The Girl From Home by Adam Mitzner Read Free Book Online Page A

“Go have fun. I’m going to be done here in another forty minutes or so, and then I’ll come find you. Okay?”
    â€œSure,” he says. “One thing, though, I go by Jonathan now.”
    â€œGood choice,” Dana says, nodding. “Fits you better.”
    *  *  *
    The same thought recycles again and again in Jackie’s brain: How could she have ever been friends with these people? Vain and insecure. Mean-spirited to the point of nasty. And above all else, stupid as the day is long.
    Barbara DeSapio was Jackie’s best friend in high school. The number of nights they slept at each other’s house likely qualified each of them for legal residence.
    They lost touch in college, but not for Barbara’s lack of trying. It was Jackie who broke away, wanting to put as much distance as possible between the vapid beauty queen she was in high school and the person she wanted to be. And for a while, it worked. She had long considered it her greatest failing that she’d returned to Rick and to East Carlisle. In the end, Jackie had no excuse other than that she’d been afraid. Instead of relying on her intelligence, which she’d never been quite confident would support her, she fell back on her beauty, which had never let her down, and she ran back to the land where she had once been queen.
    Facebook did the rest, reacquainting her with the old high school crew. Barbara lived on Long Island, and even though she was only two hours away, their contact over the past years had been limited to liking one another’s status and the annual birthday call.
    When she sees her former BFF in the flesh, it’s even more apparent than from photographs that Barbara has kept up her looks, so much so that she could still manage a passing resemblance to Heather Locklear, her senior yearbook separated-at-birth partner. Jackie assumes that some of that must come with money—as Barbara’s Facebook feed was a never-ending stream of photos with her personal trainer. On top of which, Jackie assumed that a nip or tuck had been done, too, or at the very least, a healthy amount of Botox. Barbara didn’t have a wrinkle or crease on her.
    Michelle Sackler, née Abromowitz, and Melissa Romero, née Farella, completed the quartet of high school royalty that ordinary students referred to as the Cliquesters. They both attended college at University of Miami and then moved in together after graduation. Their parents willingly picked up the rent because they viewed an apartment in a complex that was next to the medical school as a better investment in their daughters’ future than graduate school. Turned out they were right. Before the two-year lease ran out, Melissa married an anesthesiologist who lived on the sixth floor, and Michelle tied the knot with a plastic surgeon resident on nine.
    The M&Ms, as Michelle and Melissa called themselves, now live within five minutes of each other in Boca Raton. They’re both stay-at-home moms, even though the youngest of their children is in high school, which leaves a lot of time for them to have lunch, shop, and go to the gym together. One of those lifelong friendships straight out of a multiplex rom-com, Jackie thinks.
    â€œI can’t believe that you and Rick never left East Carlisle,” Melissa says.
    â€œYeah,” Michelle chimes in. “It must be so strange to go to the same places where we used to hang out as kids.”
    â€œHave you driven down Route Eighteen?” Barbara laughs. “I doubt that there are five stores still around from back then.”
    â€œThe mall’s still there,” Michelle points out. “Remember, Jacqueline, when we’d go into the dressing room of . . . what was the name of that store with the really short skirts? And we’d stuff the miniskirts into our bras and then walk out like we were Dolly Parton or something?”
    â€œG&S,” Melissa