Just Seventeen

I was just 17, like the song says. Carly, Jady, and Candy all came to my house at 5:00 p.m. so we could get ready for the big spring dance. I was already jealous of all of them. They had cool names that ended with "y." My name was Jane. Plain Jane was a moniker that applied to me with ruthlessness.  I planned to fix the plainness with make-up. If possible.

Jady was the best at changing her looks into okay to pretty. I watched in awe as Jady started by adding clip-in extensions to thicken and lengthen her hair. It was like a beauty magic trick.

Jady had once helped me with some clip-in extensions for my naturally thin, fine hair. It looked better when she was done, although she had a little more expertise at applying extensions to herself than to me. Because my hair was so thin, the clip part of the extensions peeked through my hair. It didn’t work. We took the out.

Jady also knew how to apply false eyelashes to herself with precision. Again, she had tried to help me out in that area once. My false eyelashes looked nice – for two seconds. Then, the right one started to slip off my eye, and the left one flipped up on one end. I just looked ridiculous. I ripped them off. Ouch!

Too bad it was never enough that I brushed my hair 100 strokes each night. And when I applied mascara, I made sure to use 100 strokes on each eye. This was a tip I learned from reading Girl magazine. I still felt plain, though.

Besides, what if I met a boy while wearing fake eyelashes and extensions, became his girlfriend, got engaged, married him, and then he had to see my real hair and lashes? Wouldn’t he probably divorce me? My mind jumped forward a lot at 17.

Of the four of us, Carly had the best figure. She plumped out in the right places, and curved in at the waist. She had the shape of a living Barbie doll. (Again, even Barbie had the “y” sound at the end of her name. No fair!)

Being friends with the walking Barbie doll, I noticed pretty quickly that boys were highly attracted to a great figure. At least, if their eyes were any indication. Teenage boys could not control where their eyes looked, and they were often looking at Carly’s body.

Besides, there was a ready-made comparison. After all, Candy was facially gifted, but more boys paid attention to Carly. In fact, Candy had the face of an angel. Her blue eyes framed by big, dark eyelids and perfect eyebrows were enhanced by her pouty lips. Carly also had a sweetness about her that tempered my jealousy, at least a little bit.

So, here I was, hanging out with Fake Pretty, Figure, and Facially-Gifted. No wonder I always felt like such a Plain Jane.

After we completed our hair and make-up, we slipped into our formal clothes. I did love my lacy, blue tea-lengthy dress, but I had to admit that Figure drew the most attention with her black, silk dress that almost looked like a combination of nightgown and Va-Va-Voom!

Facially-Gifted was wearing a white, flowing dress, and she looked flawless. Fake Pretty wore a dress covered in multi-colored glitter, and she had even added some glitter to her hair.

We practiced how we would walk into the transformed gymnasium. We lined up in a horizontal row of four, like we had seen happen with girls in every teen movie we had ever seen. We were going to turn the heads of everyone there.

We all looked into the mirror, and did one last touch-up with lip gloss. Between the four of us, we had enough lip gloss slathered on to coat a brick wall. Convinced we looked good, although I was convinced everyone else looked better than I did, we went to the dance.

Our big entrance plan was changed when we could only go through the door one body at a time. That ruined entrance was an omen of the lackluster night to come.

All the popular girls kept getting asked to dance, which was people who were not us. We stood near the punch bowl, trying to look nonchalant. We had made a pact ahead of time to dance with any boy who asked us, no matter if he be ugly or nerdy or both. We had a theory that if good-looking boys saw us say yes to anyone, they would not be afraid to ask us to dance. We were as superficial as Jady's eyelashes and extensions.

The plan didn't matter. No one asked us to dance. At all. No one. The night was close to ending, when Charles, the most popular boy in high school, walked towards us. Charles was the high school quarterback, a senior, with the typical good looks of anyone in that position.

We looked around us. Maybe his girlfriend Annie was standing nearby, although I had not seen her that night. Annie, whose name of course ending with the “y” sound, was the head cheerleader. Charles and Annie were almost a predestined couple.

I didn’t see Annie anywhere. Charles walked right up to me.

“Want to dance?” He asked.

I must be dreaming. He seemed to be talking to me, but that couldn’t be right. My friends were all prettier, better in every way. I pointed to myself. “Me?” I asked, surprised.

“Yes,” Charles asked, with his trademark confidence. “Do . . . you . . . want . . . to . . . dance?”

“Yes,” I answered.

We entered the dance floor, and I was glad it was a slow song. I’d be much more embarrassed to have to try my luck during a fast dance. Even though I’d grown up taking ballet, tap, and jazz, I had no idea what to do during a fast dance.

Slow dance, on the other hand, was just two teens wrapped around each other, shuffling around the floor. Charles pulled me close to him, and I looked over to see my friends watching me. Jady gave me a thumbs up. I smiled.

All of a sudden, Charles pushed a bit away from me and slathered my mouth with his. What? Yucky! What was he doing? Was this what a kiss was supposed to be like? There was no pleasure in it. It was just a bunch of wetness somewhere near the area of my mouth. My first kiss ever was highly disappointing, if it even counted as a kiss.

Saturday night was strange. The fact that I got asked to dance was a small success, but the supposed kiss was a disaster.

Also, I wasn’t sure what to expect at school on Monday. Everyone knew that Charles and Annie were a couple. That Monday, Charles walked by me in the hallway. I didn’t speak to him, and he didn’t speak to me.

Apparently, our dance and kiss had been as fake as Jady’s eyelashes.