Any Red-Blooded Girl

I WAS afraid to look down. Were his pants
unzipped? Shit. What was I going to do if
that
was my
present? I mean, we’d rehearsed all these lame ways to turn a boy
down in Sex Ed, but I’d forgotten the whole routine already. The
truth was, I hadn’t paid much attention in Sex Ed in the first
place, since my prospects of getting anywhere near a boy I liked in
the next century seemed dismal. Most of the time when I liked
someone, they never liked me back. I was cursed—until now, which
left me entirely unprepared for whatever was in Mick’s pants.

“Okay, close your eyes again,” he said.

“Do I have to?”

“You said you loved surprises.”

Any Red-Blooded Girl

A Novel by

MAGGIE BLOOM

Copyright 2011 by Tara Nelsen-Yeackel

Cover Art Copyright 2011 by Brittany Cain

Cover Design by Tara Nelsen-Yeackel and
Brittany Cain

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Although this is a free book, it remains the copyrighted property
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author. Thank you for your support.

This book is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places and events are products of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual
persons, places, or events is coincidental and unintended.

To every girl

One

“FLORA Moon Fontain! Get up!” my mother
shouted from the doorway of my bedroom. “The car’s packed, and your
dad and Will are already outside.”

Ugh. A family camping trip. I was supposed to
be in Europe with Jessie, the best friend a girl could ever wish
for—sipping espresso at an outdoor café in Rome; posing for cutesy
tourist pics at the Eiffel Tower and the
Arc de
Triomphe; riding the Tube and talking in a subpar cockney
accent.
I was
supposed
to be having fun.

“Uh-huh,” I groaned and rolled over, pulling
the covers tight around my shoulders.

My mother flipped on the overhead light.
“Flora, I mean it. We have to go. If we don’t get on the road now,
we’re going to be stuck in rush hour traffic in the city.”

The city?
Since when was my mother so
familiar with New York City? We live in Pennsylvania. Punxsutawney,
Pennsylvania. Home of the weather-predicting groundhog. The last
time my mother was anywhere near
the city
was probably
before I was born.

I flung the thin quilt aside and stretched
out in a toe-curling yawn, but my mother just stared at me.

“Okay…geez…I’m coming,” I promised. “You can
go now.”

Even though I was more prepared to endure a
brain tumor than two weeks of camping hell, I rolled out of bed and
tugged on yesterday’s rumpled jeans. The Elmo T-shirt I’d worn to
bed was perfect for the eight hour car ride, since nobody would see
me in it anyway. But then there was the matter of my hair. Since
the peroxide fiasco, there wasn’t really much I could do with the
frizzy orange mess. So I wiggled a checkered headband from my
underwear drawer and flattened my crispy bangs against my forehead.
It was about the worst I’d ever looked, and to be honest, I didn’t
really care.

With my overstuffed duffel slapping against
my knees, I stumbled down our front steps toward the rented SUV.
The thing was a monstrosity, but I was still glad Mr. Tightwad
(that’s my dad) had splurged on it. I mean, it was bad enough we
were going to be stuck together in a tent for two weeks, but if
we’d somehow managed to cram all of our camping gear into Mr.
Tightwad’s little Hyundai, I would have hurled myself to the ground
and refused to go.

“Back here!” my dad called, waving eagerly
from behind the SUV.

I stepped off the curb with the enthusiasm of
a death row prisoner, but as usual, my father was oblivious. He
just shot me this moronic happy-go-lucky smile and dropped my bag
in the back.

And by the time I hoisted myself into the
SUV, my mother was already curled up in the passenger seat with a
stack of color-coded maps. Apparently she’d planned every second of
this torture-fest down to the last detail. Honestly, I think she
missed her calling. Instead of spending her life sticking her
fingers down people’s throats (she’s a dental hygienist, by the
way) she should have been a travel agent. That way she could
torture strangers, instead of me—and get paid for it.

I claimed the seat in front of my brother,
Will, who was sprawled out on the third row bench in his shiny red
and silver track uniform. But before I could even settle into a
good funk, there was a knock at my window.

“Cell phones; iPods; MP3 players; any other
electronical doohickeys you two have stashed back there,” my dad
demanded from the sidewalk, holding his hands out in front of him
like he was expecting something to drop down from heaven. “Hand ’em
over.”

“What?” I protested. “Why?”

Will started rummaging through his backpack,
like he was actually going to comply with such an insane
request.

My father just smiled. “Because we’re going
back to nature,” he said. “We’re cutting ties with all things
technological. Plus, you never know what could disturb Champ.”

Again with the Champ talk? If you’ve never
heard of Champ, or Champy, or the Champster, or Mr. Champs (all
names this creature is known by in
our
house) don’t worry.
You’re not alone. Champ is basically Lake Champlain’s version of
the Loch Ness Monster, and we’re going to search for him on our
trip. In fact, the hunt for Champ is probably the
only
reason Mr. Tightwad even agreed to a vacation in the first
place.

“That’s not fair. I need my stuff. Is Mom
giving up
her
phone?” I whined, hoping my dad would fall for
the equality argument.

“As a matter of fact, no. Your mother is
keeping her phone. But she’s leaving it turned off. It’s only for
emergencies.”

“Just give it to him,” Will piped up from the
backseat. “It’s not like you’re gonna use it.”

It figured. It was just like Golden Boy to
contradict me in an argument with our parents. Who was he trying to
impress anyway? I mean, Mom and Dad liked him best since before I
was born, so there was no contest there. I guess maybe he was just
shooting for a few final brownie points before he went off to
college.

“You don’t know that,” I objected. “People
might be trying to call me. I’m not a leper, you know.”

But the truth was, my brother was probably
right. Since the Beer Incident, it was doubtful I’d be popular
again any time soon.

“Whatever,” Will snarked.

I cranked down the window and thrust my cell
phone and MP3 player at my dad. “Here.”

“
Muchas gracias,
” the old man chirped.
“And don’t worry, Flowbee. We’re gonna have lots of fun—even
without all these fiddley-widdleys.”

I swear to God, if I hear my dad say doohickey,
or fiddley-widdley, or refer to me by the name of a do-it-yourself
haircutting machine one more time, I’ll scream. I mean, under
normal circumstances, I can take Mr. Tightwad, Golden Boy, and the
Mental Hygienist (a.k.a. my mother) in small doses. They can even
be quite entertaining if you’re in the right frame of mind. But
now, since I’m a virtual prisoner, since they think I’m devil
spawn…well, my patience is wearing pretty thin.

As we pulled away from the curb, I shut my
eyes and tried to disappear. Maybe if I was lucky, I could wish
myself out of this horror. Because honestly, the trip to Europe
with Jessie was the one thing I’d been looking forward to in my
drop-dead boring existence. I mean, I have no boyfriend; I have a
limited pool of decent friends; I’m an average student; I’m not
athletic, like Golden Boy; I have no special talents I’m aware of.
Europe was my escape. My adventure. My chance to reinvent myself.
Heck, maybe if the stars had aligned just right, I would’ve even
snagged an Italian stud along the way. Now I’d never know.

And the worst thing was, what nixed my
European vacation in the first place wasn’t even my fault. It was
stupid, lame Jimmy Bickford’s. After all, if he hadn’t smuggled
those beers into my ’80s movie-palooza, I’d be clutching a barf bag
on a trans-Atlantic flight as we speak.

“Flora, did you hear me?” my mother asked,
distracting me from my pity party.

“Huh?”

“I
said
Mrs. Hobson was in the office
yesterday for a root canal, and Dr. Brown had to drill her tooth so
deep it almost cracked in half. Can you imagine?”

Unfortunately, I
could
imagine. I
could imagine all too clearly. Because Mrs. Hobson was my math
teacher from freshman year, and my mother loved to tell gory
stories about painful dental work. Yipee.

“Uh-huh. That’s nice.”

“Nice, Flora? I don’t think so. The poor
woman was terrified. But Dr. Brown is so good with the patients…”
Blah. Blah. Blah.

I suppose I should’ve tried harder to follow
my mother’s crazy story, since she was actually still talking to me
after the Beer Incident. But honestly, I just couldn’t muster the
energy.

As tired as I was, though, I was also
restless. And bored. I must say, Mr. Tightwad sure knows how to
suck even the tiniest shred of joy from my feeble existence.

Desperate, I turned to Will for
entertainment. “So when’s Nat leaving for Tulane?” I asked,
figuring he might talk to me about his girlfriend, who was ditching
him for college in Louisiana.

“What do
you
care?”

“I don’t know. I just thought you might be
kinda bummed,” I said. “I mean, you guys have been together like
forever.”

“For your information, I support Nat’s
decision,” Will claimed. “Sure, it would’ve been nice if she’d
stayed around here, since I’m going to Temple. But Tulane has a
great pre-med program, and…” He paused and shook his head. “Listen,
it’ll be better for both of us. We’ll have a chance to do our own
thing for a while. We’ll keep in touch. If it works out, we’ll know
it’s real. We’ll know it’s right.”

I’d never felt so bad for my brother in my
whole life. Because even though he was trying to sound all logical
and self-assured, he really just sounded brokenhearted. Plus, I
could tell everything he’d just told me had come directly from
Natalie. It was how she’d explained things to him when she broke
the news of her departure. In a way, though, I couldn’t blame
Natalie for leaving Punxsutawney. It could be the most tedious
place on earth. I bet she thirsted for something different,
something exciting, something new. Hell, sometimes I even wish for
bad
stuff to happen, just to shake things up a little (not
death or destruction, of course—maybe just a scary thunderstorm or
a sprained ankle).

“Well, that makes sense,” I lied. “Sounds
like you guys have things all figured out.”

“Yeah, we do.”

I picked up one of my mother’s handy-dandy
roadmaps and fanned myself. “Are you hot?” I asked Will.

“Not really.”

“Well, I’m freakin’ sweating,” I complained.
“Dad, can you turn on the AC?”

“Air conditioning? Already?” my father asked,
as if I’d requested a five-course meal. He tapped the LCD display
on the dashboard. “It’s only seventy-three degrees,” he reported.
“Seventy-five. That’s the optimal temperature for air conditioning.
We’ll shoot for that.”

Holy shit. Apparently Mr. Tightwad must have
read some article that suggested avoiding air conditioning until
you just about croaked.
That
should save us about fourteen
cents.

“So I have to sit here and drown in my own
sweat?” I whined. “Can we at least roll down the windows?”

“Okie dokie, smokie,” my dad agreed. “You go
right on ahead and do that.”

All I can say is, it was going to be a long
two weeks. Two weeks I’d never get back. Two weeks I should have
spent having the time of my life in an exotic locale with my best
friend in the whole wide world. Who knew, maybe Jessie could have
twice as much fun to make up for my misery. At least
that
might take some of the sting out of how things had turned out.

Two

EVEN though I was exhausted, of course I
couldn’t sleep scrunched up in the back of that stuffy SUV. And to
make matters worse, I’d forgotten to pack a pillow—an error I could
already tell was going to haunt me for the rest of the trip. And
just when I figured things couldn’t possibly plunge any further
downhill, my dad put on a polka CD. Yes, you heard me right: Polka!
If you’ve ever listened to this crazy shit, you know it’s only fit
for the criminally insane, the deaf, and people in comas. Mr.
Tightwad has a whole polka library.