"You're slender everywhere you need to be, and two places you shouldn't be," Mom said.

This chapter introduces some Japanese J-Pop groups. They are all real and you can watch videos on… https://theculturetrip.com/asia/japan/articles/the-9-most-unique-j-pop-bands-right-now
Marianne

Chapter 4 And Now is a Spotlight…

One of the common aspects of a J-Pop performance is usually the large number of bodies on stage. The band had two keyboard players, guitar, bass, drums and two singers. There were eight of us and Aiko with her four other cheerleaders so we had to fit the twenty into whatever space we were provided.

CHAPTER 98
I sat basking in my smug satisfaction in seeing two girls, who had arrived at the House so utterly broken, now standing up and making the world their own, along with a future. Charlie then dropped a bombshell to match Marlene’s.

“Got my own news, as well! Got a letter on Friday, from the clinic. All sort of fits together with last night”

I had noticed some of her own smugness that day, even though it had almost evaporated in the heat of her time with Seb. Unfortunately, she then started spraying tea as she struggled with laughter,

[Late Saturday]
“Which way are we going?” asked Carla.

I’d brought Roxy to a standstill where the Macclesfield Canal leaves the Trent and Mersey Canal near Kidsgrove.

“It depends on you.”

“Me? Why?”

“How many locks do you want to go through between here and Manchester?”

My cell-phone chimes rang, indicating a text. I picked up my phone. The text was from... Great Grandma Gloucester?

Kaya stood in her room. Fear and uncertainty made her indecisive about what to do next. There were two messes that needed to be cleaned up. All of her makeup and the broken mirror on her floor, and the relationship between herself and her family. Those messes did need to be cleaned up but Kaya did not know which one to do first. The teenage girl wanted to make the right decision to make up for all the bad ones she had made today.

Chapter 2 And it Shines over all…

Akito had hinted to his folks that the team was a little different and our first session of the year brought home just how different it was going to be. Up to now we had all been using issued leotards that the school got cleaned for us. That evening Miss Ryoji presented us all with three sets of leotards.

“We’re not objects!” Sophie chanted, backed by dozens of her friends and colleagues. “We’re not objects!”

“You go, girls!” A passer-by, a young woman in her early twenties, said, giving the picket line a thumbs up as she walked past them and into the vast concourse of Heathrow airport. Nevertheless, Sophie still felt uneasy.

Chapter 3

Seeing the ‘Closed’ sign at the door Victor was just about to give Linda a call, terrified that he would have shown up at the wrong address and as a result be too late at what he considered his absolute last chance to get his old life back.

“This isn’t going to last is it?” I asked him.