The Better Half
Alli Frank & Asha Youmans
A NOTE FROM MINDY KALING
When was the last time you laughed out loud while reading a novel?
Alli Frank and Asha Youmans’s novel The Better Half had me LOLing throughout. I was charmed by the story of Nina Morgan Clarke, a woman who is on the cusp of everything she has worked toward for years, and the one-night stand with a man named Leo West that may derail everything . . . in the best possible way.
Nina is just about to start her first year as head of school at a ritzy private school, and she is prepared. As a Black woman, she’s confident, cool under pressure, and accustomed to the type of BS that bubbles up in privileged academic spaces. But her life outside school—Leo, and the emotions he reawakens in her—is a new kind of challenge, a new kind of opportunity.
With every surprise thrown Nina’s way, I connected with her a little more. With every interaction between Nina and her BFF, Marisol, I wished I could step into the pages and hang out with these two amazing ladies. With every gesture Leo made to win Nina’s heart, I melted just a little bit more.
Charming, hilarious, and honest, The Better Half celebrates the absurdity and joy in life and does so with grace and heart. I’m so proud to bring Alli Frank and Asha Youmans’s dynamic story to Mindy’s Book Studio, and to share it with you all.
FIRST TRIMESTER
ONE
I need some sleep, Marisol. I don’t care if it’s in a bed, on a massage table, or by the pool. Just lay me down and leave me there. You know what I’m saying?” I plead. I’m trying as hard as I can to shed my buttoned-up exterior and loosen up for summer, but it feels like something’s stuck in my gears.
“I got you, Nina, I got you! Chilling only, promise. Check my bag, I even brought a book.” Marisol, my Mexican sister from another mister, nods to her purse on the passenger floor by my feet. Now I know she’s lying.
I dig through this season’s got-to-have-it handbag with custom clip-on strap. “Four back issues of People magazine do not make a book,” I tease.
“It does if you include the Vanity Fair that’s in my suitcase. Those articles are hella long.” Marisol lays her foot heavy on the gas, taking advantage of a rare stretch of light traffic on Highway 101 heading north toward Santa Barbara. The rule follower in me wants to point out that she’s pushing eighty miles per hour, but I bite my tongue. Wind sneaks in from the edges of Marisol’s drop-top sports car, a fortieth birthday present to herself. My box braids are barely tousled, and it’s a good thing too; I spent six hours in the salon chair to have my hair handled for the entire weekend. I can’t wait to curl up by the pool and pleasure read with a stack of real novels I’ve been dying to devour. I know I’ll be the one up at 6:30 a.m. laying down towels and sunhats to claim a prime poolside spot. Marisol’s more rise and shine by nine.
I reach out to add some tunes to the ride. Marisol spares no expense when it comes to her car’s system. She’s got sound that bumps.
I turn the bass up and select The Notorious B.I.G.’s “Going Back to Cali.” The catchy hook on this West Coast tribute track takes me there, and I sneak a peek at Marisol to see what she thinks of my selection.
“You are so weird. You’re the only grown woman I know who makes heading to a bougie resort in a printed kaftan, blasting gangsta rap, look normal,” Marisol says, shaking her head no but smiling yes. “But heyyy! This is my song!”
“You mind if I close my eyes? I just need to catch a minute of sleep.” Not waiting for an answer, I recline my seat back as far as it will go, then slip my feet out of my sandals and put them up on the dashboard, my toes enjoying the cool of the windshield. These are my last days of personal freedom before my life’s consumed by my first year running the show at the Royal-Hawkins School.
Two years ago, Allister Nevins, the thirteenth headmaster of the Royal-Hawkins School, announced that after nineteen years at the helm, he would finish the twenty-four months left on his contract and then retire to his beloved English countryside. I knew my moment had arrived. I had kept my head down, worked hard, focused, and played my academic and professional cards right my whole life. Reputable colleges, check. Distinguished high school science teacher position and department chair, check, check. Upper school academic deanship riding teenage procrastinators right into top universities. Check, check, check. And most recently, seven years as assistant head of the Royal-Hawkins School, otherwise known as the on-campus punching bag for all personnel and parents. One big fat check.
No doubt, after Headmaster Nevins’s retirement announcement, my calculated hustle would land me squarely where I wanted to be: a viable candidate for the head of school position. Or so I thought. After a few days of immense encouragement and enthusiasm from individual members, the board informed me that I had little chance among the field of applicants they were expecting unless I earned a doctorate immediately. They wanted the trifecta （a woman, a first-generation American, and a person of color） with a trifecta. Which meant that on top of my BA from Wellesley and MA from Columbia Teachers College, I now had to earn my doctorate in education. I suspected that if I made it to the final round interview, and the board of trustees chose me, they’d want all qualifications among candidates to be equal. No tokenism here! I get it. It’s called covering their corporate ass.
What followed the board’s mandate was two years of me pulling hundred-hour workweeks. As assistant head, I ran Royal-Hawkins while Headmaster Nevins spent his last days focused on his farewell tour and mansplaining the school’s alarm system to me, which I’ve been successfully arming for years. Professionally, I had my administrative duties to tend to plus taking on my final degree at UCLA in the evenings and on the weekends. Personally, I was busy raising my daughter, Xandra, and prepping her to apply to Pemberley, the boarding school outside New York City her father had attended, for her freshman year of high school. I was spent. For those two years my entire world was consumed by Google Docs. And then a week ago, after what seemed like a lifetime of going and doing and stressing, it all came to an end. In one day, I had picked Xandra up from LAX at the end of her freshman year, moved my Bruins tassel from the right to the left, wheeled boxes into my new office, and sent out my first Message from the Head of School to families and alumni of Royal-Hawkins. I expertly hid my woes of middle-age exhaustion and feelings of impostor syndrome from the school community. Now it is time to celebrate my accomplishments with Marisol. Despite our close bond, we tend to differ in our definitions of revelry. I know Marisol’s packing pot gummies in her purse, whereas I have chewable melatonin.
“Wake me up a few minutes before we get there. I don’t want the valet to catch me drooling on myself.” I lick the corners of my mouth to start clean.
“Oh, I see how it is. You’re worried what other folks think, but you’re okay looking all raggedy for me. I’ve been waiting for this girls’ weekend for forever, so you better be ready to turn it out!” Marisol nudges my knee and blows me a kiss with her pouty, apple-red glossed lips. I know she’s excited to have me all to herself for the next couple of days after an extensive girls’ night out drought, other than our monthly afternoon spa dates. Buried in life or not, we both agree: after forty, we have to do the work necessary to keep ourselves pulled together given our public-facing jobs.