Chelsea Magyar studied herself in her mirror, changing angles to see if it would change anything. Much to her dismay, Chelsea found her reflection uninspiring from every angle.

Sure, she hadn’t always been this way. She’d always been tan, a mixture of her peasant Hungarian background (two generations removed) and the countless hours spent in the pool for water polo and swim team and in the ocean surfing and bodyboarding. There were some scattered freckles dashed across her nose and cheeks, but she thought they weren’t very good-looking. That was about the only upside she found to her body, though. Freshman year she’d been hot stuff as a quick burst of puberty had given her some nice curves in the right places. That summer, though, she’d slowly watched the needle on the scale inch higher every week. Pretty soon she was up a dress size, despite the diets that only seemed to prolong the inevitable.

“Pudgy,” Chelsea said. That’s what she was: pudgy. Chelsea didn’t think she was fat, especially in comparison to Tara Kelly who was easily 20, maybe 30, pounds heavier than her. But she wasn’t as slim and trim as she might care to be, like Morgan Jones was.

Gingerly, Chelsea tested her stomach. It didn’t yield a whole lot, but it certainly did. The same was true for her thighs, much to Chelsea’s dismay. Her breasts and her ass were nothing to write home about. Chelsea desperately wished that at least some of the extra weight had gone there. Such was not to be her luck. She was usually too tired in the morning to bother putting contacts in, so Chelsea felt her appearance was further depreciated by the presence of glasses on her nose, which she thought was ugly too, imprisoning her chestnut eyes. Her light brown hair was perfectly straight and boring. Even her voice was plain. She hated it so much that it almost grated on her own ears.

Boring, Chelsea thought, That’s an even better description than pudgy. Since when was it decreed that smart girls had to be ugly AND boring?

It was true, Chelsea was as smart as a tack and was acing all her classes. School was easy for her, but that was about the only break Chelsea felt she’d caught as a teenager. Unfortunately, having a 4.33 GPA for this semester didn’t exactly get her a date for the movies on Friday night.

Her physical self-examination completed, Chelsea left the most unenjoyable aspect: the weigh-in. Chelsea desperately hoped that her weight hadn’t gone up any. Before, it had been that she hoped her weight hadn’t changed. Before that she prayed her weight had gone down. But now Chelsea always waited nervously as the needle spun, hoping she hadn’t added anymore to her frame.

Chelsea sighed as the scale stopped on 141 pounds. At least it didn’t go up this week, Chelsea thought with minor relief. Despite this little victory, there was always a nagging in Chelsea’s head that told her it was only temporary.

Looking at the clock, Chelsea grudgingly gathered together her swim bag and threw on enough clothes to be decent and headed down for practice. She just hoped Tara wasn’t going to be throwing those same hard passes she had last week. With luck she’d gotten over breaking up with Ryan by now. He was a jerk anyway.

***

Chelsea usually sat on the bench for most of the match. Well, actually she swam off in a side lane watching the play and cheering the other girls on. They were actually doing well this season, so there was something there to cheer about.

This also gave her time to quickly scan and check the stands to see if any of her friends showed up. Occasionally one or two did, but this was a rarity. In the sea of faces, Chelsea did a double take. What was Liam O’Shea doing here?! Chelsea’s amazement was quickly interrupted as she got subbed into the game.

Much to everyone’s delight, they won the game and their ebullience flowed over into the locker room after the game. Such a strong start to the season could only be a sign of good things to come.

“Hey, did anyone see what I saw today?” Tina asked.

“What? The RFK girls kicking some major Stony End High ass!” Nina said.

Everyone of course started cheering again, but Tina cut through the noise once it had subsided enough. “No! Liam O’Shea! He was here at the match!”

“No way!” Christy exclaimed, “Nobody every comes to our matches, not even my mother!”

“Yeah, I saw him too,” Chelsea said, “He was talking with Patsy when I looked.”

Everyone groaned at mention of water polo’s indefatigable chatterer. “You know what this means,” Tina said.

“What?” Morgan asked.

“Liam’s probably got the hots for one of us,” Tina said.

The room fell silent and everyone began looking around, wondering who it could be. “Liam O’Shea? Like one of us?” Jenna said in disbelief.

“I don’t know, he’s not all that bad,” Lynn said, “At least he could help me with my math homework.”

“And I heard he kept all his notes from last year to AP Euro and I could sure use those,” Kristin said after a moment.

“And he is getting an A in AP US,” Morgan said, “and, besides, he could be uglier.”

Everyone laughed. Well, mostly everyone, that was, because Chelsea didn’t. What if Liam likes me? Chelsea thought, hope breaking like light through clouds for her, I wonder…

Of course, Chelsea didn’t notice that Tara wasn’t laughing either.

***

At the next game on Friday, there was Liam O’Shea again and the team was buzzing in between periods over the sighting. Luckily, they weren’t too distracted during the game as they still won and ran up a pretty score too.

Back in the locker room, most everyone was too excited about their win to even think about talking about Liam. After all, business before pleasure. However, Chelsea noticed Tara pack up and get out pretty quickly, so out of curiosity, Chelsea peeked out the door wearing only a t-shirt and saw Tara leave with Liam.

Chelsea was crestfallen for only a moment. Tara was a really nice girl and she was happy for her. However, the pairing was an unlikely one, and Chelsea could only wonder. Of course, if there was someone out there for Tara Kelly, then there was doubtless a boyfriend waiting in the wings for Chelsea Magyar.

And just in case, Chelsea prayed very hard that night.

***

“Oh my God. You will not believe what I saw this afternoon,” Christy’s voice said from Chelsea’s cell phone, “Tara Kelly and Liam O’Shea are an item!”

“Mmmhmmm,” Chelsea said. Not only was this old news to her, but Chelsea really didn’t care. She was on the verge of finishing an English paper and just wanted to be done with it.

“That’s all you have to say? This is huge!” Christy said.

“Look, Christy, some other time. I’m working right now—” Chelsea began as she typed, cradling the cell phone tenuously in her shoulder.

“Oh never mind, I still have to call Nina and Morgan and Lynn and…oh yeah, Kristin. I always forget her. Go back to your stupid paper,” Christy said and hung up in frustration.

Chelsea didn’t hold it against Christy that she was always so caustic. Some people were just made that way and Chelsea could usually get away from Christy before she got too aggravated by her. Besides, all she needed were two more paragraphs and she was done…

Monday rolled around and sure enough there was Tara and Liam. After a quick interrogation that we all found to be satisfactory, Chelsea and the other girls quickly accepted him as an okay guy. Though Chelsea wished that it was her and not Tara that was the object of Liam’s affections, she was still content. After all, now maybe Nina would go ask someone else how to do her algebra rather than always come to Chelsea.

***

The water polo team was doing well, especially after the close loss to Central, and life was good. At least as good as it could be for Chelsea, who still thought that God had obviously given her the left over genes that no one else wanted. She was facing the prospect of yet another Christmas without a boyfriend. She’d promised herself in September this’d be the year she’d get one, but, unsurprisingly in retrospect, she hadn’t had any luck whatsoever.

Chelsea was in a funk as she brooded over all these things during yet another boring day of AP Biology. Katherine tapped her on the shoulder and handed her a folded note, interrupting her ruminations. Chelsea was about to hand it on when Katherine said, “No, it’s for you.”

Chelsea figured it was Christy asking some stupid math question that if she worked hard she could probably figure out. However, she was pleasantly surprised when she found that the handwriting was vastly different from Christy’s chicken scratch (this note was actually legible). Chelsea read intently:

Hey Chelsea,

How are you? I haven’t talked to you in a while, but of course we just can’t interrupt Phillin’s lecture with something interesting, so forgive the note. I don’t know if you’re free, but would you like to catch a movie Saturday? I’m told that “The Crossing” is supposed to be pretty good. It’s by the guy who did “All The Pretty Horses” apparently. If not, that’s cool, but maybe we can say hello to each other a little more often now.

—Ross

Chelsea’s head shot up and craned over at Ross. He looked back at her and gave a little wave. He was tall, thin, and pretty good-looking by Chelsea’s estimation. She couldn’t believe what she’d just seen. She hastily read the note again. Yep, she’d read it right.

Chelsea tried to keep from blushing or slinking down in her chair as she scrawled her nearly legible her reply underneath Ross’s signature:

Sure, that’d be cool. You’ll have to wait until after practice, though, it ends at 4:30. Is a 5:00 movie good for you? Call me.

Chelsea scribbled her number below, signed it, and then refolding the paper, crossing out her name and replacing it with Ross’s. The paper then wound its way back up through the sea of bored students to Ross. As Mr. Phillins was always much too involved in his lecture, there was never any threat of having such notes intercepted.

When class ended, Chelsea quickly scurried out before Ross could approach her. Even though her prayers had been answered, she’d forgot to ask God to give her courage enough not to screw up.

***

Chelsea got home after practice and anxiously asked if anyone had called for her. No one had, so she went to her room to do some history reading. She could barely concentrate on what she was reading she was so overcome with the agony of waiting. To try and relieve her stress, Chelsea tried pacing back and forth, but she soon found that to be way too much physical effort after having done two hours of water polo practice. Instead, she settled down to read Casino Royale by Ian Fleming. She was probably the only girl in the entire high school that was an avid James Bond fan.

About twenty minutes later, the phone rang and Chelsea pounced on it before the ring had subsided, nearly falling off her bed. “Hello?”

“Hi, Chelsea, it’s Ross McKenna,” the voice on the other end said.

Suddenly Chelsea wished she was back to waiting as a tight knot formed in her stomach and her mouth went dry. “Uh, hi,” Chelsea said, and mentally cursed herself for not having anything better to say.

“Hey, umm, like I said in the note, you want to catch a movie on Friday?” Ross said. If Chelsea hadn’t been so absorbed in her own anxiety, she might have noticed Ross sounded equally apprehensive.

“Yeah, sure. I hope you won’t mind me showing up with wet hair, though,” Chelsea said.

Ross laughed nervously. “That’ll be okay. I’ll meet you there at 5, all right?”

“Sure,” Chelsea said and smiled, relieved that things seemed to have gone well, “See you Friday.”

“Okay, bye,” Ross said.

“Wait!” Chelsea blurted, suddenly remembering.

“Yeah?”

“Look, I don’t know if you’re doing anything, but I’ve got a game tomorrow and it’d be cool if you’d come,” Chelsea said, trying to be as casual as possible.

“Really? Sounds like fun. Count me in,” Ross said.

“All right, see you tomorrow,” Chelsea said.

“Okay. And wear your glasses on Friday. They make you look cute.”

Ross hung up, leaving a stunned Chelsea. Ross McKenna actually wanted to go to a movie with her. With her! And he thought she looked cute in her hated glasses! And, on top of it all, he was going to see her play tomorrow. Wait a second, tomorrow? Who are we playing tomorrow? Chelsea scrambled across her bed and grabbed her water polo schedule. Tomorrow was the match with against their archrivals, Decatur High, a team they hadn’t beat in six years!

Groaning, Chelsea flopped back onto her bed. Just what she needed, the only boy in her entire life who was ever interested in her to see her get absolutely pummeled by the school’s archrivals. Just peachy.

***

All the girls warmed up nervously before the match. They were well aware that they needed to beat Decatur today if they wanted to go into the Christmas Break on a high note, though they still had two more games. There was a larger than usual crowd for the match, probably because Decatur was the school’s arch nemesis.

Chelsea caught Ross in the stands sitting with Matt, Liam, and some of the other boyfriends. They were talking and laughing carelessly. If only I could be so relaxed right now, Chelsea thought as the knot came back to her stomach. Ross waved and Chelsea meekly waved back.

The game was soon underway and Ross became the least of Chelsea’s problems. Decatur came out hitting hard in what could best be characterized as a dirty game. Luckily, no one on Kennedy was reciprocating and Decatur was getting called for it all the time. This gave Chelsea and her teammates plenty of prime opportunities to score and score they did, running up a 10-3 score by the game’s end. Chelsea had a goal and an assist in what was probably her best game this season thus far. She thought that there was slightly more cheering than usual after her goal, but she wasn’t sure about that.

After the game was over, Chelsea hurriedly got dressed and went out to see if Ross was still there. Much to her dismay, he wasn’t, but Liam ran after her on her way out.

“Chelsea!” Liam heard.

She turned around as Liam came to a halt next to her. “Hey Liam. Tara’ll be out soon.”

“No, I’ve got a message for you from Ross. He said he was real sorry he couldn’t stay but he had to finish his Bio reading. He wanted me to make sure you remembered you’re going to meet him tomorrow at five for the movie,” Liam said.

“Thanks Liam,” Chelsea said, “See you tomorrow in English.”

“He really likes you Chelsea,” Liam said, “and I can’t blame him.”

“Bye Liam,” Chelsea said as she turned away with a smile and she knew she was blushing so hard that she must have looked like a fire engine. Maybe God hadn’t given her all the reject genes. Maybe He was just really slow.

***

Chelsea broke roughly three different traffic laws on her way to the movie theater. Coach had kept them late and Chelsea was extremely lucky that there hadn’t been any police officers around as she streaked through the streets.

She met Ross at 5:05 after having ran through the parking lot. “Sorry I’m late,” Chelsea panted, “but Coach held us after.”

“Don’t worry. I already bought the tickets. Movie doesn’t start until 5:25 anyway, so we’ve got plenty of time,” Ross said as he handed one to Chelsea and they walked inside.

As they got in line for popcorn, Ross said, “You must be hungry after practice.”

“Yeah,” Chelsea admitted. She didn’t want to get too much to eat because she had a tendency to stuff herself after practice. Maybe that’s why she’d been putting on a few more pounds in these past weeks…

“I’ll get the food. Maybe you should go save me a seat,” Ross said.

Chelsea didn’t want to argue, so she left Ross and headed to the theater. She found it nearly empty, so she chose a couple of middle seats and sat down to wait for Ross. She was surprised to see Ross come in with a huge bucket of popcorn and two large sodas.

“They had this great deal on this combo. I think I would have lost money if I hadn’t bought it,” Ross said as he sat down next to Chelsea, placing the gigantic tub of popcorn in her lap. Chelsea was going to protest that she’d gain about twenty pounds if he left it in her lap, but she decided not to say anything. She’d try to hand it over to him later on in the film.

They chatted about school and various things as they waited for the previews.

“That was a great game yesterday Chelsea,” Ross said as he reached over for more popcorn, “I saw you score that goal. It was really cool.”

Chelsea blushed in the dim lighting of the still-empty theater. “Thanks,” Chelsea said, “It was really cool to have you come.”

“It was really cool to see you play,” Ross returned.

Chelsea only blushed a deeper shade of red as the previews rolled.

***

“The Crossing” was just about the worst movie Chelsea had ever seen. It was worse than some of the movies on “Mystery Science Theatre 3000” on the Sci-Fi channel. Chelsea was stunned by exactly how bad the acting could be, how atrocious the plot could be, and just how sappy a soundtrack could be. Chelsea was pretty sure she spent more time stealing glances at Ross than she did actually watching the screen.

Both of them had shied away from using their shared armrest for fear that they might accidentally make contact with each other. However, their hands bumped into each other’s enough going for popcorn. Chelsea went to grab another handful when she touched the bottom of the bucket and almost gasped. Had she really had that much? She would have resolved to have stopped right there, but there wasn’t anything left to not have.

Chelsea wiped the butter off her fingers with a napkin and out of habit put her arms on the armrests. Before she knew it, Ross had twined his fingers around hers and soon their palms met. Never having been in this situation before, Chelsea felt highly awkward, but let her hand rest in his.

They sat like that for the last twenty minutes of the movie. As the credits rolled, Ross released Chelsea’s hand and he stood and said apologetically, “I’m sorry, that must have been about the worst movie I could have chosen.”

“It’s okay,” Chelsea said, “Even though it was so bad it wasn’t funny.”

“I…uh…hope that you’ll give me another chance after a disaster like that,” Ross said with obvious embarrassment as they walked out.

“Why wouldn’t I? I mean, it’s not like you’re in competition with anyone,” Chelsea said.

“That’s only because they don’t know what they’re missing. It’s not every day that you get a girl as smart and as cute as you.”

“Now you’re really making me embarrassed,” Chelsea said, “I must be so red that I look like a tomato.”

“A cute tomato,” Ross said as they hit the cool evening air.

“A tomato that could use to drop a couple pounds,” Chelsea said.

Ross said very quietly, “I don’t think that’s true.”

Chelsea stopped dead. After she’d just eaten all that popcorn he was telling her that she didn’t need to lose weight? This was just beyond comprehension. “I’m sorry,” Chelsea stuttered, “What exactly are you saying?”

“Well, it’s a little embarrassing, but I don’t think you need to lose any weight. You’re cute and you shouldn’t have an image-driven society press upon you some rigid standard of beauty. I think because you’re not rail-thin you are attractive. You look so much healthier and vibrant than someone like Morgan,” Ross said, “And…no, I shouldn’t…”

“Trust me Ross, there’s very little you could say now to surprise me,” Chelsea said in a state of shock.

“Okay, but don’t think I’m a weirdo or anything like that. It’s just that I think you’d look even better with a couple more pounds.”

Chelsea’s eyes just about popped out of her head. He thought she’d look cuter if she was fatter! For a moment, Chelsea was going to tell Ross he was nuts, but before the words could come out of her mouth, she thought about it. Here was someone who saw her as beautiful and thought all of her imperfections were really what made her pretty. This was the type of guy that you saw in movies, that girls wished for. How could she really just turn her back on Ross and say he was weird?

“This isn’t a joke, is it?” Chelsea said, for lack of something better to say.

Ross shook his head. “I can’t joke about something like this.”

Chelsea took a deep breath. “Well, I think we definitely need to get to know each other a little better. Are you doing anything else tonight?”

“No.”

“You don’t drink coffee, do you?” Chelsea asked.

“You bet I do! Want to go get some?” Ross said enthusiastically.

“Sure, I think there’s a lot we need to talk about,” Chelsea said.

***

And there was quite a bit to talk about. Ross divulged that he’d always liked rounder girls and he thought that ever since Chelsea had plumped out she’d been much better looking. Chelsea, over time, warmed up to the idea, and soon wasn’t checking her scale as much as she used to. Nor did she look into the mirror with the same disgust at what she saw anymore. In fact, Chelsea seemed to think that she looked quite good. And she no longer watched what she ate with the same concern. Gradually, Chelsea noticed she was looking a little rounder, and she had to admit she didn’t despite what she saw. When people at school saw Chelsea, everyone noticed a certain change about her. Whenever someone would ask, all Chelsea would do was smile.

When Christmas Break hit, she and Ross were arm in arm and head over heels. Life for Chelsea was better. She had a boyfriend who loved her for who she was more than what she looked like.

God worked in mysterious ways.