Queen Sophie Hartley

by Stephanie Greene

  “Who cares if Lauren is taller than you and has straighter hair?” she blurted out loyally. “Your nose looks much more like a beak.”

  It didn’t seem to comfort Nora at all. She whirled around to Sophie with a furious face.

  “Why are you looking at me?” she shouted. “I told you not to look at me! You’re always spying on me! I can’t stand it! I can’t even get any privacy in my own room!”

  “It’s my room, too,” said Sophie. “And I wasn’t spying. I was looking around.”

  “Looking around?” cried Nora. “At what? It’s our bedroom. What is there to look at?” Nora’s hair was flying out around her head now, but Sophie didn’t think this was the right time to suggest she might need to use more spray. “Oh . . . oh...” Nora seemed stuck, like a windup toy against a rug. Then she came unstuck. “Oh, I hate you, Sophie!” she cried. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!” She yanked her bathrobe off the hook on the closet door, opened the door to the hall, and ran out of the room. When Sophie heard the bathroom door slam, she fell back against her pillow and sighed.

  It was really very interesting. Whenever Nora yelled that she hated her, she always yelled it in threes. But when she just spoke it, she only said it once. As in, “I hate you, Sophie,” when Sophie took the last cookie. Or the last card from the deck. Nora had said it to her so often, it didn’t really mean anything anymore. But there was no doubt Nora was mad at her.

  Sophie sighed again. Their mother always told them it was better to get angry and clear the air than to walk around brooding. She said that people who let things get pent up inside only ended up making themselves sick. If that was true, Nora must be feeling pretty cleaned out by now, Sophie thought. Judging from the sound of that door, Nora had definitely moved from brooding to mad.

  She bet Nora would thank her someday.

  Probably not tonight, but soon.

  Sophie briefly considered taking out her list and finally adding “Being kind” to the top of the things she was good at. But then she thought it would be too much like bragging, so she decided to wait. Then she could add “Being modest” to the list, too. All in all, it was very satisfying to think how quickly her second list was catching up to her first.

  Chapter Six

  “How about today?” Sophie asked hopefully. “You’d really like them if you actually talked to them.”

  Sophie kept her eyes on Heather’s face. She didn’t have to look down at the other end of the table to know that Alice and Jenna were glaring at her. That’s what they had been doing for days. Every time Sophie smiled at them, they mouthed “snob” and looked the other away.

  Even though they were her best friends, she was getting tired of them. She was getting tired of Heather, too. It felt as if everybody was allowed to go around acting however they wanted except for her.

  “Not yet,” Heather said briskly. “They don’t have enough points.”

  “Points?” said Sophie.

  “It’s the system we used at my school in California,” said Heather. She took a small notebook and a pencil out of her lunch bag and opened it. “I need to teach you about it. It’s really the best way to keep track of who you want to be friends with.”

  “Oh,” said Sophie. This was going to be long and complicated, like food and smells, she could tell. As she watched Heather run her finger down her list of names, she thought that life in California didn’t sound anything like life in Ohio. Heather’s list looked alarmingly long from upside down. All the names had little boxes next to them. Some of the boxes had check marks. Many more didn’t.

  “You have four points so far,” Heather explained. “You got two points for eating onions, one point for not having bushy eyebrows....” Heather looked up at her. “I hate bushy eyebrows. Don’t you?” she said, and then, before Sophie could answer, looked at her list again as she ran her finger further down the page and said, “and one point for being in the same reading group I am. That’s four. Four is the minimum number you need to be someone’s friend.”

  Minimum number? Sophie didn’t even know what a minimum number was. She’d never heard about points before, either. And why did she get two points for eating onions and nothing for peanut butter when Heather loved it so much?

  It was all too confusing.

  “I’m afraid Jenna and Alice have only one point each,” Heather told her. She said it regretfully, like a doctor delivering bad news. “Jenna’s only in the blue reading group, and Alice can’t do cursive.”

  “I can’t do cursive, either,” said Sophie.

  “True, but you knew the capital of Oklahoma yesterday. It evens out.” Heather looked down again and started checking off boxes with sharp, choppy strokes while Sophie watched. The list of Heather’s friends was getting shorter and shorter. Unfortunately, if Sophie went on eating lunch with Heather much longer, it was going to be her friend list, too. There wasn’t another member of Mrs. Hackle’s class sitting anywhere near them.

  But there didn’t seem to be anything Sophie could do about it.

  She had four points.

  “Some people,” Heather said to her disgustedly. “Chris Brooks has such huge ears. And Allie North wears clothes that don’t match.”

  “Clothes should always match,” said Sophie.

  Heather looked up at her. “You’d never wear stripes with checks, would you?”

  Sophie panicked. She wore anything with anything, as long as it fit.

  “Of course, you wouldn’t,” Heather answered for her. She looked back at her list. “No one does.”

  “Oh.”

  “And what about Tamara Wilson?” said Heather, looking up again.

  It was a little bit like being interrogated: Sophie knew there was a right answer but she didn’t know what it was. And she wasn’t about to take a guess.

  “What about her?” she said cautiously. She was rapidly realizing that it didn’t matter if none of Heather’s answers made any sense to her. She didn’t have to understand Heather’s rules. She only had to follow them.

  “She wears socks with sandals, that’s what,” said Heather. “No one wears socks with sandals in California.”

  “But we live in Ohio,” said Sophie.

  “It doesn’t matter. Rules are rules.” Heather clapped her notebook shut and leaned across the table with a strange look in her eyes that made Sophie nervous. She couldn’t tell whether Heather was going to kiss her or bite her. She leaned back ever so slightly.

  “One more point,” Heather said to her breathlessly, “and we’ll be best friends.”

  Dr. Holt was in a bad mood again, Sophie could tell. If she was always in a bad mood, that would be one thing, Sophie thought resentfully as she dragged a bag of soil across the grass. Sophie would know what to expect. But Dr. Holt was in a different mood every day, depending on what kind of night she’d had. It made it very hard for Sophie to know how to act.

  She had just planted the red flowers next to the yellow flowers because she thought it would look pretty. But then Dr. Holt said she wanted them next to the white ones, so Sophie had to dig them up. Next, she had tried to make a fancy pattern with the pink ones along the wall. Dr. Holt told her they were crooked.

  “Don’t try taking advantage of me because of my eyes,” she said irritably, plucking at the sweater draped around her shoulders. “I’m not blind yet. I can still tell a straight line.”

  “That’s not what I was doing,” said Sophie. “I thought it would look nice.”

  “You dig the holes,” said Dr. Holt. “I’ll tell you what to put in them.”

  “I’m not just here to take orders, you know,” muttered Sophie.

  “What’d you say?”

  “Nothing.” Sophie plunged her trowel into the soil and pulled it back out so fast that a shower of dirt flew up, sprinkling her knees, the terrace, and Dr. Holt’s shoes.

  “Hey! Watch what you’re doing there, toots!” said Dr. Holt.

  “Don’t call me ‘toots,’” said Sophie.


  “Then don’t you go making a mess of my daughter’s terrace.” Dr. Holt shook her feet in the air to knock the dirt off, but some of it stayed on, caught up in little clumps in her shoelaces. It served her right, Sophie thought meanly. She could feel Dr. Holt sitting there, angry and proud. Sophie wondered how proud she would be if she knew there was dirt all over her shoes.

  “I can get someone else to do this, you know,” Dr. Holt said in a stiff voice. “You don’t have to do me any favors.”

  “And you don’t have to be so grouchy all the time,” said Sophie. She started on another hole.

  “You’d be grouchy, too, if you were losing your sight and couldn’t get around without a wheelchair.”

  “It’s not my fault,” said Sophie. “It’s not anyone’s fault.”

  “I know it’s not, but it makes me mad.”

  “Well, you don’t have to get mad at me.”

  The air between them seemed to get a little lighter after they said this. Sophie worked in silence for a while. Then she couldn’t stand it any longer.

  “You’ve got a bit of dirt...,” she said, and reached out and brushed the dirt off Dr. Holt’s shoe with her hand.

  “Thank you,” said Dr. Holt.

  “You’re welcome.”

  Sophie worked some more in silence. “Why don’t you fix yourself if you’re a doctor?” she said finally.

  “I’m not a medical doctor, I’m a doctor of history,” said Dr. Holt.

  “What’s history?” said Sophie.

  “The story of things that happened in the past.”

  “What good can a doctor do if it already happened?” said Sophie. “It’s too late to fix it, isn’t it?”

  “Ha! You can say that again.” Sophie wasn’t sure, but it looked as if Dr. Holt thought Sophie had said something funny. “I’m called a doctor because I studied so much about it,” Dr. Holt went on. “I taught English history to girls in a boarding school for almost forty years.”

  “Oh.”

  “You might have enjoyed it,” said Dr. Holt. “I told them stories about kings and queens—”

  “Queens?” Sophie’s head shot up. “Queens . . . who wore tiaras?”

  “You like that idea, do you?” Dr. Holt smiled, as if she was actually glad she’d pleased Sophie; it changed her whole face. Sophie found herself smiling back.

  “English history is full of queens who wore tiaras,” said Dr. Holt. “I could tell you about a girl who became queen when she wasn’t much older than you are.”

  “Really?” said Sophie.

  “Queen Victoria. She was crowned queen of England when she was only eighteen years old.”

  “Oh.” Sophie couldn’t help but sound disappointed. “That’s much older than me.”

  “She was a princess when she was thirteen,” said Dr. Holt. “Is that close enough?”

  “It’s better,” Sophie admitted. Then, “Did she wear a tiara?”

  “Did she? You’ve never seen so many diamonds.”

  “Ohhh...” Sophie had never heard anything so wonderful in her whole life. She pictured a young princess of thirteen wearing a magnificent tiara sparkling with diamonds. Real diamonds.

  “Did she wear it all day, every day?” she asked reverently.

  “She had to. She was the queen.”

  “Except when she was riding, right?”

  “Riding?” That seemed to stump Dr. Holt. She leaned back in her chair and rubbed her chin. “Well, she rode horses a lot. I should think she wore it even when she was riding.”

  “I don’t see how she could have,” Sophie said practically. “I rode. All you do is bounce up and down from the minute you get on the horse until the minute you get off. It’s awful. You’d have to tie a tiara down with string.”

  “String? On a queen?” said Dr. Holt. “You mean a gold chain, don’t you?”

  “Of course,” breathed Sophie. She was carried away by the very thought of it. The gold, the diamonds. “Oh, I hope I meet a queen someday,” she said wistfully.

  “You’ll have learn how to curtsy first,” said Dr. Holt. “Queens don’t shake hands with commoners.”

  “What’s a commoner?”

  “You are. I am. Anyone who’s not a member of the royal family is considered a commoner.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a very nice thing to call us,” said Sophie.

  “That’s neither here nor there,” Dr. Holt said firmly. “If you want to meet a queen, you’ll have to learn how to curtsy.”

  “But how?” said Sophie. “I don’t know anyone who knows how to curtsy.”

  “I do.”

  “You do?” Sophie said. Dr. Holt was getting more and more amazing all the time. She couldn’t imagine anyone as stiff as Dr. Holt curtsying. Or letting anyone call her a commoner. Not even a queen.

  “I can teach you, too,” said Dr. Holt. Then before Sophie could say another word, she added, “But I’m warning you, it’s hard work. There’s a lot more to curtsying than just bobbing up and down.”

  “That’s all right,” Sophie said rashly, thinking that her mother would fall over dead in a faint if she could hear. “I love hard work.”

  Chapter Seven

  And hard work it was. Sophie was so eager to start that Dr. Holt agreed they could put the gardening to one side for a while. Sophie didn’t even mind the way Dr. Holt sat barking orders at her. She tried to follow her instructions very carefully. If she could get it right and meet a queen, Sophie was confident the tiara wouldn’t be far behind.

  It was much more complicated than she’d thought. There were a ton of things she had to remember. Back straight, arms out, head up, toes pointing straight ahead. The hardest part was keeping her balance. The first few tries, every time Sophie got halfway into a curtsy, she fell over.

  “It’s not a bob, the way all you young people seem to think it is these days,” Dr. Holt said unsympathetically as Sophie collapsed into another heap on the grass. “A real curtsy is a dignified, elegant movement. You lower your body to the ground. You don’t drop it.”

  “How can I be dignified if I don’t even know what it means?” Sophie grumbled, getting to her feet.

  “Believe me,” said Dr. Holt, “you’ll know what it means when you get it right.”

  Unfortunately, Sophie’s body didn’t want to lower, it wanted to drop. No matter how hard she tried. “You’re wobbling,” said Dr. Holt. “That’s because you’re leaning forward too much.”

  “I can’t help it,” Sophie wailed as she fell onto the grass for what felt like the thousandth time. She lay on her back and looked up at the sky, discouraged. “When I get the back right, you tell me my legs are wrong. When I get the legs right, you tell me my arms wrong.”

  “You’re not giving up, are you?”

  Sophie heard the challenge in Dr. Holt’s voice. She thought that maybe her life would be easier if she wanted a baseball cap, say, instead of a tiara.

  But she didn’t.

  “No,” she said resignedly.

  “Then stand up and try it again.”

  Sophie sighed and stood up.

  “Slowly now,” Dr. Holt told her. “Remember: You’ve just walked down a long red carpet; you’re standing in front of the queen; she’s up on her throne wearing an ermine cloak and a magnificent tiara.”

  Sophie didn’t know what ermine was, but it sounded romantic. She stood up straighter.

  “Good. Now, right foot forward . . . that’s right. Have some dignity. Chin held high . . . hands out to the sides holding your magnificent silk gown . . . no smiling, Sophie. The queen doesn’t like it.”

  Sophie frowned obediently.

  “You don’t have to look as if you’re mad at her,” said Dr. Holt. “That’s better. Now, carefully . . . carefully! Back straight . . . Slowly lower your body until your left knee almost touches the ground. That’s it. Now hold just a moment, and come back up.”

  Wobbling only the tiniest bit, Sophie made it back up into a standing position.<
br />
  “Now you’re cooking!” said Dr. Holt. She looked as if she would have jumped up out of her chair if she’d been able to. “It took you long enough, but you look pretty good.”

  Sophie was beaming. “Pretty good” from Dr. Holt was like “Bravo!” from anyone else. She’d done it. It was funny how much more a compliment meant when the person giving it to you was usually a grouch.

  After that, she didn’t want to stop curtsying. The more she practiced, the steadier she got. Her favorite part was the slow dip of her head she had to make when her knee was touching the ground. The tiny nod that said, “Your Majesty.”

  It made Sophie feel elegant. She could almost hear the queen saying back, “Sophie.”

  She practiced it so many more times that Dr. Holt started to get a little grouchy again, so Sophie went back to gardening. She could hardly wait to get home and practice in front of the mirror. She wasn’t going to tell anyone in her family about it until she could do it perfectly. Especially Nora.

  She would use a book on her head. She’d hate it if her tiara slipped down over her nose in front of the queen.

  As soon as she had helped with the dishes after dinner, Sophie ran up to her room and shut the door. She took off her sneakers and put on her velvet shoes and then, because she didn’t own an ermine cloak, slipped her nightgown over her head and tied a towel around her neck before placing the book on her head. But no matter how slowly she moved, the book kept slipping off and thumping on the floor, so Sophie took it off in case the noise made anyone come up to see what she was doing.

  She soon discovered that if she watched herself in the mirror while she curtsied, she wobbled too much, especially when her knee was near the floor. So she lined her stuffed animals up in a row on her bed and curtsied to them. They didn’t clap or show any signs of appreciation, though, so Sophie began to wish there was someone in her family she could curtsy to without being laughed at.

  When she heard her mother say good night to John in his room across the hall, she knew it was eight o’clock. The Hartley children went to bed at half-hour intervals, starting with Maura, who went at seven-thirty. That meant Sophie had half an hour more to practice before her mother came up to check on her.