AllFreeNovel
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A disaster.
“I can’t,” I inform them with an officiousness that peels my fingernails off. “I have to man the table at the Dance and Dairy festival for Habitat for Humanity.”
Check.
“No. You don’t. I already talked to Mrs. Kormatillo. She said they can find someone else,” Perky says.
Checkmate.
“Please,” I groan. “Please don’t make me go.”
“Why wouldn’t you want to go? You were valedictorian! You went to an Ivy League school! You came home and got a job with benefits and—”
“I am the overachiever who never left and now I’m unemployed and fat.”
“Whoa! Who took Mallory and replaced her with her sister’s voice?” Fiona asks, shocked. “You just morphed into Hastings for a minute there. She was drunk the night she said that crap to you, Mallory. That was four years ago! Don’t internalize it.”
“And you are not fat.” Perky shuts one eye and examines me. “In fact, I’ll bet you’re within five pounds of high school weight.”
“I am.” I’m actually two pounds lighter, but I don’t say that aloud, because that’s just begging for the universe to throw three pounds my way.
“Stop calling yourself fat. You are an overachiever, however,” Perky notes.
“She is not!” Fiona jumps in. “Quit insulting poor Mal.”
“Overachiever is an insult?”
“It implies she’s pushed beyond her natural abilities. Like it’s some kind of psychological problem.”
“You have a very negative view of the world for a preschool teacher, Fi,” Perky shoots back.
“Says the woman who hates everyone.”
“Not everyone. Just people who say the word tits.”
We settle in with our rice and curries and deep-fried chickpea flour concoctions and for five minutes, we shut up about the stupid reunion.
Five minutes.
That’s the outer limit of how long Perky can stay silent.
“So,” she says, exactly three hundred and one seconds later (yes, I clock watched), “Now that Will is back in town and the reunion is coming up—”
I start gagging uncontrollably on a piece of spiced cauliflower. Coriander burns when it coats your uvula.
Massive side eye gets thrown my way by my two friends. “You’re going, Mal,” Perky declares. “Plus, remember Rayelyn Boyle? She checked ‘Going’ on the reunion app.”
“Rayelyn’s going?”
“Your nerd friend,” Fiona says casually.
“Uh, she was just my friend. We were in all the academic curriculars together.”
“Right. Nerd friend.”
“If she was my nerd friend, what were you two?”
“Your hip friends,” Perky interrupts.
