by Nancy N. Rue
“He’s gonna do it!” Phoebe said.
Sophie stared as Jimmy shrugged and sat down across from the fullback.
“I give it fifteen seconds max,” Phoebe said.
But Fiona shook her head. “Jimmy wins at, like, all these gymnastics competitions. That football player wishes he had Jimmy’s arm muscles.”
Darbie held the camera up just as Jimmy and the other guy linked hands. Immediately, both their faces turned red. The eighth grader got a concerned look in his eyes and grunted.
“He’s fakin’ it,” Phoebe said.
But Jimmy didn’t make a sound as he slowly pushed Mr. Fullback’s arm flat onto the table.
“Dude,” Phoebe said.
“I told you,” Fiona said.
“I want the lime green one, Jimmy!” Julia said.
“We don’t want that on film,” Sophie said.
“That Eddie kid’s about to explode.” Phoebe’s full lips spread into a smile. “I think it’s funny.”
“You stay and watch it, then,” Fiona said. “Where to next, Soph?”
“Dunking booth,” Sophie said.
She wanted to see Coach Nanini, the boys’ coach she always thought of as Coach Virile because he actually was bigger than Sophie’s dad. Besides, virile was such a masculine word. He was Sophie’s favorite GMMS teacher.
“I’m taking you down, Coach!” Gill Cooper was yelling when they got there. Gill was one of the athletic girls the Corn Flakes referred to as Wheaties. She was about to pitch a softball at a target that, if she hit it, would dump Coach Nanini right into a huge vat of water.
“You couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn!” Coach yelled back in his high-for-a-guy voice. To Sophie he looked like a big happy gorilla with no hair.
“Wanna bet?” Gill hurled the ball, and Coach Nanini went down with a splash that soaked everybody standing within two yards.
“Did you get it, Darbie?” Fiona said.
“In more ways than one,” Darbie said. She rubbed the camera dry against her sweatshirt.
Suddenly a whole chorus of “Fight! Fight!” broke out, and it seemed like the entire festival crowd surged toward the snow-cone booth next to the dunking tank. Before she could turn around, Sophie was swept up by the mob, feet not even touching the ground. “Take him down, Eddie!” the kid directly next to her screamed. It was Colton Messik, the Fruit Loop with the stick-out ears.
Sophie swung her elbows around and got herself down onto the ground. Squeezing her eyes shut and digging her fingers in, she started to crawl.
“Hey, somebody get that girl out of the way!”
Sophie raised her head to see what girl they were talking about, but something came down hard on her back. She was flattened to the dirt.
Two
All right, break it up!” Coach Nanini’s voice cut through the roar of the crowd, and whoever was on top of Sophie rolled off. She gasped for air.
“Good grief — are you all right, LaCroix?” Coach Yates, the girls’ PE teacher, was suddenly beside her. Sophie couldn’t mistake that voice either. It had yelled her name enough times in class.
But now Coach Yates was saying gently, “Let’s make sure you’re okay before you get up. Anything hurt so bad you can’t move it?”
Sophie shook her head, cheek still in the dirt.
“I didn’t even get to see who was goin’ at it,” some kid whined from the crowd.
“Eddie Wornom,” somebody answered him. “He fell on that little seventh-grader chick.”
“All right, everybody move on,” Coach Nanini said. “Nothing to see here.”
Sophie kept her head down until everybody shuffled away. If Eddie Wornom had been on her, she didn’t want anybody seeing who she was. Ewww.
“He was fighting that gymnastics dude,” the same kid said.
Gymnastics dude? Sophie thought. Not Jimmy!
Coach Yates told Sophie to try to sit up.
“Was it really Jimmy Wythe?” Sophie said as she struggled to get upright.
“Yes,” Coach Yates said, “but he doesn’t look as bad as you do.”
“I’m okay.”
“Except for the blood dripping from your nostrils and the scrape across your forehead.”
Sophie rubbed her hand under her nose. Her fingers came away red.
By then the rest of the Corn Flakes had squatted around her. From the looks on their faces, Sophie was sure she was disfigured for life.
“No broken bones, though, I don’t think,” Coach Yates said. She shook her head, stirring the too-tight, graying ponytail that stuck out through the opening in the back of her GMMS ball cap. “You always end up at the wrong place at the wrong time, don’t you, LaCroix?”
“Wherever Eddie Wornom is is the wrong place,” Fiona muttered.
Sophie didn’t remind her that it was against the Corn Flake Code to put people down, even when those same people took them down. She looked at her bloody fingers again. Literally took them down.
“Well, Sophie,” said a voice behind them.
Sophie tilted her head back to look up at Mrs. Clayton, the head of the Round Table. She stood over them, frowning beneath her faded-blonde helmet of hair.
“Looks like we have our first case,” she said. “Are you hurt?”
Sophie was suddenly tired of answering questions. She was starting to shake.
“Could somebody find my dad?” she said. “I want to go home.”
Daddy was brought over from the pony rides, with Sophie’s six-year-old brother, Zeke, screaming that he didn’t get to ride long enough. After asking Sophie the same questions everybody else had, Daddy tucked her into the front seat of the pickup beside him, and they listened to Zeke wail all the way home.
“We didn’t get to go to the bonfire! I didn’t get to have a corn dog!”
“You ate two cotton candies and a taco.” Daddy gave Sophie a sideways grin. “Your mother is going to be mad enough at me as it is.”
“I wanna go to the bonfire!”
Only Daddy promising they would have their own fire in the backyard shut him up, which was good, since Sophie’s head was starting to sting.
“Now, remember, Z-Boy,” Daddy said as they pulled into the driveway, “don’t upset Mama. I want you to chill.”
Right, Sophie thought as Zeke ran to the house, still screaming about corn dogs. Zeke doesn’t know how to chill anymore.
But Mama “chilled” him as nobody else could. With her arms around Sophie, she told Sophie’s fourteen-year-old sister, Lacie, to get some hot dogs out of the freezer and dig out the cooking skewers. Then she described the wiener roast they’d have so well that Sophie could almost taste it. Zeke went happily outside with Daddy to pile on the wood.
“Now, Dream Girl,” Mama said, turning Sophie around so she could inspect her face. “Where had you drifted off to when this happened?”
Mama smiled the wispy smile that Sophie knew matched her own. Everybody said she and Mama looked just alike, except that Mama actually had hair, and it was curly and highlighted; she claimed it covered the gray that three kids had given her. And right now, Mama was puffier than usual. She was going to have a baby.
“I wasn’t daydreaming this time,” Sophie said. “Two boys were fighting, and I got caught in the crowd. Then Eddie Wornom fell on me — ”
Mama’s eyes got stormy. “They were fighting at the festival?”
“It was heinous,” Sophie said.
“Let’s get you cleaned up — come on.”
Sophie sat in the chair by the window in her parents’ upstairs bedroom while Mama cleaned the scrape on her forehead. Even though the hydrogen peroxide stung when Mama dabbed it on with a cotton ball, Sophie loved her alone time with her mom. It was a rare thing these days. When Mama wasn’t resting, Zeke got most of her attention, acting out like he was practicing to be a Fruit Loop. Even now, Sophie could hear him hollering down in the yard.
“What’s his deal?” Sophie said. “It’s like he’s Terrible Tw
o all over again.”
“He was never this bad when he was two.” Mama blew softly on Sophie’s forehead. “I hope this is just some phase he’s going through. You girls never went through it.”
“Girls are so much better than boys,” Sophie said. “Do you hope our new baby is a girl?”
“I hope our new baby is healthy.” Mama patted her tummy. “How do you feel about having a little brother or sister? We haven’t had a chance to talk about it much.”
Sophie hadn’t had a chance to think about it much, either. Ever since the family meeting when Mama and Daddy had announced that there was going to be another LaCroix, Sophie had been wrapped up in Round Table and Film Club and Corn Flakes and Bible study with Dr. Peter and keeping her grades up so she could still have her video camera, according to her deal with Daddy. Besides, the new baby didn’t seem real yet. Mostly it was just about Mama needing a lot of rest and Mama not getting upset and Mama taking vitamins the size of checkers.
Lacie came in then. She had a Daddy-look on her face, which wasn’t hard because she, like Zeke, had his dark hair, his intense eyes, and his way of having everything figured out. “I hope you’re almost done,” she said, tossing her ponytail, “because Zeke is going to jump into the fire if we don’t start cooking hot dogs in the next seven seconds.” She grinned. “Which doesn’t sound like a bad idea, actually.”
“Lacie!” Mama said.
“Kidding — just kidding.”
But as they followed Mama downstairs, Lacie looked at Sophie with a gleam in her eyes that clearly said, “Which one of us is going to flush the kid down the toilet first?”
The bonfire didn’t go well.
At first, as Sophie smiled into the steam of her apple cider, she decided this was better than the bonfire at the festival. There were no Corn Pops or Fruit Loops doing stuff that would land them at the Round Table, where Liberty Lawhead would look at them solemnly and say …
“What were you thinking? Were you thinking that these innocents who are not as hot as you are, not as rich — do not have rights too? The right to walk down a hallway without being teased? The right to be exactly who they are without being told they are lame and weird?” She leaned across the table, pointing her pencil in their direction —
“Sophie,” Daddy said, “I think that one’s done enough.”
“Oh, go all the way and burn it to a crisp, Soph,” Lacie said.
Sophie looked at her black, shriveled hot dog.
Zeke, of course, wanted his charbroiled like that. When Daddy wouldn’t let him, he pitched a fit that knocked his chair over into Mama’s and sent them both tumbling to the ground.
Daddy yelled about Sophie not paying attention to what she was doing and Zeke and Mama almost falling into the fire, all the while dousing the flames with water as Zeke screamed. As Lacie and Sophie headed for the house with the skewers and the unopened bag of marshmallows, Lacie pointed out that they had been miles from getting burned.
“I thought it was the pregnant mother who was supposed to get cranky,” Lacie said. “Not the pregnant father.”
Behind them, Mama was saying, “I’m fine, honey,” while Zeke howled about corn dogs and pony rides and everything else that had been denied him. Daddy was just howling — at everybody.
Sophie couldn’t get to her room fast enough. She didn’t even stop to examine the bandage on her forehead or the condition of the rest of her face. She just crawled under her pink comforter, within the sheer curtains Mama had hung around her bed, and pulled a purple pillow over her head.
“I hope you’re there, Jesus,” she whispered, “because I need to talk to you!”
That was what Dr. Peter — once her therapist and now her Bible study teacher — had taught her to do: to imagine Jesus and tell him anything she wanted and ask him anything she wanted. Since, according to the Corn Flakes, she was the best ever at imagining, she could see in her mind right now Jesus’ kind eyes understanding absolutely everything.
This has been like the most confusing day, she said deep inside. First that Phoebe girl hung out with us — and Jimmy Wythe got into a fight and I don’t know how that’s going to work out because he’s on the Round Table Council and now he has to go in front of it — and I got trampled — and Mama asked how I felt about the new baby and I don’t even know — then Zeke acted out like no other time — and then the worst: Daddy got all mad and yelled at everybody, even though it was only Zeke who was being evil. What’s that about?
She didn’t expect an answer right then. Dr. Peter said that imagining Jesus talking back to her would be like putting words in his mouth. But she knew from experience that he would answer somehow, if she kept asking and kept waiting and kept looking in unexpected places.
Since that was the case, she made sure she was asking him exactly the thing she needed.
“Will you please help me find a way to make things more fair?” she whispered.
Then she added that she’d like for Zeke to please hush up so she could go to sleep — and then she did.
Three
By the time Sophie got to her locker before school on Monday, she’d heard three different rumors about what was going to happen that day.
“Eddie Wornom broke Jimmy Wythe’s nose, and he’s gonna get suspended by that Table thing.”
“Jimmy Wythe knocked Eddie Wornom unconscious, and they’re just gonna expel him, period.”
“They broke Sophie LaCroix’s back, and they’re both being put in juvenile detention.”
The fact that Sophie was standing right there, obviously in one piece, didn’t change their minds.
“It’s like there’s nothing else to talk about,” Darbie said to Sophie and Fiona at the lockers.
Fiona nodded toward the chattering knot of Corn Pops a few lockers down.
“I know Eddie didn’t start it,” B.J. was saying, cheeks already three shades of red. “He knows he can’t play basketball if he gets in trouble.”
Sophie knew what Fiona wanted to say: that Eddie was getting way too honkin’ huge to run down a basketball court.
“That is just wrong, B.J.,” Julia said. She raked her hand dramatically through her thick hair. “Jimmy obviously didn’t start it. He’s a lover, not a fighter.”
Ewww, Sophie thought.
“I’ll tell you one thing for sure,” silky-blonde-haired Anne-Stuart said, sniffing juicily. The skinniest Corn Pop, she always seemed to have a sinus problem. “If that Round Table thing tries to suspend Eddie, the office won’t let them. He’s too valuable to the school.”
“Do straighten them out, Sophie,” Darbie said.
The four Corn Pops swiveled their heads at the same time and, as usual, looked at the Corn Flakes as if they had been invisible until then. Sophie had figured out that was the only way the Pops could express their attitude toward the Flakes — ever since the Flakes had exposed them and gotten them kicked off the cheerleading squad. The Pops would get suspended from school again if they did anything more than just pretend the Corn Flakes weren’t there.
“Straighten us out on what?” said Cassie, the newest Corn Pop. Her more-blonde-than-red hair trailed in strings down her back, and her mouthful of blue braces were a perfect match for the Limited Too top hugging her ribs.
“Sophie knows about the Round Table,” Fiona said. “She’s on it.”
Julia gave Sophie a bored look. “So?”
“So,” Sophie said, straightening her tiny shoulders, “it’s our job to sort out who did what and then help them behave better. We don’t do punishments.”
“Of course you don’t.” Anne-Stuart gave a particularly gooey sniff. “You can’t. Like I said, Eddie’s popular, and his father gives the school, like, a ton of money.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Sophie said. “We just go by the Honor Code, no matter who the person is.”
“Sounds lame to me,” Cassie said.
B.J. gave her buttery-blonde bob an impatient shake. “You dis us all the time,” she sai
d to Sophie. “So how can you be fair to Eddie? You just better — ”
“Shut up, B.J.,” Julia said.
“Excuse me, girls.” A wiry man with a tool belt was standing behind Darbie. His voice was sandpaper scratchy. “I need to work on that locker right there.”
“Oh, sorry,” Darbie said as she and Fiona and Sophie scooted out of his way.
The Corn Pops moved aside without looking at him.
I guess the janitor’s invisible too, Sophie thought.
“What’s wrong with it?” Fiona said.
“It’s broken,” B.J. said. “Duh.”
“It’s broken, all right,” the janitor said. He ran his hand over his no-color hair that was so thin red scalp showed between the waves. “And it didn’t happen by accident, far as I can tell.”
Sophie liked his sandpaper voice. It was kind of grandfather-y, even though he didn’t look as old, even, as Fiona’s Boppa.
“That’s Eddie’s locker,” B.J. said.
Julia looked into her until B.J.’s cheeks went pale.
“Well, it looks like Eddie was doing pull-ups on it,” Mr. Janitor Man said, pulling a huge screwdriver out of the tool belt. “There are bars down in the gym for that. This wasn’t made for it.” He glanced over his shoulder without really looking at B.J. “You tell your friend Eddie that, would you?”
Sophie and the Corn Flakes escaped before Julia could stare B.J. into a dead faint.
When they got to their two-hour English/History block, Mrs. Clayton called Sophie to her desk right away. Her usually dry-looking face was almost glowing.
“Round Table will meet after school today with our two little warriors,” she said. “Try not to listen to any of the scuttlebutt that’s going around school between now and then.”
Sophie was pretty sure “scuttlebutt” meant rumors.
Mrs. Clayton was nodding her blonde helmet of hair. “This will be our first opportunity to change some attitudes around here,” she said. “Remember, it’s not about taking sides. It’s about making this a safe place for people to learn.”