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Impossible. But I pretended to search, waving the tweezers near her face, wondering if I should pretend to see something.
    “Anything?” Her voice sounded breathless.
    “I’m . . . not . . . sure.” Look at me.
    “Violet, you must be very certain. I have a date tomorrow, someone new, someone rich. I can’t have . . . a hair.”
    No reaction to my new and improved nose. But, of course, she was too fixated on herself, her wonderful self, as she always was. Maybe if I found a hair, she’d look at me.
    “Oh, here it is!” I inched the tweezers up to one downy, blond, regular peach-fuzz hair. I grabbed it. “Got it!”
    A moan escaped her lips, and with that sound, I gave the skinny hair a mighty yank. My mother gasped.
    “There!” I held the empty tweezers in triumph.
    “You’re sure that’s all?” she asked.
    “Positive.” Look at me. Look at me!
    But she turned away. I wanted to say something, anything else. Ask for help with my homework. Ask her to make me cookies? Hardly. Ask if she thought I was pretty. Ha. I knew the answer to that one without asking. I never would be.
    Unless . . .
    “Okay, Mommy, I have lots of homework.”
    I did have homework, but for once, I let it slide. I could do it atschool. One B was hardly going to wreck my average.
    Had I just thought that? I’d gone ballistic about the group project, about anything less than an A.
    But the difference was, then, I’d thought it mattered. Now, I knew it didn’t. Middle school grades didn’t matter. Grades didn’t matter. Or how smart you were. Or what college you got into. Nothing mattered if you didn’t have the one thing that did: beauty. I was going to get it, and I wasn’t going to wait.
    I ran to my room and looked for a mirror. There was none over my vanity. I hadn’t wanted one. Now, I did. I needed the truth of my ugliness, laid out before me, to see my work. I had no compacts, no powders or blushers, nothing with a mirror in it. Finally, I spotted the little jewelry box my grandfather had given me. It played music when opened, a plastic ballerina whirling round and round, the mirror behind her reflecting her every move. I broke the ballerina off and threw her aside, leaning on the spring that had connected her to the box. It kept spinning even after the dancer was removed. I tried to examine my face.
    I couldn’t see much in the tiny mirror, just my nose and my nonexistent lashes. How I hated my lashes! I tried to think back on the conversation with the witch, the conversation and what had happened before it. The boys. They’d attacked me, and suddenly, magical help had come. I remembered the other time the magic had come. The broken bird. What did those two experiences have in common? In both cases, I’d really wanted something to happen. Was that it? Was it enough? No. If merely wanting something to happen was enough, I’d be beautiful already.
    And my mother would have a beard like Santa Claus!
    No, it had to be more than wanting. There had to be some kick in the butt, something to jump-start the magic like cables on a car battery.
    The anger. That would explain it. Maybe longing and need too. Ordinarily, I was what people in books called mild-mannered, accepting as an ugly girl needed to be. Pretty girls could have fits of pique, but girls who looked at me should be nice. Usually, I was.
    But today, I hadn’t been. How could I have? Nor that day with the bird. I loved birds, and I hated the kids who would harm one. Someone who hurt an innocent little bird would hurt me, or anyone.
    Hate.
    I stared into the mirror as best I could, patted the spring that had now stopped wavering in the tiny gold frame. I hated my face, my eyelashes especially.
    They weren’t hard to hate, sparse and pathetic, almost invisible. I’d told myself that my ugliness made me stronger, a survivor. Now I knew I’d lied. Ugliness wasn’t power. Beauty was. Those pageant girls knew it. So did the network execs who only hired