Some Girls Do - Softcover

Dugan, Jennifer

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593112555 ISBN 13: 9780593112557

Verlag: Penguin Young Readers Group, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

In this YA contemporary queer romance from the author of Hot Dog Girl, an openly gay track star falls for a closeted, bisexual teen beauty queen with a penchant for fixing up old cars. Now available in paperback!

Morgan, an elite track athlete, is forced to transfer high schools late in her senior year after it turns out being queer is against her private Catholic school's code of conduct. There, she meets Ruby, who has two hobbies: tinkering with her baby blue 1970 Ford Torino and competing in local beauty pageants, the latter to live out the dreams of her overbearing mother. The two are drawn to each other and can't deny their growing feelings. But while Morgan—out and proud, and determined to have a fresh start—doesn't want to have to keep their budding relationship a secret, Ruby isn't ready to come out yet. With each girl on a different path toward living her truth, will they be able to go the distance together?

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jennifer Dugan is a writer, a geek, and a romantic who writes the kinds of stories she wishes she’d had growing up. She’s the author of the graphic novel Coven, as well as the young adult novels Playing For Keeps, The Last Girls Standing, Melt With You, Some Girls Do, Verona Comics, and Hot Dog Girl, which was called “a great, fizzy rom-com” by Entertainment Weekly and “one of the best reads of the year, hands down” by Paste magazine. She lives in upstate New York with her family, their dog, a strange kitten who enjoys wearing sweaters, and an evil cat who is no doubt planning to take over the world. You can visit Jennifer at JLDugan.com or follow her on Twitter and Instagram @JL_Dugan.

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1

Ruby

There’s an art to the extraction. First, I take Tyler’s arm—heavy across my stomach—and slide my fingers beneath. I lift it slightly and move centimeter by centimeter to the right side of the bed. And when I’m mostly free, I grab one of his pillows—warmed by my own overthinking head—and slip it under his arm. If I’m lucky, he’ll snuffle softly in the moonlight streaming into his messy bedroom, hug the pillow, and stay sleeping. If I’m unlucky, he’ll wake up and ask me where I’m going: Ruby, just stay. Ruby, please. Ruby, it won’t kill you to cuddle. I don’t have the energy for that.

Tyler’s messy brown hair falls into his face as he smiles in his sleep and hugs my pillow replacement a little tighter. I got lucky tonight—in every sense of the word. I grab my boots, leftovers from one of the ten million Western-themed pageants I’ve smiled my way through over the years, and creep out the front door barefoot, careful not to let the screen door slam and wake his parents.

The motion-sensor light clicks on as I shove my feet into my boots and make a beeline for my car, my soul, my lifeline: my baby-blue 1970 Ford Torino. Yes, it’s old as hell, but it’s the one thing in this world that’s truly mine. I bought it, rusted and rotten, off my great-aunt Maeve’s estate for three hundred bucks. I painstakingly put it back together, scavenging pieces from junkyards and flea markets. I restored it to its current state of splendor. Me. I did that.

Okay, so maybe I had a little help from Billy Jackson, the town’s least-crooked mechanic, but still.

I climb inside and shift it into neutral, taking off the emergency brake and letting the car coast backward down Tyler’s long hill of a driveway and into the street, where I finally flick the ignition. It rumbles to life, the sound closer to a growl than a purr. I resist the urge to rev the engine—god, I love that sound—and point my car toward home, feeling loose and boneless, relaxed and happy, content in the way one only can during that tiny glint of freedom between chores and obligations.

Not that Tyler is an obligation—or a chore, for that matter. He’s nice enough, our time together fun and consensual. In another universe, we’d probably be dating. But we live in this one, and in this universe, I love exactly two things: sleep and my car.

Tyler is a great stress reliever, an itch to scratch, a good time had by all. Nothing else. We have an arrangement, a friends-with-benefits sort of thing. No strings. If he called me tomorrow and said he wanted to ask a girl out, I’d say Go for it as long as it isn’t me—and I’d mean it. I hope he’d say the same. Which is why I’m driving home from his house two hours after getting a text that simply said: big game tomorrow, you around?

Be still my heart.

But then, a couple weeks ago, I texted him: pageant in the AM, come distract me? And he was crawling through my window within minutes.

See, it’s not an all-the-time thing; it’s an as-needed thing. Some people get high; Tyler and I get twenty minutes of consensual, safe sex—always use a condom, people—and a subsequent awkward exchange about how my leaving right after makes him feel weird. Thus, the sneaking out once he falls asleep: the ideal compromise, at least on my end.

I pull into the dirt-patch driveway in front of my trailer. It might not seem like much to some, but it’s ours and it’s home. Just me and my mom. Well, some of the time, anyway. The better times.

But the lights are still on in the kitchen, the TV flickering in the living room, and my heart sinks. Mom works the overnight shift cleaning offices, and her car’s not here, which means this will not be one of those “better times.” Literally nothing could drag me down from a good mood faster than having to be around her boyfriend, Chuck Rathbone.

Chuck and my mom have been together off and on for the past few years—and unfortunately for me, lately they’ve been more on than off. “Getting more serious,” I heard her say to a friend. Which is why he has unrestricted house privileges. Along with eating our food and wasting our electricity even though we can’t afford it privileges. 

I get why Chuck can’t help chasing my mom around—my mom is the kind of beautiful that even hard jobs and tough luck can’t dull, a beauty queen and Miss Teen USA hopeful right up until that second line showed up on her pregnancy test eighteen years ago. (Sorry, Mom.)

But I don’t really understand why my mom always takes him back. Chuck is, objectively, the worst.

I’d crash at my best friend Everly’s house if I wasn’t so sure Chuck had heard my car—my engine is less than stealthy, and normally I like it that way. But if I leave now, he’ll definitely tell Mom, and that’s one guilt trip I don’t need. On a scale of “needs an oil change” to “engine’s seized,” being rude to my mom’s boyfriend rates somewhere around “blown head gasket”—not a fatal blow, but like most things when it comes to my mother, expensive and difficult to fix.

I turn off my car, listening to the tick of the engine as it cools down in the spring air. The curtains in the living room move, no doubt Chuck stumbling around, trying to see what I’m doing and why I’m not inside. I reach into the back seat to grab the bag of stage makeup Mom made me pick up earlier and get out.

Our door creaks as I yank it open, and ignore the siding falling off next to it, then step over a particularly suspicious stain on the carpet. Five yapping Jack Russell terriers come tearing down the hallway. Mom’s other pride and joy. Please, god, do not have let them in my room; they’re barely house-trained—and by “barely,” I mean not at all.

“Shut those mutts up!” Chuck yells from the kitchen as he pulls open the fridge, as if I have any control over them. As if anyone has control over them. Mom likes them a little wild; she says it’s more natural that way. I’d personally prefer if their “wildness” could be limited to the rooms with vinyl flooring.

I crouch down and pet as many of them as I can, as fast as I can, while being tackled by the others. Tiny paws dig into my sides and legs as they fight for attention. “Shh, shh, shh,” I coax, calming them as much as it’s possible to calm five underexercised terriers that rarely see the outside of our home.

“Goddamn dogs,” Chuck says, carrying two cans of beer over to the recliner in front of the blaring TV. Fox News. As usual. He drops into the recliner, drips of beer falling onto his faded black T-shirt, which reads don’t tread on me. He looks like he hasn’t shaved in days, flecks of gray poking through his brown stubble. “You’re home late.”

“Yeah, sorry. I was studying with a friend,” I say, standing up once the dogs decide that sniffing one another is more interesting than tackling me. I wonder if they can smell Tyler’s cat.

Chuck raises his eyebrows, the last wisps of hair on his head flopping comically. “Your mom might fall for that garbage, but I know what girls like you do at night, and it’s not studying.”

“What would you know about studying?” I say, hating that he’s right but determined not to give him the satisfaction.

“I know you don’t get hickeys from math homework.” He laughs,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Young Readers Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2022
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593112555
• ISBN 13: 9780593112557
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 352
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Penguin Random House Ireland; https://eu-contact.penguin.ie; ; Morrison Chambers, 32 Nassau Street; Dublin; D02 YH68; Irland