The Ivy League Part 23

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              Grace and I raced up the stairs to my bedroom. She won. I had eaten more than her, so it had pulled me down. I chose to inform her of this fact, but she merely rolled her eyes.

              My enormous room was neat and perfectly tidy; note to self: thank Rebecca for making my bed again. We plopped down at my computer, and I pulled out the DVD and journal with a flourish. Something fell out of the journal, underneath the table.

              “Ta, DA!” I said triumphantly, waving the two objects in Grace’s face. She went slightly cross-eyed, trying to keep it in view. Now that the phone call was over and I had sufficient ammo on Ellen, I was feeling hugely optimistic, and was, in an odd and twisted way, was even looking forward to my first shift of punishment tomorrow.

              “Great,” Grace said. “What is it?”

              I opened my mouth. “…I don’t know.”

              She looked at me and I dove underneath the table, pulling out the document that had fallen out of Ellen’s leather-bound journal.

              “NO WAY!” I yelled in a slightly muffled voice from underneath the table.

              “What? What is it?” Grace said, trying to join me in my cave and nearly cracking her skull open on the edge of my table.

              I re-surfaced, waving the yellow papers in the air like a flag. “Grace, you’ll never guess what this is!” I said excitedly, clambering back onto my rolly chair.

              “I’ll take your word for it. What is it?”

              I didn’t respond because I was too busy staring towards the heavens, savouring the moment. I could just see it unfolding…

              Grace snatched the papers out my hand and her eyes got wide as she stared at it. She looked up at me, a wicked grin spreading across her face. My smile was still dreamy, with all the beautiful possibilities open before me.

              “Wow. Where did you get this?” she asked admiringly.

              “Leah,” I said absently, still thinking of how I would put this to use.

              “Nice,” Grace said, smirking. “There’s even a before and after picture!”

              I came back down to earth, taking the papers back from Grace. I smirked, too, as I looked down at Ellen.

              The papers were hospital admittance information, documenting Ellen’s nose job. Goodness, and I had only been joking the day that I asked if re-dying her hair had cost more than re-making her nose. I guess I’d hit a nerve, after all.

              There were, like Grace had pointed out, two pictures. One was ‘before’ and it depicted a thirteen year-old Ellen, smiling up at the camera through a mouthful of metal braces. Her skin had been freckled, she had a seriously bad perm job, and her nose…well, let’s just say I can see why she had that changed. There was an enormous bump on her original nose, making it look like the beak of a giant, prehistoric bird; this was beautifully seen in the shot of her profile, throwing the nose into the spotlight. The ‘after’ picture changed Ellen dramatically – though her nose was red, inflated and sore-looking, the bump was gone and she looked more like the present-day Ellen rather than an eighth-grade loser. The second photo seemed like only a week after the surgery; her perm there was as bad as in the one before, and her braces glinted blindingly. Wow. Talk about a gift from heaven.

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