Pulp. Robin Talley
This is not a natural position. Ow.”
“That’s awesome, though. You’ve almost got it, but you need to pull your hair over your face more.”
Abby pulled. “How’s that?”
“Better.” Linh laughed and reached for her phone. Abby laughed, too, lifting her head from the cushion. “Hey! You’re breaking the pose. I didn’t get a photo yet.”
“I can’t help it. I’m a warped woman!”
Linh was still laughing, but when she sat back down she moved to the other couch, putting two armrests between them. Abby sat up, trying not to let her disappointment show, and tugged the hem of her dress back down.
“I want to read one of those books.” Linh pointed to Abby’s computer. “I bet they’re hilarious. Plus, those covers are pretty hot.”
“The covers are basically just ads for cleavage.”
“There are worse things to advertise.”
“True.” Abby flushed. “Let’s find an ebook.”
She balanced her computer on her knees and turned so Linh could see the screen, then ran a search for lesbian pulp fiction. While the results loaded, Abby drummed her fingers on the edge of her laptop and tried to think of a good excuse for her to move to the other couch, too.
“Huh, okay, so there’s like five million results.” Linh pointed to the screen. “Here, that one has a list.”
Abby clicked through and skimmed the article. “I was right about the censors. This says the books basically always ended with someone either turning straight or dying. Otherwise the publishers could’ve gone to jail.”
“Whatever, I don’t care. I just want to read the sex scenes.”
Abby laughed, delighted, and scrolled down. The article had a list of books at the bottom, with more of those ridiculous covers. “These titles are so weird. Strange Sisters. In the Shadows. Voluptuous Vixens.”
“Voluptuous Vixens?” There was so much glee in Linh’s voice that Abby giggled, too.
“Edge of Twilight. The Third Sex. A Love So Strange.”
“Boring. See if you can find that Warped Women one.”
“Hey, wait, the article says this other one’s good. And it’s free to download.” Abby cleared her throat and read.
“The classic and enduringly popular novel of two young girls coming of age in Greenwich Village. The story’s heroines, Paula and Elaine, stand alongside such classic lesbian pulp characters as Beebo Brinker and Leda Taylor.”
Linh cracked up. “Beebo? What kind of names are these?”
“Fifties names. Here, get this—the author’s name is ‘Marian Love.’ So cheesy. Her book came out in 1956. It’s called Women of the Twilight Realm.”
“Why do so many of these books have Twilight in their name? Is there lesbian vampire subtext?”
“Well, I’m downloading it, so I guess we’ll find out. Wow, check it out, this cover is cheese-tastic, too.”
The image on the screen had rips running through it, as though someone had taken a photo of an old, beaten-up copy of the book and uploaded it as the official cover. The picture didn’t have as much cleavage as some of the other books, but Abby could tell it would still have been shocking by fifties standards. It showed two women sitting on a bed together, one with short brown hair and one with long blond waves. The blond one, dressed in a filmy nightgown, was crying onto the brown-haired woman’s shoulder. The brown-haired woman was smoking, wearing a necktie, patting the other woman’s shoulder and staring at her boobs. Above the title a tiny line of type read “They were women only a strange love could satisfy. A daring novel of the third sex.”
“I didn’t know people were allowed to smoke on book covers,” Linh said, studying the screen.
“Everyone smoked everywhere in the fifties. They didn’t know it was gross yet.”
“Whatever. Turn to the beginning. I want to read about the strange love these two ladies get up to.”
Abby clicked into the text and read the first line out loud.
“Elaine had already had her heart broken once. From now on, she was keeping it wrapped up in cellophane.”
Abby stopped reading. “What’s cellophane?”
“You don’t remember that song from Chicago? ‘Mr. Cellophane’?”
“Oh, right.” Abby and Linh had both done theater in middle school, before their schedules got so packed. “Well, is cellophane bulletproof or something? Why would you wrap your heart in it?”
“How would I know? Come on, find the sexy parts.”
“Here, you can look.” Abby passed her the computer.
“Okay...” Linh clicked through the pages. After a minute, she frowned at the screen. “This is all just talking so far. Everyone’s sitting around in a bar with all their clothes on.” She clicked again and again, still peering down. “And...that’s the end of chapter one already. What kind of porn is this? These covers are false advertising.”
“Keep going. Maybe the porn’s in chapter two.”
While Linh clicked, Abby turned to her phone to look up cellophane.
The characters on the cover of Women of the Twilight Realm didn’t look that much older than Abby. She wondered who’d broken Elaine’s heart so badly that she needed to protect it.
And would that even work? Wrapping your heart in metaphorical armor? Maybe you could keep yourself whole just by concentrating hard enough.
Before she could find anything, her class-reminder chime popped onto the screen.
“Shit!” Abby’s panic bubbled, wiping away all thoughts of vintage lesbians. She snatched the computer from Linh and shoved it into her backpack. “I forgot. I’m supposed to meet with Ms. Sloane in three minutes. Shit, shit!”
“Ms. Sloane?” Linh didn’t get up, but there was alarm in her eyes. “Isn’t she your project advisor?”
“Yes. Shit, shit!”
“Wait—is this your meeting about the project proposal? The one you still don’t have a topic for?”
Abby pinched the bridge of her nose. “Yes.”
“Abby, this is serious! You could get in real trouble!”
“I know, I know. I’ll figure something out on my way there.”
Abby threw open the door without waiting for Linh to say anything more and charged down the hall, ignoring the sophomores who turned to stare from the doorway of the art room.
She tried, desperately, to come up with an idea. Any idea.
Maybe she could write fanfic after all. She’d posted a Flighted Ones story back in middle school that had ninety-seven chapters, and some of them had even been good. Maybe she could pull out some of the chapters, change the names and rework them into something Ms. Sloane would find acceptable.
It wasn’t a great idea, but it was all Abby had. She raced across the hall and down the stairs to the third floor, her platform Mary Janes thundering on the tiles. She’d probably have to take the story offline before she turned in her project, in case Ms. Sloane ran one of those plagiarism searches. It would suck to lose all those reader comments, though.
“Abby?” Ms. Sloane stepped through her classroom door. Abby came to an abrupt halt. “Are you all right?”
“I’m