The Prettiest

by Brigit Young

  “You’re disgusting!” Eve spat out as Sophie held tightly on to her arm, trying to keep her balance.

  “Of course he’s disgusting. He’s dressed up as Sophie!” she heard Caleb say behind her. “So sensitive, geez!”

  “Shut up!” another guy yelled from somewhere.

  “Come here,” Brody insisted, putting a palm out to Eve once again.

  “Don’t touch me!” Eve held her hand tight against her body in a fist.

  The other day, when he’d called Sophie crazy, it had been a sign of some awfulness inside him. She knew she should’ve said something to him. Maybe because she hadn’t said anything, he’d thought it was okay to do what he had done. Why hadn’t she said something?

  “Hey!” Mr. Flynn hollered as he continued to make his way through the crowd.

  Brody moved toward Eve and touched her fist, trying to pull it to him.

  “I said don’t touch me!”

  Seemingly out of nowhere, Winston Byrd shot out of the crowd and pushed Brody with all his might. “She said don’t touch her! Stop!”

  Brody probably would’ve fallen to the floor, but his guys caught him.

  Caleb Rhines ran toward Winston, all three of the boys ignoring Mr. Flynn’s pleas to stop. “What is wrong with you, man?” Caleb shoved Winston, who backed away and bolted out of the gym.

  Mr. Flynn finally arrived next to Brody. “Come on, Brody, let’s get out of here.”

  “Yeah, get out of here!” Sophie hissed.

  Brody paused, grinning at her, nudging off Mr. Flynn’s attempts to pull him away. “It’s just a joke, Silver Ledge.”

  For a moment, Sophie seemed to morph into an entirely different person. The whole bottom half of her face quivered. Her shoulders wilted. Her mouth clamped shut, and then it tightened.

  “Yeah, we know where you live. People talk, you know. Nice try keeping it secret, though,” he went on.

  As quickly as Sophie’s spine had slumped over, it straightened. She held her head high. The Sophie that Eve recognized came back.

  “Brody Dixon. Stop talking right now.”

  For the first time, no murmurs or hollers could be heard in the gym. The only sound was Mr. Flynn directing another adult across the room to come help him.

  Sophie’s jaw clenched. “I mean it. Stop.” Sophie took a step toward him, not a quiver left in her.

  Eve remained where she was. How did Sophie speak back to him with such courage?

  And did he say Silver Ledge? The apartment building? Eve had never been there, but she knew some kids in their district lived there. Who cared?

  “Oh. What?” Brody goaded her. “You don’t want everyone to know you live in Silver Ledge? Like, a block from the jail?” Brody turned to the crowd and added, “I like my girls thrift store– and food stamps–free, you know?”

  Some in the crowd gasped.

  Eve tried to remember what had seemed sweet about Brody. Had it just been that he’d spoken to her? Told her about his dad’s girlfriend? Shared with her that he wanted to be an actor one day, but his dad didn’t like that? Was it just … his attention that she liked? How pathetic was Eve to let all that trick her? Attention had always been something she thought she hadn’t wanted, and yet she’d fallen for it.

  Sophie pointed a finger at Brody’s chest. “People only like you because you’re rich. You’re a creepy, mean, disgusting excuse for a human being who will peak in high school before the world figures out you have no talent except for having a room for your ugly dog!”

  Brody and his boys laughed. “What is she even talking about?” He turned to his friends. “Somebody’s still mad I didn’t ask her to the dance.”

  At this, Sophie stalked out of the room, her high heels like mallets on the drum of the floor.

  Eve turned to follow, but at the sound of Brody’s voice she stopped.

  “Eve,” Brody said in a command, hand out once more. “Come on.”

  “No.” Eve could finally breathe as Nessa arrived by her side.

  “What?” Brody’s hand remained reaching toward her.

  “Don’t talk to me.” Eve felt herself shudder. “Don’t come near me, ever again.”

  The crowd behind her seemed to inhale as one, hushed.

  Mr. Flynn at last succeeded in pulling Brody away. “Come on, now. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Okay, fine!” Brody yelled back to the crowd as they left. “But, hey! Eve! Are you ever going to tell the truth?” He and Mr. Flynn neared the door. “Isn’t is obvious?” he hollered to the entire eighth grade. “Eve Hoffman wrote the list herself! She told me so!”

  At that, the kids behind Eve moved away from her, joining Caleb and the other guys. Eve felt them watching her, and knew everyone’s feelings toward her had instantly flipped.

  “It’s true,” Caleb told the crowd. “Eve wrote it. Brody liked her, so he didn’t want to tell on her. But now…”

  Could Eve turn to her classmates, explain to them that Brody and Caleb were lying? No one would believe Eve, no matter how awful Brody had been that night. All he had to do was say the word and Eve was done for.

  She could stay, and try to fight back.

  But something else mattered much more.

  Eve grabbed Nessa’s hand. They both knew what they had to do next.

  Find Sophie.

  29

  SOPHIE

  She sat on the piano bench with the lights off. Her secret was out. Her mascara streaked across her cheeks.

  She’d thrown an insult at Brody that her mom had shouted at her dad one day. “You peaked in high school!” her mom had cried. He’d snapped back, “You too.”

  Knowing she’d repeated those words, even to Brody, made her ill.

  When Nessa and Eve came into the room, Sophie couldn’t lift her head to face them. Instead, she stared at the piano pedals. She worried that if she looked at their faces, she’d cry more.

  “Brody’s right, guys,” she forced out. “I was mad that he didn’t ask me.”

  She instinctively dabbed under her eyes with her shirt, and the sequins scratched her nose.

  Crying was for the weak. But she felt weak.

  “I wanted the most popular, richest guy in school to ask me to the dance,” she continued with a sniffle. “I mean, everyone thought he would. Before this stupid list came out.” Neither of the girls answered her, but she felt them move closer to the piano. “And he was right that I live in Silver Ledge, okay? But my dad isn’t in jail!”

  “Even if he was, that doesn’t mean anything about you and shouldn’t be an insult!” Nessa broke in.

  Sophie held up a hand to stop Nessa from saying any more. “I didn’t really care about ‘justice,’ okay? I wanted to find evidence so I could take down the list writer and get a new one written. Be number one, like I thought I was.”

  Sophie felt a sob lodge itself in her throat, but she gritted her teeth to hold it in. “I should’ve just let him kiss me! Then none of this would’ve happened!” The sob shot out of her. “I just … I don’t know why, but I just didn’t want to.” Sophie put her head in her hands. She couldn’t let Nessa and Eve see her like this. From far off, she heard the dance music start up again. “I just want to run away.” Sophie heard her voice waver. “Get on a bus, take it to the train station, get on a train, take it across the country.” She thought of her dad. How he had left. Where was he this month? Austin? She wiped her nose again. She had to keep it together. “But I can’t. So I’ll just run home.” Sophie got up and headed toward the door, facing away from Nessa and Eve.

  Nessa blocked her exit. “You think I cared about ‘justice for all’ or something?” Nessa confessed.

  For the first time since Sophie had met her, Nessa appeared a little less confident.

  Nessa took a breath. “Brody hurt my feelings that day. Before the assembly.”

  Sophie saw Eve snap her head toward Nessa. “What?”

  Nessa nodded. “Yeah. He made it sound like Mr. Rhodes was doing
me a favor for giving me the lead in the show. ’Cause I’m not a supermodel, I guess.” Nessa didn’t face Eve as she went on. “I’m just really tired of guys like Brody thinking they can be jerks like that and it’s all good, you know?”

  “It’s not like I wanted to catch Brody for the good of everybody or anything!” Eve broke in loudly. “I was just thinking about myself! At first, I just wanted the attention to stop. I wanted to stop the stares. The endless stares. And then … I guess I liked some of Brody’s attention, I think. But I should have known that something like this would happen … I’m so sorry. I can’t believe what he did to you tonight, Sophie.”

  “Me either!” Nessa took Sophie’s arm and led her back to the piano bench. Eve hurried along behind her.

  “Okay, so none of us were thinking about how each other or other girls felt. Like I thought everyone was overreacting. And then the other day when I saw Lara Alexander crying…” Nessa sat down, and Sophie and Eve sat on either side of her. “I mean, how did I not think about how bad this felt for everybody? Really bad!”

  “Wait, she was crying?” Sophie didn’t know why, but that made her feel like crying again, too.

  “Yeah! And Erin was just as upset, too…,” Nessa continued.

  The three girls sat in silence.

  “I don’t think we’ll ever get any evidence of who wrote it,” Sophie said, finding herself wanting to break the quiet.

  “Yeah, probably not,” Nessa acknowledged.

  “He’s not going to admit it,” Eve said with certainty. “He was never going to get close to me or anything, anyway. I don’t think he’s that kind of person,” she added in a near whisper.

  “Yeah,” Sophie agreed. “He was always going to get away with it.”

  “And I mean, for all we know, he didn’t even write it,” Nessa offered.

  “Time to give up,” Sophie announced. “Brody wins.”

  “But he did write it,” a voice said, drifting toward them from the back of the choir room. A boy’s voice.

  Eve let out a little yelp and hopped up from the bench.

  “For Pete’s sake, what is it with people lurking in the back of choir rooms?” Nessa hollered with a hand to her heart.

  Sophie felt a fury rise in her. Who would listen in on her? How dare they?

  “Show thyself!” Nessa marched over to the lights to turn them all on.

  In the back of the room, Winston Byrd leaned his elbows over the back of a chair, hands clasped together.

  “Hi, Phantom of the Opera,” Nessa joked.

  “Get out.” Sophie stormed toward him. One of Brody’s followers? How dare he invade their choir room?

  “Wait! He defended Eve when she didn’t want Brody to touch her!” Nessa giggled. “Pretty great!”

  “Gross.” Sophie shot her a glare. Sophie thought of her mom. Of Mrs. Jackson, who helped take care of Bella and had four grandchildren to take care of, too. Of all that Sophie had to do to get through these awful days. They didn’t need help from any boy. “He needs to go.” She arrived at his chair and motioned for him to leave.

  “But what if he can help?” Eve suggested.

  “We just decided this is all hopeless!” Sophie argued.

  “Let’s just hear him out.” Nessa gestured for Winston to begin.

  “Um…” Winston fumbled for words.

  It took everything in Sophie not to snap, “Come on! Out with it!” but she knew Nessa and Eve wouldn’t like that. She walked down with him to the first row choir seats, and all the girls sat as Winston stood in front of the piano and chalkboard and spoke.

  “He brags about it all the time,” Winston mumbled. “He talks about why he put each girl where. Why he left certain girls off.”

  Okay. Interesting. Why had he put her as number two? Was it just the kiss?

  She shouldn’t still care. She shouldn’t! Why should she care what he thought after he ruined her life? But she did. She hated herself for it, but she did.

  Before Sophie could ask about herself, Eve jumped in, her face all tortured and sad. “Why was I number one?”

  “Maybe to cause drama?” Winston’s low voice cracked a tiny bit. “He’s such a jerk…”

  It felt funny to hear one of Brody’s guys saying that.

  “And why would he tell people I wrote the list?” Eve asked.

  “You embarrassed him,” Winston answered.

  And when Sophie heard that, she knew she didn’t need to ask why she was number two. She’d been right all along. She’d turned him down and embarrassed him. That explained everything. You didn’t say no to guys like Brody.

  Winston turned to Sophie, blushing. “He also brags that he drove you crazy. You probably shouldn’t have told everybody that you wouldn’t kiss him back.”

  “I’ll do what I want, thank you,” Sophie answered.

  “Okay. But, yeah. I told you. Jerk,” Winston grumbled. “He says stuff about how someone’s eyebrows can make them not in the top ten, or someone’s toes can make them not on the list and stuff.”

  “What?” Nessa smacked her own forehead. “A girl’s toes? Let’s get a look at his toes, huh?”

  “That’s so stupid,” Eve added.

  “It’s all stupid!” Winston turned away from them and hit the top of the piano, just like Sophie had the night of the assembly, she remembered. “And even when the guys don’t agree with him, or don’t care, they just say ‘yeah, you’re right’ to whatever he says. My best friend … Well, my ex–best friend, Caleb, he just listens and laughs and is like ‘totally, man.’”

  Sophie had never heard a boy say “ex–best friend” before.

  “Wait.” Sophie turned to the girls. “How can we trust him?” She pointed at Winston.

  “You can!” he pleaded, taking a step toward them.

  Sophie shushed him. “Seriously, he’s Brody’s friend.”

  “Hmm. She’s not wrong.” Nessa crossed her arms just like Sophie.

  “Have you guys seen me with him the past couple weeks?”

  Sophie hadn’t, now that she thought about it. He sat with them at lunch … well, not for the past week. And she didn’t see him in the halls, except with Caleb, sometimes.

  “Okay, I haven’t. But why?” she challenged him.

  Winston sighed and held a palm to his forehead as if he had a headache. “Because I don’t like them anymore, okay? And I just—”

  “You want to leave the Empire and join the Jedis?” Nessa interrupted.

  “Yeah,” Winston answered. “That’s right.”

  Sophie wasn’t entirely convinced. But it was true that without him and his inside knowledge, they had nothing on Brody at all.

  Nessa and Eve turned to Sophie, as if she was the deciding vote on whether to let him stay or not.

  Sophie surrendered. “So you’ll help us, then,” she said.

  “Wait, with what?” Nessa asked. “What else is there to do?”

  “Before tonight, we didn’t know for sure that Brody did this. And we also only thought about getting him caught. Punished. After tonight…” Sophie felt the thoughts that had stirred inside her, unnamed, form themselves. “We know he did it. We were right all along! Right, Winston?”

  Winston nodded.

  “And we can’t just bring him to Principal Yu. No. That’s not enough. He needs to be”—she took a breath and decided Brody’s fate—“humiliated. He needs to be so humiliated that no one ever cares what he thinks again. Not one, single girl.”

  “Or boy,” Winston added.

  He was right. “Or boy,” she repeated.

  Winston took a seat next to them.

  “It can’t just be about finding proof of his crimes,” Sophie thought out loud. “It’s got to be more than that. We have to find undeniable proof that makes the school hate him. Proof that could get him expelled.”

  “You’re right,” Nessa agreed. “Nobody’s safe with him around.”

  “Exactly. We have to expose him,” Sophie went on. “In
front of everyone.” She turned to Nessa, knowing she would understand.

  “The show!” Nessa lit up.

  “Huh?” Eve’s face scrunched up in confusion.

  “Yes! We have to expose him at the show!” Sophie almost hugged Nessa. This was genius.

  Nessa jumped up and down a little. “Final curtain call! Tell everyone everything we find!”

  “Yes!” Sophie found herself holding hands with Nessa and jumping a couple of times with her. Then she went into planning mode.

  Winston was a science guy, so she instructed him to find out the IP address of LordTesla. That could potentially break the whole case. Winston told her he didn’t know that much about computers, but she shrugged him off. He’d do fine. Nessa had the job of not only spying on Brody all the way through rehearsal, just like she had before, but also finding a time to secretly go through his backpack. They had to push harder in every way to catch a guy like him. To Sophie’s chagrin, Nessa insisted that Sophie do makeup and costumes so that she could help, too. Sophie relented. Fine. She’d be a theater kid for a little bit. She wasn’t going back to the Sophies, anyway.

  “What about me?” Eve asked as Sophie gave out the tasks.

  Sophie didn’t know. Eve would be a pariah on Monday. She’d rejected Brody, just like Sophie had.

  “I’ll think of something,” Sophie assured her.

  “I also think we need more girls,” Nessa said. “All eyes need to be on him in rehearsal, from all corners. What if he tries something like what he did tonight?”

  Nessa was right. “Who can we trust?” Sophie asked.

  “I have some ideas.” Nessa smiled. “I’m on it.”

  “You guys are some serious vigilantes,” Winston muttered. “I’m impressed.”

  Eve laughed in recognition, but Sophie had no idea what he meant. “We’re what?”

  “Vigilantes,” Eve explained. “It means when the law isn’t doing its job, you do it yourself.”

  “Yeah.” Winston jumped onto her explanation, like they could read each other’s thoughts. “A good example would be Batman.”

  “Or,” Eve continued, “in real life, in about the early 1900s—”