THE CRAZY GOOD SERIES - Rachel Robinson Page 0,5

my makeup to get shiny.” I laugh because her makeup is the least of her worries. I look over at her and drop my eyes to her barely there white mini-skirt. Like barely there. She doesn’t have a slutty bone in her body, so how she dresses when she goes out confounds me.

“I can see your underwear,” I tell her, laughing. She doesn’t even attempt to pull her skirt down.

She shrugs. “I’m not going to be sitting down tonight. It’s just us girls right now.” Her flawed logic is painfully refreshing. Because dancing won’t make it ride up more than sitting. Sure. Jess cranks up her rap music to a level that makes me wince. Always the ghetto booty rap when in the world of Jess.

“Good point,” I say, peeking into the side mirror to see Gretchen stifling a laugh. When we arrive moments later and the valet guy opens the door for Jess, I don’t try to hide my sniggering when his eyes widen briefly. Jess hands him the fob with a small wink and finally readjusts herself.

When people say age is only a number, I don’t think they take into account the difference a few years can make. As I watch all the newly minted twenty-one year olds dance around with full cups splashing vodka everywhere, I wince remembering those days. Finding yourself, losing yourself, and then finding your real self. That’s what happens in only a few years. Unfortunately for me, I get to lose myself one extra time. Here I am, warped back in time, mixed in with twenty-one year olds, trying to find it again.

Being almost thirty and supposedly wiser, Gretchen called ahead and reserved a table for the night; not that Jess will be sitting at it, but it is a reprieve all the same. I slide into the booth and wedge myself toward the corner, deciding to make it my home for the night. I watch Jess meander closer to a few of our other friends just as Gretch sits down next to me.

I bump her leg. “Total hottie checking you out at twelve o’clock,” I say in her ear. She just smiles like a person mad. At Benji. Who just so happens to be the bartender at the club she chose for the night. Which just happens to be the club she chooses every weekend. “I don’t get why you give him the run around. Go on a date with the poor guy already. Your wrinkles are getting uglier as we speak.” Benji waves at our table, knowing full well we’re talking about him.

“I’ll go get drinks. Morganna is on her way. Keep an eye out,” Gretchen says, disappearing into the crowd of swaying bodies and flashing lights. We got here later than usual because good spray tans take time. The drunkenness in this place has already peaked.

Through a crowd of stumbling babies I see her. Our friend. As she approaches my mind plays the song from Mean Girls. You know the one where the Plastics walk in a fierce group down the high school hallway? Then everyone stops and stares? That’s Morganna in one song.

Morganna comes from a small southern town where people talk more than they listen. When they do listen they take their careful, manipulative time to listen to the undercurrents laced throughout the words. Innocuous statements turn into gritty rumors that spread like wildfire in the parched forests of California. Morganna caught more than a thick southern drawl growing up in her hometown; she caught a fearsome, incurable drive to succeed. Nothing is more potent or dangerous than a woman with something to prove and proving things, no matter fact or fiction is her favorite past time.

After obtaining scrupulous grades throughout her stint at an Ivy League college and passing the BAR with ease, Morganna became a divorce attorney. She is feared, revered and, most of all, wildly successful. I’ve never seen Morganna cry nor have I ever seen her show any emotion that she hasn’t planned out at least fifteen days in advance. She is untouchable, beautiful and her confidence knows no bounds. It’s easy to forget Morganna’s southern roots. I know she only lets her country accent slip when she is furious with her husband or when she’s had a few too many glasses of red wine.

You go to her when you need help organizing a party, if you need advice about your stepbrother’s DUI arrest, or if you need directions on how to cook and