Free Here I Go Again: A Novel by Jen Lancaster

tooling down the street on his ten-speed. Is he . . . is he delivering newspapers? Oh, dude, I’m so sorry. I feel a real flash of empathy that he’s somehow ended up in his old high school job. I’d heard that he’d been killing it on Wall Street after college, but clearly the recession’s gotten the better of him if he’s back here doing this. No wonder he avoided the reunion.
    He tosses the paper on my porch, but I pretend to be very interested in my coffee so we don’t have to make eye contact. We’re both less embarrassed that way.
    I jog down the steps to retrieve the paper and return to the big Adirondack chair. I’m having a little trouble concentrating on the news, because I can’t stop peeking at Brian Murphy’s parents’ house across the street. When he lived at home, he used to sit out front and read the paper every day when weather permitted. I still can’t believe I was ever into someone who read the newspaper in high school! Voluntarily, and not just to find movie listings! Seriously, if he and I had ever gone public, I’d have been ousted as head of the Belles faster than you can say “shunned.”
    I wonder what kept Brian from the reunion? I guess that’s a good thing, though. He didn’t witness my entire social implosion. Of course, there’s a possibility he’s got bad blood with me, too, as our brief dalliance ended so badly. I’ll probably need to rethink my strategy in discussing business with him. Maybe I’ll ask Deva how she’d approach him.
    I scan the headlines of the Chicago Tribune , looking for mentions of NoCoup.com. I don’t see anything about the IPO, but I do notice that Clinton’s announced a run for the Democratic nomination for president. Good for her. Yet I hope she does something with her hair if she’s elected. I mean, really, should the leader of the free world be running around in velvet headbands ?
    I idly page past the news of another Clarence Thomas hearing—what did that old perv do now?—and editorials on the war, which frankly give me boredom cancer. I skip those entirely.
    I’m about to pull open the sports section when ancient Mrs. Camarelli’s cat, Snowball, walks across the paper. Why is it that cats can’t stand the sight of you until you’re reading? I attempt to shoo him off my lap but he keeps nuzzling me and getting fur all over my sweater. He’s a sweet cat, but come on!
    “Snowball! Snowball, please!” I’m in the process of placing him on the ground when it occurs to me that Snowball went to the Big Litter Box in the Sky about ten years ago.
    This is weird.
    “You’re not Snowball, right? You’re some other annoying cat keeping me from getting my news on.” I read the tag on his collar. Snowball Camarelli, 708-555-9989 .
    Well, I’ll be damned. I guess Mrs. Camarelli somehow found a replacement Snowball, right down to the two different-colored eyes and half a tail.
    What are the odds?
    But didn’t I hear that Mrs. Camarelli herself went to the Big Litter Box in the Sky last year?
    Um . . . am I suddenly living an episode of the X-Files ?
    I slowly flip back to the front page of the paper and I read that it’s, in fact, Bill Clinton who’s seeking the presidential nomination. And the paper’s dated October 15, 1991 . . . the day before my seventeenth birthday.
    What. The. Fuck?
    I dash back inside the house, looking for clues or possibly Scully and Mulder. The kitchen calendar is open to October 1991. According to today’s entry, my mother’s having her hair “frosted” this morning before hitting a noon “Jazzercise class.”
    Okay, someone is messing with me.
    Clearly.
    And yet Jodie Foster’s on the cover of the Time magazine in the half bath, with an article on her directorial debut in the film Little Man Tate , which I saw with Kimmy’s boyfriend Chet on a night I was mad at Duke during my senior year. (Told you he was a cheater.)
    Well, Mamma did discover “the eBay,” so it’s possible she could