CHASING PUBERTY
Excerpt Copyright 2005 by Kat Brookes
CHAPTER ONE
Dear Diary...
It hasn�t happened. I had a whole summer to push past the limits of my seventh grade training bra and what did I get? Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Even my best friends Lynn and Christy got real boobs this summer. It�s hard to believe that at the beginning of summer break they were the same as me � flat as a pancake. How could they leave me behind that way? We�ve always done everything together. Summer was such a rip. Who�d have thought that a week before my freshman year of high school I�d still be chasing puberty?
Yours flatly,
Logan Stanley
* * *
Hi. I�m Logan Stanley and I�m a girl. I thought I�d make that clear right from the start. My name tends to throw people. Blame it on my mom.
I live in the small town of Middleburg, Ohio. One of those blink-and-you-miss-it kind of places. I don�t even think we�re big enough to make it on the map, or maybe they just forgot about us. But I�ll take it over a big city anytime. My eighth grade class went to Cleveland on a field trip and you wouldn�t believe how many people are squeezed into that one city. Like ants on an Oreo cookie crumb.
I hurried to dress with an occasional glance at the clock by my bed. This was it. My very first day of high school. This was where we went from being top dogs in middle school to freshman peons, climbing the ladder of class rank all over again.
The first day of high school is one of the most important days in a girl�s life. �Make it or break it day�, as it�s called at our high school, can decide a girl�s social fate for that school year. You have to wear just the right thing, something to showcase your move from childhood into almost-a-womanhood.
I glanced down at the short sleeve Old Navy t-shirt I�d chosen to make my statement with. It was sort of a yellowish-beige color with nothing on it; which seemed fitting seeing as how there was nothing in it either.
Reaching up, I ran my fingers through my dark brown hair and pulled it back into a ponytail holder. Once I had finished with my hair, I put on my favorite cotton candy pink lipstick and smacked my lips together the way I�d seen my mom do it a zillion times before. I�m not sure what it was supposed to accomplish, but I did it anyhow just the same.
I kept my jewelry simple. Today I had decided to wear a pair of twisted gold hoop earrings that my parents had given me for my last birthday. They were nowhere near the door knockers Mrs. Maple, my last homeroom teacher, always wore, but they were still eye catchers.
Christy had asked her parents for a pair of hoops just like mine for her birthday, but her mom surprised her with some weird looking turtle earrings instead. They ended up as ear ornaments for the stuffed Teddy bear Christy had won at Six Flags two summers before. I can�t say that I blame her. Turtle earrings are so not cool.
The door to my bedroom flew open and I turned away from the dresser mirror to find my older sister, Nicole, glaring at me from the doorway with her usual I�m-the-angry-princess glare. It�s a perpetual state with her. No big deal. You sort of become immune to the eye darts she shoots your way after a while.
She stomped into my room and planted a perfectly manicured hand on her jean-covered hip and snarled, �Did you take my good hairbrush?�
I flashed little Miss Out-Of-Her-Training-Bra-At-Nine my best scowl. One I�d had loads of practice using when she was around. It was always me. Every time she lost something of hers it was my fault. As if I�d want to use anything of hers anyway.
Not.
�Yeah,� I lied. �I used it to brush Abby with last night.�
Abby was our four-year-old collie who liked nothing better than to run through the woods behind our house and get all messy.
My sister let out a shriek that rattled the dog nose-smudged panes in my bedroom window. �Mom!�
I grinned. That was some set of lungs my sister had on her. Big boobs. Big lungs. Big hair.
She took a step toward me, poking her finger in my non-existent chest. �You are so going to pay for that.� Threat made my sister spun around, whipping her long, blonde, Barbie hair in my face and then stomped out the door.
I watched her go with a satisfied smile. No matter how dismal my life was at that moment as I prepared to enter my freshman year of high school with a middle schooler body, there was just something mentally therapeutic about taunting my sixteen-year-old sister.
Odd how genetics worked. Nicole got the body and I got the brains. At least there was still hope for me to have both someday. And if it doesn�t come naturally, I can always buy boobs. My sister can�t buy brains.
