Here's Lily by Nancy Rue

hugged Dad for the final tuck-in, and the lights were out. She didn’t grab for the flashlight and an issue of Seventeen the way she usually did at that point. She turned over on her stomach and squeezed her eyes shut and prayed, as Art would have put it, “like a mad dog.”
    God, I’m sorry I’ve been so rude to You. I’m as bad as Shad Shifferdecker. No, worse, because he probably doesn’t even know any better, but I do. I know how much You love me and want me to figure out who You made me to be, and that’s why I know You’re in the modeling agency somewhere. Will You please help me find You so I can stay there?
    Lily opened her eyes a slit as a thought hit her: What if God didn’t want her to stay there? What if, like Mom and Dad said, she wasn’t serving Him there? Didn’t that make her just as, well, selfish as Shad?
    But if Shad comes to the show, he’ll see that I’m not some bony giraffe with fleas. Then he’ll act better, and I’ll be the one who did it, which means I’ve served .
    It sounded so good that Lily almost bounded out of bed to go down and tell Mom and Dad right then. But it would be so much better to tell them after Shad had eaten every one of his evil words with a fork—no, make that a shovel. Lily fell asleep with a vision of Shad chowing down on words he’d shoved into his mouth with a bulldozer.
    But from the moment she got up the next morning, nothing— absolutely nothing —went in the right direction.
    â€œI have a game right after school today,” Mom said as she crammed sandwiches into the brown bags lined up on the counter. “If we win, we go to State.”
    â€œWill you have games next Saturday if you do?” Lily said.
    â€œIf we get that far in the tournament.”
    â€œYou know you’re gonna walk all over everybody,” Art said. “Hey, since State’s gonna be at Cedar Hills, pep band is playing for it.”
    â€œSo you have to be there too?” Lily said.
    Art rolled his eyes at her. “Am I in the pep band?”
    â€œYeah, but—”
    â€œNo, Lily, I am the pep band.”
    â€œWe really need to work with Art on his self-esteem,” Dad said dryly as he passed through the kitchen. “Has anybody seen my glasses?”
    Joe looked up from the homework he was still finishing at the kitchen table and lowered his eyebrows. “I wish I was in the pep band. No, I wish I was on the team—the water boy, anything! Man, I don’t want to go to some fashion show!”
    â€œNobody’s asking you to!” Lily said. “I wouldn’t want you there if you paid me to let you.”
    â€œHuh?” Joe said.
    â€œLily. Blotchy,” Mom said. “And, Joe, don’t get your boxers in a bunch, okay, pal? You don’t have to go to the fashion show. You’d actually have to comb your hair, and we all know that isn’t going to happen.”
    â€œIt’s not a fashion show,” Lily said. “It’s a modeling show.”
    â€œFor wannabe models,” Art said. “Which one’s my lunch, Mom?”
    â€œI hope it’s the one with the arsenic in it,” Lily said, and she snatched up her backpack and stormed out the back door.
    â€œDoes this mean I don’t have to walk with her today?” she heard Joe say as the screen door slammed. “She’s always telling me to hold my shoulders straight and walk like I look good . . .”
    Lily was glad she didn’t hear the rest. In fact, all she could hear were her own thoughts: It doesn’t matter. I just have to get Shad there. I just have to get Shad there .
    But about the middle of the morning, when they were just getting into the geography lesson, Lily got a note from the office that erased even that hope.
    It was from Kathleen:
    Good news, Lily! We have the Cedar Hills Middle School auditorium for our show next Saturday afternoon, thanks