The book opens with George sneaking into the closet in the third bedroom where she keeps her “secret collection” of girls’ magazines, which she has rescued from a trash can and the library recycling bin (2). She imagines that the girls in the magazine are her friends and that “she would fit right in” with them (3).

When George’s brother Scott rushes home, she hides the bag of magazines in the bathroom, before he goes in there. Afterwards, Scott jokes that his “little bro” snuck a “dirty magazine” into the bathroom (8). When Scott leaves the house, George hides the magazines once more and throws herself face-down on the bed, “wishing that she were someone else—anyone else” (10).

George is moved to tears at the end of Ms. Udell’s reading of Charlotte’s Web, when Charlotte “the wonderful, kind spider” dies (11). Rick and Jeff, the two class bullies, laugh, saying “some girl is crying over a dead spider” (12). When they realize the crier is George, who they consider “close enough” to a girl, they collapse into hysterics (12). Ms. Udell disciplines the bullies and tells George that “it takes a special person to cry over a book” and that one day, she will “turn into a fine young man” (15).