How to Change a Life
Stacey Ballis
Acknowledgments
As ever, I am awfully lucky to have my family to support me. First and foremost, to my husband, Bill, who is my muse and my cheerleader and my most favorite person, thank you for putting up with my crazy. To my parents, Stephen and Elizabeth Ballis; my sister and brother, Deborah and Andy Hirt; my in-loves, Jim and Shirley Thurmond and Jamie and Steve Surratt—having you all in my corner means the world to me. I am blessed with the best nieces and nephews, so thank you to Rebecca, John, Elizabeth, Oliver, Kalie, and Quincy for letting me be a part of your lives. To my ever-amazing goddaughter Charlotte “7” Boultinghouse, I love you more than anything, but please stop getting taller.
This book is a celebration of friendship, and I am more deeply blessed in that arena than most. You are all too numerous to mention here, but you know who you are. Especially my friends from grammar school and high school and college—it is beyond wonderful to have you all still in my life. A special shout-out to the Party Crew, reconvened, expanded, missing one piece of our hearts; it is a blessing to know you all, and I really look forward to seeing what the second thirty years of friendship will bring us. Dave Ray, we’re trying to make you proud.
For the Sisterhood of La Pitchoune—Shannon Kinsella, JeanMarie Brownson, Bethanne Patrick, Betsy Andrews, and my roomie Catie Baumer-Schwalb—thank you for being. We are all always dancing with Julia and stronger together.
For my Lunch Bunch, Jen Lancaster, Gina Barge, and Tracey Stone.
For all my Goulds, near and far.
For my extraordinary agent, Scott Mendel. This is our tenth book and almost fifteen-year anniversary of working together, so I think I can finally say that we are officially old friends as well. Thank you for everything, always.
For my team at Berkley, especially my editor, Danielle Perez. All is deeply appreciated.
In the weird world of writing, especially writing about food, I rely on my compatriots for advice, inspiration, wisdom, recipes, and more than a few cocktails. Thank you to Kat Kinsman, John Kessler, Jennifer V. Cole, Jane Green, Elinor Lipman, Amy Hatvany, Sarah Pekkanen, Renée Rosen, Liz Brack, and Ted Goeglein. Thank you for getting it and for being there for me.
And, lastly, to my readers. You cannot imagine what it means to put these stories into the world like helpless children and know that there are strangers who will take them in and nourish them and keep them safe. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I’ll keep trying to do you proud.
SEPTEMBER 1991
When the bell rings, we all shuffle inside the large corner classroom on the first floor in the old building of Lincoln Park High School. Twenty-six spotty, nervous, and hormonal freshmen, with quickly fading memories of being the older cool kids just three months ago at our various elementary schools, thrust into the lowest level of the social totem pole. Funny what a difference a summer makes. Some of us have grown new boobs, gained an inch or two; voices have deepened; skin has erupted in angry red pimples. Braces have been removed, revealing straighter smiles, or added, with annoying and embarrassing accessories like rubber bands that fly into the world of their own accord at inopportune moments, or headgear that makes us look like we’re eating television components. We’ve gained weight or lost it. Gotten chic haircuts or mortifying ones. Some are hoping for a clean-slate do-over, losing the hurtful nicknames and bad reputations that followed us through the previous nine years, and wanting to remake ourselves in a new image. Preferably a cool, popular image. Some are relying on a previous ranking as A-listers to carry us through into an equally popular crowd. Many of us, on this first day, have already suffered the usual brands of freshman hazing: we’ve had various nonlethal items chucked in our general direction, like pennies, eggs, water balloons; we’ve been given directions to the nonexistent “fourth floor” or suggestions to use the equally absent “elevator.” The pretty girls have already been hit on; the not-so-pretty ones have already been ignored, if lucky, or laughed at, if less lucky.
In Chicago, at a high-ranking magnet school like Lincoln Park, while there are some neighborhood-based feeder schools, a great majority of the students are in special programs that they had to test into. So the school literally draws from the entire city. There is a freedom in knowing that the entirety of your eighth grade colleagues are not in attendance, having scattered to the winds, enrolling in other equally good magnet schools as well as various religious schools and private institutions. It’s only first period, but so far I’ve recognized just one kid from my graduating class, Benji Colson, and he and I, while not friends, were both solidly B-list at Oscar Mayer, and weren’t enemies. Benji appears to have grown about three inches over the summer, which is good for him, because he was still just a hair shy of little person height when we graduated, looking much more like a fourth grader than an eighth grader.
I wish I could have gifted him some of mine.