Emily pounded Jane's front door, panting. When her best friend opened it, she collapsed to the hallway, still panting.
"Let's be honest," she said to Jane. "You and I are losers."
Jane laughed because she thought both Emily and her already knew that for a fact. Besides her best friend always had a way of making it funny. But Jane hadn't been completely hopeless. She did make a few shots during basketball practice and sometimes got a C+ on her tests. She might not be as good in sports and school as Caroline, but she wasn't as bad as Emily either.
"We could form a club," Emily went on. Jane pulled her friend to a seated position and dropped down to her level so that they could talk better and to find out what silly idea Emily had come up with this time.
"A club for what?" she said, cocking her head to the side.
"A club for losers," Emily said, which made Jane laugh again. "It would be open only for people like us. Like, you'd have to be bad at a certain number of things to qualify for a membership. You'd have to miss the most baskets in P.E, and read the shortest books for English class, and have the worst experiment at the science fair."
"And we'll call it..." Jane prompted as if waiting for a brilliant name, but brilliant names don't come easily for them.
"Loser Club!" Emily grinned. "You know like the 'Breakfast Club', or something like that."
"Do people have to eat breakfast together to be a member though?" Jane wondered, getting distracted.
"I don't know, I just heard about it somewhere, so I stole the concept," Emily said with a shrug. "So I'll be the president, and you can be the vice president. Well...unless you want to be the president?"
"Nah." Jane shook her head. "The club was your idea."
Besides, Jane figured, it was more loser-ish to be a vice president than a president, even of a loser club for two.
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,sixmonths before.Jane let 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