OMG! I just finished "Second Helpings"(for those of you that don't know what I'm talking about it's the sequel to Sloppy first by Megan Mccafferty) it was unbelievable! Its was that good! Well anyway on with the story!

SLOPPY FIRSTS

January pt. 2

The Fifth

When I was a kid, I love playing with the Charlie's Angles dolls I inherited from Bethany. I'm talking about the old school angles: Sabrina, Kelly, and Jill-even Kris. (They never made dolls for Tanya Roberts or Shelley Hack.) They all wore a navy blue scarf and matching go-go boots but their polyester jumpsuits came in different colours: Sabrina's in red, Kelly's in yellow, Jill's in white and Kris's in green, I thought they were so cool, even though everyone else I knew played with Barbie and the Rockers.

This was back when I wanted to be my pretty, popular older sister more than anything, back when I was young and impressionable and stupid I loved everything she loved. Anything she thought was cool, I thought was cool. Though my Bethany-worship was short-lived-thank god her pop culture impact lives on. She is directly responsible for my freakish lack of interest in nearly all forms of entertainment targeted at my own generation (Gen Y? Gen I? Gen What-ever?) In favour of all thing anachronistic.

The Irony does not escape me.

One day when I was brushing the Angles' hair, getting them ready for their next bad-guy-whupping adventure, I noticed that Sabrina didn't have eyelashes. All the Angles had painted on eyelashes but Sabrina. First I thought it was a mistake-like I'd gotten a messed up doll. But then I asked Bethany if her friends' Sabrina had eyelashes and she said she didn't think so. I tried to figure out what it was about Sabrina that wouldn't make her undeserving of eyelashes. I never did.

Until last night. I caught a rerun no TV Land in which Kelly and Jill went undercover as Hot-pants-wearing hookers while Sabrina-in a turtleneck, no less-gathered case-cracking clues with Bosley. Suddenly, her eyelashes ness made sense. Sabrina was the brainy Angle. Yet another example of how every girl had to be one or the other: Pretty or smart. Guess which one I got. You'll see where it's gotten me.

By the way, this is the type of thing that Sango and I talk about. But I won't rehash out convos here. I'll show and tell on a need to know basis. The rest is off-limits. Private

I know it's bizarre that I don't gush on and on about someone who means so much to me. But that's exactly why I won't. When you say too much about anything important, it always ends up sounding more trivial than it is. Words trash it. Plus, my convos with Sango are like Farsi or some other foreign language. It sounds like blah-diddy-blah-blah to everyone except those who speak it. I you read a word for word transcript of our last convo you'd come to a conclusion that Sago and I are total morons I wanted to talk about Charles Angles with Sango in person Today, which I obviously couldn't do. Even though my dad used his network administrator clout to hook Sango and me up with the most state-of- the-art Web cams, it doesn't help much when Sango's computer isn't as high-tech as ours. We spent the artificial face time griping about how we can't see or hear each other. I might as well use an abacus. Personally I am computer alliterate I total prefer handwriting a letter then typing it out then sending it. It's nothing short of a miracle that my brain doesn't just blow up.

In lieu of Sango, I settled for asking Ayame if she remembered playing with Charlie's Angles dolls when we were little kids. Ayame is my age and lives across the street. For the first twelve years of my life, these qualifications were all I needed in a best friend. But that was before Ayame's braces came off and her boyfriend, Naraku, got on, before Sango and I met in our seventh-grade honours classes.

"Hey. Do you remember when we were used to play with the Charlie's' angles dolls?

Ayame shook her two red pigtails and stared like I'd just grown horns out of my forehead.

Ayame is pretty. Very. Actually, she's beautiful. She's what you call a super star, glamorous, or if you are the male sex: "a knock out, what a catch, ahrooooo!!!"

Her looks are directly responsible for the demise of our friendship.

One afternoon in August before seventh-grade Ayame and I went shopping with my mother and sister for back to school cloths. More than one sales clerk commented on the trio's classically beautiful, high-quality genes. Their eyes where big and blue (mine are small and brown as mud puddles.) Their skin, lightly tan and unblemished (mine sunburnt and zitty.) They were petite, yet curvy in all the right places (I was long limbed and skinny with orangutan arms.) Who couldn't have assumed that I was the neighbour's daughter? They thought it was hilarious. I laughed along, hiding my humiliation.

Our friendship was never the same after that. But it was ok cause a month later I met Sango and Ayame met Naraku Roku (an eighth grader, no less) and we didn't need each other anymore anyway. My mom still clings to the idea that me an Ayame are best buds an assumption based on the fact that I've know Ayame all my life, verse the paltry three and half years I've know Sango. This is partly why my mother cannot comprehend that a 60-minute phone call a week to Sango isn't enough. Another one of those reasons is that my mom knows nothing about me.

Seconds after the Charlie's Angles dis by Ayame, Kikyo and Kagura joined us at the table. "Honours" is a relative term in our school district, so I met them in seventh grade classes, too, through Sango. Or Sango through them. See, Sango, Kikyo and Kagura had been quite the clique in their own elementary school. This is as unfathomable as me being friends with Ayame back in the day. Once Sango and I discovered that we were of like minds, we christened Ayame, Kikyo and Kagura and "clueless crew." Now they're still here and Sango is gone. My luck sucks.

Once all three members of the clueless crew were assembled they commenced their daily ritual of not eating and alternately trashing/worshipping the models and actresses in a teen magazine.

"How could they have put her on the cover? Her ass is like totally huge," cried Ayame.

Ayame is always zeroing in on the hugeness of models' Asses. That's because Ayame herself is an aspiring model that is convinced she has a huge ass.

Anyway Ayame has been modeling for a year now and has yet to make it in the pages of any of the major teen publications. She's one of those anonymous, magalog models. But that's goddamn glamorous for Shikon high. (SH)

"Omigod! My dad's photographer friend said she has cellulite," said Kagura.

"Ewwwww!" said Kikyo and Ayame in unison.

"Yeah, he said they call her quote "Stucco Butt" unquote behind her back."

Kagura all too frequently utters the phrases "Omigod!" and Quote and Unquote." To her credit, Kagura has stopped making the double-finger-bending gesture that traditionally accompanies the latter.

I glanced at the cover crow in question. She wasn't skinny, but she definitely wasn't fat. She looked curvy. Sexy. Strong. I thought about Sabrina, turtleneck without eyelashes. I decided to come to the models defence.

"I bet the editors put her on the cover to make us feel good about ourselves. To show that you don' have to be prefect to be pretty…"

"Puh-leeze, Kags," Kikyo said, "Stop being so Naomi Walts, already."

Kikyo thinks that reading feminist manifestos makes up for her borderline ho-bag behaviour. Sango and I call her the Kissing slut because she's made out with thirty-one different guys by her fifteenth birthday. That's when she decided it was time to move on to manual stimulation. And when she turned Sixteen, well, lets just say she earned the title headmaster.

Kikyo calls herself an "extreme" virgin and intends on keeping it that way until she finds someone who meets all her criteria: Six feet tall; drives a jeep; lean and cut; but not meathead and muscular; blonde; surfs in summer; skis in winter; flosses daily. She knows this is a tall order especially at shikon high, so she settles for messing around with one Mr. Wrong after another until Mr. Right comes along.

The Clueless crew continued flipping through the magazine taking swigs of their Diet Cokes and passing one-word comments on the images on each page

"Nasty."

"Foul."

"Hideola."

Suddenly, Ayame slapped her hand down on a page.

"Now that girl has like, a totally kickin' bod!"

"Totally!" a stick figure with balloon boobs- a body that rarely if ever, occurs in nature.

They complained about how they could do toning exercises until Y3K and still not even come close to having a great bod like hat model. They discussed their so-called flaws with enthusiasm. Ayame has a cover girl face, but a "huge ass" is holding back her career. (I'd kill for a less bony butt.) Kikyo "hates" her infamous DD-cup rack. (Yet she continues to show it off in tiny tees and tight sweaters, much to the delight of Shikon high's male population) And lets not forget Kagura, whose self-deprecation stems from her belief that she looks like "a butchy softball player instead of a ballerina." An image reinforced by her nickname "Bruiser." (Her self-a-steam has been permanently trashed since her her step mom sent her to fat camp for her fourteenth birthday.)

Finally, Kikyo said, "Well, Jess would look like that if she got a boob job." And they all looked me up and down.

I ould never get a boob job. It's a disgusting procedure-I saw one performed in The Learing Channel. The surgen went in through the belly button. The belly button! He stretched her skin like it was a wad of bubble gum and just pushed and shoved them into place. Ka-Boom: Va-va-va-voom.

"All we are saying is that your abs, ass, and legs are like, totally prefect," Ayame said. "You should take it as a complement."

I knew where this was heading: a calorie-fat analysis of my lunch followed by a "Ho can you eat so much and stay so skinny?" interrogation.

"That pepperoni pizza has at least five hundred calories…"

" And twenty-five grams of fat…"

"Not to mention like, two hundred fifty calorie' worth of non-diet soda…"

I have pointed out numerous times that while they are doing whatever it is that they do after school once cheerleading season is over, I am at the track practice. And there, I spend two and a half hours not sitting on my ass, daydreaming about how prefect it looks in my bun-huggers uniform, but hauling it around the track. But they refuse to see how all the food I eat makes it possible for me to do that. O instead of repeating myself, I made a false confession.

"All right. You got me. I'm bulimic."

Kikyo was unfazed. "Puh-leeze. You're not bulimic. Binge and purgers are usually in the chunky side," she paused. "Right, bruiser?" Kikyo winked. Kagura winced-almost imperceptible before flipping Kikyo the bird.

These people are supposed to be my friends. But more often than not. I can't stand them.

Well, if I'm not bulimic, why do I feel the urge to puke right now?

That's what I should have said. But I didn't. Instead, I just grabbed my backpack and left, without saying a word

I stood alone in the bathroom until the bell rang. I pressed my forehead against the cool mirror, fogging it up with my breath. I drew a smiley face on the mirror with my finger, then I wiped it away. Finally. I looked at my reflection and thought "If Sango had been there, I wouldn't be here."

Ok so did you like? Yes, no, maybe? Well please tell me in the review the next chapter will be up tomorrow."Repeat will be up tomorrow". I promise