The Prettiest

by Brigit Young

  Sophie could see from Eve’s neck that she was blushing. Eve really was a Disney princess, Sophie thought. She probably sang to birds.

  “She didn’t want to have to go outside and deal with the world, I guess,” Eve went on. “And I just don’t quite fit in in the hallways with a hundred people, you know?”

  “This Emily Dickins sounds just sad to me. And loaded. Staying in your room all day writing ‘roses are red’ or whatever? Ignoring the world?” And it must be nice not to need to go out and make an actual living, Sophie didn’t say out loud.

  “No, it wasn’t like that!” Eve insisted, shaking her head.

  The more she talked, the less Eve sounded like the quiet girl from school. Sophie found this Eve much more interesting.

  “Stop moving your head!” Sophie commanded. “And don’t forget that when you’re doing this, you need to start from the scalp and slowly pull the straightener down to the tips, okay? Actually, try it yourself real quick.” Sophie handed Eve the straightener and smirked as Eve struggled. “Anyway, I’m just saying, it’s okay to be romantic and stuff, but it’s not always the real world. Maybe Emily Dickins could have used some time in the hallways.”

  Eve said nothing except “Dickinson” and handed the straightener back to Sophie.

  “Is that her?” Sophie nodded to a book on Eve’s bed stand with Emily’s name and a picture of her, she assumed. “I wonder what number she would’ve been on the list,” Sophie said, and, to her surprise, Eve chuckled.

  “That’s pretty funny!”

  “She’s kinda cute, really.” Sophie found herself giggling, too.

  Sophie heard her phone ding. She went to check it. “It’s the Choir Room Trio text.”

  “Yeah? What’s it say?” Eve asked.

  “I thought you weren’t allowed to use your phone,” Sophie teased.

  “You can tell me what’s on your phone!”

  “Nessa says that Brody, Caleb, Winston, Aidan, and Tariq are posting a bunch of nasty comments under girls’ pictures about what number they are on the list.”

  “Disgusting.”

  “Typical.”

  The phone dinged once more.

  “What else?” Eve asked.

  “Oh, Nessa asks how the makeover is going.”

  “Well?” Eve asked. “How is it going?”

  “Finished,” Sophie answered.

  She stood in front of Eve and took in the full view. Wow. Sophie had turned this girl into a movie star. She led Eve to the full-length mirror on the back of Eve’s bedroom door.

  “Voilà.” Sophie couldn’t help herself—she smiled, thin lip and all.

  Eve gasped. “I look—I—I look—”

  “Like a goddess,” Sophie said. She curtsied in her jeans.

  Eve spun in a circle, even though her skirt didn’t twirl at all.

  “See? Kind of fun, right?” Sophie went to Eve and adjusted her skirt a bit.

  Then, still staring at herself, Eve awkwardly moved her shoulders in a little shimmy.

  Sophie laughed. “Glad you like it.”

  “Oh my—” Eve said.

  “For a famous poet wannabe, you’re pretty bad at saying words,” Sophie said, still laughing.

  Eve turned to her and declared, “I love the eye part!”

  “It’s called eye shadow.”

  Eve flipped back to the mirror and kept moving her shoulders, but then her fingers started snapping and her whole body joined in. “And I love this song! Who is it?” she asked, dancing without any of the grace of a Snow White. More like one of the Disney sidekick characters. It was kind of funny.

  Sophie knew this song too well. “My dad’s band,” she said, dismissing it and grabbing her phone to change it. How embarrassing.

  “I love it!” Eve repeated.

  Sophie changed it to a Top 40 playlist. “Don’t.”

  “But it’s so—”

  “He’s a jerk,” Sophie cut Eve off.

  Sophie kind of couldn’t believe she was saying this to Eve Hoffman. She didn’t talk about her dad. Ever. But there they were, doing that.

  Eve didn’t speak for a second, and she stopped dancing. Then she looked back into the mirror as she said to Sophie, “Nessa and I call jerks ‘Malfoys.’ And if they’re really bad, then ‘Voldemorts.’”

  “Sooo nerdy.” Sophie cringed, but laughed. She turned up the new song as if to drown out the sound of her dad and erase it from the room.

  The door burst open, and their little sisters danced their way inside, both dressed up in Eve’s mom’s clothes.

  “I THINK HANNAH IS MY BEST FRIEND!” Bella yelled to Eve as the music pounded.

  Sophie gave in and danced, too. She grabbed her little sister’s hands, and they spun around together. Eve continued her goofy moves, her fingers snapping and her knees wobbling side to side. Maybe this was the Eve Hoffman that Nessa got to see.

  As the song ended, they turned to the door and saw Eve’s mom standing in its frame, a bemused look on her face.

  “How’s that school project going?” she asked, but not in a stressed-out way. More like she actually knew they weren’t doing one and didn’t care.

  But when she took in Eve’s face and hair, her smile disappeared.

  “Oh, honey,” she said as Sophie went over to her phone to turn off the music. “You look … so different.”

  Sophie knew in that moment that Eve’s mom was judging her. She probably thought Sophie was a “bad influence.” Maybe Eve’s mom could tell that Sophie’s clothes looked fancy, but were really used. Some of them homemade, sewed on her grandma’s old sewing machine. Her mom had taught her how. Maybe Eve’s mom saw the smudges all over Sophie’s makeup bag, sitting next to Eve’s chair, and wondered why her stuff was so dirty. Maybe she’d even figured out that Sophie wasn’t from their neighborhood. Did parents know about other kids’ parents in town? Maybe Eve’s mom knew that the Kanes lived in Silver Ledge Apartments, or that her mom served people at a diner on the side of Greer Road. And even though there was nothing wrong with that, a lawyer or a doctor or something, which Eve’s parents totally must have been, might think there was.

  “We should go,” Sophie said to the rich girls and their mom as she grabbed her stuff and threw it into her backpack. Bella came to her side.

  “Oh.” Eve’s mom sounded surprised.

  “Oh,” Eve parroted in the same way.

  “You need a ride home, honey?” Eve’s mom asked.

  “No, it’s so close,” Sophie answered, and she headed off from the huge, happy Hoffman home with Bella, still bopping around and singing, unaware that she would never be in the same world as someone like Hannah Hoffman.

  She would have to make her own world.

  20

  EVE

  After the Kanes left, Eve sat in front of her mirror. Oh my goodness. She looked like one of the portraits at the Detroit museum. And without her curls she seemed … older.

  But could she do this on her own on Monday? Sophie had left a list of instructions, but could Eve really manage the right mix of lip and eye shadow colors and the knot-free hair? The one time she’d tried to straighten it on her own, it had frizzed out in all directions like she’d been struck by lightning. Nessa had taken about a thousand pictures.

  As the sun set, and havdalah ended, Eve turned on her phone.

  Texts lit up one after the other like stars appearing in the night sky, almost all of them from Brody Dixon.

  oh man I cant tell you how glad I am youll go w me

  not sure about my costume yet lol whats yours

  i bet youre gonna look so beauitufl at the dance

  we should hang out next week id love to get to know u better

  u around? I have rehearsals. Maybe before or after?

  u there

  She almost texted the Choir Room Trio, I can’t do this, but she stopped herself. She stood in front of the mirror once again.

  Maybe the list was right. Maybe she was really, uniquely pr
etty. She did have a mouth that naturally pouted, just like her mom. And Sophie had told Eve that her eyes were “stunning.” Inspecting her reflection, she saw it was true. They were so brown and dark that, looking into them, it felt like they never ended, like the swirls of soil brown went all the way to the middle of the earth. In the mirror she could see how the violet color shading them gave the brown of her irises a new glow, a hum, just like Sophie had said it would.

  She felt guilty as she thought it, but still, she thought that maybe, just maybe, she was the prettiest.

  Sophie sure knew how to give a makeover.

  Eve texted Brody back.

  Sorry! Just getting these now. Busy day.

  Oh no, why did she have to use an exclamation mark?

  And she couldn’t explain Shabbat to him, could she?

  I was gonna be Juliet. Haha. I have this old Renaissance dress from the Renaissance Faire. But you be whatever!! I can meet you after rehearsal on Monday, if you want. I was going to wait for Nessa, anyway. So I’ll see you then?

  That was a lie. She had never planned on seeing Nessa rehearse.

  That night she was pretty, and made up, and a liar.

  Sophie’s words repeated themselves in her mind: You’re judging me for liking to look a certain way.

  Was she? She didn’t know. She didn’t know if she was supposed to not like this face in the mirror, or only like it bare, or not think of it at all.

  The face in the mirror didn’t make sense anymore.

  21

  THE CHOIR ROOM TRIO

  NESSA: ok so the first real rehearsal tomorrow is the moment of truth

  EVE: Why?

  SOPHIE: because that’s when you have to get brody to fall in love with you/trust you/etc

  NESSA: what she said. stay late. go to the library or whatever. tell him youll meet him. my mom or dad can drive us home after.

  SOPHIE: then you’ll start sitting with me at lunch. sorry, nessa.

  NESSA: i cant come? [GIF of Rachel from Friends going “Aw pretty please?”]

  SOPHIE: that just gets too complicated

  NESSA: i was kidding genius. ill pass thanks. plus the cast has been sitting together a lot and i prefer my theater friends to Fake Eve—no offense eve. did you notice that literally zero theater girls got in the top 50? maybe we need to change our search to someone who really hates musicals. also, isnt that a form of prejudice?

  SOPHIE: moving on nessa do your best to find out his passcode to his phone

  NESSA: on it. we need a tech genius on this. eve could your bro help

  EVE: If Abe knew who wrote the list he would actually punch him.

  NESSA: and … the problem is…???

  EVE: oh come on

  SOPHIE: ok goodnight

  NESSA: remind me what your job is again

  SOPHIE: my job is managerial

  NESSA: omg goodnight

  EVE: see you tomorrow

  SOPHIE: light eye shadow. straightened hair! the shirt with those sleeves!

  NESSA: oh boy this is gonna be a disaster

  22

  NESSA

  Eve came into rehearsal that Monday afternoon right as the musical director told the ensemble to leave and asked the two leads to stay to begin work on their songs. Eve, newly dolled up, sat quietly in the theater’s back row. She gave Nessa a little wave.

  “It’s never too early to dive in!” Mr. Rhodes chirped, turning his sheet music to the show’s big ballad, and Nessa loved him so much in that moment.

  As she and Brody began to sing, Nessa spotted Eve look up from the pages of her notebook and gaze at him. Gross.

  Brody made the love in the song feel real, even if he sang like a toddler who had just jumped into ice-cold water.

  But didn’t Eve know that he was a bad guy in real life? He wrote the list! How could she like him? Who was this girl who didn’t tell Nessa about boys asking her to dances? This girl getting crushes on monsters?

  She felt the urge to mess with the harmony a little so Brody would make a mistake and maybe freak out at her and yell or something, so that Eve would remember he was mean.

  Nessa believed Eve when she insisted that all the attention from the kids in school bothered her. But that day, coming to school with the “new look,” Eve hadn’t exactly seemed devastated. She even swished her straight hair behind her shoulder a couple of times in a move Nessa could only describe as Sophie-rific.

  Nessa missed Eve’s curls.

  Right as rehearsal ended, Nessa pulled out her phone and texted Sophie: brodys voice sounds like the sound cats make before they vomit, but guess who seems to like it, anyway?

  To which Sophie responded ew. And more ew.

  Sophie may have been incredibly stuck-up, but at least she saw Brody for what he was.

  As Nessa headed out of the auditorium she mouthed to Eve, “Record it!” Eve was supposed to try to get him to confess. Somehow.

  Eve’s befuddled face confirmed that she didn’t know how to lip-read. This was hopeless. Did Nessa always have to be the one in their friendship who knew how to get things done?

  And if Sophie’s plan did work, and Eve did get Brody to admit to writing the list, if she didn’t record it for proof, who would believe Eve Hoffman over Brody Dixon?

  No one.

  Nessa was on it, though. She’d keep pretending to ignore him, but she’d watch his every move. She’d find a clue, a hint, a something.

  As she waited for Eve to mess it all up, Nessa headed to the bathroom next to the auditorium.

  Inside stood Lara Alexander, dabbing under her eyes with crumpled toilet paper.

  “Oh, hey.” Lara tossed the toilet paper into the trash and faced the mirror to reapply some eyeliner.

  “Hey.” Nessa stood by her and pretended to fix her hair in the mirror, even though it already looked good. “You were awesome at the read-through the other day.”

  Lara gave her a closed-mouth smile. “Thanks.”

  So what was Lara upset about? Still this stupid list thing? Nessa wasn’t on it, either, and it didn’t ruin her life. Couldn’t Lara talk to the counselors?

  “You really are better than me.” Lara nodded vehemently as she sniffled.

  “No, no, I’m not!” Nessa was better overall. But Lara was still great!

  “You are. And that’s okay.” Lara pulled out some mascara. “It’s okay,” Lara repeated as if to convince herself. “Ya know, it’s just…” Lara took a breath and strengthened her voice. “I think I’m probably going to switch schools.”

  “Oh. Wow.” So the rumors were true. This could really hurt the production. They needed her! “Before the show or…?” Nessa tried to sound casual.

  “I can’t be here anymore!” Lara spat out. “People are laughing at me, like they think I think I’m pretty, they think I’m full of myself, and they’re just so happy to see that no one would choose me for the top fifty prettiest. Well, they’d be happy to know I’ve never thought I was pretty and I’ve never liked how I looked. So they don’t have to feel like it ‘brought me down a peg’ or whatever.”

  “I don’t think people feel—” Nessa tried to say what she knew she should say, but Lara cut her off.

  “Because guess what?” Lara turned to face Nessa. “I hate everything about my face. Except my eyes. I like those. I used to wonder if I could be an eye model, like in ads where only eyes are seen. Like for mascara. Models start really young, like sixteen. My sister might end up modeling. She’s almost sixteen, you know. And she’s perfect. I’ve always hoped one day I’ll look like her. But I look like me.” Lara’s voice cracked. She went into a stall to grab another chunk of toilet paper. “I’m so ugly.”

  “You’re so, so beautiful,” Nessa told her. And it was true. It was why Nessa had worried that Lara might get the part of Marian. It was also why, Nessa realized, she’d always assumed that Lara thought she was better than her.

  Lara ignored her. “I just don’t understand what happened to make everybody not l
ike me. I used to think that when boys were looking at me it was because they liked me, but now I know it’s because I’m a joke.” Lara hid her face inside the tissue, and Nessa saw a droplet of an inky mascara tear hit the bathroom floor.

  A flush came from one of the stalls. “Yeah, it’s not so great,” they heard someone say. A few moments later, Erin O’Brien came out. She handed Lara some more tissue paper and washed her hands. “But some of us never expected to be in the top fifty, fair or not. Some of us don’t have famous parents and models for sisters.”

  “No! I didn’t mean to complain, I—”

  Erin left the bathroom without responding.

  Lara looked toward Nessa for backup, and she seemed to take in Nessa for the first time. Maybe she thought about how Nessa wasn’t on the list, either. “I’m not trying to say I have it worse than anyone or anything. But I can’t help who my parents are! God!” She let out a sob.

  “Look.” Nessa held her shoulders. “Nothing is wrong with you or me or Erin. What’s wrong is that stupid list. Like my mom says—it’s cruel.”

  She grabbed some paper towel and helped Lara fix her makeup.

  “Yeah,” Lara said, though she didn’t seem like she believed it. “Do you really think Hayley Salem is prettier than me?” she asked.

  Nessa decided to stay with Lara for a little bit. Maybe Nessa owed it to her, for always having assumed Lara was full of herself, just like Lara had said.

  Apparently, she could have benefited from being a bit more full of herself. They all could have.

  23

  EVE

  Brody Dixon sat with her on a bench outside the front of the school.

  As they spoke, Eve could see their breath, billowing out in white clouds.

  “How’d you think we sounded?” he asked her.