Free Here I Go Again: A Novel by Jen Lancaster Page A

procure these items. Why , I couldn’t say, but it’s possible. Maybe she wants to remind me of better times? That’s lovely, but kind of esoteric. I don’t really understand the no-longer-dead cat business, but snaps for creativity, yes? Was she in the bushes while I read the news, all, “Cue the cat! Cue the cat!”
    The TV Guide in the den features Sharon Gless and Arsenio Hall on the cover, both having topped Mr. Blackwell’s “Worst Dressed” lists. Michael Westen’s mother is done up in clown pants and a tapestry vest, and Arsenio’s wearing a tie the color of baby poop. (I know this because Nicole made me try to change a diaper once.) ( Once .) These two deserve to be on the naughty list, for sure, but I don’t have time to parse out the specific nature of their fashion crimes right now.
    I’m thoroughly confused and possibly a tiny bit creeped out. This isn’t outside of the realm of what Mamma would do to cheer me up, and she’s known for being an elaborate plotter. Like the time she threw that massive surprise party for Daddy’s fiftieth birthday and she hired Frankie Valli to sing but then she forgot to have anyone actually bring Daddy to it. I’ll say he was surprised . . . at breakfast the next morning.
    Okay, I can see maybe how she’d enlist the services of a not-dead cat, an i-banker, and maybe an auction site to buy a few old magazines.
    I guess?
    I look around the room, trying to piece this all together, and my eyes come to rest on Daddy’s big square Magnavox. (Clever attention to detail, replacing the plasma screen my father bought before the 2010 Super Bowl.) (Geaux, Saints!)
    Still, it’s not outside the realm of the possible that Mamma set this all up. I don’t quite understand why, and that’s a puzzler, because usually her motives are clear, like when she’d buy me designer jeans a size down from what I normally wore when she was at the height of her passive-aggressivity while I was in high school. (I certainly don’t miss her doing that. )
    But is all of this really her doing?
    As I stare at the television, I realize it holds the key. My mother can’t control what’s broadcast, right? So if this is all one big (confusing) ruse, I’ll turn it on and see Matt Lauer and Ann Curry. Easy enough.
    I search for the remote and the television slowly fires up. Today is indeed on NBC, featuring a prepubescent Katie Couric and a fat Al Roker.
    There’s no way Katie and Al are in on this, too.
    OMG!
    WTF!
    IDK!
    I bolt into the garage, expecting to find my desk, a bunch of balloons, and perhaps a very confused Frankie Valli, but instead I run directly into a hot pink BMW convertible, topped with an enormous red bow.
    This car is my birthday present.
    In 1991.
    Deva, what was in that bottle?
    Shell-shocked, I make my way back into the driveway. I’m standing there all dumbfounded when Nicole pulls up, not in a hideous family truckster, but instead in her mom’s battered old Ford Taurus.
    Did I mention she’s clearly seventeen again?
    I stand there trying not to gawp when Nicole cranks down her window. “Hi, Lissy! We’ve got to fly or we’ll be late for homeroom!”
    I slide into the seat next to her and I say nothing, as words currently escape me.
    Nicole self-consciously smoothes her miniskirt and poufs her perm. “You look really pretty today, Liss. But, um . . . I thought you said we weren’t allowed to wear jeans on Mondays.”
    That’s when it finally sinks in.
    This is it.
    This is my chance!
    Somehow, some way, I’ve been granted an enormous do-over. I don’t know why this happened, but it did happen and I’m here now. I have no choice but to roll with it. If I’m back in time, that means all the bad stuff in my future never actually happened. I’m not old, I’m not fat, I’m not dumped, and no one’s mad at me.
    And maybe all those diary entries that make me seem like the Meanest Mean Girl Who Ever Meaned don’t actually exist?
    Grappling with this new