Pulp. Robin Talley
ago. If you don’t get started soon, how will you have time left for your college applications?”
“I know, I know.” Abby tried to think of some explanation that would get Linh off her back. “My brother’s been sucking up all my time lately. I keep having to take him to dance class since my parents are always out of town.”
The truth was, just thinking about college applications made her shudder. She hated how competitive everyone got over that stuff. As though they were all suddenly reduced to SATs and GPAs and other quantitative acronyms that had nothing to do with who they really were. And the essays weren’t any better. How could anyone seriously sum up their view on the world in five hundred words?
Senior projects were the same way. Everyone at Fawcett obsessed over them as if they were curing cancer or painting the Sistine Chapel instead of doing glorified science fair projects and book reports.
“Hey, maybe I could get credit for writing Broken Dreams fanfic.” Abby grinned. “Do you think I could just write a bunch of short stories about Velma being a lesbian and change the names?”
That did the trick. Linh laughed and pulled off Abby’s cat-eye glasses, balancing them on the tip of her own nose.
Okay, this couldn’t only be happening in Abby’s head. They were definitely flirting.
“You and your fifties obsession.” Linh flipped the glasses up at Abby, giggling. “That show’s been canceled for, what, a year?”
“Two years. Anyway, Broken Dreams wasn’t the fifties, it was the early sixties.” Abby smiled and grabbed her glasses back. As much as she wanted to keep up the playful vibe, she couldn’t let Linh have her glasses. Abby loved how they looked, but she could also barely see without them.
“Is Broken Dreams fanfic even a thing?” Linh asked.
“Definitely.” Abby slid her glasses back on and reached for her laptop. “Want to read about Walter and Earl getting it on in the back of the accounting office?”
“Ew. Although kind of, now that you mention it.” Linh pulled the computer onto her lap and started a search.
Abby laughed. In ninth grade, she and Linh used to read fanfic together every day. They were obsessed with a dumb show called The Flighted Ones. Their favorite pairing was Owen/Jack, or “Ojack,” as the true fans called them. Abby had stayed up late at night writing long, overwrought stories describing Ojack’s first date, or their first kiss, or their First Time. (This was back before Abby had had a First Time of her own, so writing fictional versions felt deliciously scandalous.)
“Ha, look at this.” Linh turned the screen so Abby could see it. “Someone made a list of all the gay stuff that ever happened on this show. Do you remember a woman trying to lick Velma’s neck?”
“What? No!” As Abby leaned in to see the screen, an ad off to the side of the main article caught her eye.
In the image, a woman in a tight red dress with a gorgeous flipped hairstyle stood behind a bed. In front of her another woman, wearing an old-fashioned skirt and blouse, was lying down. The words I PREFER GIRLS loomed beside them in giant red font.
Abby pointed. “What’s that?”
“Huh, I don’t know.” Linh clicked on the image. “Are those characters from Broken Dreams?”
“I don’t think so. Those look like fifties outfits to me.”
If there was one thing Abby knew, it was fifties fashion. She’d been a devotee since middle school. She used to make her own fifties-inspired outfits, starting with simple wrap tops and pencil skirts, until the year her grandparents gave her a sewing machine for Hanukkah and she upgraded to sailor suits and cocktail dresses.
Finding the old patterns and sewing them was fun, but it took forever. After she’d spent months making her prom dress sophomore year, Abby decided she’d had enough of ironing musty old fabrics and sorting through tangled piles of thread. Now her sewing machine sat in the attic and she ordered retro-style clothes online.
Which meant the outfits were the first thing Abby noticed when Linh clicked through to the page with a bigger version of the same image. The women under the I Prefer Girls label were dressed simply—a clingy sleeveless dress on one, a pink blouse and black skirt on the other. The blouse was unbuttoned nearly down to the woman’s waist, so you could see her slip beneath. Or maybe that was her bra.
The page’s headline read “The Best of 1950s Lesbian Pulp Fiction.”
“Wait a second. Is this seriously from the fifties?” Abby pulled the computer onto her own lap. “Is that a book cover?”
“I didn’t know they had lesbian porn back then.” Linh leaned in to see. “Oh, wait. There’s another one—Wow. Scroll down.”
Abby scrolled. Below the picture of I Prefer Girls was another cover. This one was called Warped Women, and it also featured a woman in a red dress. She was holding a whip and leaning threateningly over another woman who was crouched on the floor. The crouching woman’s blouse was unbuttoned, and underneath she was wearing a black lace bra. Her left boob was basically hanging out of it.
“What kind of books are these?” Linh’s mouth was agape.
Abby kept scrolling. Image after image, with more of the same. The covers showed women in varying states of undress, and they had titles like When Lesbians Strike and My Wife the Dyke and Twilight Girl. The captions beside each cover listed publication dates—1963, 1955, 1959, 1965...
“Fifties lesbian porn.” Linh laughed harder than ever. “Hey, I think we’ve found your genre!”
“Can you even imagine?” Abby kept scrolling. The images got sexier the farther she went. “I can’t believe they got away with this. I mean, there aren’t even books like this today, as far as I know. Plus, they had censors in the fifties. That’s why all the movies sucked.”
“Here, let’s make a new one. For your senior project.” Linh leaped to her feet and grabbed the cement column that stood next to the couch. She pulled down the neckline of her T-shirt, stuck out her chest, lifted one knee onto a cushion and tilted her head forward, imitating the woman on the cover of the last book on the page, Dormitory Women. “Did I get it right?”
All Abby could think was that there should be a law banning your ex-girlfriend from doing sexy poses in front of you before you’d officially gotten back together. Seriously, this had to be a legitimate form of torture.
But she did her best to keep acting nonchalant as she held up the computer screen to compare. Linh did look kind of like the woman on the painted cover, with her dark hair and thick eyebrows, even though Linh’s warm eyes and inviting smile were a thousand times prettier than the cover model’s. Not to mention that Linh was wearing a T-shirt and cutoffs, and the Dormitory Women model was in a tight white blouse and severely belted skirt.
“Hmm—I think your hand needs to be lower down...” Abby carefully adjusted the position of Linh’s hand on her thigh and brushed her hair forward over one shoulder, trying to act as if her intentions were solely artistic. As if touching Linh didn’t activate any still-in-love-with-her segments of Abby’s brain, or other body parts. “Pout your lips more. There, that’s perfect.” Abby lifted her phone and snapped a photo.
“You do one next.” Linh pointed her chin toward the laptop screen.
“Okay!” Abby scrolled until she found a cover she liked. The book was called Woman Doctor, and the cover showed a woman, a psychiatrist apparently, sitting in a chair taking notes on a pad while a younger woman with curly blond hair lay on a couch behind her. The whole design seemed to be some bizarre male fantasy, because the patient appeared to have gone to her therapy appointment wearing an old-fashioned slip and nothing else.
Abby’s hair was brown, straight and boringly plain