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

says.
    â€œRight, G&S,” Michelle says.
    Jackie recalls precisely this dynamic from over two decades ago, and hated it then. The M&Ms finishing each other’s thoughts, as if combined they might have a normal-size brain, and Barbara trying to drive a wedge between them and Jackie, so she could protect her position as Jackie’s best friend.
    â€œIt’s actually very nice,” Jackie says. “Living in the same town you grew up in, I mean. There are still a lot of teachers around from our time, and there’s something—I don’t know what the word is, gratifying, maybe?—to see your kids doing the same things you were doing. Our youngest, Emma, she’s a gymnast over at the Weider school, and Robert plays quarterback for the Bears.”
    â€œI bet that makes Rick happy,” Barbara says.
    There’s something about Barbara’s tone that Jackie finds unsettling. A familiarity that shouldn’t be there. Jackie’s often wondered whether Barbara slept with Rick, maybe when they were in college and she and Rick were on one of their many breaks. Maybe in high school, for all Jackie trusted either of them.
    â€œOut of all of us,” Melissa says, “I think Jacqueline’s life is the closest to what I would have imagined in high school.”
    It’s about as bad an indictment as Jackie can imagine, even though she can certainly see why Melissa would have planned this for Jackie twenty-five years ago.
    You’ll marry Ricky and live in a house on Farmington Lake, and you’ll have a boy and a girl, and the boy will be a football player, and the girl will be beautiful.
    How much did Jackie not want that to be the way her life turned out? And yet, maybe she protested too much. She didn’t have to move back to East Carlisle after college. She could have turned down Rick’s marriage proposal and gone on to graduate school, like she’d originally planned.
    She had never imagined the price she’d pay for her insecurity would be so unbearably high. A life of abject fear with no end in sight.
    *  *  *
    Alex Miller is the first person Jonathan encounters whom he was actually friendly with in high school. They weren’t in the same core social circle but in the same general sphere of high school life at least: smart boys with ambition. Alex had done all right for himself too. A couple of years back, Jonathan ran into Mitch Glassman at a restaurant in SoHo, and Mitch mentioned that Alex Miller was a partner at Cromwell Altman, a top-tier New York City law firm.
    Alex is looking good, which gives Jonathan a boost that he might not be as run-down as the others he’s scanned from a distance. Alex’s hair remains full, albeit half-gray now, and he doesn’t seem to be a completely different shape than he was in high school.
    In the time it takes Jonathan to approach, Alex has been joined by Stephen Hirshman, who was a world-class geek in high school. The years have not been kind to Hirshman. A bean pole with a huge Jewfro back in the day, he’s now swung in the opposite direction, close to three hundred pounds and bald as a cue ball.
    â€œFinally, men in suits,” Jonathan says.
    Alex chuckles. “Yeah, really. Did an e-mail go out that everyone was supposed to dress like teenagers?”
    â€œOnly among the guys,” Hirshman says. “The girls seem to have gone all out. Some social scientist should make a study about why the female of the species preserves itself so much better. Look over there—Jacqueline Lawson and the Cliquesters. I swear, it’s like time has stood still for them.”
    Cliquesters , Jonathan repeats in his head. He hasn’t heard that term in twenty-five years.
    â€œOkay,” Hirshman says excitedly, “this definitely falls under the category that there is no karmic justice in the world, but I heard that Jacqueline married that douche bag Ricky Williams. The prom queen and