I took one last look in the mirror and dredged up a massive sigh, a sigh that, like Helen of Troy’s face, could have launched a thousand ships.

Unlike my face.

Not that it’s a bad face. A little on the round side maybe, but that’s genetics, not chocolate doughnuts. Brown eyes. Naturally straight teeth, which is good. Naturally straight hair, which is not so good.

No extra eyeballs or stray nose hairs. The occasional zit, but nothing of epic proportions.

All in all, a perfectly acceptable face. Nothing special. Nothing that’ll be launching a thousand ships any time in the immediate future. If ever.

Nothing like Elaine Duncan’s face.

Don’t get me wrong. Elaine isn’t perfect.

It’s just that everybody thinks she is.

I mean, her thighs are a little heavy, but with that thick wavy black hair and those deep blue eyes, her flawless taste in clothes, unfailing sense of humor, brains, confidence, and genuine niceness, who the heck bothers to criticize, much less even notice, her thighs?

Ever since I got to know Elaine two summers ago, when we both signed up for a three-week theatre camp at the college, I’ve wanted to be just like her: the style, the humor, the brains, the confidence, the niceness. The whole enchilada.

At first I thought maybe a hair cut and dye job would be a good place to start, but my imagination, one of the few things I have that’s truly excellent, kept me from creating a Red Cross level disaster. Elaine’s hair on my head would have been really awful.

In the battle between cosmetology and genetics, genetics wins every time.

It’s not that my hair is exactly bad. It’s just that it’s straight. And brown. Nothing dramatic. Nothing stylish. Nothing special.

And that’s me, Barbara Louise Jensen, in a nutshell.

So why, on my first day as a junior at Travis High School, did I even bother looking at myself in the mirror? Sure, I had the skirt and matching top and the classic Elaine Duncan shoes, but isn’t there a saying somewhere about making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear?

"Why couldn’t it still be yesterday?" I muttered.

At least yesterday all I had to worry about was Andy.

~ * ~

"Andy, if I have to do this one more time, I’ll scream until I turn thirteen shades of purple."

"Just one more time. I have fifteen minutes before I need to go mow the Petrie’s lawn. That’s enough time for one more run-through." Andy ran his fingers through his hair.

His hair is orange, and, since he’s always running his fingers through it, it always stands up in little spikes like a rooster.

"No, Andy. I hate the lines, I hate the characters, and I hate the scene." Andy finally took a good look at me so I got louder just for good measure. "We’ve rehearsed it all summer long and I’m sick of it!"

"I just want it to be good."

"It is good, okay? In fact, it’s perfect. It’s so perfect that we’ll never need to practice it again. And now, I think I hear the Petries’ lawn paging you." I talked through my fist in a pretty darn good imitation of an operator’s voice: "Andrew Prescott. Andrew Prescott. Please report to surgery for your five o’clock grassectomy."

"Why are you two out here yelling at each other?" My mom poked her head out the back door. "I swear, the two of you argue like an old married couple."

"Very funny, Mother." I felt my face get hot. Mothers can be so embarrassing.

"The way you were hollering I thought maybe Bob was home."

Bob is my older brother. I’ll take Andy over Bob any day of the week.

"We were just rehearsing our scene, Mrs. Jensen." Andy has learned from long years of experience to take my mom with a grain of salt.

"You’ve been working on that thing all summer. When are you going to do it for an audience?"

"The first speech tournament is in Austin at the end of September," Andy told her. "We’ll do it--or duet--then. But I want to have it in good shape before we show it to GeeDub."

"GeeDub?"

"Gail Walker. G.W. GeeDub." Andy waited until he could see she’d gotten it. "The speech coach. She goes with us to all of the tournaments."

"Lucky GeeDub." Mom laughed. "And I thought I had it tough just keeping track of Barbara and Bob! I can’t imagine chaperoning a whole team of teenagers on an overnight trip. And why the trips have to be overnight is beyond me."

"It’s because we’re three hours away from everywhere." A nice way of saying that Travis, Texas, is in the middle of nowhere. "We’re too far away from all the big cities in the state, and the big cities are where the really good tournaments are." Andy had the intense look on his face he gets whenever he’s talking about one of his passions.

"Makes sense, I guess. Well, Barb, it’s almost time to eat. I need you to set the table, please. Would you like to stay for dinner, Andy?" Mom likes Andy. Adults usually do. Just like they like Elaine, which goes without saying.

"I wish I could," Andy said. "But I’ve just heard from a very reliable source that the Petries’ lawn is turning into a jungle. I promised I’d mow it for them before the homeowner’s association got after them."

"Well, maybe next time." Mom went inside then, thank goodness.

"So I’ll see you tomorrow, Andy. Maybe we’ll have a few classes together this year."

"If not, there’ll always be scene rehearsals." Andy waved as he left.

"No more rehearsals!" I yelled after him.

That was yesterday.