Sophie Gets Real

by Nancy N. Rue

  Darbie sighed. “You’re always so good, Sophie. I’d rather toss her out by her drawers and be done with it.”

  But Darbie followed Sophie to Coach Nanini, who was one of the Round Table advisers. Round Table was a council of faculty members and students who tried to help kids that couldn’t seem to follow the school rules. Coach and the other teachers thought most kids acted out because something was bothering them, and instead of just being punished, they should be helped. Sophie had been on Round Table for the first half of the year until a new council came on, but Coach and Mrs. Clayton, the other adviser, had asked Sophie to be a consultant.

  “It’s Little Bit and the Lass,” Coach Nanini said when they reached him. “Those are some serious faces.”

  “That’s because we have a serious problem,” Darbie said.

  Coach Nanini folded his big arms and said, “Okay, let’s hear it.”

  Sophie filled him in, while Darbie punctuated with little grunts. When she was finished, Coach Nanini peered beneath his hooded brows in the direction of Team One’s court. The ball was just sailing from Tod Ravelli straight to Brooke — who had her back to him as she gawked at Kitty on the sideline waiting to rotate in.

  “Heads up, Brooke!” Fiona shouted.

  But the ball hit Brooke in the back of the head and bounced away. “Hey!” she said. “What jerk threw that at me?”

  Coach Yates blasted the whistle, and Coach Nanini nodded his shaved head. “She looks like Round Table material to me. I’ll talk to her after class.”

  Sophie felt a wisp of guilt as she and Darbie joined the team again. I feel like I just passed Brooke off so we wouldn’t have to deal with her, she thought.

  But by the time Coach Yates sent the class to the locker room, all traces of regret had disappeared. Within thirty minutes, Brooke had fallen into the net, told Vincent he had big lips, and wrestled Fiona for the ball until Coach Yates nearly popped a blood vessel blowing her whistle.

  “I know this isn’t Corn Flake Code,” Fiona said to Sophie as they headed for the locker room, “but that girl is harder to be around than the Corn Pops.”

  “Maybe she has issues,” Sophie said.

  “Yeah, well, if she ever tackles me on the volleyball court again, she’ll definitely have an issue.” Fiona sighed and rolled her eyes. “Okay. I’ll pray for her. Besides . . .”

  But Sophie didn’t hear the rest. She pulled Fiona to a stop by the sleeve and pointed.

  “My sister’s here,” Sophie said, her voice cracking. “This can’t be good.”

  Lacie was standing in the doorway to Coach Yates’ office, looking way too serious for a fourteen-year-old. Even the scattered freckles across her nose looked pinched in.

  “Lacie?” Sophie called.

  Her sister turned toward her with tears in her eyes. Lacie never cried. “We have to go to the hospital,” she said.

  “Is the baby born yet?” Sophie said.

  “Yeah, and Soph —I think there’s something wrong with her.”

  Two

  Boppa, Fiona’s grandfather, was waiting in front of the school to take the LaCroix girls to the hospital. Sophie was full of questions for Lacie as they hurried to his car.

  “How do you know something’s wrong with the baby?”

  “I just — ”

  “Did you talk to Mama?”

  “No, but — ”

  “Did Boppa tell you?”

  Lacie shook her head, swishing her dark ponytail from side to side. “He just said Daddy needed to stay there with Mama. That alone tells you something.”

  “What does it tell me?” Sophie said.

  “That something’s not right.”

  “Not really,” Sophie said. “Maybe the baby’s just so adorable Mama couldn’t wait till after school for us to see her.”

  Lacie gave her a big-sister look before she opened the car door. “Right. Daddy’s going to take us out of school for that. Frogs might sprout wings and fly too.”

  Sophie slid into the second seat of Fiona’s family’s SUV. Boppa, who was usually ready with a grin and a wiggle of his caterpillar eyebrows, looked at her as if his soft face were about to crumple. Hard fingers of fear wrapped themselves around Sophie’s heart and stayed there.

  “Okay, Mr. Bunting,” Lacie said as she buckled herself into the front passenger seat. “I wish you’d tell us what’s going on.”

  Boppa shook his partly bald head. “Your dad just wants everybody together for your baby sister.”

  Lacie gave Sophie a what-did-I-tell-you look over the front seat.

  Poquoson, Virginia, and then Hampton seemed to pass in slow motion as they rode through the February bleakness, but Sophie’s mind was on fast-reverse.

  Mama had had to stay in bed for the last several months because Baby Girl LaCroix wanted to be born too soon.

  Nobody was supposed to upset her — and Sophie was sure she had at least a dozen times — not to mention the trouble her six-year-old brother, Zeke, had gotten into pretending to be Spider-Man. Had they caused the baby some kind of problem?

  Mama had gotten paler and puffier, and early that morning when Daddy took her to the hospital she’d looked even worse to Sophie — like a bloated marshmallow.

  Did all that mean the baby was born sick?

  Or that Mama herself had something wrong?

  Sophie groped in her mind for a daydream character to escape into. Ever since the Corn Flakes had started making movies early in sixth grade, Sophie’s dream people had become as real to her as actual people. They almost always became the main characters in their films, even after the Lucky Charms joined them in Film Club. Dr. Peter, once her therapist and now her Bible study teacher, had told Mama and Daddy that Sophie should always use her imagination. He believed that doing productions would help her channel it instead of letting it get her in trouble for daydreaming.

  If the Flakes and Charms were working on a film right now, she could dive into her role as a superhero or something and imagine her way through this baby thing somehow.

  But when Boppa took Lacie and Sophie to Daddy inside the hospital lobby, it was all too real. Their tall, big-shouldered father was white-faced, and his mouth was pressed into a line that quivered at the corners. His short dark hair looked as if he’d been raking his fingers through it.

  Daddy held out both arms and folded the girls into them. Sophie thought he smelled nervous, like sweat and coffee.

  “What’s going on, Dad?” Lacie said.

  He didn’t answer for a minute, and when he did, his voice was thin. Very un-Daddy-like.

  “We have a new LaCroix,” he said. “Hope Celeste. Six pounds, one ounce.” His arms squeezed tighter. “She’s beautiful, just like her big sisters.”

  “Is she okay?” Lacie said.

  There was a pause so long that the fingers of fear had another chance to grip Sophie’s heart.

  “She will be okay.” Daddy loosened his hold so they could look up at him as they walked down the hall. “They’re doing some tests.”

  “Tests for what?” Lacie said.

  Sophie couldn’t grab hold of any of her darting thoughts. Only one came out of her mouth. “She isn’t going to die, is she?”

  “Hel-lo — no!” Lacie said.

  Daddy stopped them just outside a door and smothered Sophie’s shoulder with his hand. “That’s a fair question, Soph,” he said, “and we think the answer is no. But she has to be checked because — ”

  His voice broke, as if something had chopped the words off in his throat. Sophie clutched at his big hand.

  “Because,” he said, “Hope was born with something called Down syndrome.”

  Lacie gasped right out loud.

  “What is Down syn-whatever?” Sophie said.

  “It means she’ll be re — um, mentally challenged, right?” Lacie said.

  Sophie stared, first at her, and then at her father.

  “I’m not sure of everything it means,” Daddy said. “She’ll learn s
lower than other kids, and she’ll look a little different.”

  “Like the kids in the Special Olympics,” Lacie said.

  Sophie had no idea what that was, but she could tell from the way Daddy nodded with his eyes closed that the “Special” was like the special in “Special Ed.” Like the kids whose classrooms were near the Corn Flakes’ lockers — the kids the Pops and Loops referred to as “’tards” and imitated behind their backs.

  Then what Lacie had started to say was true. Baby Hope was retarded.

  “Do you want to see her?” Daddy said. “Mama’s asleep, but she said to let you meet Hope as soon as you got here. She knew you’d be excited.”

  Excited wasn’t exactly the word Sophie would have used. She pulled a strand of hair under her nose, a thing she always did when she was confused. Her heart beat double-time as she followed Daddy through the door into a small hallway lined on one side by a window.

  The room on the other side of the glass was softly lit. It took Sophie a moment to realize there was a clear, small, bathtub-style container just beyond the window. In it was a tiny, pink, kicking baby, waving her fists.

  “That’s your little sister,” Daddy whispered.

  Sophie was afraid to even peek at her. What if she had a giant head or two noses or something?

  “Oh — she’s adorable,” Lacie said. “She looks like you, Sophie.”

  “Yup. Spitting image of you when you were born,” Daddy said.

  Sophie shuddered. How can she look like me? Sophie knew what “special” kids looked like. She stood on tiptoe to peer into the baby’s bed, and she could feel her eyes bulging.

  “Did I have all those tubes in me?”

  “You had more,” Daddy said. “You were really sick.”

  “Did I have Down syndrome too?”

  Daddy pulled Sophie almost roughly to his chest and held on. “No, Baby Girl,” he said. His voice sounded broken again. “You didn’t have it.”

  “I’m talking about her hair and her little cheeks,” Lacie said. “Check it out, Soph.”

  Sophie tried to look past the tiny mask over baby Hope’s nose and mouth and the tube that fed into a vein in her little head. She did have a fuzz of golden hair, almost like a miniature halo. Her skin was pale with a whisper of pink, just like Sophie’s and Mama’s. And she was tiny — the tiniest person Sophie had ever seen.

  “She’s going to be the shortest one in the class, just like me, isn’t she?” Sophie said.

  “If she ever goes to schoo — ”

  “Lacie,” Daddy said.

  Sophie glanced back to see Lacie biting her lip.

  “Let’s go see if Mama’s awake,” Daddy said.

  Sophie took another long look at her baby sister, who had drifted off to sleep. She didn’t have as many things going in and out of her as Kitty had had when Sophie visited her in the hospital. That had to be a good sign. And although Sophie hadn’t seen all that many newborn babies, Hope looked perfectly normal to her. All the fingers and toes were there. She had two eyes. Her ears were sort of rolled up, but maybe that was because they weren’t all the way open yet. When Darbie’s dog had puppies, it took two weeks for their ears to pop into shape.

  “Come on, Soph,” Daddy said. He smiled a tired smile. “You’ll be able to look at her for the rest of your life.”

  Mama was sitting up in bed when they got to her room, and her face was pinker and less puffy than Sophie had seen it in a long time. She almost looked like regular Mama again, except that Sophie could tell she’d been crying. That was not a good sign.

  “Is she getting more beautiful by the minute?” Mama said as she hugged Lacie.

  “Yes — even though she does look like Sophie.” Lacie grinned back at Sophie and wrinkled her nose.

  Sophie edged carefully up to the bed to give Mama a kiss. Mama pulled her right into her arms.

  “I won’t break, Dream Girl,” Mama said. “I’m going to be back on my feet any minute now. Then we can get back to normal, huh?”

  Lacie looked at Daddy, who cleared his throat.

  “You told them,” Mama said to him.

  Daddy nodded.

  “It’s not ever going to be normal again, is it?” Lacie said.

  Sophie thought her heart would squeeze to a stop.

  “It’s going to be a new normal,” Daddy said. “Our little rookie will have special needs, and we’ll learn how to meet them. We’ll work together as a team. New game plan, that’s all.”

  Daddy always talked about the family like they were headed for the Super Bowl. But the tears sparkling in his eyes weren’t part of his usual game face.

  “The first thing we’re going to have to do,” Mama said, “is make sure Zeke doesn’t use Hope for a football.”

  “Or try to climb up the wall with her like Spider-Man,” Lacie said.

  “She might be the first Spider-Baby.” Daddy laughed. It sounded like a laugh he had to make up, because he couldn’t find a real one.

  “It’s going to be okay, my loves,” Mama said. “God will show us everything we need to know.”

  She put out her hands for the girls to take hold. Mama’s was icy cold in Sophie’s. Daddy’s was clammy. It made Sophie wonder if they really believed it would be okay at all.

  Sophie tried that night to imagine Jesus before she went to sleep. That was what Dr. Peter had taught her to do. With Jesus’ kind eyes in her mind, she could tell him and ask him anything she wanted. She didn’t imagine his answers, though, because Dr. Peter said that would be speaking for him, instead of waiting for the truth to appear in the days to come.

  Sophie couldn’t have thought up answers for Jesus that night anyway. She couldn’t even think up questions. It was so confusing, and all she could do was fall into a restless sleep. When she woke up the next morning, she was holding her hair under her nose again.

  Zeke flew into Sophie’s room and threw back the filmy curtains that hung around her bed.

  “Daddy’s taking us out for breakfast!” he announced. His volume was always on LOUD.

  Sophie tried to pull one of her purple-and-pink pillows over her head, but Zeke yanked if off and sailed it across the room. He was dressed in full Spider-Man garb, including a red mask that covered everything except his eyes, and unfortunately, his mouth.

  “Daddy’s not gonna let you wear that into a restaurant,” Sophie said.

  “We’re goin’ to Pop’s Drive-In!” he shouted. “You can wear anything you want. I’m even wearin’ it to the hospital.” He threw himself onto Sophie’s bed and kneeled over her on all fours. “Hopey doesn’t know about Spider-Man yet.”

  “But she’s about to find out,” Lacie said from the doorway. “Hurry up, Soph.”

  Lacie coaxed Zeke out with promises of cartoons. Sophie put another pillow over her head — because uninvited thoughts were barging in.

  Would this be the last time they got to go to Pop’s for breakfast? Would they be able to take Hope out in public if she was — different?

  Sophie tried again to imagine Jesus with his kind eyes, and there he was. Only his eyes were sad, as if he didn’t think everything was going to be okay, either.

  That made it hard to climb out of bed.

  When they got to the hospital, Daddy dropped Zeke off in Mama’s room. He and Sophie and Lacie headed for the nursery to say good morning to Hope.

  Sophie held a hunk of hair under her nose all the way down the hall. The closer they got to the nursery, the slower she walked. By the time she reached the window, Daddy and Lacie were already there, waving excitedly to someone on the other side of the glass.

  “Look who’s up!” Lacie said.

  Sophie slid reluctantly between her and Daddy, to see a nurse in a mask holding Hope in her arms. The tubes that had been taped to the baby’s face were now gone.

  “She’s breathing on her own,” Daddy said. “Look at that — she’s doing it.”

  “She’s amazing,” Lacie said.

  Sophie couldn’
t take her eyes off the tiny person’s face. Without half of it covered, Sophie could see a nose so small it almost didn’t exist. Unlike Sophie’s eyes, the baby’s murky-blue eyes tilted up a little at the outer corners. From her baby-pink mouth, a matching tongue poked out. And stayed there.

  “She’s so precious,” Lacie said.

  “Her eyes will probably turn brown like yours did, Soph,” Daddy said.

  But Sophie could barely keep from crying out, It’s just like you said, Daddy. Our baby is different.

  The nurse let Daddy in so he could hold little Hope, and Lacie pressed her hands and nose against the glass. Sophie backed silently away and walked, stiff-legged and fast, until she found a cubicle that said FAMILY WAITING ROOM on the door.

  She plopped down on one of the sofas and closed her eyes. But she couldn’t erase the picture of her baby sister with a tongue that lay on her lips like a wilted rosebud. It reminded her of kids she’d seen at school who couldn’t control their own faces and bodies.

  Is she always going to look like that? Sophie thought.

  How was she supposed to eat?

  How was she going to talk?

  Sophie squeezed her eyes shut tighter. Would she ever even learn to talk? What about all the dreams the Corn Flakes had had of teaching her to use Fiona-vocabulary — like “dire” and “fabulous” and the Corn Flakes’ favorite, “heinous”?

  Sophie watched those dreams swirl away down an imaginary drain, but she shook her head. It would be at least two years before even a normal little kid could say those words. Maybe there would be a cure for Down syndrome by then. Maybe Sophie would be the first one to read about it and tell Hope’s doctor. Maybe she would even —

  The doctor straightened up from the microscope and worked hard at not smiling — at not running around the laboratory, shouting, “I’ve found it! I’ve discovered the cure!” After all, she couldn’t be completely sure yet. There were more tests to do. And if she revealed how close she was now, it would be in all the news reports, because everyone had complete faith in her work. She could already see the headlines: DR. DEVON DOWNING FINDS CURE FOR DOWN SYNDROME.