by Brigit Young
Yes, a little whisper in the right gossipy ear could end Eve.
Sophie felt herself sprinting so fast across the track that her feet hardly touched the ground. The chilly air sliced at her cheeks. Soon it would be too cold to run outdoors and they’d have to move to the indoor track.
But what if she got in trouble for spreading lies? Could she get kicked out of school for that? Expulsion might not ruin the life of someone like Eve, who could just switch to a private school or something, but it would make everything Sophie’s mom had done for her pointless.
As Sophie made her way to the end of the track, the coach, Ms. Meijer, greeted her with “Good time today, kid.”
The rest of the girls, one by one, headed back to the locker rooms.
“Thanks.” Sophie jogged in place. “I’m gonna go again.”
Ms. Meijer looked to her watch and then up at the sky, like she needed to see the sun to double-check the time. “Only once more, ’kay? That parent-student meeting starts soon.”
Sophie nodded and took off.
Her torso steamed hot as she pushed herself even faster.
Just keep running.
Her mom couldn’t come to the meeting, of course. Work. Their neighbor on the fourth floor watched Bella on the days Sophie had track. So Bella was fine. Sophie could stay for the assembly if she wanted. Should she? All her friends would be there.
But were they really her friends? Could Sophie say to Amina or Hayley, “I’m mad I’m not number one? I’m angry? Let’s talk about it?” Like friends do on TV, having those touchy-feely moments that end in a group hug?
No. No way. They talked about sports, boys, and videos they’d watched online. They shared selfies. Her “friends” hadn’t even been over to her place. Her mom refused it. She told Sophie that “those kind of kids” would judge her. And Sophie didn’t really want them there, anyway.
In her peripheral vision, she caught a group of seventh graders sitting in the bleachers, giggling in their puffy coats. She almost never saw kids sitting out there. The kids who mattered, the ones she didn’t want seeing her with her makeup sweating off, had other sports practice at the same time.
Were the seventh graders laughing at her?
She should have just let Brody kiss her last week.
It had been her second time at his house. They studied with the door open, just like his dad always told them to. But when his dad went downstairs, Brody smushed up his lips and moved toward her. And Sophie wondered if he’d ever kissed someone before, because she hadn’t, and she shivered at the way his lips were a little wet, like she’d be kissing spit, and she didn’t want her first kiss to be like that, and so she’d jumped up, grabbed her books, and yelled, “Gotta be getting home!” like a total weirdo. They hadn’t even texted about it after, in a joking way or anything.
Yes, she should’ve just kissed him back. Then maybe he wouldn’t be asking the new number one to the dance.
Sophie slowed down at the track’s end and felt her legs pulse as she came to a stop.
“Even better time.” Ms. Meijer held up her stopwatch.
Sophie nodded, panting, and headed toward the shower. “Hey, Sophie, new shoes next week, okay?” she yelled out behind her. This was an every-other-week refrain from Ms. Meijer. “Seriously, you’re going to hurt yourself. You’ve got no support down there. Come on.”
“Next week, I swear!” Sophie hollered back without looking.
These shoes had lasted her a year, and they’d last her another if they had to. She wasn’t going to add sneakers to her mom’s list of things needed.
Sophie jumped into the shower and stayed there under the hot water until she felt sure every other girl had gone. Then she whipped out her makeup bag, made herself presentable, and swept her wet hair up into a ballerina bun. She headed toward the auditorium, taking the long way. She didn’t want to bump into anybody.
What would all the parents say at the meeting? What would Principal Yu do? What could they do?
When Sophie opened the door to the stairwell, she felt relief at the low lighting and silence. If she’d spoken, her voice would have echoed.
And then Sophie did hear an echo, an airy but grating voice that bounced up the stairwell. And it was talking about her.
12
EVE
Text message, after school, unknown number, obviously Miranda Garland:
u didnt tell me the little hand necklaces are a jewish thing? i just googled it when someone said something (thanks for the rec btw lots of compliments on it today!) wow weird haha no but srsly I had no idea u were jewish cuz your soooo pretty. wanna go to the mall w me and bree this wknd? itll be fun ill text u
Text message, after school, another unknown number:
i gotta be honest youd be a lot cuter if you plucked your eyebrows. ur kinda hairy.
Text message, another unknown number:
how many ppl have u kissed??????
13
SOPHIE
“She’s always been that kind of pretty that’s only pretty because she does everything right, you know?” Hayley Salem rasped.
“Totally,” Liv answered.
“She knows how to ‘look’ pretty,” Hayley said. “Not be pretty. I mean, have you ever seen her without makeup?”
“No. Have you?”
“No.”
“And actually,” another voice said. Amina. Who, all the way back in sixth grade, had sat by Sophie in homeroom, painfully shy but sweet and stunning, and who Sophie had seen potential in. “Eve Hoffman is beautiful in the way Sophie’s not. Like, that natural way. Like, in those pictures of celebrities without makeup, some look disgusting and some look even better? Eve’s the even better.”
“And Sophie’s the disgusting,” Hayley giggled.
“No, no,” Amina defended her. “She’s cute and you know it. She’s just … overrated, I guess? In the school?”
“Agreed,” Liv concurred.
“Agreed,” Hayley parroted.
“And you know who’s also pretty? Rose. I know she’s kind of annoying, but she looks like a mermaid or something,” Liv said.
“Oh my gosh, she totally does! Or, wait, is it just the flowy-red-hair thing?” Hayley continued as they opened the door to the first floor.
Sophie held her breath at the top of the staircase. She waited until the door on the first floor had shut behind them, and she used her runner’s legs to speed down into the emptiest, darkest room in school she could find. And there she hid, like a mouse in the wall.
14
EVE
Text message, as her family drove into the school parking lot, unknown number:
u there?
hey its brody
u think about what i asked?
What should she do? What should she say? How should she act? Complimented? As afraid as she really felt?
Eve prayed she didn’t see Brody at the assembly. She didn’t want to see anyone. There, in the school auditorium, kids who hid behind those unknown numbers would surround her. And they’d continue sizing her up.
Eve’s parents had refused to leave her at home with Abe. They said she had to “join her community.” At this, Abe had rolled his eyes.
“Sorry, man.” Abe put a hand on her shoulder. “And what if your own community has turned on you, huh?” he added to himself as he headed to his room. “What then, Mom and Dad…”
The assembly was packed. Eve found herself looking at every eighth grader and wondering which of them had sent her which text. She wore a baggy hoodie to hide inside, and she turned her phone off because she couldn’t take any more buzzing.
Apparently Principal Yu had emailed Eve’s parents about getting Eve in to see the school counselor. But Eve told them she was fine. So far, thank goodness, they believed it. Hopefully they could get out of there before Principal Yu had a chance to grab her parents and persuade them to make Eve talk to someone.
Nessa and her parents found Eve and hers, and Nessa filled her in on
the entire cast list. They did their special handshake, a series of seven moves.
“I knew you’d get the part.” Eve smiled.
“Well, yeah.” Nessa pretended to pose with a microphone like a pop star. “But, ew, Brody my-dad-ran-for-Senate-one-time Dixon got Harold Hill.”
Should Eve tell Nessa about Brody’s invitation to the dance? She’d kept it to herself all day.
Before Eve could decide whether to say anything or not, Principal Yu came to the stage to speak.
Eve saw that Curtis Milford sat a few rows to the left of them, and she made sure to keep her face pointed toward the right so he couldn’t even try to catch her attention.
* * *
As Principal Yu began to speak, several parents’ hands shot up.
Despite Principal Yu’s attempts to assure the parents they’d have a chance to talk, some moms and dads stood up one by one in order to yell, first at Principal Yu and then at one another.
Eve took out her notebook and buried her face inside it. She continued the poem she’d left unfinished yesterday morning. Words and images drowned out the voices around her.
“I just hope this doesn’t start some kind of witch hunt in the school,” one of the standing dads said. “Like every boy here is a suspect. Look, we all did this kind of stuff when we were kids. It’s normal.”
“Oh, ‘boys will be boys,’ right?” a mom hollered at him. Hayley Salem sat next to her. They shared the same nearly translucent skin and hair.
“Oh, like girls can’t be cruel, too,” another mom chimed in.
“And do girls grow up to do the same things we see boys doing?” Hayley’s mom continued. “Do girls grow up to hurt other girls the way the boys do? Have you watched the news recently?”
Speaking over the agitated parents, Principal Yu repeated her whole spiel from the other day about the counselors, how they’d find the kid who did it, how bullying would not be tolerated, and on and on, but the blaring symphony of anger grew louder.
Eve kept writing.
“This is kinda exciting!” Nessa whispered to Eve. “Oh man, Lara’s parents look so mad,” she added.
“I heard she might drop out of this school and transfer to Greenmount,” said a voice behind them.
They turned around and saw Amina Alvi’s exquisite face, framed by her wavy, almost-black hair. Eve saw that Amina’s mom, sitting next to her, shared that perfect face, though hers was framed by a hijab decorated with bright orange and pink swirls.
But why did Eve notice how pretty Amina was? She knew nothing about Amina except that she thought Amina was pretty. Maybe Eve was just as bad as whoever wrote the list.
“She must be so upset,” Amina whispered. “And Greenmount may be a private school, but do you think that means they’re nicer? Pssh. I doubt it.”
Amina’s dad put a finger to his lips, and Amina leaned back in her chair. Then she shook her head and gave Eve a look that said, “Parents, right?” Eve hadn’t spoken to Amina since fifth grade. And she was a Sophie. This was all so strange.
Eve turned back to her paper, scribbling as fast as she could, the thoughts tumbling out in a ramble.
“Lara better not leave the school. She’s got a good part in the show!” Nessa murmured, though Eve was hardly listening.
Try as she might to shut out the yelling, snippets of arguments continued to jump out at her:
“… the tech-age version of graffiti on the bathroom walls!”
“Don’t twist my words!”
“… impossible to reason with you people.”
“Do we really need to turn this into some kind of drama?”
“… nobody meaner than a middle school girl.”
“There are other options than this school, you know…”
“Not everyone has those options!”
And on and on.
Principal Yu said something about “meaningful dialogue,” and Eve heard her dad scoff.
Then another woman stood up, and the clear bell of her voice seemed to take over the room.
“I think we need to hear from the children,” she said. “How do they feel about this?”
Eve lowered her head farther into her notebook.
“I notice that most of the children here today are girls. Understandable. Me, I came with my son.”
Eve could hear the rustle of her classmates looking over shoulders to investigate which boy came with this mom. Even Eve looked up.
Beside the woman, his head hanging as low to the floor as Eve’s, sat Winston Byrd, the quiet Brody guy.
“I propose that our sons need this assembly most of all. Look, these girls have been made to feel less than human,” she went on.
Eve remembered her brother saying the same thing.
Winston’s mom stood tall, her demeanor confident, as if she did this all the time. “To not be on the list, you’re getting the message that you’re ugly. And in our world, where from the age of one a girl’s looks are treated as all-important, a girl being perceived as ‘ugly’ sends her the message that she has less value. And for those on the list, they’re being told that their purpose is to be looked at. Ranked. The poor girl sitting at number one … How does she feel?”
Eve felt her mom stiffen at the same time that she did. No one would make Eve talk, would they?
“Our boys need to hear this. They need to begin to understand their classmates’ pain. I mean, in this context, being number ten, five, or one is not a compliment, okay, girls? Okay, boys?”
“Better than the alternative,” her dad grunted as her mom lightly hit his arm.
“Dad, stop it.” Eve may have whispered aloud, or maybe she just thought it. What did he know about being a girl?
“I think we should hear from each of these girls,” Winston’s mom continued. “Let’s give them a voice. Boys, listen. Girls … speak.”
Eve stopped hearing her. Would they start with number one and go in order? How could she escape?
Winston’s mom made a lot of sense, and Eve agreed with what she was saying, but Eve had never asked to be number one. She certainly never asked to be the spokesperson for this lady’s point of view.
“I gotta go,” Eve whispered to her mom and Nessa, and she stumbled over the laps in her row, dropping some loose papers from her notebook as she went, but not stopping to consider them. She had to leave.
She ran out the door, searching for whatever other room lay nearest to her, where she could hide.
“Hey!” Eve heard a boy’s voice behind her, but she ignored it. “Hey, wait!”
The choir room. Right down the hall.
She pulled open the anchor-heavy doors and let them clamp shut behind her, escaping the voice. She was done hearing from boys right then.
She put her back against the door by the wall and let herself slide to the floor.
The tears came. Rushing out seemingly without end, like the text messages she’d been getting all day.
And as the tears poured, she heard the creak of a choir chair from somewhere in the darkness beyond her.
“Who’s there?” Eve spoke to the shadows.
The shadows spoke back: “Well, isn’t this just perfect.”
“I’ll go.” Eve turned to push the door.
“Who do you think you are?” the voice called to her.
Eve glanced back to see a figure emerge from the depths of the choir room, where the tall kids always sat. And there, with her arms crossed and a sour glare on her face, stood Sophie Kane.
“You’ve been here for the whole assembly?” Eve managed to squeak out.
“I’ve been here long enough to hear you freak out, let’s just say that,” Sophie answered, looking Eve up and down the way Brody had in the hallway the morning the list came out. “Of all people, of course it’s you.” Sophie stormed toward her. “You…”
Eve had never been in a fight before. Was Sophie going to slap her? Should she run? Why couldn’t her legs move?
“You think you can get away with t
his?” Sophie hissed, getting closer and closer.
What was Sophie Kane talking about?
“Oh wow.” Sophie laughed a frightening laugh. Like a supervillain. “You little…”
“I’m … sorry?” Eve didn’t know what she was sorry for, though.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done to my life?” Sophie ran a spastic hand through her hair.
“Me?” Eve’s jaw dropped.
“Yes, you.”
“What are you talking about?”
But before Sophie could answer, they heard the door begin to open.
Eve and Sophie froze, catching each other’s eye.
It was the first time Eve had actually looked Sophie Kane directly in the face. Sophie’s eyes were as dark blue as morning glories, and she was perfectly tan, even in October.
Wait. Was that a fake tan?
Here Eve was, thinking about a girl’s looks again.
“Don’t come in!” Sophie ordered.
As Nessa entered, Sophie scurried toward the back of the room.
Nessa slammed the door shut behind her. “Oh man. You’ve been crying. Look, don’t listen to that lady. She’s got some of the girls talking about their feelings now, so it’s gonna go on all night.” Nessa wrapped an arm around Eve.
Eve felt the tears stirring inside her again. “I had to get out of there.”
“I know,” Nessa comforted her.
A loud sigh came from the chairs.
“Is…,” Nessa said as she separated from Eve, “someone in here?”
Eve nodded in Sophie’s direction.
“Can we put some chairs in front of the door or something?” Sophie complained from where she sat. “Is there a lock? How do we stop the whole frickin’ school from barging in here?”
“What are you doing here?” Nessa turned to Sophie. “Shouldn’t you be with your minions?”
“What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be talking about your feelings with Principal Yu?” Sophie shot back.
