hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th —-1 —0 —+1 105-71113_ch00_2P.indd 1 2/21/18 5:04 AM hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th —-1 Feiwel and Friends —0 New York —+1 105-71113_ch00_2P.indd 3 2/21/18 5:04 AM hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th A Feiwel and Friends Book An imprint of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC 175 Fifth Ave nue, New York, NY 10010 Things Jolie Needs to Do Before She Bites It. Copyright © 2018 by Kerry Winfrey. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America Our books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact your local bookseller or the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at (800) 221-7945 ext. 5442 or by e- mail at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan . com. Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available. ISBN 978-1-250-11954-4 (hardcover) / ISBN 978-1-250-11955-1 (ebook) Book design by April Ward Feiwel and Friends logo designed by Filomena Tuosto First edition, 2018 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 -1— 0— fiercereads . com +1— 105-71113_ch00_2P.indd 4 2/21/18 5:04 AM hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th To Hollis and Harry, my favorite guys —-1 —0 —+1 105-71113_ch00_2P.indd 5 2/21/18 5:04 AM hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th —-1 —0 —+1 105-71113_ch00_2P.indd 7 2/21/18 5:04 AM hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th Chapter One ometimes I think my parents named me Jolie as a joke. S It means “pretty” in French, although that’s not why they chose it— I’m named after some long- dead great-aunt. But they had to know as soon as I exited my mom’s birth canal, when I was still all purple and covered in amniotic fluid, that Jolie Peterson was not going to be pretty. Très not jolie, if you will. I’m a lot of things— the smart one. The reliable one. The one who can binge- watch an entire season of any drama on Netflix, no prob lem. But the pretty one? Well, that’s never been me. My older sister, Abbi, has always worn that crown— and also the prom queen sash and the Miss Brentley tiara. On the mantel in our living room there’s a framed photo of her smiling on the foot- ball field as she’s being crowned at the homecoming game, —-1 showing off her perfectly white, straight teeth that never even —0 —+1 1 105-71113_ch01_2P.indd 1 2/21/18 5:05 AM hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th needed braces, let alone braces and a palate expander and a hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th retainer and surgery and more braces. hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th Abbi’s looks have been cooed over and awarded forever; people simply avoid mentioning mine. I mean, no one insults hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th me. No one says, “Whoa, get a look at the jaw on that one!” But hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th when our relatives tell Abbi how lovely she is, they inevitably pause when they get to me, then ask vague questions about where I’m going to college. I know I’m not hideous. I don’t terrify children and dogs don’t bark at me. No one’s forcing me to live in the Notre-Dame Cathedral. But I do have mandibular prognathism, which in non- oral- surgeon terms means I have an underbite—my lower jaw sticks out farther than my upper jaw. My teeth only meet in one tiny spot, which makes chewing difficult and means eat- ing takes forever. I get headaches all the time, especially if I chew gum or talk too much. And it means that the oral sur- geon’s office is my home away from home, if “home” is a place where someone constantly takes pictures of you in profile and then mea sures the distance between your upper and lower jaws. But what matters to me most right now is that my underbite makes my chin stick out past the rest of my face, it makes my smile look weird, and it makes my face look awkward. It makes me anything but jolie. But on June 2, two weeks after ju nior year ends and the day after my seventeenth birthday, I’m getting fixed. I’m having surgery to move my unruly jaw into place, and after a summer spent letting the swelling go down, it’ll all be over. Goodbye, jaw -1— pain. Goodbye, being the last person at the table to finish every 0— meal because it takes me forever to chew. Goodbye, headaches. +1— 2 105-71113_ch01_2P.indd 2 2/21/18 5:05 AM Then I’ll be normal. I’ll be like Abbi. hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th I’ll be pretty. hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th I’ve known I need surgery for years. Ever since my dentist rec- hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th ommended that I see Dr. Kelley, it’s been pretty clear that my hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th prob lems aren’t exactly of the “totally fixed with one round of braces” variety. Dr. Kelley started me on a years- long plan that involved multiple rounds of braces and the dreaded palate expander. Seriously, a device that a doctor puts in the roof of your mouth and then slowly expands? It sounds like a medieval tor- ture device, but it’s just something I had to have because my upper jaw was narrower than my lower jaw. And then, of course, comes the surgery. My parents never pushed it; they were clear about it ultimately being my decision. But Dr. Kelley was honest about what would happen if I didn’t get the surgery. My jaws being “misaligned,” as she put it, basi- cally means that my teeth rub against each other and years of that could lead to all sorts of complications. Plus, it turns out it’s kinda stressful on your joints when things are constantly out of alignment. I already have a hard time biting into food, and that would only get worse. Plus, I would have to deal with way more jaw pain as I got older, and possibly even prob lems speaking if my jaw continued to shift and grow. And when she put it like that . well, who’s like, Oh, sure, a lifetime of pain and difficulty eating? Sign me up. But I can’t lie; the bonus effect itwill have on my appearance, the normal silhouette I’ll have, the smile with my teeth lined up exactly where they’re supposed to be . ​that’s what I think about most of all. Of course, when we first started talking about surgery I was —-1 barely a teenager—it was easy to say yes to something that —0 —+1 3 105-71113_ch01_2P.indd 3 2/21/18 5:05 AM hn hk io il sy SY ek eh fi fl ffi ffl Th seemed like a lifetime away.