Page 1 of You Spin Me

Prologue

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess.

She was a tad vain and spoiled, but aren’t all princesses?

To be honest, she wasn’t a princess per se, she was just an upper-middle-class Jewish girl from a little town outside of Boston.

But she was beautiful. And it wasn’t exactly her fault that she was spoiled. From the moment she popped out of her mother’s womb, everyone oohed and ahhed at her perfectly formed features, her dark curls, her thick lashes and her expressive eyes. By the time she could speak, she’d been praised for that beauty more times than anyone could count. Who could blame her for trading on those looks?

If you could have every wish granted with a sweet, dimpled smile or a demure flutter of lashes, wouldn’t you?

The problem, of course, is that beauty fades. Skin wrinkles, breasts sag, curls lose their gloss, and the plumpest of lips thin.

If a girl truly believes her worth to be a function of her outward appearance, what is she to do when the mirror cracks?

Once upon another time,there was a beast of a little boy.

He hadn’t started out that way. He was his family’s darling. Everyone adored his wide smile, his sweet nature and his big brown eyes that flashed with humor.

Unfortunately, our little hero was impatient. He wanted to be like his older brothers, to stay up late and watch movies and eat popcorn.

One night, he was awakened by moonlight shining on his face. He couldn’t yet tell time, but he knew that it must be very, very late—so late that everyone had finally turned off the television and trooped off to bed. The huge round moon gave him an idea. He knew where the popcorn was kept. He knew how to turn on the flame. Just like in the commercials, he would make the foil rise to a shape like the moon.

If he did that—all by himself—he’d never be treated like a baby again.

His skin prickled with cold when he pushed the bedcovers aside. He didn’t like the tight pajamas his mother tried to put on him every night, so he slept in his undies. He did love his Superman cape, however, so he slipped it over his head. The cape warmed him and made him feel brave.

He crept downstairs, pushed a chair across the kitchen floor, climbed onto the counter, opened the cabinet and stretched his pudgy four-year-old arm until he grasped the metal handle of the magic popcorn maker. He crawled over to the stove and sat down next to it. He hesitated, unsure. He couldn’t quite remember what came next. He just wanted to watch the foil rise and to hear the kernels pop.

Finally, he remembered: the knobs! Reaching across the burners, he turned the one closest to him.

There was a whoosh.

Sadly, what happened next turned his life into a living hell.

Chapter1

Motormouth Motor here at WBAR—Boston’s best rock station—with your traffic and weather on the ones: There are a lot of cars on the road and it’s cold out. Get used to it.

JESS

When I get home from work at four-thirty in the afternoon on December 1, 1988, having spent the day teaching dance and aerobics to rich kids at a posh private school, it’s already dark outside. It’s as cold inside my apartment as it is outside, which means the furnace is on the fritz again.

My thirtieth birthday just gets better and better.

No messages on the answering machine, which means no auditions for me tomorrow. Nobody told me that ad agencies go into hibernation from Thanksgiving to New Year’s. I was really hoping for a chance to book something this month. Even doing background in a commercial would help pay the bills.

At least my heating oil charges will be low. Just as I find the super’s number in my day planner—which I should have memorized by now, I have to call him so often—the phone rings and I pick it up, hopeful for some good news. “This is Jess.”

“Hey, it’s Will. Happy Birthday.”

Will’s my best boy friend. Not boyfriend. We’ve played lovers at Shakespeare Boston too many times to count, but he’s as much of a brother as my real brother is. Plus, he has a pretty serious girlfriend.

“Thanks, but can you keep that under your hat? Last thing I need is everyone in town asking how old I am now.”

“So, old woman, did you get a call?”

“You mean aboutHamlet?”

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