The Good Sister by Wendy Corsi Staub

passionately about something, she fights for it.
    Not about to let her daughter miss out on a wonderful high school experience, she told Thad firmly, “I have a feeling she’ll love Sisters if she just gives it a chance.”
    So.
    Thanks to Jen, Carley gave it a chance.
    And thanks to me, she’s absolutely miserable. Look at her.
    There are dark circles under Carley’s bespectacled eyes. Her skin is broken out thanks to stress and hormones—also the culprits behind a noticeable recent weight gain. She’s never been a thin, wiry kid like Emma, but she wasn’t necessarily plump, either. Lately, however, sedentary habits, an insatiable sweet tooth, and a tendency to turn to food for comfort have caught up with her. She’s getting a double chin, and the buttons on her white blouse strain as she leans to drape her windbreaker over the coat tree by the door.
    She sees Jen staring at her and scowls suspiciously. “What?”
    About to remark that it’s much too chilly on this raw day for just a thin jacket like that, Jen thinks better of it. No need for criticism right now.
    “Nothing.” She lifts her gaze away from the gaping buttons, away from the round, pimply face, and notices that Carley’s brown ponytail is damp.
    Resisting the urge to pat her head or—God forbid—pull her into a big hug, Jen weighs her words carefully before asking the most innocuous question she can think of: “Is it sleeting out there again?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe a little bit.”
    “I was thinking the sun might peek out this afternoon, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to, does it?” Jen glances up at the gray, misty world beyond the glass pane in the door.
    Carley mutely stares at her sneakers as she backward-skates the rubber soles over the mat, leaving thick streaks of March mud.
    “It was snowing out this morning, did you see?”
    Still no response.
    “I’m glad it didn’t stick,” Jen goes on. “I was planning to put those pansies I bought yesterday into the window boxes, but it was too wet out there, you know?”
    “Mmm hmm.”
    Following her daughter’s gaze to her once-white Nikes, Jen finds herself wondering if things would be different, maybe, if Carley didn’t wear them, along with opaque navy stockings, to school.
    While uniforms are still required at Sacred Sisters—although the plaid skirts are shorter and the navy blazers less boxy than they were in Jen’s day—they no longer have to be paired with low-heeled brown loafers.
    Jen can’t imagine stiletto heels being tolerated, but she’s seen girls wear cute sandals and boots that almost border on sexy when paired with above-the-knee-hemlines. That particular style might not do pudgy Carley any favors, but there must be a look that would be more flattering than those clunky old—
    No. Stop thinking that way. It’s not Carley’s fault. It’s not about what she wears, or doesn’t wear, and it’s not about her face being broken out or the weight she’s gained. Other girls at the school are in the same boat, or worse off; girls who are tremendously obese, or physically disabled, or utterly impoverished charity cases, or brazenly nonconformist with shorn hair and hidden tattoos . . .
    Why Carley? Why did the bullies have to set their sights on her, of all people? Why a sweet girl who’d never hurt a fly?
    Carley isn’t talking, except to insist that she doesn’t want to leave Sacred Sisters.
    Jen’s first instinct had been to pull her out—and she still might have done it, despite Carley’s determination to stay put, if both Thad and the school’s social worker hadn’t urged her not to react so drastically.
    “If she’s willing to give it another chance,” Thad said, “then I think we should back her up. Situations like this can build character.”
    He had a point, but . . .
    “You should be proud of her for wanting to stick it out,” Sister Linda told her over the phone. “Your daughter isn’t a quitter. That’s something we