His neck was long and thin and his head large, his face was sallow and covered with pimples, his ears were big, red and stuck out stiff from either side of his head.
His hair he wore "pompadour." Within a month after his entry of the High School he had a nickname.

The boys called him "Skinny-seldom-fed," to his infinite humiliation.
Little by little the crude virility of the young man began to develop in him.

It was a distressing, uncanny period.

Had Vandover been a girl he would at this time have been subject to all sorts of abnormal vagaries, such as eating his slate pencil, nibbling bits of chalk, wishing he were dead, and drifting into states of unreasoned melancholy.

As it was, his voice began to change, a little golden down appeared on his cheeks and upon the nape of his neck, while his first summer vacation was altogether spoiled by a long spell of mumps.
His appetite was enormous.