Free The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs by Matthew Dicks Page B

don’t know what they are, either, but just trust me. Emily was a bully. Ellie, too.”
    â€œThings were different when I was your age. Bullying wasn’t the thing it is today.”
    â€œJesus Christ, Mom. A rose by any other name and all that bullshit. Chilean sea bass is really Patagonian toothfish, but the name doesn’t change the way it tastes. You didn’t call them bullies back then, but that’s what they were. Fucking cowards who ganged up on you and made your life miserable.”
    Caroline didn’t know why she continued to defend Emily, but she did. Old habits, maybe. “I always thought that Emily and Ellie had more in common than me and Emily, so it made sense that they would gravitate toward each other.”
    â€œSure,” Polly said, sounding exasperated now. “But they didn’t have to be dicks about it. You can have more than one friend. You can make new friends without cutting out your oldest friend completely.”
    â€œA lot of the stuff that Emily and Ellie got into was stuff that I didn’t even understand,” Caroline said. “They were listening to bands like Black Flagg and Suicidal Tendencies. Echo & the Bunnymen. The Meatmen. Music was so important. Liking the right music, sure. But just knowing the music was even more important. It changed the way they dressed. The way they talked. God, I can’t believe I remember all this. It must sound so pathetic…”
    â€œIt’s not pathetic,” Polly said, softening her voice a bit. “Of course you remember that stuff. It was high school. You remember stuff when you are younger because there are so many firsts. Lots of memorable moments. When you get old, it’s same old, same old. Less new stuff to remember. It’s why time seems to fly the older you get. Life isn’t as interesting anymore.”
    â€œIs that really a thing?” Caroline asked.
    â€œSeriously? Do you even read anymore?”
    â€œIt makes sense. I remember so much from that time. Emily and Ellie would watch Saturday Night Live every week and spent all day Monday talking about the skits and the monologue. It’s all I would ever hear on Mondays.”
    â€œYou had Saturday Night Live back then?”
    Turned out Polly didn’t know everything. “Yes, but I never got to watch it. Grandma wouldn’t let me stay up that late. And there was no Internet back then, so it wasn’t like I could catch up on YouTube the next day. Even if I wanted to listen to their music, it meant I’d have to find the tapes and buy them. I couldn’t just use Google and know everything I needed to know to sound cool. It may be hard to believe—today’s world is so different—but information cost money back then, and I had no money.”
    â€œYou guys were living in the stone age,” Polly said.
    â€œIt wasn’t that long ago,” Caroline said. “But the world really was different back then. I remember spending hours sitting in front of my mother’s radio with a clunky plastic cassette recorder in my hand, just waiting to record a Meatmen or Black Flagg song. And of course they never did. Emily and Ellie loved the most obscure bands. The ones that only college radio stations were playing. It sounds crazy, but I thought that if I could just find a way to listen to the same music, then I could talk to them about it. I could be cool.”
    Then came the day that changed everything.
    It had started off well. An A on her French test. A smile from Randy Marcotte in English class. A substitute in gym who let the class hang out on the bleachers and do homework. Caroline was feeling good when she passed through the double doors into the already crowded cafeteria. She arrived late on Fridays—she had to walk across campus from typing class—so many of the students were already seated and eating by the time she got there.
    As Caroline approached the lunch table, she saw