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| - "Shannon!" Isabelle ran up the stairs to her stepsister's room. "Mom says if you don't get up in the next ten seconds, you're not going to soccer practice for the next month!" Shannon bolted straight up in bed. "Ohmigosh. I'm coming, I'm coming." She piled her messy black hair on her head and pulled an elastic around it, only vaguely securing it in place. Shannon sighed and thought it looked rather like the leaning tower of hair. Running downstairs, she asked, "What's for breakfast?" "Shannon," her stepmother said, looking at her grubby shirt, "those clothes are filthy." "No, they're not!" "Yes, they are. Get some clean clothes on." Shannon sprinted up the stairs and grabbed a pale blue t-shirt and black shorts from the laundry. She threw them on and ran back downstairs. Isabelle spared her stepsister a look of disgust — the one eyebrow raise — before going back to her waffles. It's like I'm Cinderella, Shannon pouted. Except I hate her dress. Why can't she wear shorts like a normal person? Shannon sat herself down at the table and began swinging her legs. Because she was so short, they didn't reach the ground. Unfortunately, Isabelle chose that moment to shift her leg right into where Shannon's foot was swinging, and she ended up whacking Isabelle in the knee. "Hey!" Isabelle snapped, putting down her fork and pushing back her chair so as to examine her knee. A black and blue bruise was blooming there already. "You little —" "Isabelle," her mother said warningly. Shannon often felt her thoughts racing around in her head when she was mad. All the jumbled thoughts she had about her evil stepsister formed into one question, which Shannon blurted out. "Isabelle?" "What?" Isabelle said, still looking at her knee. "Why do you wear a skirt all the time?" Isabelle looked up in surprise. Clearly, this wasn't the question she had been expecting. "Well, why do you wear shorts all the time?" "Because skirts are stupid," declared Shannon. "What's the point of them? Skirts are always dry-clean only, which means you can't play soccer or basketball or hockey or lacrosse or —" "Well, think of prom," said a furious Isabelle. "Would you wear shorts to prom?" "What's prom?" "That's enough, girls," said Mrs. Garcio-Shapira, placing her palms on the table in front of them. "Isabelle, I want you to walk Shannon home from school today." Isabelle muttered something underneath her breath, but at that moment the clock struck seven-thirty. "Girls!" Mrs. Garcio-Shapira said, waving them out the door. "Have a good day at school!" The two of them walked along the sidewalk, the tall thin one and the short stocky one. When they arrived at school, Isabelle detatched herself from her stepsister to walk toward a group of girls who all looked snide and cruel, leaving Shannon to wander around on her own. The bell was about to ring when Shannon walked into a pair of ripped jeans. "Oh!" said Shannon, staring up at the face that belonged to the pants. It was surly and tough. "I'm sorry —" "What do you think you're doing, kid?" leered the boy, shoving Shannon to the ground and getting her previously clean clothes dirty once again. "Watch where you're going!" "HEY!" Isabelle was running toward Shannon and the boy, looking irritated. "Keep your hands," she said, jabbing a finger into the boy's chest, "off my stepsister. Or else!" The boy recoiled and ran away like a scared little puppy. Shannon looked up at her stepsister from her place on the ground. "Wow, thanks Isabelle!" "Don't mention it," said Isabelle, offering her hand to her stepsister. The two of them walked into school together, fashionably late. Shannon's day went horribly. It started with an accident in art, where she went to dip her brush in her paint and knocked over a large jug of paint, all over the neatest germaphobe in class. He didn't say anything, but stared down, horrified, at the yellow staining his red silk tie. "Look what she did, teacher!" he cried in a British accent, pointing a dripping finger at Shannon, who turned red. "What do you have to say for spilling that paint all over Edwin?" the teacher asked Shannon. "I — I didn't mean to!" insisted Shannon, but her pleas fell on deaf ears. "Don't try to lie to me, Ms. Garcio-Shapira. I had your sister in this class, and she was the worst little troublemaker I've ever seen." "I'm not her real sister though!" cried Shannon. "I'm just her stepsister!" Her next class, physical education, wasn't much better. Shannon usually excelled in sports, but during soccer, she tripped over the ball and fell on her wrist. The teacher told a crying Shannon that her wrist might even have broken, which made Shannon even more disappointed. She headed off to social studies with her wrist in an icepack, figuring that nothing could possibly go wrong there. But because of Murphy's Law, it did. Shannon was shifting around the icepack when it bumped a priceless piece of porcelain off her desk and into a billion pieces on the floor. The social studies teacher sent her into the hallway to regain her composure, and Shannon stayed out there for the rest of class, sniffling and cradling her arm. Lunch gave Shannon a break. She did not spill spaghetti sauce all over herself, or drop her chocolate milk, or do anything potentially embarassing. At recess, however, the playground supervisor told Shannon she would not be able to participate in the baseball game, for fear of hurting her arm even more. Shannon was sitting on the curb of the school during dismissal, feeling like the day couldn't get much worse, when suddenly he walked by. Tommy Andrews, the boy she had a crush on. Isabelle came out of the front doors and down to where Shannon was sitting. "Hey kid," she said. "You look like you've had a bad day." "I did," said Shannon miserably. "First I spilled paint all over —" "I had the best day ever," gushed Isabelle, cutting over her stepsister's talking. "I talked to Sean Love in class, and he's so dreamy, and then he sat with me at lunch —" "ISABELLE!" sobbed Shannon. "You don't care, do you?" She spotted Tommy walking closer to her, and figured she must look a mess, what with her dirty clothes and red tear-streaked face. "Who's that kid?" asked Isabelle, pointing to Tommy. Shannon turned red and Tommy said, "Hey, Shannon." "I think I know!" squealed Isabelle, clutching Shannon's hurt wrist. "Ouch!" Shannon cried, extracting herself from Isabelle's grip and grabbing her stepsister with her good arm. "We need to go. NOW!" Once they were on the way to Black Brook Road, Isabelle confronted her sister. "You like him." "What? Who?" "That Tommy kid. That said hi to you?" "No, I don't like him," Shannon lied through her teeth. "Boys are icky." "Mhmm," said Isabelle. "Well, tonight I'm giving you a makeover." "Eww." They reached home, and of course Mrs. Garcio-Shapira had to ask about her stepdaughter's wrist. She forced Shannon to get X-rays, and it turned out that Shannon's wrist really was broken, and she would have to get a cast. "Good," said Isabelle. "Stage one of the makeover. Now, get pink for your cast color." "No," said Shannon. "I want blue." "Tough. You're getting pink." Isabelle's ears perked up and she ran into the hospital hallway. Shannon pressed her ear to the door and listened. "Hey, yeah, my sister was talking with me," she could hear Isabelle saying, "and she told me she wanted pink for her cast color. She told me she'd feel weird telling you, so I figured I would." That little ratfink traitor stepsister! thought Shannon. She just pulled a Jekyll and Hyde on me! Shannon walked home a little while later with her new pink cast, sweating in the early May heat. "Thanks a lot." "Hey, I did you a favor." "Sure you did." "Well, I'll dress you tomorrow morning, okay? I'll help you." Help, thought Shannon. Puh-leese. True to her promise, Isabelle got up the next morning and forced her sister into a pink skirt and brown top. "I look horrible," said Shannon, looking in the mirror. "No, you don't," said Isabelle. "Now come here so I can put that lip gloss that Auntie Marie got you last Christmas to good use." She trapped her sister in a headlock, and while Shannon had a heavy cast to aim at her sister, it did her no good. "Get — off — of — me —" Isabelle managed to smear the lip gloss onto her stepsister's mouth, and stood back, looking pleased with herself. "There. Timmy's going to love you." "Tommy." "Whatever, Shannon." Shannon walked to school with her books in hand. She saw the boy who had pushed her down yesterday, but he drew back as she passed by, and she smirked. She went to put her books into her right hand, then realized it was in the cast. Frowning slightly, she walked to class and sat down. "Please take out your pencils and copy down your homework," the teacher said. Shannon heard the scribbling of nineteen other pencils around her and looked down at her paper, which blurred. How was she supposed to write with her hand in a cast? "Shannon," said the teacher's voice behind her. "Why aren't you writing?" "My hand's in a cast, how am I supposed to write?" "Use your other hand," said the teacher. "I don't accept slackers in my class." Shannon's heart sunk as the teacher walked away. She was a righty for everything, and her left hand was as weak as Isabelle. She picked up the pencil with her left hand and attempted to write her name. The pencil skidded across the paper, leaving a long dark mark across it. Shannon sighed and put the pencil down. "Shannon." The teacher was behind her again. "I told you to start writing. Now start writing or I'll have to send you to the principal's." "I can't write," said Shannon. "I'm a righty." "Like I said," the teacher persisted. "Use your left hand. I see no problem in that." "I can't write with my left hand," said Shannon. "Really." "I expect your homework to be written down in the next five minutes or I will have you in detention." As she walked away, she added, "Legibly." Shannon got up and asked for a bathroom pass from the helper. She got into the hallway, but instead of going to the bathroom, she sat down with her back pressed to the wall and started to cry. Tears splattered down onto her horrid pink cast, and she heard footsteps near her. Looking up, she saw an unfamiliar black-haired girl standing there. "Hi," she said, sitting down next to Shannon. "Whatcha doin'?" "Having the worst day of my life," sobbed Shannon. "I might get detention from the teacher if I can't get my homework copied down. And that's so stupid. I mean, can't I just remember for the night?" "She's only trying to help," said the girl. "My name's Isabella, by the way. How about we go back into your classroom and I copy down your homework for you?" "Sure," Shannon said. Then she added, "Your name sounds like my stepsister's." "Oh, really?" asked Isabella. "Who's your stepsister?" "Isabelle Garcio-Shapira." Isabella's nose wrinkled slightly, and she said, "Oh... she's nice." "No she isn't." "Yeah, you're right," Isabella sighed. "She locked me in her basement closet once." Shannon's eyes nearly fell out of her head as they walked into the classroom. "That's so mean." "Well, hello, Isabella," said the teacher. "What are you doing here?" "I'm just here to copy down Shannon's homework," Isabella replied, grabbing Shannon's pencil and her homework planner, neatly writing down every single bit of homework she had in very springy, bouncy letters. When she finished, she handed the planner back to Shannon. "Don't let her push you around." Shannon nodded.
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