by Nancy N. Rue
“No!” Sophie said.
Lacie put her fingers in her ears.
“I don’t care if everybody laughs at me when I’m just being my weird self,” Fiona said. “But I don’t want them laughing if I’m doing something totally lame that isn’t me. Besides — ”
There was a pause. Lacie nudged Sophie.
“What?” Sophie said. “It doesn’t have to be lame — I want to hear your ideas.”
“I can’t get a bad grade,” Fiona said. “I’m the one who made sure you got good grades so you could have your camera. But now that you don’t listen to me, you’re going down. And I’m not going down with you.”
It was abruptly silent. When a dull drone sounded in Sophie’s ear, Lacie took the phone from her and pushed the button.
“She hung up, Soph,” she said. “She just flat hung up on you.”
Ten
Sophie stared at the phone, which was still in Lacie’s hand.
“That was just wrong,” Lacie said, flipping her ponytail. “If she’s going to be that way about it, you don’t need her for a friend.”
“No — I do!” Sophie said. “It’s all my fault!”
Lacie shook her head, but when the sound of Mama and Daddy coming through the kitchen made its way up the stairs, she was out the door in mid-shake.
“What happened?” Sophie heard her call down over the banister.
“We need to talk,” Daddy called back up.
Sophie felt herself folding in as she got up and closed her door. There goes another hour or two, she thought.
In fact, it wasn’t even a minute or two before Lacie was bellowing, “I don’t want to go to another church! You’re taking me away from my friends! I’m the middle school youth group president!”
Colleen O’Bravo perched the green hat atop her head and crumpled beneath its brim. “She’ll eat the heads off of them for sure,” she said to herself. “And it will not do a bit of good. When Ma and Da make up their minds — ”
Sophie’s thoughts trailed off. Colleen wasn’t much help right now. Sophie was losing her best friend, and it was going to take more than imagination to get her back.
“I want Dr. Peter!” she whispered to the walls.
What would he say? She closed her eyes and pictured him on the window seat in his office, face pillow in hand, squinting through his glasses with twinkly blue eyes.
I read the Bible story, Sophie said to him in her mind. And it helped me with Darbie. But Fiona —
She could see Dr. Peter wrinkling his nose, pushing up his glasses. No ‘But Fiona,’ Loodle, he would say. It’s in the Bible. It’s truth. Love her the way Jesus loves his friends.
Sophie was about to kick her feet — rather than even think about washing them or anybody else’s — when the phone jangled beside her. She snatched it up, the word “Fiona!” already on her lips.
But it was Darbie, jabbering like the words couldn’t come out fast enough. “You haven’t a clue who just called me! It was Fiona — and she reefed me!”
Sophie didn’t even have to ask if that was the same as eating the head off her.
“She told me she was going to audition for the Corny Pops,” Darbie went on. “Now what are we going to do? We’ll surely make a bags of doing our show without her! This is desperate!”
“You know it!” Sophie said. “We have to get her back is all — I know you’ll hate this idea, but I’m trying to figure out how I’m supposed to love her like Jesus. What I mean is — ”
“I know all about that,” Darbie said.
“You do?” Sophie said.
“Don’t be thinking it isn’t hard to love some blaggard who’s just left your garden in flitters bolting through with his evil signs — or worse. I’m quite the expert on doing what the Lord says even when you’d rather be hanged. I’ve been doing it for ages.”
Sophie sat up straighter on the bed. “You mean, like washing people’s feet, sort of?”
“I know that story. And the one about the lady who wiped Jesus’ feet with her hair.”
Sophie barely took time to notice that Darbie pronounced Jesus, “Jaysus.” She could only gawk at the phone.
“My ma and me, we always talked about the Bible stories — we would never have been able to carry on without them.” Darbie’s voice dropped. “My aunt and uncle don’t go to church — and it’s murder without it.”
Sophie finally found her voice, and it came out squeaky-nervous. “You know the foot-washing story then?”
“I do.”
“Well — we have to love Fiona like that. You know, wash her feet. Only I don’t know how.”
“It isn’t difficult,” Darbie said. “Bowl. Towel. Water.”
“You mean, really wash her feet?” Sophie said. Her voice was squealing up into dog-world.
“That’s what the story says. And you know what else it says, of course.”
“No,” Sophie said.
“Fetch your Bible, then,” Darbie said.
But before Sophie could even reach for hers, the door opened and Daddy stuck his head in. The skin under his eyes was long. “Lights out, Soph,” he said. “We’ll talk tomorrow. Deal?”
Sophie nodded. When the door closed, she whispered to Darbie, “I have to go.”
“Read the entire story,” Darbie whispered back. “The part where he gives out to them — you know, gets in their faces, as you Americans say. Sometimes that’s love too, my ma always told me, mostly when she was giving out to me about something I did wrong. Oh — and I’ll bring the pitcher tomorrow.”
“For what?” Sophie said.
“For the water. And let’s do it in the corner of the play yard. I don’t fancy having every eejit in the school gawking at us.”
Sophie’s mind was whirling when she hung up, but she reached for her Bible and her flashlight and tented herself under the covers.
Jesus loved them by getting in their faces? Sophie thought.
Sounds like something Daddy would say — “Soph, I’m doing this for your own good.”
Chewing at her hair, Sophie read the story three more times, searching for a place where Jesus — how had Darbie said it? — gave out to the disciples.
Okay, so I’m Luke, she thought, and Jesus is being all nice and washing everybody’s feet, and then he gets in our faces. Sophie sat up and pretended that Jesus was back at his place at the table, leaning across to talk to them all. Sophie/Luke squinted back to see him. Jesus’ voice was getting firmer; it was as if she could almost press her hand against his words.
“I tell you the truth,” he said, “no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him.Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.”
Sophie tried to hear it again, with Jesus using an even sterner voice, like he wanted to make sure they got it. She couldn’t quite remember the exact words. In her head it was, “If you understand what I’m saying to you, then act like it.”
Sophie/Luke scrunched up his face as he tried to get it. As always, his teacher’s eyes were kind even though he was stern, and he felt himself breathing deep in his chest. He expects me to love and love and love some more, Sophie/Luke thought. He watched the faces of his friends glow in the half darkness. The Master Jesus was telling them what they had to do. But he wasn’t getting all yelly and making them feel like — eejits. “This is what I have to do,” Sophie/Luke told himself. “I have to make people understand, only with love.”
By then, Sophie’s eyes felt sandy, and she burrowed farther under the bedspread with the flashlight still in her hand.
Darbie knows about “Jaysus” too, she thought as she fell asleep. What a CLASS discovery.
Mama didn’t even question why Sophie wanted to borrow a bowl and a towel to take to school. She bagged them up so Sophie could carry them on the bus without bopping anybody in the head, and as Sophie went for the door she said to her, “I’m sorry we haven’t been much help to you, Dream Girl. But Daddy
and I are going to make special time for you tonight.”
As good as that sounded, Sophie couldn’t think about it right then. She met Darbie at school just as Aunt Emily was dropping her off, and they waited like crouched tigers for Maggie and Kitty to appear. Sophie knew Fiona would be the last one to get there since, without a nanny, it was probably a zoo at her house in the mornings. That was fine, because it took a few minutes to explain the foot washing to Kitty and Maggie.
“I don’t get it,” Maggie said, her voice flat. “What if her feet aren’t dirty?”
“It isn’t about dirt,” Sophie said patiently. “It’s about showing Fiona that I love her and I respect her, but she can’t just go off and pout.”
Maggie shrugged. “So why don’t you just tell her?”
“I tried that,” Sophie said — less patiently. “She wouldn’t listen — but this will get her attention.”
“How do you know?” Maggie said.
Darbie gave a soft grunt. “Wouldn’t it get yours?”
“I think it sounds cool!” Kitty said. “Will you do mine?”
“Fiona first,” Sophie said.
“Since she’s the one bolting off to join up with the Pop Corns,” Darbie said.
Kitty would have died of the giggles if the Buntings’ black SUV hadn’t squealed up to the front of the school just then.
“Go out to your places, okay?” Sophie said.
Sophie hurried to grab Fiona the second her foot emerged from the car. Fiona slammed the door against the chaos inside the vehicle and tried to wriggle past her.
“No way,” Sophie said to her as she dragged her away from the car door. “I’m going to love you whether you like it or not.”
Somehow Sophie got her to the play yard, where the other girls were kneeling in the far corner, their backs to the rest of the Great Marsh Elementary world.
“I don’t have time for this,” Fiona said. They were the first words she’d spoken. “I have to go audition.”
“You have to do this first,” Sophie said. She hoped her eyes were Jesus-kind, because her voice was coming out in a very UN-Jesus way. He would never sound like a mom about to smack her kids in the cookie aisle at the Farm Fresh.
“Sit,” Maggie said to Fiona when she and Sophie got to the corner. She pointed to a folded-up jacket placed on the ground for her bum.
Sophie sucked in a breath, but Fiona took a seat. Good thing she can’t resist a mystery, Sophie thought.
Sophie got on her knees facing Fiona while Darbie poured water from the pitcher into the bowl and Kitty and Maggie took off Fiona’s shoes — with only a halfway protest from Fiona. Sophie took off her jean jacket and wrapped a big beach towel around her waist.
“I get it,” Fiona said. “You’re going to stick my foot in that water — although why I can’t even fathom.”
“Because I love you, that’s why,” Sophie said. She cradled Fiona’s heel in her palm and she could see her own hands shaking. Her voice was barely coming out at all. She was sure Jesus hadn’t been this scared that it wasn’t going to work.
“I want to serve you,” Sophie said. “Not yell at you and make you feel left out.” She leaned down and swept some water over Fiona’s toes. “You’re my best friend and I really want to hear your ideas.”
Fiona seemed to be staring at the water bubbles. She didn’t say a word.
“I’m sorry too,” Darbie said. “It was diabolical of me not to consider your feelings.”
“That must mean really terrible,” Kitty muttered to Maggie.
Sophie pulled Fiona’s feet out of the bowl and rested them on the towel across her lap. “Please don’t go join up with the Corn Pops,” she said as she dried between Fiona’s toes. “We need you. I’ll be a better friend, I promise.”
Fiona finally looked up at her, forehead bunched into folds. “I don’t know,” she said.
“What’s not to know?” Maggie said. “She apologized. She said she wants to serve you. Now you accept and it’s done.”
“Just because she washed my feet?” Fiona said.
“Can you ever stop being a hard chaw?” Darbie said. “She’s groveling for you, and you’re wanting more! I never saw such an ungrateful — ”
“Don’t yell!” Kitty said, just before she burst into tears.
“You sound like the Corn Pops,” Maggie said. “I get enough of this at rehearsal.”
“Maybe I’ll just go be a Corn Pop!” Fiona said. “At least I know how they feel about me.”
“Are you gone in the head?” Darbie said. “Sophie just told you — ”
“Just stop! Everybody STOP!” Sophie’s voice practically squeaked out of her ears as she struggled to her feet. The bowl turned over, and the water hurried toward the fence in rivulets. Nobody even looked at it. “We’re the Corn Flakes,” she said when they were quiet. “We take care of each other’s feelings. And that means everybody. We don’t act like this. Now just — stop.”
She snatched up her jacket and hugged it around her, but she knew her shivers weren’t from the cold. Even her voice was shaky as she said, “This is what we have to do. We have to stop fighting and we have to work together. If we don’t, we’re going to mess up our whole showcase — and the whole Corn Flakes.”
“Nuh-uh!” Kitty said.
“Yuh-huh,” Maggie said. “The Corn Pops’ dance is, like, professional, but right now they can hardly stand each other.”
“You don’t even know how lucky you are to have friends like you do,” Darbie said. “I had to leave all mine behind.” She straightened her shoulders. “I can go off my nut sometimes, but I’ll try not to eat the head off anyone again — you have my word.”
Kitty whimpered. Sophie thought she said something like, “Pleeeeze, Fiona.”
Fiona flipped her hair out of her face and looked at Maggie. “So the Corn Pops’ dance is spectacular, huh?”
“They’ll win,” Maggie said.
For the first time in what felt to Sophie like centuries, Fiona’s gray eyes flickered with interest. Her mouth came unbunched, and she gave a little bow of a smile. “Oh, no, they will not win,” she said. She turned to Darbie. “Okay — it’s over. No more fighting. We are going to make this the BEST performance that ever was. Whatever it takes.”
Darbie blinked for a second. “All right, then. Fair play,” she said. Her voice was careful. “After school at my house? No foostering about?”
“No foostering,” Fiona said. “I’m serious.”
“I won’t fooster, either,” Kitty said.
The bell rang, and Maggie and Kitty and Darbie picked up the remains of the foot washing. Fiona tucked her arm through Sophie’s and steered her toward the building.
Sophie felt strangely stiff beside her. Fiona had said she wanted to win the showcase — beat the Corn Pops. But that wasn’t really the mission. Besides that, Fiona had never said she was sorry.
“Boppa says I’m insecure and I need to get over it,” Fiona said. Her voice was sunny, as if they had not had a shouting match just five minutes before. “I guess I shouldn’t have told you that I was going to audition for the Corn Pops. I called Julia and set it up, but I was never really going to do it. Boppa about ate the head off me when he heard me on the phone with her.”
Then I washed your feet for nothing? Sophie wanted to say. She felt herself going even more rigid.
“You know what, Soph?” Fiona said.
Sophie shook her head.
“Sometimes I really want to know how you can be so good all the time.” She pulled Sophie’s arm closer. “I’m glad we’re okay again.”
Sophie nodded — but she wondered if they really were.
Eleven
Just as Darbie and Fiona had both promised, there were no more “ructions,” as Darbie called them, while the group worked during every possible second on Thursday and Friday to make their play the best thing anyone had ever seen — at least at Great Marsh Elementary. It seemed to make Darbie happy that they were fi
nally doing justice to her life story, and Kitty, of course, was happy because everybody else was happy.
But Sophie still had an unsettled feeling inside her about Fiona. Even during her special time with Mama and Daddy on Thursday night, while they ate yogurt and Mama’s homemade granola in the kitchen, she couldn’t quite explain it.
“All Fiona wants to do is win,” she told them, “and our mission is to make people understand how horrible it can be if they fight and are violent — you know, like in Northern Ireland.”
Daddy pulled his upper half out of the refrigerator, holding a can of whipped cream. “Why can’t you do both?” he said. “Win and educate at the same time.”
“Besides,” Mama said, “I think it’s what you and the other Corn Flakes are learning from all this that’s really important. You’re really being mature.”
Daddy squirted a tall pile of whipped cream on his granolatopped yogurt and finished with a dot on Sophie’s nose. “You’re a winner no matter what happens, Soph. I wish it was this easy with your sister right now.”
Sophie soaked that in for a second, waiting for a warm feeling to fill her up. But being praised over Lacie didn’t do it for her like she’d always dreamed it would.
“We’re changing churches, aren’t we?” she said.
“We are,” Mama said. “But I think it’s going to be a good thing.”
“Lacie doesn’t think so.”
“Right now, Lacie doesn’t think — period.” Daddy shook the whipped cream can again. “You don’t look like you’re about to pitch a fit over it though, Soph. I appreciate that.”
“I don’t have friends there like she does,” Sophie said.
“You will at our new church. At least one.” Mama grinned at Daddy. “Should I tell her?”
“Nah — make her beg.”
“Da-ad!” Sophie snatched up the can and pointed it in his direction.
His hands flew up. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know. Just don’t shoot.”
“Who’s at the new church that I know?” Sophie said.
