Free Preview: “Twirling In Traffic: Stories From An Influential Life” By Dri Foster

© HarperCollins, 2060.

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Today you know her as the legendary star of small and medium-sized screen, a glittering vision of Old TikTok glamour. But to me she’s a dear friend and mutual. I’ll never forget where I was when I first heard the name Dri Foster. I’d just gotten home from an incredible lunch and…

p. 7

But before I was a content creator I was just your average girl from Townings, Michigan. School wasn’t quite for me—I much preferred photography (of myself) and filmmaking (of me and my friends doing stuff). As the awkwardly tall and beautiful one in my class, I never stood much a chance of succeeding at mediocrity. I remember my mother chasing me around the house with a ring light because I had eight incompletes on Canvas. “Alexandria Nicole Fosterakis, I swear to God!” I can just hear her now. People these days might say it was cruel for her to move it from its optimal spot in my recording area, but that’s just how parenting was back then!

p. 32

But the party never stopped for me. An average morning saw me rolling over for my nightstand water, downing with it a B12 pill, an Omega 3 capsule, and a hormone-balancing gummy vitamin—I didn’t even chew. What can I say? It was the Twenties! We were all fucked up on whey protein. We were eating collagen like it was candy. We were getting blitzed on pre-workout before the rideshare even arrived for the night. At the height of my addiction I was taking 400% my daily value of biotin.

p. 59

Flashing lights made me duck my head as I left Erewhon. All the gossip rags could talk about was if I was dating Bryce Hall, rumors flying that I’d inspired his video about Daylight Savings Time. The truth was, and remains, that we were just very dear friends. To this day I have immense respect for him as an artistic collabora…

p. 80

I was shacking up with my manager Kyle, a guy my age who’d hit it big building and selling a Joseph Quinn stan account. I was in love or something like it. But our huge, minimalistic house was surprisingly lonely, the two of us pulled opposite ways by immense and myriad professional obligations. Things broke irreparably when he was caught selling fake Dobre Brothers merch. I found a place in Los Feliz and started quietly packing up my life. When he found me with all my Away luggage at the bottom of the stairs, he asked me if there was someone else. “Yes,” I said. “Someone named me.”

That night I got news that shook my world: our application for a dog had gone through. My phone in hand, I slid down the wall of my unfurnished loft that didn’t even have an elevator. I was going to be a single mom.

p. 125

I was living high on the hog, my walk-in closet stacked immaculately with free clothes, my trash overflowing with bubble wrap from all the PR. I had shoes in every shade of white. I was in group chats with people who’d met Lizzo and Harry Styles. But it all came crashing down when I made one wrong move following so many little annoying ones.

I was on live with my bsf, Lix Walter, when someone asked if I’d ever come to Anchorage for one of my meet-and-greets. I was feeling tired and punchy and the comments, they came so fast. In that moment I just wasn’t on my game. So I made a face like, I can’t do it here because it’s a book but it was like Biiitch. It was also like Come again?. From there the chat erupted in fiery indignation. The live was saved and distributed all over social media, past friends coming forward to give their own spin. I lost my sponsorships with Crest and the nation of Qatar. It seemed the cancellation machine needed more juice—and I may as well’ve been spirulina.

p. 232

I’d been in posting exile for months when one day I called Kyle on Apple CarPlay. He had remained my manager despite the dissolution of our relationship, us maintaining a strong mutual respect for everything we’d built. After I rehomed our dog he even stayed present in the life of my next one, helping raise her with me and my partner Dustin. It all may sound very Hollywood but it worked for us!

I was calling him to say I was thinking about ending my creative hiatus. Kyle wasn’t so sure. It was a big decision. But we agreed I’d start small, appearing wordlessly in a friend’s dance video. I was ready for the world—I just didn’t know if they were ready for me.

Standing in my finest activewear before that familiar blazing light, I held my breath as the phone timed down. 3, 2, 1—showtime. Me and Graysyn danced with a mix of power and grace, moving the top half of our bodies in perfect synchronicity. We stirred the proverbial batter. We ate it while patting our tummies. We were, in a word, phenomenal.

And that’s when I did the face, the one that had ended me.

As we hit the beat with our right fists I made the notorious expression. It was a quick thing, blink and you’ll miss it, but it landed. Oh, did it land. The story took off like a coke-and-Mentos experiment. I was back, baby, and how! Across the country they cheered me for being so self-aware.

I’ve never talked about this, but Bryce was actually the one who told me to make the face again that day. “Ya gotta do the face, kid,” he said in the husky New York elocution he used when he wasn’t filming. “They’re gonna love ya’s.”