official looking walkie-talkie makes staticky noises between us. A breeze moves through the ring of trees at the back of the crowd. Everything looks lush and green and though it’s warm, it’s not muggy the way it will be in August. King Freddie, the Queen cover band playing on the stage behind us, entertains the crowd while it’s still light out.
Meredith’s bored. She pulls a Sassy magazine out of my bag. It’s a cute boho-chic, over-the-shoulder thing that holds way more stuff than it looks like it should. Meredith got it for me on her last trip to Aspen. The cover of the magazine advertises articles on “The Perfect Boy” and “Bathing Suits that Fit You.”
“Do you see this shit?” Meredith is a master of the full-body eye roll.
“Not cool.”
Last month Kurt and Courtney were on the cover. I mean, it’s not like they’re the most functional couple or anything, but I doubt they give a crap about the perfect bathing suit. Sassy’s going downhill.
Meredith lights a cigarette, and I make her put it out.
“Alice, it’s not like the picture of your father’s disembodied head can see me!”
Above the stage behind us there’s a banner with my father’s image on it. His bald head and dark, Hulk Hogan-style mustache are blown up to massive proportions. “WQEV’s Dennis Burton – Pittsburgh’s Favorite DJ – 1991&1992” is written in what’s supposed to look like pink spray paint. 1992 isn’t even over yet, so I’m pretty sure my dad made up the poll that earned him that honor.
“Just please don’t smoke at the table,” I beg her.
She produces Twizzlers from her own boho bag and chomps on them instead.
When I was really little, I came to Flagstaff with my parents and my brother, Nate. My mom would pack an elaborate picnic basket full of health food that she and Nate would devour. My father would hide potato chips and Slim Jims under the blanket he carried. When my mom wasn’t looking, he’d sneak me some. Back then my dad was a teacher, so the beginning of my summer vacation was the beginning of his, too. I think he looked forward to it more than I did. I’ve always loved school.
Meredith doesn’t offer me Twizzlers. She knows my mom has me on a strict food plan. “Don’t call it a diet,” my mom says. “It’s a lifestyle!”
In middle school, back when I still ate whatever I wanted, I’d sit on blankets at Flagstaff with my friends, passing M&Ms and cans of pop back and forth, giggling about the boys on the next blanket. When you go to a fancy, all-girls school, you don’t really know boys as people, just as objects of your burgeoning desire, although, in my case, none of them ever desired me back. I was too tall, too thick, too much of a jock to be desirable. The only thing that even got me a seat on the cool-girls’ blanket was Meredith. We’re the youngest in our grade, but she’s always been the Queen Bee. Apparently an overabundance of self- confidence comes standard with a multi-million-dollar trust fund.
I take a baggie full of cut veggies out of my boho and offer Meredith some, but she shakes her head.
I lost more than twenty pounds junior year by eating my mom’s homemade meal bars and protein shakes, plus a well-balanced dinner and lots of celery. I’m my mom’s guinea pig, and I’ve finally shown some results. Most of the year it was hard to see the weight loss because our school uniforms are designed to hide the fact we’re actually female, but now that school’s out, it’s hard to miss. The four inches I’ve grown since last summer add to the overall effect.
“What’s the movie tonight?” Meredith has given up on Sassy and is flipping through one of my Rolling Stones.
“E.T.” The movies they play at Flagstaff are always ten years old.
She pantomimes sticking her finger down her throat. “Didn’t your dad have to carry you out when we saw that in the theatre?”
“You really never miss a chance to bring that up, do you?”
A few of my dad’s radio station interns come by to pick up more stacks of bumper stickers to pass out, and Meredith bats her eyelashes at them and does that stupid hair-flip-thing girls do in movies.
“You have a boyfriend,” I remind her when the interns are out of earshot.
“You really never miss a chance to bring that up, do you?” Now she’s batting her eyelashes at me.
After my freshman year, my dad turned a side gig in sports reporting for the local paper into an on-air job at WQEV. His outsized personality doesn’t jibe with the Top 40 music they play, but his no- nonsense nature – also known as abrasiveness – clicked with the drive- time listeners, and he quickly became the station’s largest draw.
It was his idea for QEV to sponsor the movies at Flagstaff, so after freshman year, I went from hanging out on blankets with my lacrosse team to walking up and down the hill with the station interns handing out bumper stickers. My brother used to be in charge of the intern crew, but when he decided to stay at Penn State for summer classes this year, my dad put me, a sixteen-year-old, almost-high-school-senior, in charge of a bunch of college guys. It doesn’t make any sense, but a lot of what my dad does is like that. People think he’s either a visionary or unstable. People don’t seem to realize how often those things go together.
I’m fishing one of my mom’s meal replacement bars out of my bag when the walkie-talkie on the table starts to crackle.
“I talked to her at the station this morning. She’s doesn’t look sixteen.”
I’m the only sixteen-year-old at the station and practically the only “her.”
I reach for the walkie-talkie, but Meredith puts her hand on mine, “Let’s listen.”
“I’d do her,” another voice says.
“Ooooohhhh,” Meredith whispers. “Do you think it’s one of the cute ones?”
Here’s hoping.
“Burton would kill you,” the first voice says. “But did you see that rack?”
I hate it when guys call girls’ boobs a ‘rack.’ I hate it more when they call my boobs a ‘rack.’ It’s the only place I didn’t lose weight, and while the girls at school seem to think this is some amazing gift, I’m starting to think it’s not.
“I heard she’s fucking Johnny,” a third voice says.
I try to take the radio away from Meredith, but she holds me off.
“No way,” the second voice says. “Burton would kill him.”
“She’s probably a virgin,” the initial voice says.
“He’s not wrong,” Meredith says to me with a shrug.
“Meredith!”
At some point last summer Meredith got it in her head that we had agreed to lose our virginities on the same night, she to her boyfriend, Richard, and me to his younger brother, Dylan, but I never actually agreed to that. Dylan’s fine, but the only reason he even looked at me was because I was Meredith’s friend. And the only reason I looked at him was that I was tired of being someone who hadn’t been kissed. We only hooked up a few times and never had sex.
Meredith picks up the walkie, pushes her hair back like she’s serious and says to me: “I got this.” Then she presses the button. “Hey assholes, we can hear you. Alice can hear you, and she’s your boss! Your dicks are probably as small as her boobs are big and you wouldn’t know what to do with either!”
“Stop!” I grab the walkie-talkie out of her hands.
“Too much?” She grins.
“Too much!”
“Come on. That was fun.”
It would have been fine if they were just some assholes at the mall – she has lots of creative responses when people yell things about my boobs – but this is different.
“I have to work with them the rest of the summer!”
“They won’t bring it up. I’m sure they’re shitting themselves right now. You know I got your back.”
Meredith does always have my back, but she’s just unpredictable enough for that to be scary. She’s a little like my dad that way.
She pulls binoculars out of the crate next to her and tries to find the interns on the hill. “You’d tell me if you slept with Johnny, right?”
“Meredith!”
“Well?” She takes the binoculars down from her face and side-eyes me.
“No, I wouldn’t tell you, because then I’d miss all your virgin jokes too much.”
“Alice?!”
“Come on, of course I’d tell you. Don’t worry, I have not, nor will I ever, sleep with Johnny.”
“That’s a shame. He’s hot.”
“He’s also, sort of, like, my brother.”
“Like you never had a crush on him.”
“Yeah – when I was thirteen! I had a crush on everyone when I was thirteen!”
Johnny interned at the station the whole time he was at the University of Pittsburgh, and when he graduated last month, my dad created the position of chief-lackey to keep him around. Johnny’s like a member of our family except he has a much higher tolerance for my dad’s shit than the rest of us do.
“Uh, Alice –” Meredith has the binoculars up to her face again.
“Seriously, I’m not sleeping with him. I’m still a virgin, you can keep making fun of me.”
“No, not that.” She hands me the binoculars. “Look at the other table.”
Johnny’s staffing the station table at the top of the hill. When I find him in the binoculars, I expect him to be surrounded by interns, but instead, he’s standing alone with one other guy. One very particular guy. I make a strange sound that can only be described as an audible swoon.
“That’s him, right?” Meredith is trying to grab the binoculars back, but I slap her hand away.
“That’s him.”
The Hottest Guy Ever.
Excerpted from Wasted Pretty. Copyright © 2019 by Jamie Beth Cohen. Reprinted with permission from the author and publisher. All rights reserved.
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