The Hot List Read online

  “Uh-huh,” said Maddie, who quickly turned away from me—probably busy texting Nia. Squid had been annoying people for as long as I could remember. Not only was he the shortest guy in the seventh grade, he was also the noisiest and weirdest. I mean, who but he would bring chocolate-covered grasshoppers in his lunch for dessert, juggle them in the air, and eat them?

  I needed to go someplace private. Where could I go? Then I thought of the perfect place. I pointed to the girls’ bathroom. “In there.”

  “The bathroom?” Maddie did her forehead wrinkle. “What’s in here?” she asked, following me in. I could see her taking in the faucets with the usual drip, the salmon pink–tiled walls with some faint permanent Sharpie marks. She gave me another baffled look. “Soph, I don’t get it.”

  I didn’t get it myself, which made me upset. “Shhh!” I put my fingers to my lips. “Somebody could be inside.” I crouched down to see if there were feet in any of the stalls. I’m kind of shoe-obsessed and can recognize half our class by the shoes they wear. “Nobody. Good. We can talk.”

  “Oka-ay. Will you finally tell me what’s going on?”

  Darting around, my eyes latched on that poem about Mr. Pan, the gym teacher, that someone wrote on the wall, then, suddenly—faster than you can flush a note down a toilet—I had it. The great, big, fun idea I was looking for catapulted inside my head.

  “This!” I waved the sparkly pen and the hot lists. I felt a little bit like a fraud to be so dramatic and importantsounding, like I was being Nia or something, but it was working. Maddie gazed at me, as if I was the preview to the Avatar sequel. “Watch,” I announced. “And be amazed.”

  I pushed opened the end stall, which was more spacious and had an opaque window with a ledge we could lean against. “C’mon,” I said, motioning to Maddie. We crammed into the stall, closing the door and giggling. I then wrote on the back of the door, in all caps, the hot list.

  “You are craaaa-zy!” sang out Maddie, putting her phone away in her back pocket.

  Excitement bubbles filled my chest, a few of them popping under the weight of a little fear. “Shhh. Not so loud!”

  “This is so messed-up.” Maggie giggled.

  “Yup.” Thank goodness my dad was at home, getting ready for his date. If he saw me in this bathroom, writing on the back of this door, he would not be happy. I smiled. “Watch! I’m going to combine your list with mine, and create one uberlist.” I held up both lists in one hand as I wrote.

  “Whoa,” said Maddie. “Your dad will kill you if he finds out.”

  Yeah, I’d second that. How I wish I’d had a different idea, like making confetti out of those hot lists and flushing them down the toilet!

  But nooooooo, I had to have that one genius idea in order to get Maddie’s attention. I mean, in the pit of my stomach, I knew it was bad. Like wearing-pajamas-to class-to-start-a-new-fashion-trend bad. I mean, what was I thinking?—announcing to the world who was hot and who wasn’t. That might have been texty-bloggy material for someone like Nia and her crew, but I should’ve known better—those lists were meant to be secret. Instead, I ignored my flip-floppy, squeezy-icky feeling inside and kept on writing.

  “Guard the door,” I whispered to Maddie. At least I had the sense to be paranoid about someone catching me. What I should’ve been paying attention to was who was about to be leaving my life for good.

  Chapter Two

  Maddie pulled on my elbow. “Let me write.” I couldn’t help smiling. Maddie was getting excited about our Hot List. Still, I couldn’t risk Maddie using the pen. “Everyone knows your handwriting. Sorry. Who else in the school does calligraphy?”

  She shrugged. “Probably no one, except Madame Kearns. And not very well.”

  “Exactly. That’s why I’m doing all caps, so no one will ever know our identities.”

  “But who’s going to go first? Hayden—”

  “Blue,” I corrected, reminding her once again to use our special code name for him. Blue because of his sea-blue eyes. Blue because that’s how I felt when I couldn’t see Hayden in English and social studies (he was ONLY in French, gym, math, and homeroom with me). Blue because he always wore blue jeans, but regular color shirts and shoes and stuff. He pretty much epitomized cool. He didn’t go around speaking a ton. Kind of like me, only he fell into the extremely cool category, and I was semicool—the sporty girl who wasn’t part of a big group. A one-best-friend kind of person.

  And Maddie was my best friend since fourth grade. We had done everything together. In fourth grade, we raked paths through the woods behind Maddie’s house and pretended they were for escaping vampires. In fifth grade, we jumped on our trampoline for gazillions of hours, and made little obstacle courses for Rusty when he was a puppy. Last year, in sixth grade, we survived getting our candy snatched by a couple of punk kids while trick-or-treating, and Maddie recorded me singing my favorite song, using GarageBand. And so far, seventh grade has been much better than everyone says.

  Maddie’s older sister, Gwen, swore that seventh grade was the worst year in middle school because everyone changes and gets all moody—swapping friends as easily as trading Silly Bandz. I was glad to know that because I, for one, didn’t plan on changing. I liked things exactly as they were.

  “You know, you really should say something to Blue,” said Maddie. “About liking him.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You could drop a hint, like carrying Blue’s lacrosse stick for him.” Maddie smiled. Hayden was famous for carrying his lacrosse stick everywhere he went, even now, when it wasn’t lacrosse season.

  “Yeah, right,” I said again, as my stomach bunched up.

  “I bet he’d like you. You’re so pretty.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said, running my fingers through my hair, which is probably my best feature. It’s long and dark brown and essentially frizz-free. My eyes are hazel, which means they’re neither green nor brown, like they can’t make up their mind. I guess, if I were to start wearing more makeup, I could glam myself up more, but that’s not me. I’m more of a lip-gloss-and-a-touch-of-mascara kind of girl.

  “Okay, we need to decide who’s going to go first,” I said, irritated that Maddie had pulled out her phone again to check for her new messages. “Blue or Square?”

  “Square,” said Maddie, putting up her thumb for her crush, Auggie.

  “Definitely Blue,” I said, thinking that Hayden just had to be number one.

  “I’ve got a coin!” Maddie pulled a penny out of her pocket, and we flipped for it. I picked tails and won.

  As I jotted down Hayden’s name at the top of the List, I thought the sparkly ink looked extra sparkly. Softly, I hummed the tune to this new song that I really liked.

  “Let me write. I can do caps too.” Maddie got that frowny look again.

  I continued to hum and ignored Maddie’s pleas because I was afraid she’d make even her caps look, somehow, like calligraphy.

  “C’mon,” she begged.

  I sang a little louder this time, actually singing the lyrics instead of just humming along to the tune.

  “Sophie, you’re such a good singer,” gushed Maddie. “You could be professional.”

  I stopped singing. “Yeah, right.” When I’m by myself I love to sing, but I can’t sing in front of people at all. Well, except for Maddie, my dad, and Rusty. And what’s a dog going to say about my singing?

  “It’s true,” said Maddie. “You’re the best. You have to sing at the school talent show. I think it’s in December; that’s three short months.” The talent show was a fundraiser for leadership, and it was a huge deal.

  “Yeah. Like that’s ever going to happen. Can you imagine me on stage? Never!”

  “I don’t get it. You play soccer in front of people.”

  “That’s different. You look at the ball, not the people watching the ball.”

  “Okay, I’m just sayin’,” said Maddie. “You’re really good. Ah, c’mon now, give me the pen. Please? P
lease?”

  “All right,” I conceded. “Fine. Go ahead. But in all caps!” As I handed her the lists, I noticed that her list ran a little longer down the page than mine, because she had added a name on the bottom and then crossed it off. I hadn’t noticed that before. “Who did you cross out?” I asked.

  “No one. I just misspelled a name, and rewrote it.”

  “Oh, just wondering.” I handed Maddie the pen, and she finished writing up the list, alternating between the guys on her list and mine. And then, because our list didn’t seem long enough, we added other guys until we had twenty total.

  Suddenly, Maddie’s eyes started twinkling. “I think we should add girls, too.”

  “Girls?”

  “It’s not just boys who are hot.” She shook her hips. “I’m hot! And you, too!”

  “Hey, I’m not going to stop you. Go for it.”

  Then, next to the guys’ Hot List, she started creating a girls’ Hot List and writing in girls’ names. When I saw the first name that she wrote, I inwardly groaned. Nia, of course.

  “She has the best hair in the school,” said Maddie.

  It was true. Nia had these Taylor Swift, golden blond curls. She added the rest of Nia’s long-haired, flowy posse—Ava, McKenzie, Amber, and Sierra. And then her eyes gleamed. “Now I’m going to put me and you on the Hot List.”

  “No,” I said, grabbing the pen away from her. “Don’t you dare.”

  “Why not?”

  I could hear an adult calling down the hall to someone, so I lowered my voice. “Because if we put our names, and anyone happens to see it, they’ll know we wrote it. C’mon. Let’s be serious. We’re not Hot List material.”

  “That’s not true,” said Maddie. “You’re so pretty.” She glanced at my long, jean capri–clad legs. “And you’re model tall, and you’d be taller if you didn’t slump.”

  “Thanks for sounding like my dad.”

  “Sorry.” She bit her bottom lip. “But it’s true. If I put my name on the Hot List, it’d be a dead giveaway that I wrote it.” She glanced at her hoodie, which she had paired with checkered leggings and strappy sandals. I had patiently explained to her earlier in the morning that if you’re going to go for casual, you’ve got to extend that all the way down to your footwear. But unfortunately, those were the only clothes she had packed for the sleepover.

  Maddie tapped her owl-shaped lavender glasses. “These are another problem. I can’t wait until I get contacts.” And she looked down at her chest. “Still like a brick wall down there.” She smiled up at me. “But I could put you on the List.”

  “Maddie, to get on the Hot List you’ve got to play the popularity game. Sometimes I wear any old hoodie to school. I don’t do the talk. I’m not into the drama. Am I part of a girl clan? No. You’ve got to be seen as someone who’s part of an inner circle. And that’s just not my thing.”

  “Okay,” she grabbed the pen back. “I don’t agree with you, but whatever. What about Heather and Nicole?”

  “They’re fine, but definitely not Hot List material. They’re too off on their own.” I watched as Maddie slowly added a couple more seventh graders, and then a bunch of sixth graders who were really cute—Clara Pessereau, Sarah Ruinsky, and Jane Cockrell. She made her letters really perfect-looking.

  “Give me the pen,” I said. “We need to add some eighth-grade girls, too.” So I added a bunch of girls that I knew from the soccer team until we had twenty names. The same amount as the guys. Maddie checked her phone again. “Ta-da!” I said, standing back from it.

  Maddie smiled at me. “The official Hot List.”

  We put our arms around each other’s shoulders, admiring our work. And the pure insanity of it. “I can’t believe we just did this,” I said.

  “Me either. But it was your idea.”

  “You helped write it,” I countered.

  “Everyone’s going to see this on Monday, and the whole school’s going to be chatting about why Ava came before McKenzie, and wondering who likes Hayden, who likes Auggie, and then start trying to figure it all out. It will be like that time that somebody left an anonymous love note on the bleachers in gym, but they addressed it to S and signed it C.”

  I laughed, but my stomach started to flutter and felt queasy. “No, it won’t be like that because I’m going to wipe the whole thing off with a paper towel.”

  Maddie twirled the pen in her fingers. “Sorry. It’s a permanent marker.”

  “It is? Guess I kind of knew that.” We both laughed.

  Suddenly, I heard the click click of heels clomping toward the bathroom. “What’s that?” Maddie whispered.

  “Uh-oh!” I said. “Someone’s coming.”

  I pulled the stall door shut and locked it. Then I realized that two people in a stall looked sort of weird. “There’s two of us in here,” I blurted. “Hurry, jump on the toilet,” I panic-whispered.

  Maddie gave me her you-are-so-crazy look. “No, you jump up.”

  As the footsteps grew louder, I hopped up on the toilet and braced myself with my arms so I wouldn’t fall in. Maddie started giggling. “Stop it,” I pleaded. “They’ll hear.”

  That’s when I glanced down at Maddie’s shoes. Right. She was wearing her lavender sandals. Only Maddie wore lavender sandals at Travis. It was her signature color. If whoever was about to walk into the bathroom checked out the shoes of the people in the bathroom, like I had, they’d know it was her in a second. I furiously motioned at her shoes, then for Maddie to hop up on the toilet with me, which she did.

  Only, toilets aren’t really big enough for two people, so there we were. I was straddling half the rim. And Maddie was straddling the other half. And we were clinging to each other so we wouldn’t fall into the bowl. I had to bite down on my lip not to laugh. This was soooooo insane.

  “Rehearsals took forever.” It sounded like it was Rose Workman, an eighth grader who was the star of every show, including last year’s musical, Footloose, and the only girl at the school taller than me.

  “I know it,” said someone else in irritation. “I had to call my mom to tell her to pick me up late.”

  Then one of the girls clicked right over to our stall. I tried not to breathe.

  “Hey, it’s locked,” said Irritated Girl.

  “That’s weird,” said Rose.

  Then I heard Irritated Girl open up the stall next to ours.

  Maddie squeezed her eyes shut, and I silently begged, Please don’t hear us. Please, please, please. We gave each other this look that said, This is so messed up!

  Finally, I heard the toilet flush and Irritated Girl washed her hands, which took forever. Obviously, she was one of those germaphobes.

  Then they both talked about how boring blocking the show was and to hurry because Mrs. Regis wanted to lock up. Then finally, FINALLY, they left—only Maddie and I still didn’t move until we were sure that they were actually gone.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” whispered Maddie. “We could get locked in the school for the whole weekend.”

  “No, wait. They could come back,” I whispered back.

  “Why?”

  “One last look in the mirror. I don’t know.”

  So we stayed like that for a couple more paranoid minutes until I fell and banged against the toilet paper dispenser. “Ow!” The pen flew out of my hands and clattered onto the tile. “You know we’ve got to throw it away. It’s evidence.” I stuffed it into the bottom of the trash.

  “Farewell,” said Maddie.

  “Nice knowing you,” I said. Suddenly, I felt an ache in my chest. And it was the oddest thing, but tears sprang into my eyes. It was not like me to be all weepy. “This is crazy. It’s just a pen.”

  But it wasn’t really. As we walked out of the bathroom and down the hall, carefully avoiding anyone, I thought about how Maddie had mailed the pen as well as a journal to me from Spain. It had been perfect timing for my birthday present because I had been really feeling alone without her around duri
ng the summer. She found it in an art shop in Barcelona where her dad was doing architectural research. The journal was still sitting unopened at the bottom of my drawer.

  “Uh-huh,” she said, as her phone made that text bingy sound.

  “Nia again?” I said irritably. That girl didn’t give up.

  Glancing at the screen, Maddie shook her head. “Nope, your dad.”

  “Why’s he texting you?”

  “Because you forgot your phone. Big dummy.”

  “Oh, right.” I shrugged. I had left it in the pocket of my backpack. That was more like something Maddie would do, not me. I was definitely not myself today.

  “Apparently, you’re supposed to be back before he leaves for his date.”

  “The date.” I bit my lip. “I can’t believe it’s already been an hour.” I had promised I’d be back in forty-five minutes. “I swear, it feels like it’s been fifteen minutes.”

  That’s when we both bolted out of the school to get back to my house. “Promise not to tell anyone about this,” I said as we jogged over to Rusty.

  “I promise,” said Maddie.

  Chapter Three

  As I put my books in my locker before homeroom on Monday morning, my stomach felt twisty as I thought about the Hot List. “Do you think anyone’s seen it yet?” I whispered to Maddie, who was trying to close her locker.

  “Seen what?”

  “You know what.” Beside me, Brianna Evans twirled the combination to her locker, and Trent Eckhart tossed his baseball cap into the locker next to mine. I flicked my head toward the bathroom.

  “Oh, that.” Maddie pushed her locker again, but it wasn’t completely closing. I could see a binder sticking out of the bottom.

  “Here,” I shoved the binder in with the rest of her mess, then quickly kicked the door shut before an avalanche of books thundered out of the locker.

  “Thanks!” said Maddie.

  I shrugged. “No problem.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw two health teachers, Mrs. Moriarity and Ms. Crenshaw, talking and glancing over at me. Mrs. Moriarity pointed at me, while Ms. Crenshaw craned forward. My heart began thumping. Did they know we wrote up the Hot List?