Jayli's Dilemma: Her struggle with self-esteem, bulling, love, loss, peer pressure and how she got through it all, (Paperback)

Thirteen-year-old JAY'LI HAMPTON hates her life at school. She is plagued by eczema that blotches her skin and makes her the target of cruel jokes and teasing, especially by TJ, the class bully. She doesn't believe her mother or her grandmother, who try to show her how beautiful she is on the inside. They try to explain that people who tease and bully are usually just trying to deflect their own internal pain and trouble onto someone else. Jay'li simply feels that no one understands. Not surprisingly, Jay'li is delighted when medication clears her skin and her mother gives her a new hairstyle and she is suddenly 'adopted' by the coolest girls in class, the Triple D's, DIAMOND, DANAZI, and DAVEONA. She has arrived! She is popular! But Jay'li soon finds that her "friendship" with the Triple D's is a false one, when they force her to shoplift with them at the local mall. When Jay'li's mother finds out, she informs the Triple D's mothers and Jay'li suddenly finds herself on the receiving end of their wrath at her betrayal. They make Jay'li's life a misery with constant bullying, until Jay'li, with the help of a guidance counsellor, realizes that only she can end the bullying, by standing up to the girls and revealing to the rest of the school what fakes and deceivers they really are. By facing her bullies and their falseness, Jay'li suddenly realizes that she, in fact, LOVES her own life EXACTLY how she has been living it-eczema and all. Her new joy radiates to those around her, and even TJ reveals that he had only been teasing to try to get her attention because he wanted to be her boyfriend. He had never meant to hurt her feelings. Jay'li finds her own inner strength by drawing on the support of the ones who love her-her mother, and her Nana, just as her mother had always told her she could. The death of her grandmother threatens to derail her newfound self-esteem, but Nana leaves Jay'li with spiritual quotes and reinforces the most important life lesson, the one that Jay'li has started to learn on her own: Being popular, or cool, or outwardly beautiful means nothing: You can love yourself just the way you are.