Read Online In Real Life by Jessica Love - Free Book Online Page A

Grace and Lo tell him it’s my birthday while I’m in the bathroom. I’d never eat like such a pig under normal circumstances, but I don’t even realize how many carbs I’m chowing down, because I’m so focused on Nick. Nothing else matters.
    After dinner, we walk out to the casino and practically run right into the club. I know I’m going to have to do this now.
    Legs shaking, I trail behind Lo to the box office. In front, Grace asks for three tickets to the show and shoves one in my unsteady hand.
    â€œEw,” she says. “Your hand feels like it was licked by a Saint Bernard.”
    â€œSorry.” I stuff the ticket in my back pocket and wipe my hands on the front of my new jeans. When we were getting ready, the girls deemed even Lo’s hoochie attire unacceptable, and we ran down to the mall inside Planet Hollywood to get me an entirely new outfit. The low-cut sparkly tank top and tight jeans look amazing, but I don’t feel like myself. It’s like I’m walking around in someone else’s body. But at least that body had the wherewithal to veto the sky-high heels Lo was trying to push in favor of sassy-yet-comfortable wedges. “I don’t do this sort of thing every day. It’s freaking scary.” “Scary” is an understatement. I wasn’t even this shaky and unsure of myself before the SAT, and my entire future had depended on that test.
    â€œI thought chocolate cake was supposed to calm me down,” I say to Lo. “I can’t stop shaking right now.”
    â€œDon’t stress,” she says. She grabs my hand and we follow Grace to a roped-off line where a bouncer in a black polo shirt checks IDs. “Get out your ID,” she whispers to me through clenched teeth, pushing me in front of her. “Your new one.”
    We rearranged our wallets on the drive in, hiding our real licenses behind library cards, school IDs, and Starbucks gift cards and putting our newly acquired identities in the clear plastic sleeves in the front.
    I take a deep breath as Grace gets her ID checked by the bouncer and breezes through the line. I quickly consider pulling my real license out from its hiding spot and showing the bouncer that one. What will it hurt? The show is all-ages, so it’s not like I won’t be able to get in. The only benefit is the access to alcohol, and I’m not planning on drinking anyway.
    But I remember Lo and Grace making fun of me for most of the drive from Fontana to Barstow when I said I had no fake-ID plans for this trip, and I decide to live a little and use it, even if it’s making my heart beat so loudly, I swear the bouncer can hear it over the clamor of the casino. I promised them I’d let my hair down and have fun. And I think about all the crazy things I’d passed over during the last four years. Following the rules had been safe, but safe was boring. I pull that new ID out of my wallet, hold my breath, and hand it to the bouncer, trying with everything in me to keep my nervous hand steady.
    He holds a flashlight up to the back of the card, then looks closely at the picture, up at me, then down at the picture again. He flicks the side of the card with his thumb, runs it through a little scanner, and says, “Riverside, huh? I have a cousin who lives out there.”
    Panic floods me. He’s going to ask me questions about Riverside, and I won’t know the answers. I’ve never even been there. What’s my fake name again? I’m going to get found out and arrested and hauled off to Vegas jail. The cops will call my parents and my school, and I won’t be able to go to UCLA. Damn you, Lo and Grace and Aditi Singh! Damn you all for ruining my life.
    I force a smile, but I’m sure it looks more like some creepy jack-o’-lantern face. Improvise, I think. Fake it. Do something. “Oh, yeah. I just moved out there a couple of years ago. Um, after high