Happy Birthday, Sophie Hartley Read online

  “Nothing.”

  Alice’s neck was bright red now. She was the only person Sophie knew whose neck blushed. A boy in their kindergarten class had called Alice “fire engine” one day and made her cry.

  Sophie put down her pencil. “If you don’t tell me, I won’t draw your picture,” she said.

  Their eyes met and locked. Alice stared for another minute before she took a deep breath and said, “Guess what I got today?” “What?”

  Alice hesitated. Then she whispered, “A bra.”

  “A bra?”

  “You don’t have to shout,” Alice said, looking frantically around the room to check whether anyone had heard.

  “But … you?” Sophie said from behind the hand she’d clamped over her mouth. “A bra?”

  Alice still looked the same. The same pale brown hair. The same freckles. Sure, she had a few bumps on her front, but she’d always had a few bumps. They were her stomach. Or weren’t they? Could it be they were higher up?

  “You don’t have to sound so shocked,” Alice said stiffly as she folded her arms across her chest. “Don’t stare, either.”

  Sophie clamped her other hand over her eyes.

  “And stop acting so ridiculous.”

  It was hard to tell what she could do that wouldn’t make Alice mad. Sophie slowly lowered her hands to her lap, her eyes glued to Alice’s face so they wouldn’t drift down. “But what do you need one for?” she said cautiously.

  “You mean you don’t know?”

  “Of course I know. Nora wears one, doesn’t she?”

  “Oh.” Alice sniffed. “So that means you’re being insulting.”

  Sophie knew that sniff. It would ruin their sleepover if Alice stayed hurt. “Sorry,” she said quickly.

  Alice sniffed her “I forgive you” sniff.

  “It’s just that Nora didn’t get hers until the sixth grade,” Sophie said.

  “So? There isn’t a rule about it.” The blush was fading from Alice’s neck. “A lot of girls get bras when they’re ten. You’ll have to get one, too, someday.”

  “Oh, no. Don’t drag me into this,” said Sophie. “I’m not getting one until I’m twenty-one.”

  “Oh, Sophie!” Alice put her hands over her mouth and giggled. “You’ll jiggle all around high school if you wait that long.”

  “Jiggle, jiggle, jiggle,” sang Sophie. She tossed her paper and book onto the bed, jumped up, and ran to her dresser. She yanked open her top drawer and took out a pair of socks.

  “What’re you doing?” Alice said breathlessly.

  “You’ll see.”

  Sophie wadded one sock into a ball and stuffed it under her T-shirt. She wadded up the other sock and stuffed it on the other side of her chest. Then, holding her hands against her rib cage to stop the bumps from slipping down, she turned back around and stuck out her chest. “I’m Sophie Hartley,” she said. “But you can call me Jiggles.”

  It was all right after that. Sophie and Alice laughed so hard, Alice finally cried, “I have to pee!” and ran to the bathroom. Sophie put her socks back in her drawer and started to draw.

  When Alice got back, Sophie showed her the picture. It was a face with a bright red neck and two huge circles underneath.

  “Sophie!” Alice cried. “You’re so bad!”

  “What’d she do now?” Mr. Hartley asked, sticking his head in the door.

  Sophie and Alice shrieked, “Nothing!” Alice frantically shoved the drawing under a pillow, and they sat in front of it, side by side, their guilty faces burning.

  “Looks like a pretty exciting nothing to me,” Mr. Hartley said before continuing down the hall.

  They watched almost a whole movie with Mr. and Mrs. Hartley and John before Alice’s neck returned to its normal color and they stopped giggling every time they looked at each other.

  Later, when they were in bed with the lights out, Sophie said, “I guarantee you Jenna doesn’t have a bra.”

  “Probably not,” said Alice. “All she cares about is shin guards.”

  “I hope she doesn’t try wearing them on her bosom.”

  “Oh, Sophie!” Alice giggled. “No one says bosom.”

  “My mother does.”

  “That’s because she’s old.”

  “What does your mother call it?”

  “Chest.”

  It was nice having this conversation in the dark. It felt as if they could say anything.

  “Let’s call it boobs, the way Nora does,” said Sophie.

  “Boobs sounds so funny.”

  “Boobs when it’s just us, but chest when it’s around other people.”

  “Okay.”

  And that, pretty much, was that.

  Brendan appeared from behind the door to the media center on Monday as Sophie was passing by. He was carrying his blue notebook. He told Sophie he’d cleared “all other irrelevant information” out of it so he could devote it to gorillas.

  He’d been popping up at her side like a perky ghost, armed with more gorilla information, at least once a day lately. Sophie wished he’d stop sneaking up on her.

  “Did you know that the DNA of a gorilla is ninety-eight percent identical to that of a human?” Brendan said now, glued to her side as they made their way down the hall to their class. He quickly checked a page in his notebook. ‘Actually, it’s closer to ninety-nine percent.”

  “What does that mean?” Sophie said.

  “It means that gorillas are almost exactly like humans.”

  “Well, of course,” she said. “Baby gorillas look like real babies.”

  “Exactly.”

  The weird look in Brendan’s eyes seemed more demented than passionate. Sophie moved away uneasily and bumped into someone walking behind her.

  “What are you two talking about?” Destiny said. “Sophie’s pretend gorilla again?”

  “I don’t know why Destiny keeps sticking her nose in my business,” Sophie grumbled to Alice as they stuffed their lunches and packs into their cubbies.

  “Don’t pay any attention to her,” Alice said. “She’s had a crush on Brendan since the second grade, when she hit him in the face with her jacket while they were playing tag and made him cry. She’s just jealous.”

  Jenna had come up behind them and was putting her things away. “Why should she be jealous?” she said. “She’s our star goalie.”

  “So? What good is being a star goalie if nobody likes you?” Sophie said.

  Jenna stopped. “Speaking of liking, do you like Brendan?”

  “He’s okay.”

  “I mean, like like.” Jenna’s voice sounded very unlike Jenna. “You two have been buddy-buddy lately.”

  “Like like?” Sophie said, frowning. “What’s that?”

  “You know, Sophie.” Alice wrapped her arms around herself and rocked back and forth as if she were being hugged.

  “Gross!” Sophie cried. “Are you crazy, Jenna?”

  When Jenna said “I was just asking,” Sophie recognized her new voice. She sounded exactly like Destiny.

  Pretending you’re not interested in something you’re actually dying of curiosity about is very hard work. Sophie was sick of it. Every night when Nora went up to her new room humming contentedly, Sophie wondered desperately what it looked like. It felt as if Nora had moved to a foreign country.

  Sophie went upstairs to change her clothes after school. When Nora got home, she decided, she’d casually go up to the attic and tell Nora she wanted to show her something. Maybe she’d say she wanted to talk about Destiny and Jenna. She wouldn’t be making that up. Even if Nora said the whole thing was Sophie’s fault, it would feel like old times.

  The trouble was, Nora’s friends were with her again. Sophie sat on her bed and listened to them laugh and talk in the family room. She was beginning to feel as if Nora would never be at home again without being surrounded by her friends.

  Friends who were so much more important to her than her own sister that Nora didn’t care if Sophi
e saw her precious bedroom or not.

  They were probably on the computer, IMing the friends they’d just talked to on the bus. When Nora shrieked, followed by a group shriek from her friends, Sophie knew they were talking about boys.

  That boy Nora liked had probably IMed her or something.

  She and Alice and Jenna would never shriek about boys like that, Sophie thought disgustedly. Then she remembered Jenna’s ponytail and Alice’s bra and was struck by a terrible thought.

  What if they all changed? What if everything was so different by the time they got to the eighth grade that they weren’t even friends?

  Sophie would never become a shrieker. But what if Jenna and Alice did? What if they made a whole group of new, shrieking friends they liked better than they liked Sophie, who was too quiet and didn’t shriek?

  Destiny would be their leader. Of course. They’d all run around at one another’s houses, shrieking and laughing together and having a wonderful time and leaving Sophie out.

  Just like Nora.

  Oh, no they don’t, Sophie thought as she stood up. Not if she could help it. She was tired of being ignored. She, Sophie Hartley, was not going to let people ignore her. Not anymore.

  Starting with Nora.

  Sophie heard voices on the stairs and looked wildly around her room. There must be something she could do…

  By the time the girls filed past her door, she was skipping in a circle with her hands held out, singing, “Here we go round the banana bush, the banana bush, the banana bush…”

  The girls stopped.

  “Is that your little sister?” one of them asked.

  Ha! Sophie thought. It was working.

  “Unfortunately.” Nora didn’t sound happy.

  “What’s she doing?” the other girl said, laughing.

  “Acting crazy, as usual,” Nora said. “Don’t pay any attention to her.”

  Good. Let them think she was crazy. When they got to know Nora better, they’d realize it ran in the family. “Oh, did my baby gorilla fall down?” Sophie crooned, bending down to pick up her imaginary gorilla tenderly. “Upsy-daisy, come to Mama,” she said, cradling it in her arms. “That’s a good little gorilla.”

  “Gorilla?” said one girl.

  “This I’ve got to watch,” said the other girl.

  “We don’t have time,” Nora said. “Your mothers are going to pick you up in an hour. We haven’t figured out a strategy about You-Know-Who yet. Come on.”

  “Wave bye-bye to the nice people, Patsy,” Sophie said as the girls continued down the hall. “Bye-bye, girls.”

  “I know why you’re doing this,” Nora said, leaning against the door of Sophie’s room after her friends had left.

  Sophie kept writing. “Doing what? All I’m doing is my homework.”

  “You’re doing it to annoy me, but it won’t work.”

  “Look who’s here, Patsy. It’s Aunty Nora,” Sophie said. She lovingly stroked Patsy’s invisible head. “Wouldn’t you like to give Aunty Nora a big kiss?”

  “You are so immature,” Nora said. “When are you going to start acting your age?”

  “Come back, Aunty Nora!” Sophie called to Nora’s retreating back. “Patsy wants to give you a kiss!”

  Wasn’t it immature to keep slamming doors? Sophie wondered. And why, if it was her age, did people like Destiny and Nora keep telling her how to act? If it was her age, shouldn’t Sophie be the one to decide how she acted?

  If this was growing up, Sophie didn’t want any part of it.

  SEVEN

  The last period of the day was devoted to writing.

  “Get your journals and settle down,” Mrs. Stearns called from the front of the room. “Quickly, please. No talking. We’re running late.”

  “There’s a problem.”

  Brendan squatted down next to Sophie in front of the cubbies, his face about two inches from hers, and spoke in a low voice.

  “What do you mean?” she asked, leaning away from his tunafish breath.

  “Gorillas hoot.”

  “Hoot?” It came out louder than Sophie had intended.

  “Brendan and Sophie?” called Mrs. Stearns.

  “What do you mean, hoot?” Sophie whispered.

  “It’s the sound they make,” Brendan said. “The sound of a gorilla hooting can carry for a mile in the forest.”

  “So?”

  “So,” he said, “if it’s going to sleep in your bedroom, what will your parents say when it starts hooting in the middle of the night?”

  “Brendan and Sophie!”

  Sophie heard giggling as she hurried back to her desk. Brendan and Sophie. How embarrassing.

  Darn Mrs. Stearns, Sophie thought as she opened her journal to a clean page and picked up her pencil. She had ears like a bat. No, like satellite dishes.

  Two huge, round satellite dishes like the one on the Hartleys’ roof. It picked up every channel in the universe. Mrs. Stearns’s ears were like that. Except she had two: one on either side of her head.

  And those eyes. Those x-ray eyes…

  “Are you writing or drawing?”

  Sophie looked up. Mrs. Stearns was looming over her desk, looking down at the exposed pages of Sophie’s journal. The expression on her face turned Sophie’s blood to ice.

  “May I see?”

  Before Sophie could think of a way to stop her, Mrs. Stearns reached out and picked up Sophie’s journal. Her hand seemed to move in slow motion. Sophie’s eyes followed it down … and up…

  Mrs. Stearns was looking at her journal. Looking … and looking … and looking. Sophie felt as if she were in a dream, where events were happening whether she wanted them to or not.

  “Interesting,” said Mrs. Stearns.

  Make that a nightmare.

  In Sophie’s experience, grownups said something was “interesting” only when they didn’t like it. Mrs. Stearns flipped to the page before the one Sophie had been working on. She flipped to the page after.

  When she finally stopped flipping, she looked at Sophie over the top of her glasses for a second. Then she turned Sophie’s journal around so Sophie could admire the face with a huge, round disk on either side and two crossed eyes behind glasses.

  This was definitely a case of Sophie’s not being sure whether her subject was going to like the picture or hate it.

  Sophie prayed that the little wings coming out of the person’s shoulders didn’t look like bat wings. They could easily be angel’s wings, couldn’t they? Couldn’t someone looking at the picture think Sophie had drawn a creature who saw and heard everything and who was so good and kind, like an angel, that she’d never yell at one of her students?

  “Is this supposed to be me?” said Mrs. Stearns.

  Sophie knew better than to rush her answer.

  From personal experience she knew how easy it was to rush into a confession only to find that the thing you were confessing to wasn’t the thing you were being accused of having done, but a whole different thing. So the minute you confessed, you were guilty of two things. It was amazing how often that happened.

  “You?” said Sophie.

  “Yes, me.” Mrs. Stearns smiled. “You’ve heard that word before.”

  Sophie narrowed her eyes and stared at her drawing as if she were giving the question careful consideration. “That depends,” she said carefully. “Do you like it?”

  Mrs. Stearns looked at it again. “It’s very funny.”

  “Then it’s you,” said Sophie.

  “That was so amazing,” Alice said as they ran, giggling, toward the pickup area at the front of the school to wait for Mrs. Hartley. She was taking them to a craft store to buy materials for a class project.

  “What did you draw?” said Jenna. “We were all dying to see.”

  Her mouth dropped open when Sophie told them. Alice’s, too.

  “I would have died,” Alice said, slapping her hand over her heart.

  “You? What about me?” said Sophie.

>   It was the last time she was ever—ever—going to draw in school again. Except possibly in art class. She would never forget the way her heart hammered in her chest as Mrs. Stearns carefully tore out the page, walked back with it to her own desk, put it in her drawer, picked up her book, and started to read.

  Without saying another word to Sophie.

  “Number nine on the audacity scale,“Jenna said, holding up her palm.

  “I’m still mad at you,” said Sophie.

  “Okay. Nine point five,” Jenna offered.

  It was as much of an apology as Jenna ever made. A nine point five on the scale Jenna’s brothers used to keep score of brash moves was the highest compliment she could give.

  Sophie slapped her palm.

  They were still talking about it when Mrs. Hartley pulled up to the curb in her red rental car.

  “Hi, girls,” she said as they piled into the back. “How was school?”

  Sophie and Jenna and Alice exchanged one highly charged glance and yelled, “Great!” before collapsing in a giggling tangle. Mrs. Hartley was smiling at them indulgently in the rearview mirror when an all-too-familiar voice that seemed to be coming from inside the car made Sophie look up.

  Mrs. Stearns was leaning in the front window.

  “…don’t think I’ve seen you since our last conference,” Mrs. Stearns was saying.

  “That’s right,” Mrs. Hartley said. “How’ve you been?”

  Sophie sat up. Next to her, Jenna and Alice did, too.

  ‘Just fine.” Mrs. Stearns smiled at the three frozen faces in the back seat and then looked at Mrs. Hartley again. “It’s quite an experience having Sophie in class.”

  “Oh, dear,” Mrs. Hartley said lightly. “I do hope she’s behaving.”

  “That, she is,” said Mrs. Stearns. “In her own Sophie style.”

  “Oh, dear.” Mrs. Hartley’s voice wasn’t nearly as light.

  They were having a parent-teacher conference right in front of her, Sophie thought uneasily, looking back and forth between them. Was that legal?

  “She’s quite the burgeoning portrait artist,” said Mrs. Stearns.

  Sophie didn’t know burgeoning, but she certainly knew portrait.

  So did her mother.