Written in the Stars - Lois Duncan

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does Kent. Here he comes to cut in.”

      A moment later Jane was looking up into Kent’s teasing face. “Hi, there, freckles!”

      Jane smiled at him. She thought, Even if the wish hadn’t come true—even if I still did have freckles—I wouldn’t mind being teased about them by Kent. He makes freckles sound almost like an accomplishment.

      “And all that talk about braces!” Kent was still grinning down at her. “Boy, I used to hate those things, but I’m sure glad now that I wore them.”

      “You wore braces!” Jane asked in astonishment. Somehow she had never imagined the calamity of braces happening to anyone as attractive as Kent.

      “Up until this past spring,” Kent answered without embarrassment. “Then I graduated to a nighttime retainer.”

      The orchestra swung into the last dance. Kent tightened his arm and laid his cheek against Jane’s hair. The lights dropped low, and for a moment they were lost in the softly swinging mass of dancers, swept along by the music.

      Then it was over.

      “Hey, here we are! Ready to go?” Ed had his hand on Kathy’s arm, but his eyes were for Jane. The crowd swept them out the door, and they tumbled, laughing, into the car.

      It was on the ride home that Kent kissed her—a gentle kiss, shy and awkward and half-afraid.

      “Jane,” he whispered afterward, “you’re not mad, are you?”

      “No,” Jane whispered back, “I’m not mad.”

      She felt somehow that she should be—that girls were always angry and injured when they were kissed on a first date—but tonight it was part of the magic.

      She leaned her head back against Kent’s shoulder. From the car window she could see the night sky, still heavy with stars. She wondered idly which was her star, but they all looked exactly the same, swinging together high over the earth.

      And then the ride was over and Kent was opening the car door for her, and she was saying, “Good night, Ed—Kathy—thank you for including me.”

      Kathy did not answer, but Ed said, “Good night, Janie; I’ll be seeing you—soon.”

      They paused a moment at the front door.

      “Good night, Kent,” Jane said softly. “It’s been the loveliest time I’ve ever had.”

      “It has been for me too.” He hesitated. “How about tomorrow? There’s bound to be something we can do, even if it’s just a movie.”

      “I’d love to do something,” Jane said. And to herself she thought, how easy it is! There’s nothing terrifying or complicated about it; it’s the simplest thing in the world.

      She went into the house and up the stairs. She could remember other evenings when she had come home from a blind date and crept up the stairs to throw herself miserably on her bed. But that was before, when she had not been beautiful.

      She slipped into the room quietly so as not to waken Alice and undressed in the dark. When she lay down on her bed she could still feel the magic, leaping and laughing within her, and when she shut her eyes she could feel the warmth of it all through her.

      “Jane!” It seemed only minutes later that her mother’s voice called her name. “Jane!”

      “Yes?” she responded drowsily.

      “Jane, telephone!”

      Jane opened her eyes. “Why, I just got home a few minutes ago!” Then she saw that the room was flooded with sunlight and Alice’s bed was empty.

      “Goodness,” she said, “I must have slept and slept!” She stretched and yawned and went stumbling downstairs to the telephone. “Hello?”

      “Hi,” Kent’s voice said on the other end of the line. “I hope you don’t mind my calling so early. It’s just that it looks like a great day for the beach, and if we went early we could spend the whole day. Would you like to, Jane?”

      Jane smiled at the eagerness in his voice.

      “That sounds great,” she said. “I can be ready in a jiffy.”

      “Gee, swell. I’ll be right over.”

      Jane hung up the receiver and was starting for the stairs when she overheard her name. She paused and heard her mother’s voice in the kitchen.

      “It was for Jane,” she was saying. “A boy—maybe the one she went out with last night! Our ugly duckling is blossoming at last!”

      “Well, it’s no wonder,” her father’s voice replied. “When she walked out that door last night, smiling and chatting with that Browning boy, I hardly knew her. It could have been a different girl.”

      Jane laughed with delight. It was the star! She thought. Even Daddy noticed the change!

      She started upstairs and came face to face with the hall mirror.

      “Hi,” Jane whispered happily to the face in the mirror. She started on, then did a double take and turned back. She stood staring for a very long time—at the freckles and the snub nose and the braces. Her heart sank.

      “I was fooling myself,” she said dully, “all along. I probably knew, deep down inside; that’s why I didn’t want to look in a mirror. Wishing on a star can’t change your looks. I knew it—but I wanted so badly to be beautiful, I made myself believe it.” For a moment her disappointment was more than she could bear.

      And then, through her misery, she heard her mother’s voice.

      “I know what you mean, dear. But it’s not a physical change; it’s something deeper than that—a kind of inner glow. A girl can go along for years, and then one day something will happen to give her confidence in herself. Maybe a boy will look at her in a certain way, or smile at her, or kiss her. It happened to Alice—remember?”

      To Alice? Jane thought of her lovely sister, and suddenly her mind slipped back to a time when Alice was not beautiful—when Alice had wished on stars too. Why it’s true! she thought, and wondered briefly, what had changed Alice—a look, or a smile or a kiss. She knew instinctively that Alice would never tell. It is a very private moment when a girl discovers that she is beautiful.

      She looked again at the face in the mirror and smiled. The face smiled back, not its old, tight-lipped grimace, designed to conceal the unconcealable braces, but an easy, happy smile. And it was beautiful.

      Jane turned away.

      “Mother,” she called, starting toward the kitchen, “may I borrow your swimming cap?”

       (written at the age of 21)

      What can I say about “The Wish”? There’s so much about it that is dated. How many girls today wear nylon stockings and carry evening bags? How many boys “cut in” at dances and use words like “swell” and “gee”? Only one phone in the house, and it’s downstairs, where everyone can listen in on whatever you’re saying? Swimming caps at the beach? And an understood rule that a kiss on a first date is socially unacceptable?

      Yet despite those details, the premise of this story has held strong over the years and is as true today as it ever was: A girl who feels secure in the fact that she is beautiful creates her own aura of beauty which transcends any physical imperfections she may have.

      Dear Mom,

      Bobby just swallowed a nickel and Janie is trying to make him cough it up. Aunt Sarah gave it him to make him good.

      I don’t much like Aunt Sarah. She looks

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