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  Praise for the Novels of Stacey Ballis

  “A sparkling, heartwarming novel with all the elements of a can’t-put-it-down read—a heroine you’ll root for, unexpected plot twists, and dangerously good descriptions of food!”

  —Sarah Pekkanen, author of The Perfect Neighbors

  “With lively humor, Ballis pulls together a diverse cast, evocative renovation details, and delicious food descriptions in this well-seasoned novel. Fans of Mary Kay Andrews will enjoy this.”

  —Booklist

  “Ballis delves again into foodie women’s lit with flavorful results . . . Honest and touching.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “An absolutely charming read! . . . Equal parts heartfelt and hilarious.”

  —Harlequin Junkie

  “Ballis’s heroine is a perfect blend of tough and vulnerable as she struggles to straighten out her messy life.”

  —Heroes and Heartbreakers (A Best Read of the Month)

  “A funny and heartfelt tale . . . This is Stacey Ballis at her witty and chef-tastic best.”

  —Amy Hatvany, author of It Happens All the Time

  “Readers hungry for cleverly written contemporary romances will definitely want to order Off the Menu.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “Insightful and hilarious.”

  —Today’s Chicago Woman

  “Witty and tender, brash and seriously clever . . . [Ballis’s] storytelling will have you alternately turning pages and calling your friends, urging them to come along for the ride.”

  —Elizabeth Flock, New York Times bestselling author of Me & Emma

  BERKLEY BOOKS BY STACEY BALLIS

  Room for Improvement

  The Spinster Sisters

  Good Enough to Eat

  Off the Menu

  Out to Lunch

  Recipe for Disaster

  Wedding Girl

  How to Change a Life

  Big Delicious Life

  (Intermix)

  BERKLEY

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2017 by Stacey Ballis

  “Readers Guide” copyright © 2017 by Penguin Random House LLC

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  BERKLEY is a registered trademark and the B colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Ballis, Stacey, author.

  Title: How to change a life / Stacey Ballis.

  Description: First Edition. | New York : Berkley, 2017.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017014900 (print) | LCCN 2017023064 (ebook) | ISBN 9780698171268 (ebook) | ISBN 9780425276624 (paperback)

  Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Contemporary Women. | FICTION / Humorous.

  Classification: LCC PS3602.A624 (ebook) | LCC PS3602.A624 H69 2017 (print) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017014900

  First Edition: August 2017

  Cover illustration: fireworks above houses © Lee Hodges / Getty Images

  Cover design by Sarah Oberrender

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author’s use of names of real figures, places, or events is not intended to change the entirely fictional character of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: The recipes contained in this book are to be followed exactly as written. The publisher is not responsible for your specific health or allergy needs that may require medical supervision. The publisher is not responsible for any adverse reactions to the recipes contained in this book.

  Version_1

  For my grandmother Jonnie, who taught me that every meal is an opportunity to demonstrate love and care, that every dish is a creative expression, that the making of a meal is a passionate artistic endeavor. She taught me to own my culinary mistakes as much as I celebrate my successes and, as we discovered together, that the lemon cake is just as delicious even if it has completely fallen apart under its own weight. Everything I cook is seasoned with her love, and I will be ever mindful of all the lessons she had to teach me.

  She is both deeply missed and deeply present every day.

  In loving memory.

  Contents

  Praise for the Novels of Stacey Ballis

  Berkley Books by Stacey Ballis

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Epilogue

  Recipes

  Readers Guide

  About the Author

  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, Je
n 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.

  As of my official prefreshman physical exam, I am five-nine-and-three-quarters, and I’m pretty sure there is more growth on the way. My doctor said jovially that all the supermodels are tall. Which was sweet and annoying. Because what was left unsaid is that supermodels are also thin and beautiful, which I decidedly am not. I’m not fat and ugly either, thank goodness. My weight is what one might call proportional. I’m well muscled, with boobs that I pray stop growing very soon, since I totally bypassed training bras for a B-cup when I was twelve, and my current D-cup is already more than plenty. I have hips that are beginning to widen, thick muscular thighs, broad shoulders. Nothing jiggles on me—well, boobs notwithstanding. I’ve always been athletic, so while I think of myself as something of a gargantuan freak, at least for the moment my delight in all things delicious is fully balanced by my high activity level.

  I’ve been blessed with clear skin, if a shade more olive than I would have liked, pale porcelain skin being all the fashion at the moment; blue eyes of no particular luminance; and dark brown, nearly black, hair that is very thick and straight, but thankfully naturally shiny. I keep it long so that I can pull it into a ponytail or braid when I run. I’m also sporting some godawful bangs, which I thought might make me look cooler but instead are just an enormous pain in the ass. I immediately regretted them, and began growing them out the moment I left the salon five weeks ago, so now they are in the “constantly in my eyes” length. I do a lot of blowing them up out of my way with a quick and noisy blast of focused breath, which is apparently driving my mother batshit. I suppose if I were five or six inches shorter, I’d probably qualify as “cute-ish,” but at my size, towering over most of the boys my age on the planet, let alone my school, I’m just lucky that my face is what my dad always calls striking, and my mom refers to as attractive. Neither of these is the same as beautiful, and I’ve always been grateful for them treating me like an intelligent being and not overpraising my looks the way some parents do. I know people think they are giving us self-esteem boosts, but mostly they are fine-tuning our teenage bullshit radar, and it makes them seem less honest than they probably are.

  As we all enter the classroom, heads down, you can feel the nervous energy in our group. This is the first chance to make our first impressions in our first class on the first day of high school. There’s a lot riding on it, and none of us look prepared. The woman at the front of the room isn’t what I expected. The sign on the door said Mrs. O’Connor, and I was imagining a roly-poly woman with pale skin, red apples on her cheeks, gingery hair going gray, maybe one of those Irish crown rings that you are supposed to wear one direction if you are single and another if you are married.

  So the very tall, broad-shouldered, elegant African American woman with the short little dreadlocks standing in front of the chalkboard is a definite surprise. As we enter, I notice that the room is ringed with desks, leaving a big open circle in the middle, and none of the desks are labeled.

  “Well, hello there,” Mrs. O’Connor says to me as I come into the room. She looks me dead in the eye, and might even have an inch on me. “What’s your name?”

  “Eloise.”

  “Don’t slouch, darling Eloise. You own the space you take up in this world. Abraham Lincoln said, ‘You have to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was.’ You stand straight and proud in every inch of your magnificence. Otherwise you let me and all our blessed sisters of substance down.” She stretched out her swanlike neck and seemed to get even taller. Then she smiled, even white teeth in her beautiful face. I stood up straight, and she nodded appreciatively. “You’re going to love Maya Angelou when we get to her in the spring. She was six feet tall at fifteen, and she’s as fierce as they come.”

  I blush. “She’s one of my favorite writers. I read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings last year.”

  “Well, then, Miss Eloise, let’s do her proud this year.”

  I nod, and cross the room as she directs everyone to stand in the center of the circle of desks.

  “So, my new little loves, my name is Mrs. O’Connor and this is Freshman Honors Literature, room 106.” Some blond guy in the middle of the room says “Crap” and runs for the door, just as the bell rings. “There’s always one,” Mrs. O’Connor says with a smile. The rest of us laugh nervously. “So, before we get started, we need to have desk assignments. I know many of my colleagues will be arranging you in the very-convenient-for-taking-attendance alphabetical order, but I think Mr. Lewkey and Ms. Lewis will spend
enough time in close proximity to each other this year, so I will do things a little differently. I want you to arrange yourselves in order of birthdate. Month and day only, please. You will now have to introduce yourselves to each other in order to ascertain this information; I strongly recommend that you also exchange names and general friendly words as you go along. Spit, spot, as Mary Poppins might say.” She waves her hands with their long tapered fingers at us, looking like a ballerina finishing a pose. If I tried to do that with my mannish hands, I’d probably look like I was swatting at mosquitoes.

  I mill around, saying “Eloise, May?” until I hear a voice behind me.

  “Hey, May! Over here!” I turn around and see a short curvy girl with a mass of curly brown hair waving me over.

  “Hi, I’m Eloise,” I say. “May twenty-eighth.”

  “Oh my God!” she says animatedly. “I’m May twenty-fifth! We’re practically twins!”

  “Yeah, we look like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito from that movie.”

  She laughs and snorts. “Totally. I’m Teresa Caparulo. Where do you live?”

  “Up in Ravenswood Manor. Where do you live?”

  “Not far from here, actually, just a few blocks over.”

  “Lucky you, that’s convenient.”

  “Hey, did you guys say May over here?” The question comes from a gorgeous light-skinned African American girl with almond-shaped hazel eyes and long, wavy, chestnut-colored hair.

  “Yeah, totally. Are you May too?” Teresa asks.

  “Yep. May twenty-third. You guys?”

  “I’m the twenty-fifth and she’s the twenty-eighth.”

  “We’re practically triplets,” I say, smiling. “I’m Eloise; this is Teresa. She’s local; I’m in Ravenswood Manor.”

  “Lynne,” she says, shaking the hands we hold out to her. “Hyde Park.”

  “You win for longest commute,” Teresa says.

  “Yeah, well, it was either here or U of C Lab School,” she says.