In Zanesville (A Coming-of-Age Story in the 1970s)
"We can't believe the house is on fire. It's so embarrassing first of all, and so dangerous second of all."
There is a fire in the third-floor bathroom, conjured up through the means of setting toilet paper on fire in a wicker basket. The culprit, however, has taken off and is nowhere to be found.
"We've been babysitting for the Kozaks all summer, 5 days a week, 8 hours a day; 6 kids. ... We each get 75¢ an hour."
The two babysitting best friends begin to evacuate the smoking house of pets and children before finally calling the fire department; everything is good! 👍 A police officer takes it upon himself to find the young culprit, Derek, and bring him home. By this point, the parents have also arrived...
"Derek enters the kitchen first, landing against the far wall like a discarded boot.
"Is this the one you can't make mind?" the father thunders at us."
The young adolescents watch on in horror as the father turns the stove top burner on, and plunges his son's hand into the blue flame.
The protagonist and Felicia are best friends. They are 14-years-old -- grade 9 -- growing up in the rural town of Zanesville, Illinois. There's not a whole lot to do in this town, aside from taking care of a box of stray kittens that the girls have found.
But it can only remain a secret for so long; eventually the girls' mothers discover the kittens. We eventually hear the old adage:
"Phyllis' of the opinion you're late bloomers. I want you to quit pulling this kind of shit and act your age, both you and Flea."
Ugggggh!! Parents just don't understand!
In fact there are countless passages in this novel that remind me of my own childhood. For example, an exchange between the two best friends:
"What're you having for dinner?" she yells.
"Dumplings and homemade noodles," I yell
"Can I come?" she yells.
"I want to come to yours," I yell.
"Okay," I yell."
And I remember getting this one often as well 😂
"And let me ask you this," my mother says, squinting against her cigarette. "Don't you two ever get sick of each other?"
"We're sick of each other right now," I say."
Another great high school memory: band 🎷🥁🎺 The two best friends have been in band for as long as they can remember but for whatever reason, while trying on their uniforms, band feels "strange" this time.
"First problem: the hat is resting on my ears, which means they're exposed. Second problem: the entire uniform is too large and stiff for me. Third problem: Felicia looks like Uncle Sam."
"I hadn't realized before, but now I do: we've made a terrible mistake. Band is weird."
(Image created using an AI art generator on Night Cafe)
In the end the girls decide to quit band (in the middle of the march 😭). They sit and watch the theatrics before finally returning with the rest of the students. Not before being noticed first, however...
"For just a moment, we think we've gotten away with it, until I glance over and see first flute staring at me.
"Hey," I say weakly.
"Hay is for jackasses," she replies."
And so the two best friends receive detention, along with a boy who is also there. Felicia teases her friend, telling her that he likes her. The feeling is reminiscent of when I experienced childhood crushes:
"I don't know why she said that guy liked me, because he doesn't, but just having had it said and then seeing him every day in detention makes it seem vaguely true."
But soon detention is finished, the protagonist is love sick, so the two girls are already plotting how to get more! 😄 They accomplish this by launching their garbage at the lunch lady 😂 They both agree that they have to talk to their crushes; otherwise they were "mean for nothing."
The next day at detention our protagonist finally speaks to her crush...
"Silence. The wind blows across the barren landscape of my chest. Time reverts to normal and I make my way to my table, hands trembling, and sit."
Until a note is tossed back to her, with a single word written on it:
Hi.
Love sick turns into crazy in love as the young protagonist plots her next move. She decides to talk to her crush by giving him a piece of fudge then inviting him to the football game. She finds him sitting in the bleachers and he gives her his jacket 🥺🥰
"The sly, teasing grin, the shaking of the hair back over the ears, and the clear-eyed gaze, all directed at me. A guy who isn't one of my uncles is teasing me."
"His hand is on my waist now. ... He slowly bunches my shirt up, an eighth of an inch at a time. There's something delirious and drowsy about the whole endeavor. ... A boy has his fingers hooked in my belt loop while the thumb moves back and forth along a shoreline of skin."
I loved being reminded of those first early experiences with the opposite sex, something so innocent as the sensation of someone else touching your skin. Everything feels like an ASMR experience; your head goes all tingly, as if you may fall asleep 🤤...
Back at school, in the girls' bathroom, where the protagonist encounters a cheerleader smoking in one of the stalls. She invites the girl (and her best friend Felicia) to a slumber party.
"Crap! The problem with Patti Michaels is that she not only doesn't know she isn't cheerleader material, but she doesn't know who should and shouldn't be invited to one of their parties. This is a disaster."
School continues while the protagonist ponders whether to go or not. Of course we cannot discuss high school without remembering some fond memories of puberty, and thus menstruation 😬🙈 So while our protagonist is sitting in art class...
"Suddenly I feel the warm, creeping sensation that means I need to get to my gym locker. Weird, because usually I have about 5 hours of warning, starting with a sense of doom and ending with spine-crushing cramps. ... I casually tug my skirt away."
Thankfully it was only a false alarm 😌👍
It's the night of Patti Michaels slumber party!~ The girls spend the evening eating pizza and "tripping" on Aspirin 😂🥴 (they end up getting naked all together!) Suddenly there's a tapping on the window: it's boys! The boys and girls take off together -- even Felicia! Everyone except for our protagonist, who is the odd one out... She stays behind, haunting the halls of the cheerleader's house.
"The only thing I'm sure of right now is that I hate Felicia."
The party is over, yet the girls' friendship is no longer the same. Betrayed by Felicia, the protagonist stops taking her calls. She avoids Felicia at school by hanging out with the art teacher. Felicia tries confronting our protagonist about it, but she acts as though nothing is bothering her.
The cheerleaders have taken a liking to the protagonist and invite her to another party; this time a bonfire party (with boys!). They all meet after school to discuss the details further, where our protagonist notices a boy, noticing her!
"There's a boy with them, Hector, still in the shadows, wearing a denim farm jacket. There's something about the wide, flat planes of the boy's face that reminds me of a cow, in a good way."
The night of the bonfire, where our protagonist attends with the cheerleaders. Tommy Walton, the second-most-popular boy in school, tries to kiss the protagonist but she refuses. Instead she runs into Hector, the boy she does like, and he takes her to a lookout point where they can see the moon.
"From atop the dangerous rock, we gaze down at the inky void and back up at the starry sky until we're dizzy and then he turns and kisses me. No ceremony, no confusion of legs and arms. Just kisses me..."
Then Felicia suddenly shows up at the bonfire. The girls finally discuss why their friendship changed after the cheerleader's slumber party, and the two actually seem to be going back to being best friends. In the heart of the party, the girls have a beer for the very first time 🍻
"Where are we?"
"Insaneville," Felicia answers.
My review....
The main component that I truly enjoyed about this novel was its realism. Fiction of course, but it is written so realistically that you'd believe you were witnessing the story for yourself in 1970s America. From the use of corporal punishment, to the mother's chain smoking, to the father's alcoholism, the siblings' banter, playing G.I. Joe, the invention of contact lenses, learning to use a sanitary belt!?
And -- of course -- the universal theme of growing up and coming of age. There were countless times in the novel where I was either in stitches or in shock from the relevancy.
Like again, menstruation and learning how to use sanitary products. There is a moment in the book where the protagonist is learning to insert a tampon for the very first time and I couldn't believe how scary accurate it was of many girls' experience.
"I look at the insert that comes in the box, showing an outline of a girl seated on a toilet. She's placing what looks like a firecracker in the outline of her uterus."
"Not uterus, vagina." She pronounces the word like Gina, shaking my confidence.
"Nothing is happening. There's nowhere for it to go."
"I hate to tell you this, but you have to make it fit," Felicia says.
They should show the girl screaming.
Or the arguments that I would get into with my parents 😂
"I actually don't give a shit what you heard," my mother states, "and I'm not going to stand here arguing with a teenager about what I did or didn't say."
Which in turn leads to that feeling of hopelessness, being stuck in the middle; "Being a teenager sucks! 😠
"I'm tired of figuring things out for myself! Just tell me why I look like this, feel like this, behave like this."
The experience of beginning to notice the opposite sex in a different light.
"I'm sick of being a teenager. So far it hasn't gotten me anything beyond period cramps and nameless yearning, which I had as a kid too, but this is a new kind of nameless yearning that has boys attached to it."
Realizing that you're no longer a child.
"Stuck in the mirror are mementos from my childhood, which is now over. I wandered through it and came out on the other side. It's a stark feeling."
Anxiety over your appearance.
"I look at myself in the mirror. Why did I think it was a boy calling me? He doesn't even know my name. Plus, I look like this."
I will say that I didn't completely like the ending. There was no big event; the protagonist (she doesn't have a name, by the way 😅) and her best friend make amends, that's about it. And even that isn't terribly cathartic. They both most say, "I'm so weird now," and that's about it. I understand they're teenagers, and communication isn't teenagers strong point, but it just seemed awfully lazy.
As well as the very last few lines of the book; it literally ends with the best friends making up, then "Bombs away!" and having a beer 😅 Again, not very climactic...
Anyway, thanks for reading! 🙏
