The Phoenix Girls, Book 3

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2

Mirror Image

Penny knew she’d changed a lot over the past summer. She’d grown taller, nothing like Zoe, but seemed at least to be catching up to her other non-sss friends. She had also slimmed down, shedding what Susan called baby fat from her legs, stomach, and waist, while filling out in other areas. She was a bit of a late bloomer in that regard, but was neither excited nor dismayed that her body seemed to be making so many changes without her permission. The bigger changes had happened a few years before when she was still in California, and she had too many things on her mind to obsess over her new feminine curviness. The outside of her body was finally catching up with the inside. That was all.

Even her face seemed to be changing, the slightly pudgy face of the child that was slimming into the more angular face of the woman she would become.

The new figure mostly changed nothing, because she was still just Penny, but the new way the town boys looked at her whenever she made it into town was just creepy. She caught them staring sometimes and had to fight an urge to jab their eyes out.

Then there was the thing with Trey, that boy who had chased Zoe for so long but who had finally given up on her. Penny had been slightly jealous of the attention he’d always shown Zoe, and was pleasantly surprised when, after Zoe’s departure that summer, he’d started noticing her.

The kiss had also been a surprise, more like an ambush, but the biggest shock had been her first response. Though she’d never kissed a boy, she found herself kissing back. She’d ended it then, and in a hurry, and had avoided Trey ever since. She had tried to avoid thinking about him too but had been less successful. After a lot of agonizing, she had decided to wait until Zoe had returned, to make sure she would be okay with Penny and Trey, before there was a Penny and Trey.

She had told no one else, not Katie, Ellen, or Susan. It would be bad enough having to talk to Zoe about him.

If all of this new insecurity was another symptom of her changing, then she would rather just skip it.

Penny knew she had changed, but seeing that change standing right in front of her, a perfect doppelganger standing only a few feet away and speaking to her, was uncanny.