"I cried on the phone," says Kelley Thompson about the day she learned she was on her way to becoming Miss November. A 21-year-old small-town beauty from Texas, Kelley was working as a bartender at the time. She had done some test shooting in Dallas, but she never thought.... Surely she wouldn't.... A few days after the shoot, she says, she received a sign: A trio of cottontails had dug a bunny hole in her front yard. The next thing she knew, the phone call arrived, and she was headed to the airport, bound for Los Angeles, where paradise awaited. She had never been on an airplane before. "To get off my first plane ride and go directly to the Playboy Mansion was just surreal," she says. Kelley has wanted to be a Playmate ever since she became a fan of The Girls Next Door four years ago. "I immediately fell in love with Hef and the girls on that show, and I was, like, Wow, it would be really awesome to experience something like that. It'd be like a dream." So what has all this good fortune taught Miss November? "To live life to its fullest," she says, "to not be afraid to go after something you want. Being from a small town I always knew there was so much more out there, and now I want to go everywhere and see everything. Life's too short, so give all your dreams a shot."