The Prettiest

by Brigit Young

  “So good!” Eve heard her voice become airy and high- pitched.

  Nessa had sounded perfect. Brody hadn’t been great, but something about the way he performed the song … well, it made her feel what the song was trying to say. If that made any sense.

  “It’s sort of my biggest secret that I want to be an actor. I mean, everybody probably thinks I want to do sports, right? I mean, I’ll do that, too. But I love movies. I want to be like that guy Hugh Jackman, you know? He plays Wolverine? He does action movies and stuff, but he also does really intense movies. I like that intense stuff. He even does musicals. I saw those movies, and that’s why I tried out for the show. Oh, for my biography this year I’m doing Humphrey Bogart. You know that guy?”

  Eve shook her head. “No. Sorry.”

  “Ah, it’s okay. He did black-and-white movies and stuff.”

  “Oh, cool! Sophie is doing an old actor, too. Audrey Hepburn?”

  Brody paused. “So you’re friends with Soph now?”

  Eve hesitated, and began to say, “Well, we’ve hung out…,” but Brody cut her off.

  “Yikes,” he mumbled. “Just don’t take her too seriously, ya know? You think the show is looking good, though?” Brody asked again.

  Eve nodded.

  A huge grin lit up his face. And Eve couldn’t help but think that Brody was extremely cute. His smile had this sly but sweet quality, like he knew something special about you that you didn’t know about yourself.

  She tried to remember that she was supposed to find evidence that he’d written the list. Nessa had practically screeched it at her as they’d left the theater. Sophie told her that in order to get evidence, she needed to make him vulnerable. But he already seemed pretty vulnerable. He just kept talking and talking.

  “My dad—you’ll see him when he picks me up—he’s not so happy about the theater thing. It’s so … what’s the word? When something happens so much it’s tired? Like when a guy in a movie races to get a girl at an airport before she flies away, or a bad guy gives away his entire plan at the end or something?”

  “Oh yeah! Clichés! Oh, I hate them. They totally ruin even the best books!” As the words came out, she knew they were probably the wrong ones, but even if her hair and makeup were different, she was still Eve.

  “Yeah, it’s a cliché that my dad wants me to do sports and not plays. Like, Dad—be more original!” Brody smiled that smile again and said, “You’re really easy to talk to. You know that?”

  Eve pushed a strand of newly straight hair out of her eye with a gloved hand. “Nessa says that.”

  “Nessa’s really cool, actually,” he said.

  Yeah. Eve knew that. Why “actually”?

  “I’m gonna like acting with her,” he added.

  “She’s the best,” Eve said.

  “Doesn’t really fit the part, but she can do it great, anyway,” he said.

  Eve thought she knew what that meant, but she didn’t know what to say. Should she respond, “She fits the part perfectly”? Should she explain to him that what he said wasn’t kind?

  “We have way too much homework, right?” Brody changed the subject again before she had the chance to say anything. He kept leading her in new directions in their conversation. How was she supposed to get any information out of him?

  “Yeah,” she said. And she thought of what Sophie might do. Sophie had all the confidence in the world. Eve pretended to be like Nessa, who was an actress, and then act like Sophie, who was … well, tough. “Ugh, it’s hard concentrating on homework now, though,” she said.

  Brody raised an eyebrow.

  “Now that I’m ‘number one.’” She put on a forlorn face.

  Brody just laughed. “Oh yeah, like it’s so rough to be the prettiest girl in school.”

  Eve didn’t know what to say. It was rough. It wasn’t what he thought. But maybe he just thought it was a great thing, and that’s why he’d written the list. To make her feel good. And then, the thought of him really liking her that much freaked her out.

  “I guess,” she said slowly, “someone put me there because they thought it was nice.”

  “Oh, hey, I see my dad.” Brody jumped up and headed toward a sleek black SUV that swerved a few feet from where they were sitting. Eve watched as his dad gave him a thumbs-up and wondered if that was about her, or if that’s just how they greeted each other. Weird.

  As Brody and his dad drove away, Eve texted the Choir Room Trio, He’s not going to admit anything to me.

  You ready for me to call my mom for pickup? Nessa texted back right as she appeared beside Eve. “Hi.” Nessa patted her back. “Bye!” She waved to Lara Alexander.

  Nessa took a seat next to Eve on the bench.

  “Ooh, Brody kept it warm for me.”

  “Yeah, call your mom,” Eve said.

  MAJOR FAIL Sophie wrote back to the group.

  We will figure it out! We have until winter break for me to find his password or see something at rehearsals! Loads of time. As Nessa texted she said to Eve, “Sophie is really losing it, huh?”

  No! you think we have that much time? by then, the list will be set in stone. he will get away with it. dont you want it back to normal? eve, see you at lunch tomorrow. its your first day to sit with us. hell come in the middle after his guys are done eating.

  ok ok, Nessa wrote back.

  “Just be careful around him, okay?” Nessa bounced a little in the cold.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, don’t fall for whatever performance he gives you. He’s not a good guy. Don’t forget the things he’s said before.”

  Eve didn’t know if Brody was good or not, but she knew that he wasn’t as bad as she’d thought before they spoke. And she also knew that all this phoniness exhausted her.

  “Don’t you look nice,” Nessa’s mom said to Eve as they hopped into the car.

  Eve tied her hair into a messy ponytail. “Thanks.”

  “Come on, Brody is the worst, right?” Nessa turned toward Eve from the passenger’s seat.

  “He’s…,” Eve began, trying to figure out what exactly he was.

  “Oh no.” Nessa raised her hands to her forehead and wailed, “You’re falling for the whole handsome thing!”

  “Nessa, stop the drama,” Nessa’s mom scolded as they pulled out of the parking lot, the rainbow rosary clattering against the windshield.

  “It’s not the handsome thing! He’s just not as bad as I thought he’d be!” Eve insisted.

  “Oh no,” Nessa repeated. “Handsomeness wins again.” After a beat she added, “And so does cluelessness.”

  “What does that mean?” Eve asked her.

  “Nothing.”

  They drove the rest of the way home in silence.

  24

  SOPHIE

  For the next couple of weeks, as the dance approached, Eve sat with Sophie each day. Nessa sat with the Music Man kids, not-so-subtly watching Sophie’s and Brody’s tables.

  Sophie gave Eve careful instructions on how to keep Brody’s attention, and she wasn’t doing as horribly as expected.

  A few key rules for her time at the lunch table: No reading. No writing, either. No talking about Emily Dickinson or whoever. No mention of the Renaissance Faire. No staring off into space and daydreaming. Cut down on all the awkward pauses.

  Who was this alien she’d suddenly become pretend friends with?

  It turned out it was impossible to make Eve talk like a normal person. So Sophie spoke for her.

  “So you like Brody, huh?” Rose Reed asked Eve one day.

  Eve stammered some nonsense, and Sophie pronounced loudly, to the whole table, “I’m totally for it.”

  “What about Tariq?” Rose continued, looking past Sophie and right at Eve. “Or Aidan?”

  Somehow Rose had inched her way closer and closer to Sophie, and she now sat next to Amina. A month ago she’d been on the ends of the tables. Rose being listed at number four still didn’t compute. Wh
y would Brody be so angry with Sophie that he’d do something like this?

  “Aidan’s always staring at you,” Rose gossiped. “Like everybody, I guess!”

  “Eve is going to the dance with Brody,” Sophie told Rose.

  Rose launched into a monologue about how she couldn’t wait to go with Caleb as Princess Leia and Han Solo.

  “She’s a general now,” Eve chimed in. “General Leia Organa.”

  An uncomfortable silence fell over the table.

  “Yeah, for sure!” Rose chirped. “General!”

  Sophie saw Liv and Hayley catch each other’s eye and stifle a giggle.

  At that point, the boys came to join them during their usual midlunch combination of tables. Brody scrunched himself between Sophie and Eve, talking to both of them about a bunch of stuff that Sophie blocked out. She couldn’t take in one more Michigan football statistic or she’d pass out from boredom.

  One good part about not being number one was that it was like a pressure valve had released a little bit. She didn’t need to nod and smile as much. People were less interested in her reaction.

  Maybe that’s also why she’d stopped spending as much time on her hair, and started wearing her “weekend” eye shadow, the green color she liked a lot but knew didn’t flatter her eyes as much as the bronze. No one seemed to notice, anyway. Plus, after what the Sophies had said about her in the hallway, she knew their real feelings about how she looked: She knows how to ‘look’ pretty. Not be pretty. I mean, have you ever seen her without makeup?

  Sophie liked makeup, okay?

  Anyway, she’d return to her full routine once Brody was caught and made irrelevant. For now, it wouldn’t make a difference. Every day, slips of paper that read “#2” were sneaked into the slits in her locker.

  Like she’d told Nessa and Eve in the choir room, popular kids were hated, not loved.

  Over the past couple of weeks that Eve had begun to meld with the Sophies, Sophie observed that Eve’s phone constantly buzzed. Eve would pick it up, glance at it, and put it down. Sophie would check hers, too, and see that it wasn’t the choir room text. And she’d look over at Nessa and see her chatting away with the actor kids, so she knew the texts weren’t from her.

  That day, as Rose pestered Eve, Sophie saw a text show up on the main screen of Eve’s phone.

  As Sophie read it, she swallowed hard. Sophie had never been called that before.

  When Rose was momentarily distracted by Hayley, Sophie spoke lowly to Eve. “I saw that text you just got. You have to show me the other ones.”

  Beneath the table, Eve handed her phone over with a reluctant sigh.

  As Sophie scrolled through the texts, she struggled to hide her shock.

  Eve’s sloppily eye-shadowed lids closed for a moment. “Yeah,” she whispered.

  Text after text mentioned Eve’s chest, or how she looked in whatever she was wearing that day, some in good ways and some in filthy ones. Some called Eve words that made Sophie shiver, thinking of stuff her dad had yelled at her mom during their worst fights.

  “No one ever did that to me,” Sophie whispered into Eve’s ear. “Who’s sending these to you?”

  “I don’t know whose numbers they are.” Eve continued eating, head down, as if this as the last thing she wanted to talk about.

  “I have almost everybody’s numbers,” Sophie answered, too loudly. “I can find out who these Malfoys are!”

  Eve glanced at her, the corner of her mouth turning up slightly at “Malfoys.” But then her face clouded over. “No, please don’t. I don’t want to know.” Then she whispered almost inaudibly, “Just can’t wait for this to end.”

  “What’s wrong?” Rose Reed interrupted.

  Sophie turned Eve’s phone over and went back to her food. “Nothing. Just forget it. Anyway, moving on.”

  “Um…,” Rose answered. “I wasn’t asking you.”

  The whole table turned to Rose. It was the first time in Ford Middle School history that anyone had rejected Sophie’s directions.

  Sophie dropped her fork onto her tray. “Excuse me?”

  “I’m asking Eve,” Rose went on. “What’s your phone say, Eve?” She paused. “You don’t have to check with Sophie to see if you can talk, okay?”

  Sophie tried to remember what Rose’s handwriting looked like. Had she been writing “#2” on those slips of paper? Had she put the Post-it on her back? Sophie looked to the other girls at the table, who had stopped eating, turning their foundation-heavy faces from Rose to Sophie and back again like they were watching a tennis match. Had one of those girls actually written the list? Were they all happy she was number two?

  As Sophie prepared to respond, Eve jumped in.

  “Oh, it was just a text about the dance. My costume,” Eve said. “Amina, are you still going as Veronica?”

  “Maybe,” Amina said. “But I might want to be some kind of villain!”

  In the movie version of their lives, Sophie thought, Eve might be trying to replace her. But in the real-life version, she knew, Eve was trying her best to get life back to normal. And also, in the face of the girls who were beginning to see Sophie as lesser than them, Eve might have been trying to protect her. Maybe.

  “Hey.” Sophie stopped Eve in the hallway after lunch ended. “How long have you been getting those? Are the texts always that bad?”

  “Since the list came out,” Eve mumbled. “They just get worse. But I really don’t want to talk about it, okay?”

  “You need to tell someone!” Sophie insisted.

  “And would that really make it stop?” Eve shook her head and hurried off.

  If Sophie was honest with herself, she couldn’t be sure it would.

  * * *

  PE had become unbearable. Twice a week, three classes all joined together on the field and battled it out.

  When the sexes were split up, Sophie dominated, of course. She and Hayley were a regular Steph Curry and Kevin Durant. They slammed the volleyball into the grass during the spring and climbed the ropes on the indoor obstacle courses twice as fast as the other girls during winter. But when Ms. Meijer had the girls versus the boys, or mixed-sex teams, Sophie couldn’t embarrass Brody or his guys by running too fast or playing unbeatable defense. So she just slowed down a little. She stayed farther back from the basket or the goalposts.

  That day, Ms. Meijer chose boys versus girls for soccer.

  Sophie eyed the boys gathered across from her, wondering which of them had written those texts to Eve. They must have thought they were pretty funny, huh? Using words they’d heard their favorite singers and rappers say. Not knowing or caring how it felt to be on the receiving end of those disgusting phrases.

  She couldn’t wait to score a goal.

  As Ms. Meijer set up the orange cones, Brody hollered from across the patch of grass that separated his team and Sophie’s. “Hey, Soph! How’s it feel knowing you’ll be number two again today?”

  Sophie heard a laugh behind her and turned to see that it came from Rose, who quickly covered her mouth. Brody’s friends gave high fives, and even the boys who would have loved to take her to the Halloween dance, boys she had never even spoken to, not out of meanness but more because she’d had no reason to, they laughed, too. It wasn’t even a funny joke.

  Sophie tore off her sweatshirt, knowing she’d be steaming hot once she kicked into a higher gear, and she didn’t care where it landed.

  The game began.

  This time, Sophie didn’t slow down.

  She swooped in on the ball, shuffling it toward the goal and kicking it with all her might. Take that, Unknown Numbers. Take that, Brody.

  Two minutes in and her team had scored the first point.

  “Not even breaking a sweat out here,” she announced loudly enough for everyone, especially Brody, to hear.

  He bellowed something in response, but she was already moving, already hustling so hard that Ms. Meijer didn’t even need to yell “Hustle!” the way she always had b
efore when they’d competed against the guys.

  Sophie grunted as she scored again.

  Hayley came up to her, and they bumped chests like boys did and then laughed at how it hurt.

  “Ouch! Let’s not do that again!” Hayley cackled as Sophie practically galloped back to her spot on the field.

  Sophie hadn’t forgiven Hayley for what she’d said about her, but she’d team up with her against these kids any day.

  As they all took a water break, Brody and Caleb practiced headbutting the ball. Ms. Meijer told them to quit it, and the teams faced off again.

  “Looks like I’m not gonna be second place, after all,” Sophie chirped in a sugary sweet voice to Brody.

  “Yeah!” His eyes darted to the sides as if to check to see if everyone heard him. “But no guy wants to take Larry Bird to the Halloween dance, right?”

  Caleb and Tariq snickered.

  “Explains a lot,” he said even louder.

  “Hmmm.” Sophie raised him a level in volume. Everyone was listening. “That’s weird because it doesn’t explain why you tried to kiss me at your house last month.”

  Boom.

  She heard a few “Awwww, mans!” and several kids in the crowd snickered.

  Brody Dixon’s face froze midjeer. His cocky mouth turned downward, and for a moment he looked like he had old man jowls.

  Sophie couldn’t stop herself.

  She’d pretended for so long.

  He’d been at the top, and she’d been at the top; how dare he try to bring her down? What made him deserve to stay there more than her?

  Gets-everything-he-wants Brody Dixon couldn’t handle a girl not wanting to kiss him? Please. And she was supposed to act like that was okay? She was supposed to act like any of this was okay? No.

  She raised her volume once again. She wanted every single kid to hear.

  “Poor Brody. It must be so sad for you that I didn’t kiss you back and I’m beating you now so hard!”

  Sophie heard the whistle blow, and she didn’t look back at the damage she’d caused. Without one more glance toward Brody for the rest of the game, she took her team to victory.