Chapter 1

Jane Waleski leaned over the sink and examined her face in the mirror. There was another pimple flourishing on her chin. She grimaced in disgust and wondered if she should just pop this hideous mega zit. But her mom said patience is the key.

With a sigh, she got out of the bathroom and went to the kitchen.  As she passed the hall, she stopped and straightened her back against the measuring tape on the wall. She tried to make herself taller. She placed her hand on top of her brunette head. Then she turned around and checked where her fingers had touched the tape. Five feet, two inches. Still.

She hadn't even grown a quarter of an inch since she had made the most recent mark on the chart back on her sixteenth birthday, six months before.

Jane let her eyes fall on the tape again. Her sister, Caroline, was only two years older than she was, but at eighteen, she was a full five inches taller. She could join the runways if she wanted to.

"Of course Caroline's taller. She's two years older!" Jane's mother used to say when she complained about it growing up. Now her mom couldn't use the same excuse. There must be something wrong with their gene pool. The gene for height must've eluded her. Also, Caroline had always had better grades and a shelf full of trophies. Nothing about it was fair any more.

These past few years Jane had begun to accept the fact that she wasn't one of the Waleskis. And she had started writing a book called the Unfair Life of Jane, Plain, and Short. It wasn't a real book, just a list of experiences and even that made Jane wonder whether the universe had something in the particular against her. For example:

Monday, March 9th. Jane didn't have her math homework to turn in. Mr. Putnam said, "I'll have to take five points off for that, Miss. Waleski." But when Lucy Adams, didn't have her math homework to turn in. Mr. Putnam said, "Well, turn it in first thing tomorrow, Lucy." 

Thursday, March 13th. Jane made six perfect baskets in a row before school. During gym class, when Coach Jim was watching, she missed six baskets in a row.

Wednesday, March 17th. The cafeteria ran out of dessert. The last person to get a dessert was the person right in front of Jane Waleski and Emily Zuckerman.

Friday, March 28th. Jane and Emily finally did their book reports, Ms. Reeds told them that the books they read were too short, even though she never told the class ahead of time that the book-report books had to be a certain length. Jane's book had 97 pages. Emily's book had 78 pages. Lucy Adams's book had 357 pages.

The notebook was almost full. Usually, Jane had at least one unfair thing to add to it every day. Now she could add that she still remained a dwarf for the last six months. Maybe she had stopped growing. Maybe five feet two inches was going to be her full adult height, and she would spend the rest of her life as a shortie, except for Lucy Adams, who apparently hadn't since she starred as a princess for their school play in second grade.

Jane poured herself a bowl of cereal and drowned it in milk. She had read that some farmers were giving their cows a special hormone that showed up in the milk. She took an extra swig from the jug before putting it back in the fridge. Hopefully, it would help her growing like it did with the cows too.

It was a tradition in her family that Jane and her sister made dinner every weekend together. The tradition had begun when they were both still in elementary school. Back then dinner had usually been frozen pizza, topped with whatever the girls could find in the fridge. But lately, the dinners had been real cuisines, prepared from real recipes in real cookbooks. Thanks to Caroline's perfectness.

When Jane came downstairs after a long, boring hour spent struggling with math homework, she found her sister in the kitchen, flipping through the Cooking for Dummies.

"How about Italian meatballs?" Caroline asked without looking up from the pages. "Over pasta. There's some stuff in the fridge for a salad."

"Sounds good," Jane said. She was hungry already just by hearing the menu. But Caroline was always the one who decided what they would make. Jane peered down at the open page of the cookbook. "Or how about Hawaiian pizza?"

"We don't have any pineapple." Caroline shook her blonde head, which reminded Jane of her boring everything-brown looks. Surely, the two of them were suspiciously unrelated.

"Who eats pizza with pineapple anyway?" Jane said.

"You said Hawaiian, didn't you?" her sister reminded her. Jane should've known better that Caroline was never wrong.

"Well, did you look then? Sometimes Mom stores extra cans up high."

"I'm sure there's none."

But when Jane searched the pantry shelves anyway, she didn't find any canned pineapple. Canned pears, canned corns, canned carrots. No canned pineapple. She should have known. Caroline was always right. It was one of the most annoying things about her sister.

As Jane began mincing the onions for the Italian meatballs, she tried to remember if Caroline had always been right, even way back when they were babies. All of Jane's memories were the same. Caroline racing on her first two-wheel bike, without any training wheels, the bike that her parents initially bought for her, but because she was too short to reach the pedals, they gave it to Caroline. Caroline swimming the length of the big pool as Jane clung to her inflated tube in the baby pool. Not that Caroline wasn't nice. She was the nicest. Almost too nice sometimes.

Jane had made two entries just that morning in her Unfair Life.

Saturday, March 25. The newspaper of their school had a picture of Caroline Waleski on the front page of the sports section, scoring in Friday night's game. Jane Waleski had never even had her picture in any dump news.

Saturday, March 25 (updated). Two boys from Caroline's class called her seven times. No boys have ever called Jane. Of course, Jane does not want any boy to call her. She doesn't even like boys. Jane Waleski would hang up if any boy called her. But it is still true that no one —girl or boy alike, has ever called her.