Chapter Two: Elly

I like school, and I can't wait for the first day back, especially English, history, and math classes...just about everything except health and gym. You see, I gained six or seven pounds in both the seventh and eighth grade, and I was a little heavy before that. I don't want people looking at my chubby legs in those short little gym shorts.

I don't like to play the sports we play, especially basketball and softball, in gym class, either. I can't dribble a basketball and some of the taller, more athletic girls are always stealing the ball from me, and I feel like they smirk after they do. It's so embarrassing. Softball's just as bad. I can't hit that stupid ball, and I always play the outfield when my team is not batting. I try to sort of hide out there, but somehow the ball always seems to find me, and then I have to run after it, and I just feel like the other girls are saying, "There goes old chubby legs chug, chug, chugging after the ball."

Then come the showers, and I feel like the other girls are staring at me all over again. I have frizzy brown hair and it frizzes up even worse when it's wet. The gym teachers never give us enough time to work on our hair after we finish playing those stupid sports. And then I've got to go to my next class and my frizzed hair is all clumped together, and I look worse than usual. Once I put on my glasses, which make me look like a half-blind mouse, everybody can see that I'm a dazzling beauty.

All summer my best friends Mary and Paige have been letting their hair grow out. They say the high school boys will like it longer. That must be true because when I see high school girls at the mall, most of them have long hair. But the way I see things with my hair, if I grow it out, I'll just have longer frizzy hair that's out of control. Right now, my hair just comes to the top of my shoulders. I don't know what I'm going to do about it.

I'm the oldest of three kids. My brothers Michael and David are four and six years younger than me. They don't bother me much except when they come snooping around in my room when I'm reading. But both of them can't seem to hold thoughts in their stupid, little male heads for more than three seconds, so they usually don't stay long. I love my little brothers, and just last year Mom and Dad started paying me to let me babysit them when they go out to dinner.

I love my parents. Daddy's a manager at the telephone company, and he gets these fantastic deals on cell phones. As soon as some new phone technology comes out, Mom, Dad, and I get new phones—it's great. I guess we're what you call middle class. Our house is nice and Dad pays somebody to mow our lawn, and every summer we go on a couple of vacations, usually to the beach and a state park. Mom doesn't have to work, but she has plenty to do around the house and with her sewing group and church. I don't mind helping her clean up around the house.

I want to start dating this year, even if it's just some boy having his parents drop us off at the mall or at a movie. Or maybe my parents will let Mary, Paige, and me meet some boys at the mall or at the movies. Dad hasn't said whether I can go out with boys this year. I worry that no guy will want to go out with a frizzy-haired, chubby-legged girl wearing mousy glasses. So Dad doesn't have too much to worry about.

I'm going to college. My parents have already started saving money for me to go. I think I want to become a teacher. I like little kids, and I want to do something with my life that is meaningful. I think I would like helping little kids learn how to read and write. I could see these little second and third graders coming to me for help and I'm showing them something new or how to add or subtract or something like that. Then those kids start smiling at me and I go home feeling good about myself and my day and feeling that I'm doing something meaningful with my life.

And I see myself coming home to a big house in the suburbs with definitely a husband and maybe two kids waiting for me. My husband will be tall with dark hair and kind and good looking. He'll be a businessman like Dad or maybe a doctor or lawyer or something like that. We'll have enough money to do things, but we won't be wasteful or snobbish.

Our church wedding would have been perfect, not too big or small, and Mary and Paige would have been my maids of honor. The three of us talk all the time about what type of guys we're going to marry and what we are going to do for a living and what type of house we're going to live in. I want to find someone to love me, but I know I don't really know what real love is. I'm too young for a serious relationship this year, but I would like to have a boyfriend if Dad will allow it. I worry that probably no guys at school will be interested in me.

I've been studying my school schedule. It says I have first period English 9 Honors with Ms. Hawk. Mary and Paige are in the same class and they say that they heard that this is Ms. Hawk's first year of teaching. I love to read books, especially romance novels, so I hope she will have something interesting for us to read.

I hope Ms. Hawk has got it together. I hate those classes when those young female teachers let the boys get all out of control. Boys my age are so immature. I want to date at least a tenth grader this year. A junior would be even better.