Page 1 of The Ugly Stepsister Strikes Back

Chapter 1

My stepsister Ella was ruining my life. She was blonde, petite, beautiful, talented, popular, and worst of all, she wasnice.

My dad married Ella's mom, Rose, when we were both two. It was the year after my mother left me. After Ella's mom divorced my dad, Ella still came and lived with us every summer, and every other Christmas.

We never went to the same school until Ella's mom died from breast cancer at the end of our sophomore year. Ella moved in immediately. Nobody knew where her biological dad was (he bailed before Ella was even born). She belonged with us.

At first I was glad to have her. It was fun having a stepsister. Or, it was fun up until the beginning of our junior year. Over that summer, Ella changed everything. Her hairstyle, her makeup, and her clothes. She exercised every day. Ate carrots and crap like that. She got unbelievably gorgeous (and it probably didn't hurt that her mom had been an actual Swedish Bikini Team model).

And she was new. The boys went crazy.

That was the first thing in my List of Grievances where Ella was concerned.

My List of Grievances was something I started right after the end of junior year. It was all the ways Ella had wronged me. And as I just mentioned:

Wrong the First: Guys fell all over themselves for her. There was nothing worse than just standing there pretending like it didn't bother you while guys drooled all over her and didn't even say hi to you. And the whole time, I secretly wanted to scream, "Hey, see me? I'm a girl too!" Even my guy best friend since junior high seemed to be falling under Ella's spell.

Wrong the Second: Ella made Angelina Jolie look selfish. Ella lived to volunteer. While everyone else was easing into the school year, Ella was already planning a masquerade ball for some save the orphan/whale/environment cause. She had so many charities she supported I honestly couldn't keep track. There was no competing with someone who spent most of her free time thinking about other people.

Wrong the Third: Her name. Ella Christensen. So pretty. Roll right off your tongue beautiful. My name? Mattie Lowe. Actually, it's worse than that. My real name? Matilda. I blamed my mother (and sometimes my dad, for not running any interference when my mother picked out the name). During one of our forced online chats, she said she named me after some old queen, that Matilda's a strong name and meant "mighty in battle." I was pretty sure it meant "my mom hates me." Fortunately, when I was little, my dad called me Tilly. That worked fine until the first day of kindergarten. Even at the tender age of five I understood that I couldn't be Silly Tilly for the rest of my life. I came home and demanded my dad change my name. He refused. Instead he came up with a new nickname for me, and I started going by Mattie at school, Tilly at home. Ella's just Ella. She didn't have to have a dozen nicknames just to get through her day.

Wrong the Fourth: She spent hours cleaning up around the house. Bathrooms, her bedroom, the living room, you name it and Ella had probably cleaned it recently. The other day I caught her in the kitchen actually scrubbing the floor on her hands and knees! Every time my father stumbled across her cleaning something, it made him ask me why I was so lazy. He assigned me chores that I had to pretend to do until he forgot and I could go back to doing nothing. As far as I was concerned, she was putting our housekeeper's job in jeopardy, which I refused to do, because I was not selfish like that.

Wrong the Fifth: Ella had this ability to make everything look amazing. Dance floors, people's faces, clothes; anything she touched magically looked better. She even liked to sew her own stuff like she was getting ready to try out for "Project Runway" or something. I acknowledged my lack of fashion sense many years ago, and had stuck to basic black ever since. I was only adventurous with my hair color, which was a sort of fuchsia-y shade. But not so adventurous that I'd ever used a permanent hair dye. Just semi-permanent or temporary. (And I should probably mention that Ella was a natural blonde. Yes, it made me want to puke, too.)

Wrong the Sixth: Ella was a cheerleader. Enough said.

Wrong the Worst: Ella was dating her perfect counterpart—he was handsome, athletic, funny, nice, tall (so tall it made me crazy – at 6'2" he was one of the tallest guys at school. Being 5'11" made me sort of a tall guy connoisseur and it always aggravated me to see all that height being wasted on teeny-tiny girls like Ella). He even drove a sports car. His name was Jake Kingston.

And I was completely, totally, head-over-heels in love with him.

Chapter 2

I sat in front of the headmistress's office thinking, not surprisingly, about Jake.

I spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about Jake. It was like a sickness, really. People were always saying things like teenagers don't know what love is, and we mistook lust for the real thing, blah, blah, blah. I wished I only lusted after Jake. Life would be much easier then. I could get over him if lust was the only factor.

Don't get me wrong—he was definitely lustalicious. Dark hair, dark eyes, a jawline that looked like Michelangelo himself chiseled it out of stone. Totally gorgeous. But there was this emotional component there. I cared about him.

Since I spent a lot of time observing him, I saw all the little things he did every day. Like the time he helped the girl from the Special Ed. class pick up her books that she dropped, and then walked with her to her next class. Everyone else just walked by. Not Jake.

He routinely stopped his stupid friends from picking on other kids. His friend, Scott Martin, was the worst. But Jake managed to rein him in.

Jake was always smiling this thousand-watt, movie star/model smile and saying hi to everyone that said hi to him. He was so nice. He never tried to make people feel like they were worthless losers. Unlike Scott and his girlfriend, Mercedes. Their only goal in life seemed to consist of insulting and belittling everyone around them.

He did these things quietly. Not like he was ashamed of his good tendencies, but more in a he didn't need to show off sort of way. Or like people seeing him doing it would take away from the specialness of it.

It felt like something we shared, even though he wasn't aware that I knew what an awesome guy he was.

He was smart and good at everything. I was so in love with him.

And I wasn't sure if he even knew that I existed.

I sighed, because that was what unrequited love made you do. Sigh with self-pity.

I needed a distraction. Besides thinking about Jake, I'd been sitting out here for a while worrying and wondering when the headmistress would call me in. I was pretty sure that Ms. Rathbone made us sit outside and wait this long on purpose. To give us time to work ourselves up into a frenzy about possible punishments. She'd probably learned that in one of her doctorate programs. Like everything else at Malibu Prep, she was the best. She had all these framed degree certificate things behind her desk. I suspected that that some of them were fake.

I stood up and started reading the bulletin board that hung outside the main office. It had the usual announcements, the sign-up sheets for marching band (blank), an after hours cooking course with that famous chef on TV who swore at everyone (halfway full) and one for student government candidates. For a second I thought my Jake obsession was now making me see things, but no, there was Jake's name. As the only candidate for senior class president. Of course. I let out a little snort of amusement. Who would be dumb enough to run against him?

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