Présentation de l'éditeur
Tilly Farmer is thirty-two years old and has the perfect life she always dreamed of: married to her high school sweetheart, working as a guidance counselor in her hometown, trying for a baby. Perfect.
In fact, on the surface you might never know how tough things used to be. At seventeen, Tilly lost her mother to cancer, her father drowned his grief in alcohol, and she played parent to her two younger sisters more often than being a kid herself. Still Tilly never let tragedy overtake her belief that hard work and good cheer could solve any problem. Of course she’s also spent a lifetime plastering a smile on her face and putting everyone else’s problems ahead of her own.
But that relentless happiness has served her well—her sisters are grown and content, her dad is ten years sober, and she’s helping her students achieve all their dreams while she and her husband, Tyler, start a family. A perfect life indeed.
Then one sweltering afternoon at the local fair, everything changes. Tilly wanders into the fortune teller’s tent and is greeted by an old childhood friend, now a psychic, who offers her more than just a reading. “I’m giving you the gift of clarity,” her friend says. “It’s what I always thought you needed.” And soon enough, Tilly starts seeing things: her father relapsing, staggering out of a bar with his car keys in hand; Tyler uprooting their happy, stable life, a packed U-Haul in their driveway; and even more disturbing, these visions start coming true. Suddenly Tilly’s perfect life, so meticulously mapped out, seems to be crumbling around her. And she’s not sure what’s more frightening: that she’s begun to see the future or what the future holds . . .
As Tilly furiously races to keep up with—and hopefully change—her destiny, she faces the question: Which is the life she wants? The one she’s carefully nursed for decades, or the one she never considered possible?
Extrait
one
Imagine, if you can, that you are sixteen again. That first kisses are still a possibility, that the giddy anticipation of life’s open roads is still fiery in your belly, that a perfect satin dress and a rose corsage can still make you feel more beautiful than you ever could have hoped for. Sit back and imagine all of these things: taste them, revel in them, and then understand that this—even at thirty-two, even happily married and desperate for a baby—this is why I love prom. I get why you might not, why you might think I’m some sort of stunted adolescent, why you might think that I’m one of those girls you’d have loved to hate in high school. But that’s not it: I love prom for everything that it represents—hope, innocence, possibility. So before you judge me, before you hear my story, know that. Know that I get it, it’s not as if I don’t get it, don’t get why I should have long since moved on from prom. But I can’t help myself. I love the heady expectancy, the spiraling dance floor, the rush of adrenaline before the king and queen are crowned.
And now, once again, it’s July, one school year behind us, another on the horizon, the wave pulling out the grads, the tide washing in new ones, and just as I have done for the past five years, I am planning prom. And yes, I freaking love it. I freaking own it. Welcome to my life.
Today, behind my desk in my office, I tap the eraser against my yellow notepad. This one will be the best in memory! I think. City of Lights: Westlake Does Paris! Last year we did Under the Sea, which felt a little tired, and the year prior, the prom committee nearly came unhinged when deciding between the Roaring Twenties and the Seventies, so before blood was drawn between the school president and the junior class social chair, they settled on the Fifties, which didn’t work on any level. Half the kids ditched the theme entirely, while the other half showed up in poodle skirts and skinny suits that they borrowed from their parents and spent the duration of the evening looking decidedly uncomfo
