Chapter 3.

    By the end of dinner that night, I was up to maybe fifty words. Both Dawn and my dad had asked if I was okay. Both times I had said yes. (The other forty-eight words had included, "Please pass the salad," and things like that.) At first I couldn't figure out why I felt so grumpy. I thought maybe it was the cold weather. Then I thought it was something I had eaten. But the real reason didn't come to me until I was in my bedroom later, alone.

    As I was brushing Tigger's fur, all I could think about was the BSC meeting. That dumb little incident was still on my mind.

    I kept picturing that model with the hairstyle I liked. Stacey had said, "It's not you, Mary Anne." That's all. Not a terrible insult, right? People say that kind of thing all the time.

    Still, it was sticking in my mind like a piece of bubble gum under a tabletop. How could Stacey know what was "me"? How could Claudia, or even Dawn?

    I picked up a little hand mirror. Looking into it, I tried to see "me." , I saw a decent, neat-looking girl with sort of blah hair and a gloomy face. I forced a smile, but that made "me" look worse.

    Okay, so "me" wasn't so hot. No big deal. Not everyone can be a super-model.

    Still, I wondered what everyone had found so funny. I reached behind my neck and pulled my hair up. I tried to imagine what that short haircut would look like.

    Have you ever taken a really good look at your jaw? I never had, until I was staring at myself with my hair up. My attention went right to it. And you know what? I kind of liked it. It had a strong curve. It wasn't too thin or too broad. I mean, all my life I'd always noticed the normal things in the mirror - my eyes, teeth, hair, lips, skin. They're all okay, but not beautiful. Now I was discovering a new part of me. Mary Anne's Beauty Secret.

    The Jaw that Launched a Thousand Ships.