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wall-sized studio mirrors. She saw what she always saw. Plain, ordinary Pea. She had on her gray dance sweats, which were rolled down around her hips (which really weren’t hips at all—she was too damn little to have those fabulous curvy, luscious hips she’d always envied in other women). Her ballet IS the pointe long-sleeved T-shirt was tied up just under her ribcage, exposing way more of her skin than Pea was normally comfortable showing. But this was dance class, and dance class was somehow on a different standard when it came to showing skin and such. She wished she had great boobs to fill out the top of the shirt, but she didn’t. She had what Stacy’s daughter had once called bumps. Little bumps. Her hair was, as usual, crazily escaping from scrunchie bondage, and brown tendrils of it were plastered against her flushed and sweaty face. She hated her hair. Truly hated it.
    Okay, but at least she wasn’t all fat and saggy and out of shape. Truthfully she’d probably never sag. Her internal editor whispered nastily that was because she didn’t have anything to sag, but Pea forced herself to ignore the voice in her head that was always so negative. It didn’t really matter why she wouldn’t sag—it just mattered that she wouldn’t. Right? She didn’t give herself time to answer the question; instead she took her mind down a path she rarely ventured.
    Maybe she did have something that could be worked into unique or memorable. Or at least maybe she could have something attractive about her, like Stacy kept saying. Maybe she just needed some direction so she could develop her self-confidence. She wasn’t in high school anymore, and there were no hateful girls on the dance squad to humiliate her and call her names. She was a successful adult. Actually she had managed to attain self-confidence about several things: ballet, cooking, her job as program director of Tulsa Community College. She even had self-confidence about her ability to create a great home.
    She stared at herself in the mirror as she manically battement tendu jeté -ed. Why was it so hard for her to transfer the self-confidence that permeated the rest of her life to her personal style and appearance? Was it just her past that was holding her back? Her fear that if she tried and this time, as an adult, failed, she would truly be forever doomed to the ranks of wallflower and undesirable dork?
    â€œEnough! We are fini for today, Dorreth,” Madam Ringwater said, with a look of disgust. “You cannot concentré sur le ballet when your mind is on the boudoir.”
    Pea gasped and froze mid-toe lift. “But Madam Ringwater, I’m not—”
    The ancient dance instructor lifted her well manicured hand, silencing Pea. “ L’amour fait des imbéciles de nous tous . Now go. Next time you will work twice as hard, oui ?”
    â€œOkay. Yes. I’m sorry, Madam, I just…” Pea shrugged, not really knowing if she felt embarrassed or pleased. Impulsively she hugged the old woman before she grabbed her towel and hurried out of the studio. No one had ever said anything like that to her before! No one had ever even implied that she might be preoccupied with what went on in her bedroom. Maybe her life was changing.
    Well, she was willing—she was! She would…she would…Pea chewed her lip as she got in her car and backed out of the studio parking lot. She would not let this…whatever it was that had suddenly grabbed hold of her go. Pea drove aimlessly for a while, and then her eyes widened when she saw the big red-and-white Borders sign for the Twenty-first Street store. That was it! She’d go into the bookstore and research how to get some style—some sense of nonordinaryness. She could figure out how to cook a gourmet meal, change her oil, tear down old wallpaper and make a room look magnificent. She could even plan classes for the entire continuing