Free Wicked Jealous: A Love Story by Robin Palmer Page B

toward Hillary to make sure that it was, indeed, okay. I couldn’t believe it.
My
father—a guy who had been in charge of rooms full of
Harvard Lampoon
–trained writers and stand-up comedians, two of the most difficult personalities known to man—melted into a puddle whenever he was around her. It really was like she had him under some kind of spell.
    “But try and think fast because those extra-deluxe villas go very quickly,” Hillary said.
    I could only hope that my dad’s reverse lobotomy would happen quicker.

    “I can’t believe I have to wait sixty-seven days until you move in,” Nicola moaned at lunch the day after Dad’s Italy announcement as we sat at our table in the way, way, way corner of the cafeteria. During the early fall and spring months, we liked to sit outside, but because it was March we were forced to sit inside. The good news about being considered weird is that you’re not just invisible to your classmates, but also to your teachers, which is why Nicola was able to have her feet up on the table and paint her toenails turquoise without Mr. Machowksy, our gym teacher, commenting on it as he walked by.
    I looked up from my photography book about Paris in the sixties. I loved all the photographs of the French women in their sundresses and pumps and “How could you break my heart into a million pieces when I gave you my soul?” pouts. Nicola kept telling me that with all the weight I had lost and my newfound muscle tone (“
That’s
what that line on my calf is?!” I exclaimed when she pointed it out to me), it was time for me to ditch my cargos and T-shirts for sundresses, too, but I still wasn’t ready.
    “I didn’t say I was definitely doing it,” I said for like the seventeenth time that day.
    “Oh, you’re doing it,” she replied, for the eighteenth. She began to bounce up and down in her chair. “And I’m going to be over there every single night!” she squealed.
    “Okay, who are you, and what have you done with my best friend?” I demanded.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Squealing? Bouncing in your chair?”
    She settled down. “Sorry about that.” She began to bounce again. “But it’s just so exciting!”
    I rolled my eyes. I should have known that, unlike me, who considered living with my brother and his friends some sort of karmic payback for something hideous I must have done in a past life, Nicola would think this was the best news ever. “You know, it would be one thing if you tried to do something about your crush and actually
spoke
to my brother once in a while,” I said. “Then I could understand why you were so excited.”
    “But that’s the thing,” she replied. “I
am
ready to do something about it. I’m ready to have him fall madly in love with me and give him the gift of becoming his girlfriend. Plus, I think the experience will really help socialize you,” she said, pulling at the extensions that she had finally convinced her mother to let her get. Which she immediately had braided into cornrows by a woman on the Venice boardwalk and then dyed pink.
    I looked at her. “That makes me sound like I’m a rescue dog or something.”
    “Hmm. It does, doesn’t it? Let me think of another way to put it.” She thought for a second. “Okay, got it. How about . . . if you’re lucky, maybe you’ll run into one of the guys coming out of the shower, and there’ll be a breeze from the ocean and it’ll blow his towel right off.”
    I shook my head. “Not helping.”
    She sighed. “Do you realize most girls would kill to have the opportunity to live with seven guys for a summer?! I bet after this you could get a book deal with all the secrets you learn about guys and the way they think!”
    “Okay, ‘most girls’ sit over there,” I said, pointing across the room at a clique of giggling girls. “
We
,” I said, pointing at Nicola’s multicolored toes and my French photo book, “are not most girls.”
    “Amen to that. But we’re still