Sophie’s Secret (4 page)
Sophie didn’t even have to turn around to know it was the Corn Pops.
I
guess there aren’t any teachers around,” Fiona said to Sophie, so the Corn Pops couldn’t miss it, “or they wouldn’t be talking like that.”
Sophie glanced down the hall. She could see the BACK of Mr. Denton’s balding head gleaming in the overhead lights as he stood outside the door of the Language Arts room. That would explain why Julia was taking a chance being rude.
Still,
Sophie thought,
Julia should be careful. If ANY of the Corn Pops are caught being evil, they’re toast.
Beside her, Kitty whimpered and clung to Sophie’s arm. Fiona rolled her eyes.
“Kitty, when are you going to figure out that they can’t hurt you anymore?” she said.
Fiona looked straight at Julia, who tossed her thick, auburn hair and let it bounce back into place across the shoulders of her red polo dress. It matched the one B.J. was wearing, only hers was dark blue. B.J. tossing HER shiny short bob of butterblonde didn’t have quite the same effect as when Julia did it, but, then, SHE wasn’t the Queen Bee.
“Don’t be so sure about that,” B.J. said.
But the third Pop, Anne-Stuart, nudged her with a bony elbow and said, “When did we ever hurt Kitty to begin with?”
Sophie took another quick look back at Mr. Denton. He was turning their way, and all three of the Corn Pops’ faces spread into practiced smiles.
“Whatever,” Julia said, and she swept off down the hall with Anne-Stuart and B.J. behind her, still beaming at Mr. Denton.
“Are you three behaving yourselves?” he said as they hurried past him into the room.
“Yes, sir!” Anne-Stuart said. And then she gave a juicy sniff. Sophie always thought Anne-Stuart must have the worst sinuses in York County.
Fiona led the Corn Flakes toward the room, and they all grinned at Mr. Denton.
“Everything okay?” he said.
“YES,” Sophie said, and she squeezed Kitty’s hand.
Mr. Denton nodded. “You let me know if it isn’t.”
“See?” Fiona said to Kitty as they walked in. “You have absolutely nothing to worry about.”
That was true, and Sophie knew it. HER only real worry was that she needed to improve by at least a point in each of her classes this week so she could keep on using her video camera. She was dying to try some of the old spellings of things she’d read about in her Jamestown book, like “meddows” and “blud” and “peece”—and her personal favorite, “dyinge,” for “dying.” But she decided this wasn’t the time to have Mr. Denton counting off on her paper. She did manage to slip one of the new words she’d learned from the book—“vexations”—into one of her vocabulary word sentences, just to impress him.
At lunchtime that day, when Fiona, Kitty, and Sophie were settling in at their usual cafeteria table, Harley and Gill came up, zippered lunch bags in hand.
“Can we sit with you guys?” Gill said. She had taken off the green newsboy cap, and her hair was shoved back on one side with a barrette shaped like a soccer ball.
“Absolutely you can,” Sophie said.
“Them too?” Harley said.
She jerked her spiky head back at their two friends that Sophie knew were named Nikki and Yvette, although she didn’t know which was which because they were identical twins, with short blonder-than-blonde hair that they were always tucking behind their ears to keep it from falling into their faces.
“Y’all know Nikki and Yvette?” Sophie said to Kitty and Fiona.
“It’s Vette,” Gill informed them. “Like short for CORvette. They’re very into cars.”
“Can they talk?” Fiona said.
“Of course they can talk,” Gill said.
“Just asking,” Fiona said.
A conversation began about just how many cars the twins’ dad had in his collection, but Sophie’s attention wandered to the far end of the table, where a stocky girl with very dark chin-length hair and skin the color of pancake syrup was watching the Corn Flakes and the “jocks.”
Maybe they could be the Wheaties,
Sophie thought.
Then she grinned at the dark girl. “Hey, Maggie,” she said. “Why don’t you come down here and sit with us?”
“Because I don’t want to be a Corn Flake,” Maggie said.
As usual, every one of Maggie’s words fell into the air like a bag of flour being dropped to the floor. Sophie sagged. That was the answer she always got, ever since she and Fiona had dumped Maggie a while back. Even though Sophie asked her to hang out with them about three times a week, Maggie always said the same thing. Mama had told Sophie that some people would hold a grudge forever.
Sophie felt a nudge in the back and turned to find a plastic container practically in her face.
“Want one?” Harley said.
“Her mom always starts baking Christmas cookies the day after Thanksgiving,” Gill said. “Take one of the snowflakes. They, like, disappear in your mouth.”
“I like these surprise bar things better,” Fiona said. She was currently splitting one open to share with Kitty, who already had several dabs of chocolate on her upper lip.
“Harley doesn’t share these with just anybody,” Gill said. “This is ’cause you guys rock.”
The belonging-feeling that Sophie suddenly had inside her chest was almost enough to make her want to go out for basketball or something, just for the Wheaties girls. She looked around the table at the six of them who surrounded her.
Who woulda thought just two months ago that I would have even ONE friend, much less this many?
Sophie thought.
And even though they were all way different, everybody was getting along, which was the best part.
I betcha Dr. Peter would say this was like Jesus,
she thought.
Sitting down at the table with all different people that nobody else understood.
She would be seeing Dr. Peter the next day. She decided she’d have to tell him about this.
“Excuse me,” somebody said in a sniffling voice.
“What do you want, Anne-Stuart?” Fiona said. She was never one for being friendlier to a Corn Pop than she had to be, even if the Pop was smiling like a packet of Sweet-and-Low the way Anne-Stuart was doing right now.
Anne-Stuart pulled her skinny self up to her tallest and gave her neck a nervous-looking jerk. It sent a ripple through the perfect sandy hair pulled back by a black suede headband, an exact match for her mini-skirt and boots. Sophie knew Aunt Bailey would have said that was NOT a good look for someone with legs that scrawny.
“I’m taking a survey,” Anne-Stuart said. She tapped a pad of lavender lined paper with a perfectly sharpened pencil that didn’t even have any teeth marks in it yet.
“What kind of survey?” Fiona said.
By now Kitty had her head buried behind Fiona’s shoulder. Harley was straightening hers.
“I’m asking all the girls: who wears a bra and what size is it?”
“None of your business,” Maggie said from the far end.
She shoved an uneaten banana into her lunch bag and got up and left.
Anne-Stuart appeared to be making a note on her pad, and then she looked expectantly at Gill.
“We all wear ’em,” Gill said, pointing to the three Wheaties.
Anne-Stuart nodded and scribbled like she was taking down votes for the presidential election. “What sizes?” she said.
“Medium,” Gill said, jabbing a finger toward Harley. “The rest of us wear smalls.”
There was a thick sniff from Anne-Stuart. “Then you all don’t really wear bras, or you would know that they don’t come in small, medium, and large.” She turned the pencil over impatiently and started to erase.
“Shows what you know,” Gill said. “These are sports bras.”
“Oh,” Anne-Stuart said. She puckered her almost-invisible eyebrows in a frown and then looked at Fiona.
“I’m only telling you this because I know if you try to use it for something evil, you’ll get kicked out of school,” Fiona said. “I wear a thirty, double-A.”
Sophie stared at her. She’d had no idea Fiona wore a bra. She suddenly felt like her own chest was shrinking.
“And you?” Anne-Stuart said, bulging her watery eyes at Kitty.
“Tell her, Kit,” Fiona said, giving her a jab in the ribs Sophie could almost feel.
Kitty kept her gaze glued to the tabletop. “I wear a thirty-two, A,” she said. Sophie could hardly hear her.
Anne-Stuart obviously did, because she pulled the pad into her chest and shook her head at Kitty. “You know that’s not true,” she said. “You can’t possibly wear a bigger size bra than I do.”
“What do you want her to do, pull off her sweater and show you the tag?” Fiona said.
“No!” Kitty said.
“No, I do not,” Anne-Stuart said. “But I’m putting a question mark next to it.”
Anne-Stuart made that notation with a flourish, and then she looked at Sophie. Her eyes were expectant, as if she had been saving the best for last.
“How about you, Sophie?” she said.
If I don’t answer,
Sophie thought,
Anne-Stuart will go back to the Corn Pops and tell them she had me scared or something. NO WAY!
Still, she could feel her face burning as she adjusted her glasses on her nose and looked over the top of them at Anne-Stuart. “I prefer not to wear a bra,” she said. “I wear a camisole.”
Anne-Stuart gave the biggest snot-snort yet. “Doesn’t have any breasts yet,” she said as she wrote on her pad. Then she gave them her NutraSweet smile, turned on the heel of her black suede boot, and pranced to the Corn Pops table, where Julia, B.J., and Willoughby were sitting on the edges of their seats as if Anne-Stuart were going to come back and announce the Academy Award winners.
“They are just as heinous as they ever were,” Fiona said. “I think we conducted ourselves like mature women.”
Harley gave her a blank look. “Because I didn’t get up and punch her out?” she said.
“Pretty much,” Fiona said.
Sophie slid down in her seat and pulled open her turkey sandwich. Mama had put cranberry sauce on it, just the way she liked it, but she couldn’t have eaten if she’d been starving to death.
Why did I get all embarrassed over that?
she thought.
Stuff like body things never made me turn red before —
At least until everybody on the planet started talking about the breasts I don’t have!
“Hey, Soph.”
Sophie looked up quickly at Fiona.
“We’re over them,” she said. She darted her eyes quickly at Kitty, who was cowering at Fiona’s side.
“We are SO over them,” Sophie said. She stretched so she could get closer to Kitty. “As a matter of fact, what was she talking about? I forget already.”
“I’m thinking we should be concentrating on starting our movie after school,” Fiona said.
Sophie gave her head a firm nod, the way she knew Dr. Demetria Diggerty would.
“The digging begins this afternoon—my backyard. Bring your trowels.”
I
t certainly couldn’t be a more perfect day for a dig,
thought Dr. Demetria Diggerty as she gathered the white buckets and the trowels and headed for the site where her two eager assistants were waiting to begin.
“What are your names?” Dr. Diggerty said.
“Artifacta Allen,” said the mysterious one with the wonderful gray eyes.
“Kitty Munford,” said the other one.
“No,” Sophie said. She tried to keep her voice patient. “What is your name going to be in the film?”
Kitty looked around blankly. “I don’t see the camera.”
“We have to plan first,” Fiona said—LESS than patiently.
Sophie handed each of them one of Mama’s small gardening shovels. She hadn’t asked Mama if she could use them before she left with Zeke to set up for the bake sale Lacie’s basketball team was having, but Sophie was sure it would be okay. After all, Mama had been excited about Jamestown treasure herself.
“Just be thinking of a name, Kitty,” Sophie said. “For now, we’ll just call you—”
“Kitty,” Kitty said.
Sophie knelt down on the damp ground at the edge of the square she had drawn out in the dirt with a pointed stick in the back corner of the LaCroix’s yard.
“According to the documental evidence I have obtained,” Sophie—Dr. Demetria Diggerty—said, “this is a likely place to find artifacts.”