The Prettiest Read online

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  For my mom, Brady.

  Back when I was in middle school you told me I should write about it. You were right.

  I am trying to find myself. Sometimes that’s not easy.

  —Marilyn Monroe

  1

  EVE

  Eve could feel them staring.

  As the homeroom bell rang on Monday morning, the room filled with the buzz of cell phones. When Eve looked around to see what was going on, dozens of eyes pointed in her direction. It was as if a spotlight had illuminated her.

  Eve focused on the notebook in front of her, ignoring the rising commotion in the room. She didn’t want to know why a few girls in the back of homeroom had begun to cry and some boys had started to snicker, or why the back of her head had suddenly become so fascinating to people. Whatever was happening, it couldn’t be good.

  “Enough,” Eve heard Mr. Flynn groan. “Phones down.”

  The room ignored him. Eve picked up a pen.

  Over the summer, each student had to choose a person to read about for the biography project they’d be doing in eighth grade. At one of Eve’s weekly trips to the library, she’d discovered a dusty, old collection of Emily Dickinson’s poems and chosen her. And then one night, Eve scratched a pen over a blank page, and before she knew it, she had filled a notebook with poetry of her own. But she’d never shown a soul, not even her best friend, Nessa. No way.

  That morning, she attempted a poetry exercise she’d read about in one of her thoroughly dog-eared creative writing manuals, in which you take a line from a famous poem and try to write your own poem following it.

  The line, by Walt Whitman, read: I am large, I contain multitudes …

  Eve tried to think of a line to follow.

  I am large, she began writing. Well, she felt large recently, at least certain parts of her body did. This past summer had been what Nessa called Eve’s “summer of the curves.” Her clothing size had significantly altered, and she wore a lot of her big brother’s old shirts these days.

  “I contain multitudes…” What did that even mean?

  I contain, she tried again.

  But as she wrote, Mr. Flynn hovered by her desk, his fingertips grazing the edge of her notebook.

  She looked up, expecting a rebuke, the usual reminder that she needed to pay attention. But Mr. Flynn merely stood there, surveying the scene. “What’s going on here?” he asked the room.

  Eve forced herself to look around and had the same question.

  One girl openly wept.

  Two boys huddled around a phone, cackling and crying out “Oh man!”

  And several kids sat there peering directly at Eve.

  It seemed like they’d noticed her for the first time. One girl, Mari, glared at her as if Eve were a new dark mole appearing after a day in the sun, and a boy named Auggie gawked at her like she’d manifested out of thin air in a puff of smoke.

  She snapped back to her paper.

  Why were they looking at her?

  Words. Focus on words.

  I am large, I contain multitudes.

  Once more, Eve tried to write what came next.

  But they were still staring. She could feel it. The eyes shooting stares at the back of her head felt like hot sparks of oil spritzing off a stove onto her skin.

  “Okay, can someone please fill me in?” Mr. Flynn mumbled as one of the kids offered him her phone.

  His eyes widened. “Oh lord,” Mr. Flynn murmured, glued to the screen.

  Eve registered a tap on her shoulder. The tap belonged to Miranda Garland, the girl who had sat behind her for over two years of homeroom. They’d hardly spoken before.

  “Hey,” Miranda said. “I’ve been meaning to ask you for a long time … Where did you get that necklace with the little hand? It’s so cute.”

  Eve did one of those “Are you talking to me?” gestures, and Miranda nodded.

  “From my grandmother?” Eve answered, hesitant. Her bubbe had given it to her for her bat mitzvah over the summer, and the little hamsa hung on a silver chain around her neck every day. It was no big deal. Why was Miranda suddenly interested in this?

  Out of the corner of her eye, Eve caught a face in the classroom door’s window. It was Nessa, motioning for her to come out.

  Eve glanced toward Nessa and then Mr. Flynn. He stood next to a group of distraught kids, distracted. Eve sneaked out the classroom door.

  “Did you see the list?” Nessa pulled Eve in close.

  Maybe it was all about the cast list. Mr. Rhodes was supposed to announce the cast for The Music Man any day now. Maybe there’d been an upset, an unexpected casting decision. Eve momentarily worried for Nessa, the lead contender for the role of Marian the librarian. Nessa was “born to be a Broadway diva,” she’d always say, whereas standing on a stage in front of a bunch of people probably qualified as Eve’s worst nightmare.

  “You got the part, right?” Eve asked.

  “No! Well, I mean, I’m sure I did. But that’s not the list I’m talking about.”

  Nessa handed Eve her phone.

  And in the glow of Nessa’s screen, Eve saw it. She took in the series of numbers in tiny type, one to fifty, and there, in the number one spot, she saw her own name.

  “It’s a list of the top fifty girls in eighth grade,” Nessa whispered.

  “But my last name starts with H!” Eve felt stupid even as she spoke, already knowing that she was far behind on whatever was going on.

  “It’s the top fifty prettiest, Evie.” Nessa put a hand on her shoulder, pointing to the heading of the list where THE PRETTIEST 8TH GRADERS OF FORD MIDDLE SCHOOL had been typed out in all caps. “You’re number one.”

  Impossible.

  It was true that Eve didn’t hate the way she looked. She liked her tight, coffee-colored curls and the way they lay on her shoulders. But her new body presented a person light years away from the person Eve felt like inside. She wanted to slide by, unnoticed, pretty enough but not too pretty, for as long as she could.

  So “number one prettiest”? No way. Eve could think of a hundred other girls who deserved that spot.

  All those thoughts swirled in her brain in a millisecond and came out of her mouth in a “Huh?” right as Brody Dixon, the school-wide idol of sixth and seventh grade groupies, strutted by and stopped where Eve and Nessa stood.

  He flicked a hall pass against his palm.

  Slap. Slap. Slap.

  “Hey, Eve Hoffman.” He said her name as if he was trying the sounds out for the first time to see how they felt coming from his mouth. “Congrats.” He continued on his saunter down the hallway.

  At this, Eve slid back inside the classroom door just in time to hear Mr. Flynn end some kind of speech to three of the boys in the back of the classroom.

  “This is an unacceptable way for anyone to behave!” he boomed. “Out in the real world, this would get you fired from a job. Here, maybe it’ll get you expelled. You know
what? The bell’s going to ring any minute. Just pack up your things.”

  He turned to Eve and gave her a look she interpreted as “I’m so sorry for what’s about to happen to you.”

  And what would happen?

  As Eve jammed her notebook into her backpack, she did everything she could to avoid meeting all those leering faces.

  She repeated Walt Whitman’s line over and over to herself, like a prayer. “I am large, I am large, I am large…” But they were the wrong words for that day. Because if she could have made one wish in that moment, it would have been to drink the potion that Alice takes in Wonderland and turn so small that she disappeared entirely.

  2

  SOPHIE

  Every day, Sophie woke up an hour and a half before she had to get on the bus. She had perfected the art of the blowout. It took her only fifteen minutes to section, curl, brush, and spray her hair into a swishy blond mane that would make a pop star jealous. Then came her makeup, which consumed the largest chunk of her time. She applied three shades of bronze eye shadow, and then chocolate brown eyeliner, drawing it not only above and below her lashes, but also in the hidden creases right under the lids. That really made her blue eyes pop. And last, she lined and lipsticked her mouth with her signature magenta pink. Her makeup skills were a true gift. By the time she left for school, she looked so put together that once in a while, on her way to the bus stop, even a high school guy or two would stare.

  Once she was at Ford, she owned the place. She got all As. That was a given. She was the best one on the track team, training all year to maximize her speed. One day she planned to get a track scholarship to the University of Michigan. And all the boys loved her. It was just a fact. Brody Dixon, who looked like a tenth grader and lived in the biggest house in all of Glisgold, had a thing for her. He’d been openly flirting all year, even having her over to study, and everyone knew they’d go to the Halloween dance together. In all the ways that counted, she was number one. In everything.

  When the list came out that morning, Sophie Kane stood leaning against her locker, surrounded by her girls, many of them ready to take a tardy in homeroom just to wait by her side until the last minute. And they were her girls. They may have had their own names—Amina, Liv, Hayley, plus a few others who mattered less—but everyone called them “the Sophies.” They would never call themselves this, out in the open, but people referred to them this way behind their backs. And Sophie knew that if other people said it, then it became the truth. So they were hers.

  As the Sophies babbled about something or other, Sophie played with a Spanish app on her phone. She had to work on her Spanish. The new verbs confused her. They were impossible to memorize, especially with how little she’d been sleeping lately. And falling behind was not an option, not for her.

  As she moved to the future irregular tense, a few “Oh my Gods” whooshed around her, and texts of screenshots of the list poured onto her phone in a flood, drowning out tener and tendré, and as the reality of the image hit her, as the rankings sank in and she saw that she was not number one, but number two—number two!—Sophie smiled a perfectly practiced smile and let the world believe that she was totally, entirely, and completely fine.

  But Sophie Kane was not fine.

  Sophie had been wronged.

  “Guys, this is so dumb,” she chirped to the girls as they nodded in agreement. “And Rose Reed is number four?” she asked. “Rose?” Rose, already in her homeroom, was one of the Sophies who mattered less. She wore pink belts every day.

  “She’s not even that pretty!” insisted Amina, a generally easygoing girl who Sophie liked. Amina had been ranked as number three. Probably about right. She had incredible skin and lashes to die for.

  But Rose? She was only around them at all because one of Brody Dixon’s best friends, Caleb Rhines, was into her. Rose sat on the edges of their lunch table, staring at Sophie with a lingering gaze that freaked her out. At least pretend you’re not obsessed with me, Sophie always thought.

  “And Eve Hoffman is a weirdo,” said Hayley, number five, one of the most airheaded girls on the planet. Hayley was gorgeous and the best athlete in the grade, but every time she spoke Sophie had to stop herself from just getting up and walking away. “She never pays attention, and when she’s called on in class she just gives this dumb look like…” And Hayley did an impression of someone without a thought in her head. So basically, Sophie thought, just an impression of herself.

  “That’s true,” Liv agreed. Liv, number six, was the smartest of the Sophies. Her long box braids perfectly framed a heart-shaped face.

  “Whatever, I’m heading in to homeroom.” Sophie flipped her hair to land behind her back. “Ignore this,” she commanded to the teary-eyed girls. Crying bothered Sophie. A lot.

  But Sophie didn’t head to homeroom. As she neared the door to it, she dashed into the bathroom instead, running into the final stall. Some girls were hiding in there. She could hear nose blowing. Sophie wasn’t a hider like them. She just needed a moment alone. She lifted her feet onto the porcelain.

  Eve Hoffman? Number one? The quiet girl, her face always in a book, who lurked around the theater kids? Sophie Kane, number two?

  It didn’t make any sense!

  Sophie’s mom always said, “Don’t ever let anyone think you’re less than.”

  And she never did.

  So how could she be number two? How had this happened?

  What would people think? What would Brody Dixon think?

  Whoever was in the stall next to her sounded like she was at the beginning of a panic attack. She could hear the hurried breath, and it reminded her of a mouse, and how their hearts beat hundreds of times a minute.

  People were so weak.

  Sophie, sitting with her knees pulled up to her chest, stuffed her tears deep down inside. She placed them in the same spot she parked the image of her increasingly empty mailbox, which each month received fewer and fewer postcards from her dad, and the exhaustion she felt in the mornings, when it took everything in her to pull out a hair dryer and start the day.

  No. Tears.

  She whipped out her mirror. It had a crack in the upper corner that distorted the image of her perfectly plucked right eyebrow. She pulled out her magenta lipstick. It was down to its last little bit, and she silently cursed. She could feel the cold metal edges of the tube’s rim as she painted it onto her mouth. When she got home, she’d scrape out the last bits and put them in a little baggie, a trick her mom taught her. Then it would last a few more days.

  Sophie smacked her lips together, put her wedges onto the floor, took a breath, and walked out.

  She would find out who wrote this list. And she’d destroy them. She’d make them a joke. She’d get a new list written. She’d ensure she was number one. She’d never, ever let anyone see her as “less than.”

  3

  EVE

  “They say,” Nessa gossiped to Eve over lunch as they huddled together at a corner table, “that Lara Alexander went home in tears.”

  “She’s not on the list?” Eve asked. Seeing Nessa’s look, Eve explained, “I haven’t looked at the whole thing. I couldn’t. But that’s weird!”

  Even Eve knew that Lara Alexander was remarkably well dressed, and Eve hardly noticed that stuff. Plus, her dad was the first African American president of the hospital. There had been all these announcements about it in the paper a couple of years back. Her mom wrote cookbooks. Famous ones. Her sister was the most popular girl in the high school. Lara seemed like someone who should be included in everything.

  “Well, she left school after second period. Guess somebody expected a spot, huh?” Nessa raised an eyebrow. Then her face fell. “This is all pretty messed up.”

  Eve nodded. Looking around them she saw that they weren’t the only pair of friends nestled more tightly together that day, as if by physically sticking closely to one another they could create a shield from staring eyes, from the rankings. And the lack-of-rankings. But
even as everyone stuck to their friendship groups, they also checked out one another, gauging the reactions of the other girls in school, and watching how the boys responded. Some kids leaned their heads in toward one another, speaking in hushed whispers, just like Eve and Nessa were doing. Brody Dixon held court as usual, telling a story with wild hand motions, taking up all the oxygen in the lunchroom. His crowd of worshippers guffawed at whatever he was saying.

  “Oh, good. Looks like he’s having a great day,” Nessa muttered, looking off toward the same spot as Eve.

  Farther down the table, though, where Sophie Kane sat with the Sophies, things looked more solemn. They ate in near silence.

  Rose Reed put a hand on Sophie Kane’s shoulder, and Eve might have been imagining it, but she thought she saw Sophie stiffen.

  “Sophie Kane must hate you,” Nessa whispered.

  “Oh my gosh, you’re right,” Eve said. “I hadn’t even thought of that.”

  The two of them sat with this for a moment, and quickly turned away when a couple of the Sophies glanced toward their corner.

  “What do you think Principal Yu is going to say at the assembly?” Nessa wondered aloud before blowing bubbles into her grape juice.

  An assembly had been called for the eighth graders in place of last period to “discuss, as a community, the incident earlier today,” Principal Yu told them over the loudspeakers.

  “Who knows? But whatever it is, it won’t make a difference.” Eve glanced back one last time at the Sophies. Sophie stared at her, her made-up face unreadable. Eve jumped a little in her seat.

  She turned to Nessa. “What do I do about Sophie Kane?”

  Nessa shrugged. “Like my dad always says: ‘This, too, shall pass.’”

  “Oh, great.”

  Miranda Garland and one of her friends walked by their table and waved at Eve, ignoring Nessa. Eve lifted a hand in response, trying not to grimace at the awkwardness of it all.