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.
The Italian meatballs were delicious. Jane spooned over hot, buttery noodles and enjoyed every bit of it. Jane's dad had three helpings."You girls could open a restaurant," Jane's mother said. "If you ever want a job cooking for my school, let me know." Her mom's school was a preschool where she worked as a teacher. "Our kitchen staff could definitely use some new ideas. What else did you girls do this afternoon?""Nothing," Jane said."Same," Caroline said.It was one of their favorite replies to their mother's questions."Caroline, I saw you got a letter from the senator in the mail. Was that anything interesting? Had you written to him about something?" she asked again.
Ms. Anderson explained more about how the science fair projects should be organized. Then she said, "Now I want you to form small groups for brainstorming about science fair ideas. I'll be circulating among your groups to begin talking with each of you individually."After they had counted off, Jane found herself in the first group, with three girls, including Lucy Adams —not Emily. Ms. Anderson pulled her chair over to join them."In science, we start out with questions," Ms. Anderson said in her low, throaty voice. "What questions about our physical world would any of you like to try to answer?"Jane had plenty of questions, but she kept them to herself. Why wasn't she growing taller? How come some people were better at things than other people? How could anybody have hair that
Jane floated through science class and art. Then, in third-period math class, she came down to earth with a thud.Mr. Putnam was a short, stocky man who always wore a bow tie and suspenders. He looked a little bit like an inflatable toy, held down by beanbag weights stuffed into his small, shiny black shoes."Boys and girls," he began, rocking slightly on his toes, "today we are going to start a new program called Peer-Teaching."Jane looked over at Emily. She could tell that Emily didn't like the sound of it either."In Peer-Teaching, students work together in pairs as partners. Partners study together during class several times each week."Jane met Emily's eyes again. They never wo
At lunch, Emily could talk of nothing but Grace Anderson."Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!" she moaned piteously to her ham sandwich. "I thought I was in love those other times, but they were nothing compared to this."Jane didn't want to talk about Ms. Anderson with Emily. She wished Emily hadn't seen her first. She wished Emily hadn't said that she was in love with her first."What do you want to do after school?" Jane asked to change the subject."Nothing," Emily said in the same lovesick voice that was beginning to get on Jane's nerves."We have to dosomething," Jane insisted."I guess we could mess around
By the end of the day, Jane had made three new entries for herUnfair Lifebook. In a black-bordered box on its own special page, she wrote: Monday, 27.Jane Waleski was assigned Lucy Adams as her partner in Peer-Teaching. From gym class she had: Monday, 27.Jane missed more baskets than anyone in the class except Emily Zuckerman. Coach Jim said, "Sometimes I find it hard to believe that you and Caroline Waleski are really sisters." As soon as Coach Jim had said it, Jane could tell that the coach felt sorry for letting the words slip out. "Just kidding, Jane," the coach said. "Come on now, concentrate!"
Jane tried to think of a project for the science fair, but she didn't know how to begin. In elementary school, she and Emily had just done whatever project their dads suggested, from a library book Jane's mother checked out every year on award-winning science fair ideas. One year they had done something with magnets. Another year they had let mold grow on different foods: apples, bread, yogurt. That had been Jane's favorite project.She forgot what their hypothesis had been, but she still remembered how gross the food had looked when the project was displayed in the elementary-school gym.This year she wanted to do something different—not an experiment out of a book but one she thought up all by herself. She fantasized about the judges to be astonished that a sixteen-year-old could have thought up such a project and carried it out
On Friday afternoon, classes were canceled for a school-wide pep rally in the gym. It was the game of the season. The school had its biggest rival in every sport coming into tonight's game undefeated.As Jane walked to the pep rally with Emily, she gathered data for another entry in Unfair Life:Friday, January 29th.On the way to the pep rally, three different people asked Jane Waleski, "Are you really Caroline Waleski's sister?"When the team came running out into the gym, the people in the bleachers went wild. Everyone was chanting Caroline's name. Emily joined the crowd until her throat was hoarse from yelling. Jane had cheered as loudly as she could for all the others, but she tried to cheer even more for her sister. She felt terrible for th
Jane made up her mind to stick to her rules. After making a list of her dream goals, she made it her life mission to cross each one of them.But the hard part was crossing them.She felt a sense of optimism, almost excitement flooding through her. She was also slightly overwhelmed by the things she had to commit to. Things that were mostly her least favorite things, like studying instead of watching her TV shows or hanging out with Emily.But she believed that every great man and woman had to sacrifice a lot to reach their goals, so no more whining. She would have to do the same or die trying. That was how serious she was.Jane had been shooting baskets from five until seven. She only made 30 baskets out of 100. Compared to her usual