Reading Ayn Rand in High School

I sit on the daybed skimming soft pages, tuning out Laverne & Shirley on TV. Like Dagny, the thin studious heroine, I miss Francisco d’Anconia, the childhood friend who’d returned in a smashy-tennis-leads-to-hardcore-sex scene. I’d eaten a roll of Butter Rum Lifesavers rereading it, poking my tongue through each to stroke surreptitiously along the inside of my lower lip. Hank Rearden, Dagny’s second boyfriend, gave her a boring green bracelet. No comparison. Now Dagny’s met John Galt. Whoever he is, he talks a lot. (Oh, Francisco.) At supper, my mother had said she despised Ayn Rand’s politics. Um, there’s politics?