by Nancy N. Rue
“Okay,” Jimmy said, “when we go into the next turn, I’m gonna let go. You pretend you’re falling and go all spastic. I promise I’ll catch you.”
“It won’t take much pretending!” Sophie said—and then suddenly she was free on the ice. She flung out her arms and churned her legs to keep her balance. Laughter erupted from the sidelines.
Just as she was sure Jimmy was going to back out on his promise, he swung her back into place, and they were skating like a mature Victorian couple again. It was so real, Sophie could almost feel the corset around her middle.
“Smile when we pass them,” Jimmy said.
They both turned their heads and grinned as they floated past the Charms and Flakes. Boppa was standing up, clapping, and Darbie was filming, and the others were all smiling and waving.
All except Fiona.
When Jimmy and Sophie skated up to them, it was hard to sort out which “That was perfect!” and “You guys rock!” was coming from whom. While that was going on, Fiona pulled Sophie over to the bench. Her face was as stern as Miss Odetta’s.
“I know you don’t want to make a fool of yourself, Soph,” she said as she untied Sophie’s skates. “And I’m telling you this because I’m your best friend. That really isn’t going to work for the movie.”
Sophie slid her foot out of Fiona’s reach. “Everybody said it was good.”
“They just don’t want to hurt your feelings.”
You’re doing enough of it for everybody, Sophie wanted to say. She bit her lip.
“And besides,” Fiona said, “what about when your parents see the movie?”
“What about it?” Sophie said.
“Hello! You’re all snuggled up to Jimmy, holding hands. He had his arm around you, for Pete’s sake!”
“That’s the way they skated back then!”
“Yeah, but this isn’t back then.” Fiona gave Sophie her I-know-more-than-you-do-about-this look. “Listen to me, for once. Aren’t you having enough trouble with everybody accusing you of being practically engaged to the guy? Think what they’ll do with this.”
“Nobody at school’s going to see our movie for church,” Sophie said.
Fiona swept an arm in the air. “Look around. There are kids from Poquoson all over the place here. You and Jimmy looking like you’re attached at the hip is Internet material, Soph.”
For an instant, Sophie started to go cold. And then something pinged in her mind.
“You know what, Fiona?” Sophie said. “I’m going to keep the power to be myself. Jimmy and I were working on the movie out there. It was embarrassing, but I was trying to play my part.”
Fiona knotted her lips. “Other people don’t know that.”
“ ‘Other people’ can think what they want.”
“And they will,” Fiona said.
“Then let them.”
Sophie looked at her until Fiona stood up. “Then don’t come whining to me when it’s all over that getting together website,” Fiona said. She started back toward the group.
“Are you sleeping over at my house tonight?” Sophie said.
Fiona didn’t look back. “I can’t,” she said.
Suddenly, Sophie was very cold.
Fiona sat in the front with Boppa on the way home and didn’t say much to anyone. She barely said good-bye to Sophie when Boppa dropped her off. Everybody else looked like they would rather be having their teeth cleaned.
What just happened? Sophie thought as she trudged up the stairs to her room.
She was lying on her bed, trying to find an answer in the curtains above her head, when Lacie poked her head in.
“Good, you’re not online,” she said.
Sophie blinked and smiled vaguely.
Lacie squinted at her and crawled onto the bed. “Okay, what’s going on? Tell me those little Popettes weren’t at the skating rink.”
Sophie shook her head. “They’re everywhere else. They even have Fiona believing that I’m going out with Jimmy—and I’m not!” Sophie raked her fingers through her hair. “Sometimes I don’t care what people think—but then I do!”
“Is it that website you were telling Daddy about?”
“That’s part of it.” She told Lacie about Fiona, and about the picture that had appeared on everybody’s camera phones.
“Can you prove it was the Pops?” Lacie said.
“No. They’re being really careful. I know I’m supposed to ignore it, but it’s hard! I’m used to telling them to their faces that they’re not getting to me.”
Lacie rolled over onto her stomach and propped her chin in her hand. “This time they are getting to you. You know why, don’t you?”
“Do you?”
Lacie put on her Wise Big Sister face. “Because you can’t get away from it. You turn on your computer in your own house and there they are. And if you stay off the computer, you’re out of the loop.”
Sophie nodded for her to go on.
“Besides that, you can’t really go up to them and say, ‘Back off,’ because you aren’t absolutely sure it’s them. And by now, so many people are involved, they’re probably taking it and doing their own thing with it.”
“This isn’t making me feel better,” Sophie said. “I don’t even want to go back to school now. Maybe Kitty’s mom can home-school me with her.”
Lacie rolled her eyes. “First of all, that isn’t going to happen. And second of all, you still can’t let them have control over you. Next thing you know, you’ll be escaping into Dream Land again and messing up in school.”
Sophie gulped.
“You already have,” Lacie said.
“I have two characters I can run to now,” Sophie said.
Lacie sat up. “Okay, Miss Multiple Personality Disorder, you can’t let this happen. If it’s affecting your grades and your best friendships, you have to stop it.”
“I don’t know how!”
“Hel-lo! You just put together a whole website on it. You don’t have any evidence that could point to those little vixens?”
“No.”
“Who told you about the Getting Together website in the first place?”
Sophie thought hard. “I don’t know. I got an email from somebody I didn’t know, and like a stupid head I opened it. It told me to check out the getting together thing.”
“Did you delete it?”
“I don’t think so.”
Lacie headed for the door. “Then it’s still in your old mail. Let’s get it off and give it to Daddy. He can find out who sent it.”
“What do I do about Fiona and the Flakes?” Sophie said as she followed Lacie downstairs.
“Whatever you do,” Lacie said, “do it face-to-face.”
They printed out the mystery email for Daddy, and he asked Sophie to forward it to his email. Then he told her he was going to buy some software that would allow him to monitor what went in and out of Sophie’s computer.
“Dad-dy!” she said.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you, Baby Girl. It’s these other kids that are running wild all over the Internet.” He put his hand under her chin and tilted her head up. “Meanwhile, you stay strong. Don’t let the other team intimidate you.”
But Sophie didn’t feel right then like she even had a team of her own. And there seemed to be only one thing she could do about that.
The next morning at church, she gathered the girls in the hall before Sunday school started.
“I want to know if you all believe me when I say I don’t like Jimmy as a boyfriend,” she said. “Tell me to my face.”
Everybody looked at Fiona.
“What about it?” Sophie said to her. Her stomach was squirming.
“If he isn’t your boyfriend,” Fiona said, “then why do you spend more time with him than you do with me—us?”
“You spent four hours with just him last week,” Maggie said, “and none with just us.”
“You were keeping track?” Sophie said.
“I
hardly even got an email from you,” Kitty said.
“We’re not trying to make you feel guilty, Sophie,” Darbie said. “But you asked.”
Willoughby tucked her arm through Sophie’s. “We know he’s cute and everything—”
“Would you stop?” Sophie pulled herself away. “What do I have to do to prove to you that—”
“Spend more time with us,” Fiona said. “And less time with Jimmy.” Her eyes narrowed. “That Round Table website has to be planned by now.”
“It is,” Sophie said. “Mrs. Britt’s got it.”
“Then you could be with us before school,” Fiona said.
“Well, yeah,” Sophie said.
“I told you she’d do it!” Willoughby all but did a backflip.
“Uh-oh,” said a familiar voice down the hall. “I see trouble.”
It was Dr. Peter, grinning and wearing a sling on his arm.
Sophie’s heart turned over.
“What happened?” they all said in unison.
“I had a little fender bender Wednesday afternoon,” Dr. Peter said. “That’s why I had to cancel Bible study. But I’ll be back this week.”
“Does it hurt?” Maggie said.
Dr. Peter sucked in air. “Yeah, but I’m man enough to handle it. So what’s going on here?”
“Sophie’s just getting her priorities straight,” Fiona said.
While Fiona launched into a definition of priorities for Maggie, Sophie closed her eyes.
I think that means I figured out what’s important, she thought.
But she wasn’t so sure that was what had just happened.
And she was even less sure later that day.
Ten
After church, Sophie sat down in the family room and wrote Jimmy an email:
Now that we’re done with the website, I won’t be meeting you before school anymore. I’m not mad at you or anything. My friends just want me to spend more time with them. You’re my friend too, but they’re like my best BEST friends—and they decide who I can hang out with.
“No, that isn’t right,” Sophie muttered to herself. Her finger poked at the delete key. A message popped up on the screen:
Your Mail Has Been Sent
“No!” Sophie cried. “Not send! Delete!”
But there was no getting it back—and suddenly she wanted that more than anything. She confessed to Jesus right on the spot. And she added to it, Please don’t let Jimmy hate me.
Then she sat staring at the monitor, shoulders sagging. Maybe if she let the Flakes know what she’d done to keep their friendship, she would feel better. At least they would believe her now.
Nobody seemed to be available for instant messaging, and an email meant waiting too long for an answer, so Sophie logged into the Corn Flakes’ chat room. The screen names were popping up like snapping fingers.
CHEER: She said she would be with us more now.
WORDGRL: She didn’t WANT to say it.
IRISH: She didn’t promise.
MEOW: Sophie keeps her word!!!!!! She luvs us!!!!!!
WORDGRL: I think she luvs J more.
CHEER: No way.
WORDGRL: You saw them skating.
IRISH: She was acting.
WORDGRL: Not when we were talking after. She’s way serious about him.
MEOW: She’s lying???!!!!!
IRISH: Maybe she doesn’t know she’s lying.
CHEER: Huh?
WORDGRL:She doesn’t know WHAT she’s doing. We have to set her straight.
DREAMGRL: Don’t bother. I think I have it pretty straight already.
With tears in her eyes, Sophie logged off before any of her friends could respond.
Her former friends.
She didn’t go near the Internet for the rest of the evening. In fact, she didn’t go into the family room at all after supper. The computer was suddenly a cyber-monster, waiting to devour her.
But her room, her haven, was a lonely cave, and so was she. It was as if everything had been hollowed out and she was just a Sophie-shell. She groped around for an exit.
Cynthia Cyber was more determined than ever to clean up the Internet. When friends turned against friends, the Web was no longer a healthy place to be. If only Dot Com and the others had not gossiped about her in the chat room as if she were some silly, boy-crazy—
“But they did!” Sophie said out loud. Especially Fiona. She said I was lying. How could she THINK that?
Louisa Linkhart smoothed her hands over her corseted waist and went to the library door, her gown swishing as she hesitated in the doorway. Lincoln was there, his head bent over the paper he was writing on. She hated to disturb her husband, but she so needed his advice about her friends. He was so wise and so good. It would only take a moment—
She tapped lightly on the door frame and waited for him to look up, waited for his straight-teeth smile. But there was no smile as he turned to her. There was only hurt in his very-blue eyes—
Sophie leaned against her closet door and scrunched her eyes closed. I wish I could talk to Dr. Peter right now, she thought. I will on Wednesday.
Right. At Bible study. Where all the girls she thought were her friends would be waiting to “straighten her out.”
Sophie crawled onto her bed and let the tears come.
Monday was the hardest day ever. It was the week before Christmas vacation, but Sophie couldn’t join in the gift-exchanging and the classroom-door decorating. She was too busy making herself invisible so she could avoid the Corn Flakes.
She hung out in Miss Imes’ room before school, because she knew the Flakes would never guess she’d be anywhere close to math if she didn’t have to be. Even when Miss Imes told her that as a Christmas present she was dropping everyone’s lowest grade, it didn’t help.
Sophie bolted out of first-second block when the bell rang and changed into her PE clothes in a bathroom stall. When she saw there was no getting away from the Flakes in the roll-check line, she told Coach Yates she had a stomachache and needed to go to the nurse. It was the truth. She had never felt sicker.
When she walked through the gym toward the locker room to change her clothes at the end of the period, Eddie Wornom was putting away the tumbling mats. Sophie pretended not to see him, but that became impossible when he said, “Hey. Sophie.”
This is NOT the time to start showing your real self, Sophie thought. She said, “Hey,” and kept walking. Eddie caught up with her.
“I know how you feel,” he said.
That stopped Sophie with a squeal of her tennis shoes. There is no way YOU know how I feel, Eddie Wornom, she wanted to say. Instead, she just looked up at him and waited.
“I’m not hanging out with my old friends, either,” he said.
And you’re telling me this because—
“They do stuff I can’t do anymore,” Eddie went on. “So now they’re doin’ that stuff to me.”
“They’re bullying you?” Sophie said.
She almost added, Serves you right. But Eddie’s eyes were drooping at the corners. She had seen other eyes look that same way, that very morning in her own mirror.
“Got those mats up, Mr. Wornom?” Coach Virile called from the doorway.
“I gotta go,” Eddie said to Sophie. “If you need any help—”
He shrugged again and went back to the mats. Sophie broke into a run for the door, but Coach Virile didn’t move.
“Big change in our man Eddie, huh?” he said.
Sophie swished her foot back and forth in front of her and watched it.
“I’ll take that as an I-don’t-think-so,” Coach said. He waited until Sophie looked up at him. “Miracles do happen, Little Bit. You might want to hear what he has to say.”
It occurred to Sophie as she hurried to the locker room that there was certainly no other kid she could talk to right now. But Eddie Wornom?
Lunch was the biggest challenge. Sophie escaped to the courtyard, but she didn’t feel like eating. Toward the end of lunc
h, she heard an announcement over the intercom that the new Round Table website was now up and running, and everyone who planned to use a school computer from then on had to sign the AUP. Even that didn’t lift her up.
When she got to Mr. Stires’ class, there was a note on her desk, folded like a bird the way only Fiona did it.
She could feel Fiona watching her. If I read it I’ll start crying, Sophie told herself. And they’ll know how much I miss them already.
Sophie swallowed hard. She was probably going to cry even without reading it.
It wasn’t hard to get a restroom pass out of Mr. Stires, although he did crinkle his mustache a little as he said, “Are you okay, Sophie?”
All she could do was nod, and in the restroom she slammed her way into a stall and sobbed. Only when she started to calm down did she realize she still had Fiona’s note clutched in her hand. She fumbled it open.
We didn’t do anything wrong. We’re just trying to help you. Duh—we’re your best FRIENDS!
Friends don’t call you a liar! Sophie wanted to shout. Without reading the rest, she crumpled the note and pitched it into the trash can.
In sixth period there was no getting away from them because they all had seats together, the Flakes and the Charms. Sophie stood in the doorway, debating whether to ask for another pass to the nurse or just crawl under her desk, when Nathan was suddenly beside her. His face looked like the inside of a watermelon, minus the seeds.
“They want to know if you’re rehearsing after school,” he said. He spoke so low Sophie had to move her ear closer to his mouth.
“Excuse me,” B.J. said behind them. “Other people need to get in.”
Sophie moved, but B.J. still grazed her, knocking Sophie against Nathan. Sophie had to stay there until the rest of the Corn Pops strolled into the room. Julia flung a look over her shoulder at her.
“Can’t make up your mind which boy you want, Soapy?”
Sophie looked frantically at Nathan, whose scalp had gone scarlet between his curls.
“So, are you gonna come?” Nathan managed to get out.
Julia and Anne-Stuart waited, as if he’d asked them the question.