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

reality, I search Nicole’s face for some kind of clue as to what’s next. Yet as I seek her confused brown eyes, I can’t help but remember her abandoning me in my hour of need at the reunion. I have no clue if this means that the reunion actually happened or not, but you know how sometimes you wake up from a bad dream and you’re all pissed off at the person who wronged you in it? And despite its being a dream and even though, say, your mom’s sister Aunt Sissy never actually wrote a scathing review of the trendy new Italian bistro you opened, claiming your mozzarella sticks are “on par with the Olive Garden” and that your wine list is “uninspired,” you still spend the whole day stewing at her for something that never, ever happened?
    That’s how I feel about Nicole right now.
    “No, Nicole. I’m allowed to wear jeans on Mondays. You’re not. Now get this heap moving.”
    Just like that, I slip into the skin that’s been waiting almost twenty-one years for me to return.
    And it feels so very right.
     * * * 
    T he last twenty-one years were all a dream.
    Obviously. That’s the only explanation.
    All those memories from college and working as a junior-level publicist and getting dumped over MK’s pan-Asian twist on scallops?
    Just your garden-variety nightmare brought on by mixing Jägermeister and Dexatrim Max over the weekend at a football party. Granted, a highly detailed, Ghost-of-Christmas-Future dream, but one nonetheless. It’s like the universe is giving me a heads-up of what’s to come and it’s not too late! Here’s a silver dollar, boy; go buy me a big, frigging goose!
    When I see Duke—I mean Martin —in the hallway, I don’t greet him as enthusiastically as I might have last week, because I’m still pissed off at him for taking that slutty lawyer to the reunion in my dream future.
    “Hey, babe.” He tries to kiss me as I work my locker combination. I always have used 34-24-26, my ideal measurements. (Why did chicks ever want big hips in the olden days? So gross .)
    I shrug away from his embrace. “Whatevs.”
    “What’s the matter, Liss?”
    He tries to touch my hair and I wriggle away from him and start to walk to English class, with him trailing behind me. Because I’ve been cold to him all day, he’s been nervous and attentive and I can sense a delicate yet important shift in our balance of power. In my awful dream future, he started to lose interest when we were seniors, so I’d get him jealous by breaking up with him and making out with other guys. But now that I sense I can have authority over him by just being bitchy ? I can do that! I am so going to flip the script. Dismissively, I tell him, “I’ve got to get to class.”
    He’s all puppy-dog eyes. “Can we talk later?”
    I wave him off. “In-box me.”
    He stops in his tracks and stares at me. “Do what now?”
    “Hit me up on Facebook.”
    “Huh?”
    “Or you can just text.”
    His confusion reminds me that none of this technology is on the market in 1991!
    Holy crap, I could invent Facebook before that Michael Cera–looking douche and I’d be the scrillionaire! Oprah would have no choice but to be my friend! I vow to pay more attention in my computer class.
    Anxious not to give away my get-so-freaking-rich-quick scheme, I tell him, “I said ‘I’ll smell you later.’” I punctuate this statement with a toss of my gloriously scented hair. I leave him in a cloud of flowers and Tahitian spice.
    As I make my way to Miss Beeson’s class, I notice all the junior girls admiring how I knotted my scarf. Ten bucks says they show up wearing them that way tomorrow. I give them the vaguest hint of a smile and they all start acting like they just won both showcases on The Price Is Right .
    Damn, it feels good to be a gangster.
    When I get to English, all the Belles are surrounding my empty desk. The whole crew is here—Nicole, Kimmy, April, Tammy—and they’re each clad in some variety of pastel miniskirt,