Do-Overs by Christine Jarmola Read Free Book Online

Love you!” With a click I disconnected and set my phone to go directly to voicemail. I knew she’d call back soon.
    “Are you okay?” asked Rachel. I jumped about three feet in the air and gave a squeaky scream. I hadn’t heard her come through our adjoining bathroom into my room. “You look awful. Bad day?”
    Always intuitive, Rachel knew that I was having a melt down. She was so wise beyond her years that I almost told her of my bizarre eraser and time travel experience. But then again we had known each other for less than two weeks and I doubted, even with her empathetic spirit that she would believe me. She’d probably just pack quickly and look for a different suitemate or make sure to always bolt the door between our rooms. As much as I would like to confide in someone, I didn’t want my new start to land me on the nutty list.
    “Poop,” was what I said instead. Actually I might have used a more descriptive noun, but it meant poop.
    “Yeah, I heard about that the other day,” Rachel replied with a sad smile. “Small campus, remember. Do we need to go shoe shopping?”
    Leave it Rachel to see the silver lining in fecal matter. At least it would give us a reason to go shopping.
    Reaching in the mini-fridge, Rachel retrieved two cans of Diet Dr. Pepper and a roll of cookie dough. Slicing off a chunk with Stina’s big butcher knife, she sat down on my bed and motioned for me to sit next to her. My eyes didn’t leave the knife. With a nut job in the room, that big honkin’ knife was not the best of ideas. I’d get rid of it later before my mental capacity deteriorated any further.
    “Seems your start over is going a little harder than planned,” she began. Dr. Rachel Herz, psychologist extraordinary, was in for counseling.
    “Two classes and I’ve already stuck my one foot in my mouth and the other foot in dog crap. Then in the cafeteria. . .” I barely caught myself before I mentioned the spaghetti fiasco that in reality had never happened—or something like that.
    “Oh I heard about that.”
    There was a look of shock on my face. Maybe I wasn’t the only one to experience the time change. Maybe Rachel wasn’t just empathetic but in touch with all otherworldly occurrences. Hopefully together we could figure it out.
    “Olivia’s like that,” Rachel continued. I was confused. I started to shout out, great you felt the time change too when I slowly realized she was referring to the Olivia-hunky-guy-table-incident from the week before. “Please don’t judge her badly by that. She really is a good person and in most ways a loyal friend. Just not where guys are involved. As you get to know her you’ll start to notice—how do I say this nicely? Well, she’s not super academic. I mean, you heard us teasing her about flunking out of Spanish, when she grew up in a household of native speakers. That doesn’t happen very often. Her whole life she has gotten by on her looks. I’ve met her family. Nothing she does seems important to them other than how she looks—and if she finds a rich husband.
    “I hope you don’t think I’m breaking any confidences, as that is something I will never do. To be a good psychologist I have to be trustworthy. Even more so to be a good friend,” Rachel paused for a moment and ate a nibble of dough. “Anything I tell you about Olivia, or Stina for that matter, is something that is common knowledge. But as we are all living in close confines together, the faster we understand each other the fewer hurt feelings. So I’ll fill you in on the most pertinent facts. You’ll find that for all her beauty, Olivia has no self-confidence. She needs to feel control of her situation a little more than most of us. She’s just as lost and confused as the rest of us inside that drop-dead gorgeous body.”
    For a second I felt better. My mom had tried my whole life to make me understand that everybody has their own sorrows and success and not everything that happens has to do with