SIOBHAN VIVIAN is the author of the young adult novel The List, as well as The Last Boy and Girl in the World, Not That Kind of Girl, Same Difference, A Little Friendly Advice, and the Burn for Burn trilogy, cowritten with Jenny Han. Visit her at www.SiobhanVivian.com.

For Mommy

Acknowledgements

Thank you to David Levithan at Scholastic, Emily van Beek & Molly Jaffa at Folio Literary, and Anna Baggaley and the entire team at Harlequin UK.

“The perception of beauty is a moral test.”

— HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Epigraph

PROLOGUE

MONDAY

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

TUESDAY

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

WEDNESDAY

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

THURSDAY

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

FRIDAY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

SATURDAY

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

CHAPTER FORTY

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Endpages

Copyright

PROLOGUE

For as long as anyone can remember, the students of Mount Washington High have arrived at school on the last Monday in September to find a list naming the prettiest and the ugliest girl in each grade.

This year will be no different.

Roughly four hundred copies of the list currently hang in locations of varying conspicuousness. One is taped above the urinal in the first-floor boys’ bathroom, one covers the just-announced cast for the fall drama production of Pennies from Heaven, one is tucked between pamphlets for dating violence and depression in the nurse’s office. The list is affixed to locker doors, slipped inside classroom desks, stapled to bulletin boards.

The bottom right corner of each copy has been dimpled by an embossing stamp, leaving behind the scar of Mount Washington High rendered as a line drawing — before the indoor pool, the new gymnasium, and a wing of high-tech science labs were added. This stamp had certified every graduation diploma before it was stolen from the principal’s desk drawer decades ago. It is now a piece of mythic contraband used to discourage copycats or competitors.

No one knows for sure who authors the list each year, or how the responsibility is passed along, but secrecy has not impeded tradition. If anything, the guaranteed anonymity makes the judgments of the list appear more absolute, impartial, unbiased.

And so, with every new list, the labels that normally slice and dice the girls of Mount Washington High into a billion different distinctions — poseurs, populars, users, losers, social climbers, athletes, airheads, good girls, bad girls, girlie girls, guy’s girls, sluts, closet sluts, born-again virgins, prudes, over-achievers, slackers, stoners, outcasts, originals, geeks, and freaks, to name just a few — will melt away. The list is refreshing in that sense. It can reduce an entire female population down to three clear-cut groups.

Prettiest.

Ugliest.

And everyone else.

This morning, before the first homeroom bell, every girl at Mount Washington High will learn if her name is on the list or not.

The ones who aren’t will wonder what the experience, good or bad, might have been like.

The eight girls who are won’t have a choice.

MONDAY

CHAPTER ONE

Abby Warner strolls around the ginkgo tree, one hand drifting lazily over the thick calluses of bark. A breeze nips at her legs, bare between the hem of her corduroy skirt and her ballet flats. It is practically tights weather, but Abby will avoid wearing them for as long as she can stand the chill. Or until the last of her summer tan fades away. Whichever comes first.

The spot is known as Freshman Island. It is where the more popular ninth graders of Mount Washington assemble in the mornings and after school. During springtime, nearly everyone avoids Freshman Island because of the putrid smell of the pale orange ginkgo bulbs that thud swollen onto the ground, expelling a pungent gas. This is a fine arrangement, though, because by spring the freshmen will nearly be sophomores, and will avoid anything that might identify them as younger.

Abby’s parents dropped her and her older sister, Fern, off here what feels like hours ago, because Fern has some debate club thing. Or is it academic decathlon on Mondays? Abby yawns. She can’t remember which. Either way, these kinds of mornings suck, because Abby has to get up extra early to have time to shower, do her hair, and put together something cute to wear. She does it all without turning on the light, so as not to wake Fern, with whom she shares the largest bedroom in the Warner home. Meanwhile, Fern sleeps until the last possible minute because she has no morning routine to speak of, besides brushing her teeth and cycling through a rotation of jeans and boxy T-shirts.

This morning, Fern had proudly put on a new T-shirt that she’d bought online. It had an ornate crest printed on the chest, proclaiming allegiance to a rogue sect of warriors from The Blix Effect, a series of fantasy novels all of Fern’s friends are obsessed with. And in the car, Fern had asked Abby to give her two French braids, one on each side of her head, like the ones the female main character in The Blix Effect wears into battle.

Fern only ever wants Abby to give her two French braids, even though Abby can do a knot or an up-twist — hairstyles Abby feels are better, more sophisticated choices for her sixteen-year-old sister. But Abby never says no to Fern’s requests, even though she finds it weird that Fern wants to dress in what is essentially a costume, because the braids do make Fern look better, or at least like she cares a little bit about how she looks.

School buses and cars begin to appear. One by one, Abby is warmed by her friends’ hugs. They all spent the weekend sending pictures of potential dresses back and forth to one another for the homecoming dance on Saturday night. The dress Abby is completely in love with — a black satin halter with a thick white bow cinching the waist — is on hold in her size at a store in the mall. Her only hesitation is that none of her freshmen girlfriends seem to know how dressed up you’re supposed to get for high school dances that aren’t prom.

“Ooh! Lisa!” Abby says when her best friend, Lisa Honeycutt, comes walking over from the parking lot. “Did you show Bridget my homecoming dress? Does she think it’s too formal?”

Lisa throws one arm around Abby and pulls her in for a hug. “My sister said it’s perfect! Pretty and fun, but not in a trying-too-hard kind of way.”

Abby sighs with relief at having received Bridget’s approval. Abby and Lisa are the only two girls in their group of friends who have older sisters who also go to Mount Washington. Not that Abby’s Fern is any match for Lisa’s Bridget.

Abby had been invited to spend a week this past summer at Lisa’s vacation home at Whipple Beach. Thank god, otherwise her summer vacation would have consisted entirely of tagging along on Fern’s college visits.

During that week, Abby and Lisa snuck into Bridget’s bedroom to look around. They stuck their heads in Bridget’s closet. They found a few boys’ phone numbers hidden in Bridget’s sock drawer, and held her charm bracelet against their wrists. They tried on all of her makeup, which was perfectly arranged atop Bridget’s white wicker vanity. Abby had always dreamed of having a vanity, but there was no place for one.

Bridget mainly stayed by herself that week, texting her friends back home and reading a stack of books that she’d brought with her, and she only went to the beach with Abby and Lisa once for a couple of hours. But on the one rainy night, Bridget let them hang out with her in her bedroom. She curled their hair with her thick barrel iron and let them watch a corny old movie from the foot of her big fluffy bed. Abby and Lisa asked Bridget questions about what Mount Washington High was really like, and Bridget gave them lots of helpful, frank advice, like to be cautious when hooking up with older guys, to gossip only with the friends you completely trust, and how to hide the smell of liquor on your breath from your parents.

Fern, meanwhile, offered nothing beyond recommendations of which math teachers at Mount Washington really knew their stuff. And Abby wondered, more than once, if Bridget even knew who Fern was, despite the fact that both girls were in the same grade.

Lisa is about to go chat with their other friends when Abby leans in and whispers, “Did you finish the Earth Science worksheet?”

Lisa makes a frowny face. “Abby, you can’t keep copying my homework! You’re never going to learn anything.”

Abby combs her strawberry blond hair with her fingers. “Pretty please? I just got too caught up in looking at dresses last night. It’ll be the last time.” She puts her hand over her heart. “Promise.”

Lisa sighs, but she heads into the school to get it from her locker.

Abby calls out, “Love you like a sis!”

A few minutes later, Lisa sprints back outside, her black ponytail swishing wildly. “Abby!” she screams, loud enough so that everyone at Freshman Island turns to look. Lisa dives forward the last few feet and grabs Abby to keep herself from falling. “You’re the prettiest freshman girl at Mount Washington High!”

Abby blinks. “I’m what?”

“You’re on the list, dummy! The list! My sister is on it, too.” Lisa looks at the other girls, her braces twinkling in a proud smile. “Bridget got named the prettiest girl in the junior class!”

Abby’s jaw goes slack with surprise. Even though she isn’t sure what Lisa is talking about, it is clearly news to be excited about. Luckily, one of their other friends asks, “What list?” and then everyone turns to Lisa for an explanation.

As Lisa fills them in, Abby nods along, pretending that she isn’t as clueless as the rest of them. Of course Fern hadn’t bothered to mention this very important thing, just like Fern wouldn’t have a clue about which dresses were right for the homecoming dance. Sometimes Abby wished that Bridget was her sister.

Okay. Lots of times.

Abby’s friends take turns bouncing her around with congratulatory hugs, and each squeeze makes her heart flutter a little faster. Though the freshmen boys act uninterested in their celebration, Abby notices their game of hacky sack inch closer to where she is standing.

But it still hasn’t sunk in. There are a lot of pretty freshmen girls at Mount Washington, and Abby is friends with most of them. Did she really deserve to be at the top of the pack?

It is a strange, foreign place for her to be.

“I’m sorry you girls didn’t get picked,” Abby says suddenly to everyone, and she partly means it.

“Please,” Lisa says, pointing at her mouth. “Who’s going to vote me prettiest of anything with these railroad tracks running across my face?”

“Shut up!” Abby cries, knocking into Lisa. “You’re so pretty! Way prettier than me.” Abby honestly thinks so. In fact, she is lucky to have made the list this year, because when Lisa finally gets her braces removed, all bets will be off. Lisa is at least five inches taller than Abby, with long black hair that always looks shiny and a tiny little mole at the top of her left cheek. She has a great body, with curves and boobs. Really, the only thing that isn’t perfect about Lisa is her braces. And maybe her feet, which are kind of big. But people usually overlook that sort of thing.

“You are the worst at taking compliments, Abby,” Lisa says with a laugh. “But this is seriously huge. Everyone in school will know who you are now.”

Abby smiles. She’s never been more excited about the next four years than she is right this minute. “I wish I knew who picked me so I could thank them.” The idea of one girl, or maybe even a delegation, bestowing this honor on her is extremely exciting. She has friends, older girls, she didn’t even know about. “So … where did you see the list?”

“I saw a copy on the bulletin board near the gym,” Lisa says. “But they are everywhere.”

“Do you think I could take one?” Abby wonders. She wants to keep the list someplace special. Maybe in a scrapbook, or a memory box.

“Definitely! Let’s go grab one.”

The girls hold hands as they run into school.

“So who else is on this list?” Abby asks. “Besides me and your sister?”

“Well, the ugliest freshman is Danielle DeMarco.”

Abby slows down. “Wait. The list names ugly girls, too?” In the excitement, she’d missed that part.

“Yup,” Lisa says, pulling her along. “Wait until you see it. Whoever wrote it this year put funny things underneath everyone’s names. Like Danielle’s called Dan the Man.”

Abby isn’t friends with Danielle DeMarco, but they are in the same gym class. Abby had watched Danielle kill it during the mandatory mile run last week. It was admirable, and Abby could have probably run faster than the crappy seventeen minutes she ended up with, but she didn’t want to be sweaty for the rest of the day. Of course she feels bad that Danielle has been named the ugliest girl in their class, but Danielle seems tough enough to handle it. And, hopefully, Danielle will understand that there are other girls who could have been named the ugliest, too. Just like in Abby’s case. It’s truly the luck of the draw.

“What did it say about me?”

Lisa lowers her head and whispers, “It congratulated you for overcoming genetics,” before letting out an embarrassed giggle.

Fern.

Abby bites the inside of her cheek and then asks, “Is Fern the ugliest junior?”

“Oh, no,” Lisa says quickly. “It’s that freaky girl Sarah Singer, who scowls on the bench near Freshman Island.” Abby lowers her eyes and nods slowly. She guesses Lisa can see her guilt, because Lisa pats her on the back. “Look, Abby. Don’t worry about the genetics thing. It doesn’t mention Fern by name. I bet a lot of people don’t even know you two are sisters!”

“Maybe,” Abby says, hoping what Lisa says is true. But even if most of the kids at school don’t know they’re related, her teachers sure do. It has been one of the worst things about going to Mount Washington: watching her teachers realize, after the first week or so, that Abby is nowhere near as smart as Fern.

Lisa continues, “Anyway, Fern always gets the recognition. And every time she does, you’re so happy for her. Remember last year, when you made me sit through that three-hour Latin poetry reading contest Fern competed in at the university?”

“That was actually a big deal. Fern got picked out of the whole high school to recite it, and she won a bunch of scholarship money.”

Lisa rolls her eyes. “Right, right. I remember. Now it’s your turn to get some attention.”

Abby squeezes her friend’s hand. Yeah, the genetics comment is kind of mean. But Lisa is right. It’s not like Abby herself said it. And she is always cheering on Fern for her academic stuff. She never even complained once about those early-morning wakeups or all the college visits they’d gone on this summer instead of a vacation.

Not out loud, anyway.

When they get close to the gym, Lisa jogs a few steps ahead. “Here it is,” she announces, tapping the paper with her finger. “In black and white.”

Abby finds her name near the top of the list. Her name! Seeing it makes the whole thing way more real, feel more earned. Abby is, officially, the prettiest girl in her freshman class.

She’s not sure how long she stands there staring at it. But eventually Lisa pinches her arm. Hard.

Abby tears her attention off the bulletin board. Fern is marching down the hall with incredible purpose, her book-bag straps pulled tight over her shoulders, the tails of her French braids swinging side to side.

If Fern knows Abby is on the list, Abby certainly can’t tell. Fern walks by exactly the same way she usually does at school — as if Abby doesn’t exist.

Abby waits until Fern rounds the corner. Then she pulls the list off the bulletin board, using her pinky nail to ease out the staples, careful not to tear the corners.

CHAPTER TWO

From a block away, Danielle DeMarco realizes that she’s missed her bus. It is too quiet, especially for a Monday. Nothing in the air but the typical morning sounds — chirping birds, the click click click of rising automatic garage doors, the tinny rumble of empty trash cans being dragged back up driveways.

Late to school, starving for breakfast, utterly exhausted. Not such a great way to start off the week.

But Danielle still thinks last night was worth it.

She’d been asleep for two hours when her phone rang. “Hello?” she asked, her word wrapped in a yawn.

“How can you be sleeping? It’s only midnight.”

Danielle checked that her bedroom door was shut. Her parents wouldn’t like Andrew calling so late. They still referred to him as her friend from camp, despite the million times she’d corrected them. As if boyfriend was a tongue twister. Or maybe that was the thing they worried about, because Andrew was a year older. But for someone her parents lumped in the same category as her best friend, Hope, they certainly had a lot of rules about when, where, and how Danielle could spend time with Andrew.

That had been the hardest part about coming home from Camp Clover Lake, where they’d both worked as counselors this past summer. They’d lost the freedom to hang out when they wanted, talk when they wanted. There were no more nights of Andrew sneaking through the dark and scratching the screen in the window above her bed. No more taking the paddleboats out to the center of the lake and waiting until the breeze brought them back to the dock.

Summer already felt like a million years ago.

Danielle pulled her comforter over her head and kept her voice low. “Lights out, campers,” she teased.

Andrew sighed. “I’m sorry I woke you. I’m just way too amped up to sleep. I’ve got tons of adrenaline stored up from the game and no way to get rid of it.”

Danielle and Hope had watched from the stands that afternoon as Andrew was stuck in a perpetual warm-up routine on the sideline while the football field got torn up by other players’ cleats. He’d bounce on his toes, do jumping jacks, or run a sprint of high-knee lifts to stay warm. After each play, Andrew glanced over at the varsity football coach, fingers laced around the face guard of his gleaming white helmet. Hopeful.

She felt terrible for him. It was the fourth game of the season, and he hadn’t seen one minute of playing time. What would it have mattered, giving sophomores like Andrew a chance? Mount Washington was losing by three touchdowns at halftime. The Mountaineers hadn’t won a single game.

“Well … I thought you looked cute in your varsity jersey,” she said.

Andrew laughed, but Danielle could tell by the dryness that he was still upset. “I’d rather not get called up if I’m not going to see any playing time. Just let me start on JV. It’s humiliating, standing on the sideline, doing absolutely nothing while we get our asses beat game after game. I could have had nachos with you and Hope in the bleachers for all it mattered.”

“Come on, Andrew. It’s still an honor. I bet there are a ton of other sophomores who’d kill to be on varsity.”

“I guess,” he said. “You know, Chuck got to play the whole second half. I wish I were big like him. I should do more weight room work and maybe try those nasty protein shakes he’s always chugging. I’m way too skinny. I’m, like, the smallest guy on the team.”

“You are not. And anyway, why would you want to be like Chuck? Yeah, he’s big … but it’s not like he’s in good shape. I bet you could run circles around him.” Danielle was pretty sure Andrew knew she wasn’t crazy about Chuck. Andrew once told her that Chuck had a special shelf for his cologne bottles, which he displayed proudly, and wouldn’t leave the house without a splash on. Chuck would even put some on before he’d go lift weights in his garage. According to Andrew, Chuck was really grossed out by the smell of sweat, even his own.

Andrew considered it. “That’s true. The dude does eat crap. I don’t think Chuck even knows what a vegetable is, unless it goes on his Big Mac. No wonder he can’t get a girlfriend.”

They both laughed at that.

It had taken Danielle a few weeks to understand the way Andrew and his friends acted around each other. The guys were super competitive, but especially Chuck and Andrew. Everything between those two was a rivalry — grades, new sneakers, who could reach the water fountain first. It seemed to Danielle like normal boy stuff for the most part, but every so often, Andrew would take some stupid “loss” really hard. Danielle was also competitive, and while she sympathized with Andrew’s pangs of defeat, she also never pitted herself against her friends. She didn’t even want to think about how sucky it would have been if she or Hope hadn’t both made the swim team.

That said, Danielle did take special pride in knowing that, when it came to the boys having girlfriends, she’d tipped the scales in Andrew’s favor.

“Hey,” Andrew said. “Guess what I found out today. Even if I don’t play a single minute this season, I’ll still get a varsity jacket.”

“You’ll look hot in it,” Danielle said. It was kind of a silly thing to say, but she knew it would make Andrew feel better.

“I don’t care about the jacket. It’ll just be cool seeing you in it this winter.”

“You’re sweet,” Danielle said, blushing in the dark. It would be cool to wear Andrew’s varsity jacket, at least until she could earn her own.

“Will you stay on the phone with me a little longer?” he asked quietly.

Danielle fluffed up her pillow, and she and Andrew clicked through their respective televisions together, as if their remotes were in sync. They laughed at the bizarre late-night infomercials that populated the cable channels in the middle of the night. Spray-on hair. Home gym contraptions that could double for medieval torture devices. Skin remedies for swollen, zitty faces. Diet pills based on ancient Chinese secrets.

Danielle fell asleep with her cell pressed to her ear, images of before and after flashing in the dark. Her battery died around four thirty A.M. Her alarm died with it.

For love, or something pretty close to it, she missed the bus.

Danielle reaches for her phone to call home, when she spots a notebook lying open in the street, pages fluttering. She picks it up. Using it to shield her eyes from the orangey sun, she sees, at a distance of roughly three blocks, her school bus bouncing along to the next designated stop. She missed it, but not by much.

She lowers her chin and stares out the tops of her eyes.

A second later, she’s running.

Her body isn’t warm, and she worries about possibly pulling a muscle. Chasing down the school bus definitely isn’t worth a stupid injury that might keep her out of the water. But after a few strides, Danielle slips into a comfortable rhythm. A pleasant heat ignites her pumping arms, her whirling legs.

The school bus stops for a car pulling out of a driveway. Danielle quickly closes the gap. “Hey!” she calls out when she gets close enough to recognize the students in the back windows. “Hey!”

But the kids are too busy socializing with each other to notice Danielle. The bus accelerates and a cloud puffs out from the tailpipe, stinging her eyes. She veers to the right and centers herself in the driver’s side-view mirror. She shouts again over the roar of the engine. She bangs her fist against the side.

The bus slams to a stop. The kids look down at her, shocked. Danielle pushes a few wisps of brown hair out of her face as the folding door opens.

“You could have gotten killed,” the bus driver barks.

Danielle apologizes in between heaving deep breaths. She climbs the steps, holds the notebook over her head like a trophy, and waits for someone to claim it.

After stashing her coat in her locker, Danielle heads straight to the cafeteria with Hope. She woke up too late to eat breakfast, and there is no way she can last until lunch without food. She passes up the student council bagel sale, because carbs make her sleepy and she’s tired enough as it is. Hopefully there’ll be something in the vending machines besides potato chips and chocolate bars. Danielle has been eating more and more since making the freshman swim team, her body always desperate for fuel. She wants to be careful to feed it well.

An older boy passes the girls as they enter the cafeteria. “Hey! Dan the Man!” he says, and slaps Danielle on the back.

“Was he talking to you?” Hope asks.

Danielle is too startled to react. She tries to get a look at the boy’s face to see if maybe she knows him, but he disappears as quickly as he arrived. “Um … no clue.”

The girls continue over to the vending machine. The entire glass front is covered over by papers. Danielle assumes it’s an overzealous school club desperate for members until she pulls a sheet down and reads it.

Dan the Man?

Ugliest?

A cramp spreads inside her, contracting each and every muscle.

To be called ugly is one thing. Of course Danielle has heard the insult before. Is there a girl in the world who hasn’t? And while she certainly isn’t happy about it, ugly is something people say about each other, and say about themselves, without even thinking. The word is so generic, it’s almost meaningless.

Almost.

But the Dan the Man thing is different. That hurts, even though Danielle knows she isn’t a particularly girlie girl. Wearing dresses makes her feel weird, as if she’s in a costume, pretending to be someone else. She only puts makeup on for the weekends, and even then only a little bit of gloss and maybe mascara. She’s never had her ears pierced because she’s deathly afraid of needles.

But Danielle still has all the essential girl parts. Boobs. Long hair. A boyfriend.

Hope rips down a list of her own and sucks in a big breath, the way she usually does before plunging underwater. “Oh, no, Danielle … What is this thing?”

Danielle doesn’t answer. Instead, she stares at her reflection in the newly exposed square of vending machine glass. She hadn’t had time to shower this morning, so she just threw her hair up in a bun. A haze of short brown strands spike up around her hairline. It shouldn’t surprise her — bits of broken hair fill the inside of her swim cap after every practice — but it does. She tries to smooth them down with a suddenly clammy hand, but the strands pop right back up. She pulls off her elastic and shakes out her hair. It is dry and dull from chlorine and doesn’t move like normal hair should. It suddenly looks to Danielle like a bad wig.

Danielle turns away from her reflection. She sees that the lockers outside the cafeteria also have papers taped to them. She chokes out, “Hope, I think these lists are hanging all over school.”

Without further discussion, the two girls leave the cafeteria, split apart, and begin running, one on either side of the hallway. They tear down every copy of the list they pass.

Though Danielle is glad for something physical to do, it is also her second sprint of the morning without any breakfast. She searches deep down inside for the strength to keep putting one foot in front of the other, like a straw rooting around the bottom of a soda can. She makes it to the end of the hallway, and then runs smack into Andrew, who’s standing with a few other sophomore guys from the football team.

Including Chuck.

“Yo! It’s Dan!” Chuck calls out in a deeper-than-usual voice. “Dan the Man!”

The boys stare at her and laugh.

They’ve seen the list.

Which means that Andrew has seen it, too.

“Come on, Andrew,” another boy says, giving him a big shove in her direction. “Go give Dan a kiss!”

“Yeah! We support gay rights!” shouts Chuck.

Andrew laughs good-naturedly. But as he walks toward Danielle and away from his friends, his smile slips into a look of concern. He leads her into a stairwell. “Are you okay?” he asks, careful to keep his voice quiet.

“Not bad, considering the sex change operation I apparently had last night,” Danielle says, a desperate joke to break the tension. Neither of them laugh. She holds up the copies of the list she’s torn down. “What is this thing, Andrew?”

“It’s a stupid tradition. It happens every year at the start of homecoming week.”

She stares at him. “Why didn’t you warn me?”

Andrew runs his hands through his hair. It is still light from the summer, but his roots are growing in darker. “Because I never thought you’d be on it, Danielle.”

This makes her feel better, but not much. “Do you know who wrote it?” Danielle doesn’t have a ton of friends, but as far as she knows, she doesn’t have any enemies, either. For the life of her, she can’t think of one person who would hate her enough to do something this mean.

Andrew glances at the copies of the list in her hands and quickly shakes his head. “No, I don’t. And look, Danielle — you can’t go running around tearing these things down. These lists are everywhere. The whole school knows about it. There’s nothing you can do.”

Danielle remembers the boy who slapped her back in the cafeteria, the heat from his hand on her spine. She doesn’t want to do the wrong thing. She doesn’t want to embarrass herself any more than what is already happening. “I’m sorry,” she says, because that’s how she feels. For many reasons. “Tell me what to do.”

Andrew rubs her arm. “People will want to see you looking upset. They’ll want to see you react. Everyone still talks about this girl Jennifer Briggis and how she freaked when she got put on the list her freshman year. Trust me — doing the wrong thing now could ruin the rest of high school for you.”

Danielle’s chest gets tight. “This is crazy, Andrew. I mean, this is crazy.”

“It’s a big mind game. It’s like we tell the kids at camp: If you pretend like the teasing doesn’t bother you, it will eventually stop. So don’t give anyone the satisfaction of seeing you upset. You need to be stone cold.” He anchors his eyes on hers. “Game Face. Okay?”

She bites her lip and nods, fighting back tears. She knows Andrew can see them, but thankfully he pretends not to. Apparently, he has his Game Face on, too.

Danielle takes a second to compose herself and follows Andrew out of the stairwell, though a few steps behind.

Hope stands in the middle of the hallway looking around in a panic. She spots Danielle and rushes over. “Hurry up, Danielle. I grabbed every copy in this hall and in the science wing. Let’s go check near the gym.” She gives Danielle a huge hug and whispers, “Don’t worry. I swear on my life that we’re going to find out who did this and make sure they get what they deserve.”

“Forget it, Hope,” Danielle says. She drops the copies she’s holding into a trash can.

“What? What do you mean?” Hope turns around to glance at Andrew, who has rejoined his friends. “What did Andrew say?”

“Don’t worry. He said all the right things.” Which is how Danielle feels, without question.

CHAPTER THREE

“What the f?”

Though it’s posed as a question, the three words aren’t delivered like one, with the last syllable ticking up to a higher, uncertain pitch. And yet Candace Kincaid is clearly confused by the copy of the list taped to her locker door.

She frees a strand of brown hair stuck in her thick coat of shimmery lip gloss, then leans forward for a closer inspection. She drags a raspberry fingernail down the list, linking the word ugliest and her name with an invisible, impossible line.

Her friends pop up behind her, wanting to see. They’d all come to school looking for the list today. Candace was so excited for its arrival, she’d barely slept last night.

“It’s the list!” one says.

“Candace is the prettiest sophomore!” another cries.

“Yay, Candace!”

Candace feels the hands pat her back, the hands squeeze her shoulders, the hugs. But she keeps her eyes on the list. This was supposed to be her year. Honestly, last year should have been her year, but Monique Jones had modeled in teen magazines, or at least that’s what she’d told people. Candace didn’t think Monique was pretty pretty. She was way too skinny, her head was too big for her body, and her cheekbones were … well, freakish. Also, Monique only made friends with guys. Classic slut behavior.

Candace had been very happy when the Joneses moved away.

She pinches the corner, flattening the blistered embossment between her fingertips, and then tears down the list, leaving an inch of tape and a rip of paper stuck to her locker door.

“I hate to break this to you, girls … but apparently I’m the ugliest sophomore girl at Mount Washington,” Candace announces. And then she laughs, because it is honestly that ridiculous.

Her friends share quick, uneasy glances.

“On the plus side,” Candace continues, mainly to fill the awkward silence, “I guess we know for sure that Lynette Wilcox wrote the list this year. Mystery solved!”

Lynette Wilcox uses a Seeing Eye dog to lead her through the hallways. She was born blind, her eyes milky white and too wet.

So it’s a joke. Obviously.

Only none of her friends laugh.

No one says anything.

Not until one of the girls whispers, “Whoa.”

Candace huffs. Whoa is the absolute understatement of the year. She turns the list around and goes over the other names, expecting other mistakes that might explain what the hell is going on. Sarah Singer is definitely the ugliest junior. Candace has a faint memory of who Bridget Honeycutt is, but the girl in her mind is kind of forgettable, so she isn’t sure she’s thinking of the right person. Everyone in school thinks Margo Gable is gorgeous, so seeing her name as prettiest senior makes sense. And, of course, Jennifer Briggis is the obvious choice for the ugliest senior. Honestly, any girl other than Jennifer would have been a total letdown. Candace doesn’t know either of the freshmen girls, which isn’t a surprise because she’s not the kind of girl who gives a crap about freshmen.

There’s one other name she doesn’t recognize. Weirdly enough, it is her sophomore counterpart. The prettiest to her ugliest.

Candace flicks the list with her finger and it makes a snapping sound. “Who’s Lauren Finn?”

“She’s that homeschooled girl,” one of her friends explains.

“What homeschooled girl?” Candace asks, wrinkling her nose.

Another girl nervously looks over both shoulders to make sure no one else in the hallway is listening, and then whispers, “Horse Hair.”

Candace’s eyes get big. “Lauren Finn is Horse Hair?”

She’d thought up the nickname last week, when everyone was forced to run a mile in gym class and Horse Hair’s horsey blond ponytail kept swishing back and forth as she trotted along. Candace had made a point of neighing as she passed Lauren because it was gross to let your hair grow that long. Unless, of course, you had layers. Which Lauren didn’t. Her hair was cut straight across the bottom at her waist. Probably by her mother with a dull pair of scissors.

“Well … I think Lauren’s pretty,” another girl says, shrugging her shoulders apologetically.

Someone else nods. “She could use a haircut for sure, but yeah. Lauren’s definitely pretty.”

Candace lets out a pained sigh. “I’m not saying Horse Hair isn’t pretty,” she moans, though she’d never actually considered Lauren’s looks. And why would she? This conversation isn’t supposed to be about Lauren. It’s supposed to be about her. “It doesn’t make any sense that I’d be picked as the ugliest sophomore.” Her eyes roll off her friends and on to other sophomores walking down the hallway. Candace sees, in the span of a few seconds, at least ten other girls who it should be. Ugly girls who deserve this.

“I mean, come on, you guys. This is total crap!” Candace gives her friends another chance to defend her, though she feels a little pathetic at having to bait them. “Pretty girls are not supposed to end up on the ugly side of the list! It, like, undermines the whole tradition.”

“Well, the list doesn’t actually say that you’re ugly,” someone gently offers.

“That’s true,” adds another girl. “The ugliest girls are seriously ugly. The list just says you’re ugly on the inside.”

It isn’t the rousing defense Candace is hoping for. But as the words sink in, Candace nods slowly and lets a new feeling bloom inside her. So what if people think she is ugly on the inside? Clearly her friends don’t believe that, or they wouldn’t be friends with her! And pretty on the outside is what really counts. Pretty on the outside is what everyone sees.

One of the girls says timidly, “So … should we go discuss what we’re doing for Spirit Caravan?”

Candace had announced this as the plan for the morning. Spirit Caravan happens on Saturday, before the homecoming football game. It’s an impromptu parade where the students at Mount Washington drive around town with their cars decorated, beeping their horns and getting people excited for the game. This is the first year Candace and her friends can drive themselves, since a few, herself included, had gotten their driving permits over the summer. Candace has everything planned in her notebook, like whose car they should ride in (her mother’s convertible, obviously), how it should be decorated (streamers, tin cans, soap on the windshield), and what the girls should wear (short shorts, kneesocks, and Mount Washington sweatshirts). Still, Candace stares at her friends slack jawed. “I can’t say I’m in a very school spirit-y mood at the moment.” The fact that they didn’t pick up on this annoys her. “Let’s table that until tomorrow, okay?”

One girl shrugs her shoulders. “But we only have until Saturday to figure things out.”

Another adds, “We can’t leave it until the last minute. We need to come up with a concept. We’re sophomores now. We can’t just, like, throw something together.”

A concept? Seriously? Candace rolls her eyes. But it occurs to her, as her friends nod along with each other, that they are going to talk about the Spirit Caravan with or without her. It is the strangest feeling to have, even stranger than being called ugliest.

She quickly changes her strategy and rips her page of ideas out of her notebook. “Fine,” she says, handing it off. “Here’s what I’m doing. Figure out who’s riding with me, because my mom’s convertible can only fit five of us.” She quickly does a head count. There are ten girls standing at her locker. “Maybe six, if you squeeze.”

Candace opens her locker door and stares through the metal slats as her friends walk toward homeroom without her. Her eyes move to the magnetic mirror hanging inside the door. Something about her face seems off, imbalanced. It takes her a few seconds of close inspection to realize that she’s forgotten to put eyeliner on her left eye.

Why didn’t any of her friends tell her?

After digging in her makeup bag, Candace inches close until the tip of her nose nearly grazes the mirror. She gently pulls the corner of her left eye toward her ear and traces a creamy band of chocolate pencil, one of the samples her mother gave her, across the lid. Then she lets go, her skin snapping pertly back into place, and blinks a few times.

Candace’s eyes are her best feature, as far as she is concerned. They are the lightest blue, like three drops of food coloring in a gallon of ice-cold water. People always commented on them, and even though Candace finds that predictability annoying, she of course still relishes the attention. How a salesgirl would suddenly look up from the register and say, “Wow, your eyes are amazing!” Or, better yet, a boy. Her eyes get more attention than her boobs, and that is seriously saying something. She is, after all, a true C cup without any of that ridiculous padding, which is false advertising, in her opinion.

A small sense of relief washes over her. List or no list, Candace Kincaid is pretty. She knows it. Everyone knows it.

And that is all that matters.

CHAPTER FOUR

Lauren Finn and her mother agree the sedan still smells like Lauren’s dead grandfather — a musty blend of pipe smoke, old newspapers, and drugstore aftershave — so they drive to Mount Washington High School with the windows open. Lauren splays her arms across the window frame, resting her chin where her hands overlap, and lets the fresh air rouse her.

Mondays are always the most tired mornings, because Sundays are always the worst nights. The anxiety of the coming week speeds Lauren up when she wants to be slowed down. She feels every lump in the old mattress, hears every creak and sigh of her new old house.

She is three weeks into this new life and nothing is comfortable. Which is exactly what she’d expected.

The wind whips Lauren’s long pale hair like a stormy blond ocean, all but the section pinned with a tarnished silver barrette.

She found it last night, after the first hour of tossing and turning in the same bedroom, the same bed, where her mother had slept when she was a fifteen-year-old girl. The slender bar stuck out like a loose nail where the wood floor met the wall, its cloudy rhinestones blinking in the moonlight.

Lauren crept across the hall in her pajamas. Her mother’s reading light cast a warm white glow out the seam of the open door. Neither of them had been sleeping very well since moving to Mount Washington.

Lauren cracked it wider with her foot. Pairs of caramel drugstore panty hose hung on the coils of the wrought-iron bed frame to dry after having been washed in the sink. They reminded Lauren of the snake skins shed in the warm dunes behind their old apartment out west. Their old life.

Mrs. Finn looked up from the thick manual of tax laws. Lauren weaved through unpacked boxes and hopped onto the bed. She opened her hands like a clamshell.

Mrs. Finn grinned and shook her head, looking a bit embarrassed. “I had begged your grandmother to buy me this when I started high school.” She pinched the barrette between her fingers, examining the fossil of her youth. “I don’t know if you’ve ever had this feeling, Lauren, but sometimes, when you get something new, you trick yourself into believing it has the power to change absolutely everything about yourself.” The corners of Mrs. Finn’s mouth pulled until her smile stretched tight and thin, turning it into something entirely different. With a sigh, she said, “That was quite a lot to ask of a barrette, don’t you think?” Then Mrs. Finn threaded it into Lauren’s hair, securing a sweep over her daughter’s ear, and pulled the quilt back so Lauren could lie beside her.

Lauren hadn’t experienced the feeling her mother had described, but one much more unnerving. Like with Randy Culpepper, who sat one desk away in her English class.

On her very first day at Mount Washington High, Lauren had noticed that Randy smelled strange. Woodsy and sort of stale was how she’d first categorized it, until she overheard in the hall that Randy was a small-time pot dealer who smoked a joint in his car each morning before school.

That Lauren now knew what an illegal substance smelled like encapsulated how much her life had changed, whether she’d wanted it to or not. She swallowed this secret, along with so many others, because knowing them would break her mother’s heart. She could never confirm that things in her new school were as bad as she’d been told.

If not worse.

A while later, after Mrs. Finn had finished studying and turned off the light, Lauren stared into the dark and held on to her mother’s words. Despite all these changes, she would stay the same girl. Before falling asleep, she touched the barrette, her anchor.

Lauren reaches for the barrette again as the sedan slips into a free space along the curb.

“How do I look? Like an accountant you’d want to hire?” Mrs. Finn turns the rearview mirror toward her and regards her reflection with a frown. “It’s been so long since I’ve had an interview. Not since before you were born. No one’s going to want to hire me. They’re going to want some beautiful young thing.”

Lauren ignores the sweat stains in the armpits of her mother’s blouse, the small run in the panty hose that betrays the paleness of her mother’s skin. Paler still is Mrs. Finn’s hair, blond like Lauren’s, but dulled by gray.

“Remember the things we talked about, Mommy. Focus on your experience, not the fact that you haven’t worked in a while.”

They’d done a mock interview last night, after Lauren’s homework had been finished and checked. She’d never seen her mother so unsure of herself, so unhappy. Mrs. Finn doesn’t want this job. She wants to still be Lauren’s teacher.

It makes Lauren sad, their situation. Things hadn’t been good the last year out west. The money left by Lauren’s father was running out, and her mother cut back on the cool field trips they used to take to get a change of scenery from The Kitchen Academy — what they called their breakfast nook between the hours of eight and four. Lauren hadn’t even known her mother had stopped paying rent on their apartment. Her grandfather dying and leaving them the house was a blessing in disguise.

“Lauren, promise me you’ll talk to your English teacher about the reading list. I hate the idea of you sitting in her class for the whole year, bored to tears with books we’ve already read and discussed. If you’re afraid to do it —”

Lauren shakes her head. “I’ll do it. Today. I promise.”

Mrs. Finn pats Lauren’s leg. “We’re doing okay, right?”

Lauren doesn’t think about her answer. She just says, “Yeah. We are.”

“See you at three o’clock. I hope it goes fast.”

Lauren leans across the seat and hugs her mother tight. She hopes for that, too. “I love you, Mommy. Good luck.”

Lauren walks into school, barely a force against the tide of students flowing from the opposite direction. Her homeroom is empty. The fluorescent lights are still off from the weekend, and the legs of the upturned classroom chairs spike four-pointed stars, encircling her like oversize barbed wire. She turns one over and takes a seat.

It is terribly lonely at school.

Sure, a couple of people have talked to her. Boys, mostly, after daring each other to ask her stupid questions about homeschooling, like if she belonged to a religious cult. She expected as much — her male cousins were just as goofy and awkward and annoying.

The girls were only slightly better. A few smiled at Lauren, or offered tiny bits of politeness, like pointing out where to put her dirty cafeteria tray after lunch. But no one extended herself in a way that felt like the start of something. No one seemed interested in getting to know her beyond confirming that she was that weird homeschooled girl.

It shouldn’t have surprised her. It is what she was told to expect.

Lauren lets her chin rest against her chest. She pretends to read the notebook lying open on the small patch of desk attached to her seat. Really, though, she discreetly watches the girls filter into the room and take chairs beside her. She picked up the trick from Randy Culpepper, who used the same posture to sleep, undetected, in second period.

She doesn’t see the girls’ leader with them, the pretty one with the icy eyes. It’s a rare sighting.

The girls are frantic, whispering like crazy. Stifling giggles and laughs. Completely consumed with whatever they’re gossiping about. Until one notices Lauren watching them.

Lauren lowers her eyes. But she’s not fast enough.

“Oh my god, Lauren! You are so lucky! Do you even know how lucky you are?” The girl puts on a big smile. Huge, even. And she runs on tiptoes over to Lauren’s desk.

Lauren lifts her head. “Excuse me?”

The girl ceremoniously places a piece of paper on top of Lauren’s open notebook. “It’s a Mount Washington tradition. They picked you as the prettiest girl in our grade.” The girl talks slowly, as if Lauren spoke another language, or had a learning disability.

Lauren reads the paper. She sees her name. But she is still completely confused. A different girl pats her on the back. “Try to look a little happier, Lauren,” she whispers sweetly, in the same way one might discreetly indicate an open zipper or food stuck in her teeth. “Otherwise people will think something’s wrong with you.”

This throwaway line surprises Lauren most of all, because it completely contradicts what she’s already assumed.

CHAPTER FIVE

Sarah Singer’s plan is to break it to him fast, so there’s no scene. Forget dressing it up, explaining things. That’s only going to make it worse. She’ll just say something like, I’m done, Milo. Our friendship, or whatever the hell you want to call it now, is over. So go ahead and do what you want. Live your life! Become best bros with the captain of the football team. Feel up the head cheerleader, even though everyone knows Margo Gable stuffs. I’m not gonna judge you.

That last part will be a lie. She’ll totally judge him for it.

Sarah sits on her bench, nibbling the edges off a strawberry Pop-Tart. The tangy smell of smoke on her fingers sours the sweet. She forces down what’s in her mouth and chucks the pink frosted center — her favorite part — into the grass, because all this sugar clearly isn’t helping. Let the squirrels eat the crack; she needs to calm the hell down. She moves a tangle of tarnished necklaces off her chest and feels for her heart. It flutters like a hummingbird’s, so fast the individual beats blur together and make a steady, uncomfortable hum.

She rips the cellophane off a new pack of cigarettes, lights up. A lift of wind carries away the smoke, but she knows Milo will smell it on her when he gets to school. He’s like a police dog, trained to sniff out her vices. Last night, when she was hanging half out of his bedroom window, she smoked the third-to-last cigarette in her old pack and told him, after his depressing play-by-play of his aunt’s final days of lung cancer, she’d seriously think about maybe quitting.

Remembering that now makes her laugh, puff out smoke signals. Both dissipate into the chilly morning air.

Last night, she talked a lot of shit.

But Milo … apparently he’d been talking shit since the day they met.

Whatever. Let him bitch about her smoking. It would be a relief to replace her anxieties with something simple and clear, like being annoyed with him.

Sarah watches two junior girls scurry along the sidewalk. Sarah knows who they both are, but what she thinks is: All the junior girls at Mount Washington look the damn same. The shoulder-length hair with highlights, the stupid shearling boots, the little wristlet purses to hold their cell phones, lip glosses, and lunch money. They remind her of zebras, keeping the same stripes so predators can’t tell them apart. Survival of the generic. It’s the Mount Washington way!

The two girls stop in front of her bench and huddle, shoulder to shoulder, each clutching a piece of paper. The smaller one hangs on her friend and chokes out a series of high-pitched laughs. The other simply sucks air in and out, a rapid fire of hiccupping wheezes.

Sarah’s nerves can’t take it.

“Hey!” she barks. “How about you ladies hold your little powwow someplace else?” She uses her lit cigarette as a pointer and jabs off in the distance.

It seems like a fair request. After all, these girls have the entire school to roam undisturbed. And everyone at Mount Washington knows that this is her bench.

She discovered it freshman year. It had always been vacant, because it was positioned directly beneath the principal’s window. That didn’t bother Sarah. She wanted to be alone.

That is, until Milo Ishi came along last spring.

He’d been adrift on the sidewalk one random day, a new boy tossed around between currents of students who looked nothing like him. He folded his arms and tucked them tight underneath his chest, the chosen defensive posture for skinny vegan half-Japanese boys with shaved heads. Milo didn’t look like Sarah, either, but maybe a more-evolved version. His sneakers were only available overseas. His headphones were expensive. His black eyeglass frames were crazy thick and probably vintage. He’d even gotten his first tattoo already — a Buddhist proverb scrawled on his forearm.

After a few minutes of watching, Sarah took pity on him and called out, “Hey, New Boy!”

Milo was terribly shy. Almost cripplingly so. He hated talking in class and broke out in hives whenever his parents argued. It was hard to get him to open up, but when he finally did, Sarah felt like she’d found a kindred outcast. She liked begging Milo to torture her with stories of his former life in West Metro, what going to an arts-focused high school in a city had been like. Milo said West Metro was a third-tier city, but to Sarah it could have been New York for how it stacked up against Mount Washington. At West Metro High, field trips were to fine art museums, there were no sports teams, and the drama club wasn’t just a showcase for girls who aspired to be another Auto-Tuned voice sugaring the radio.

The bench is where they wait for each other before and after school each day, where they do their homework and split a pair of earbuds for the right and left sides of an illegally downloaded song. An oasis where two kids who once kept to themselves suddenly keep with each other.

Once, Sarah tried to carve their names in the bench, but discovered the wood was that new space-age treated stuff and broke the knife she’d nicked from the cafeteria after the third stroke. So she makes sure to have a black marker in her book bag to trace a fresh layer of ink over their initials whenever they begin to fade.

As Milo’s bus pulls in, Sarah tucks the long front pieces of her inky black hair behind her ears. Milo had shaved the back of her head for her a few weeks ago, after he’d finished shaving his own, but it’s growing in fast. That hair, pure and healthy, is soft, like a puppy dog’s, and a golden brown that totally clashes with the dyed-black front. Her natural color. She’d almost forgotten what it looked like.

Milo, all lanky bones and sharp angles, walks toward her with a manga split open in front of his face. His knobby knees pop past the army green fringe of his cutoffs with each step. Milo claims he wears shorts no matter the weather. Sarah says that’s because he’s never lived through a winter on Mount Washington. She will give him such shit the first time she sees him in jeans.

She catches herself smiling and quickly resets her mouth with another drag.

“Yo,” she says when Milo reaches the bench, and gets ready to let the ax fall.

Milo looks up from his manga. A grin spreads across his face, so deep his dimples appear. He says, “You’re wearing my T-shirt.”

Sarah looks down at herself.

Milo’s right. This is not her black T-shirt. There are no white spots from bleaching her hair. She always strips it before she dyes it, so the new color sets as pure and saturated as possible. It’s the only way, really, to make sure what’s underneath doesn’t show.

“You can keep it,” he mumbles coyly.

“I don’t want your shirt, Milo.” In fact, if Sarah had other clothes with her, she’d change out of it right now. “Obviously I grabbed the wrong one last night. And I haven’t done laundry, so I just threw it on again this morning.” She clears her throat. Damn. She is already off her game. “Look. I want my shirt back. Bring it tomorrow.”

“No problem.” Milo falls next to her on the bench and goes back to his manga. From her seat, Sarah can see the page. An innocent school girl with doe eyes and a pleated skirt cowers in fear before a wild, snarling beast.

She moves her eyes and thinks, Makes total sense.

Milo’s quiet for a few pages and then says, out of nowhere, “You’re acting weird. You said you wouldn’t act weird.”

He is wrong.

“Let’s not make this weird, okay?” is what Sarah had said when she’d come out of the small space between his wall and his dresser without her jeans. She left everything else on — her hooded sweatshirt, her socks, her underwear.

“Okay,” he’d said, eyes wide, lying on a set of faded Mickey Mouse sheets, ones he’d probably had since he was a kid.

“No talking,” she’d said, and dove under the covers.

The rest of her clothes came off shortly thereafter. Not her necklaces, though. Sarah never took off her necklaces. Milo climbed on top of her and his weight pressed the tiny metallic links into her collarbone.

She reached out to his nightstand and turned his stereo up as loud as it could go; it was playing one of the mixes she’d made when they’d first met. The vibrations shook the crap piled on Milo’s dresser, buzzed the window glass. But even with the music blaring right next to their heads, Sarah could still hear Milo breathing, hot and fast in her ear. And every so often, a moan. A tender sigh. From her own mouth.

The memory of her voice fills Sarah’s head now, like an echo, mocking her over and over.

She turns away from him. “I’m not acting weird. I just don’t want to talk about last night. I don’t even want to think about it.”

“Oh,” Milo says glumly. “Alright.”

Sarah won’t let herself feel guilty. This is all Milo’s fault.

She takes a drag and blows the smoke down against his school bag. She knows his sketchbook is in there. She could reach in right now, flip to that page, and ask him straight up, How come you never told me?

That’s what she goes to do. But she’s drowned out by the girls standing near the bench.

They’ve doubled in size, from two to four. The girls scream with laughter, completely oblivious that there is a relationship about to implode right next to them.

Sarah feels the heat on her fingertips. Her cigarette has burned down to the filter. She flicks her fingers, sending the orange butt soaring in their direction. It bounces off one girl’s fuzzy yellow sweater.

Milo puts his hand on her arm. “Sarah.”

“You could have lit me on fire!” the girl who’s been hit screeches, and she spazzes out, checking herself for burn marks.

“I asked you nicely to go somewhere else,” Sarah points out. “But I’m not feeling nice anymore.”

The girls shift their weight in one unified huff.

“Sorry, Sarah,” one says, shaking the paper. “This is just really funny.”

“That’s how inside jokes usually are,” Sarah snarks back. “Funny to those inside, annoying as shit to the rest of the world.” Milo laughs at her barb. It makes her feel marginally better.

After sharing plotting looks with the rest of her group, another girl steps forward. “Well, here,” she says. “Let us clue you in.”

As soon as the paper is dropped in her lap, Sarah realizes what it is. That damn list. It makes her want to barf year after year, watching how the girls in her school evaluate and objectify each other, tear girls down and build others up. It’s pathetic. It’s sad. It’s …

… her name?

It’s like she’s trying to be as ugly as possible!

Sarah looks up. The four girls are gone. It’s like a sucker punch to the gut, the surprise worse than the hurt itself, and no chance to hit back.

“What’s that?” Milo takes the paper.

Milo transferred in last spring to Mount Washington, so he doesn’t know about the shitty tradition of the list. Sarah’s head hurts, watching him read it. For a second, she thinks about explaining, but ends up chewing her fingernail instead. She says nothing. She doesn’t have to. It’s all right there, on the stupid fucking paper.

His mouth puckers. “What kind of asshole guys would do this?”

“Guys? Please. It’s a coven of secret evil sluts. This happens every year, a masochistic prequel to the homecoming dance. I swear to god, I can’t wait to get the hell off this mountain.” She means it for so many reasons.

Milo reaches into Sarah’s back pocket. His hand is warm. He grabs her lighter. After a few clicks, a flame hisses up. He holds it under the corner of the list.

It’s nice, watching the list burn until it’s nothing but char. But Sarah knows that there are copies hanging up all over school. Everyone will be staring at her, wanting to see her embarrassed, belittled. The tough girl knocked down, forced to admit that she does care what they think of her. When the paper breaks into tiny pieces of flaming ash, she grinds them out with her sneaker.

I’m such a dumbass, Sarah thinks. Believing that she could do her thing and they could do their thing, both sides coexisting in a fragile but still-functioning ecosystem. It started every morning on the bus. She’d plop herself in the front seat, put up her hood, tuck her headphones into her ears, and sleep with her head against the window. It was easier to completely tune out than to overhear girls talking the cruelest shit about each other one day and pledging themselves as BFFs the next.

The phoniness is what sickens her most about the girls of Mount Washington. Their charade of undying friendship and love is as badly acted as the high school musicals, yet everyone plays along and pretends that in twenty years, their cheap FRIENDS FOREVER charm necklaces won’t have a bit of tarnish.

Other girls have been knocked out of favor, the same way she had back in seventh grade. But Sarah is the only one who never tried to get back in, and she knows it makes them hate her even more.

Evolution provides clues to the clueless. Animals bear the kinds of markings and bright colors that show how dangerous, how poisonous they are. Sarah has taken great pains to make sure everyone won’t think she wants to be like them.

The maddening thing is that she could have tried. She could have made the decision to shop at their stupid stores, to buy the ugly boots and the teeny purses, to bounce along to their crappy music.

If they think she’s ugly for trying to be different, that’s fine by her.

Mission accomplished, in fact!

“Forget it,” Milo says. “Those so-called pretty girls are completely deluded. They’re the ugly ones.”

She stares Milo down. Had he said this yesterday, before she’d found out the truth about him, she could have believed him; she would have felt better. But today was today, and now she knew better. Whatever they had was over. It had to be. She can’t pretend Milo is something he’s not.

But Sarah is glad he’s here right now. Glad for the moment, anyway. Because she needs Milo’s help.

She hoists her book bag onto her lap and pulls out her black marker from the front pouch. “Do me a favor. Write UGLY as big as you can across my forehead.”

Milo shrinks back. “Why would I do that? Why would you want to do that?”

Sarah stutters for an answer, and settles on, “Do it, Milo.”

He swats the marker away. “Sarah, we had sex last night.” He’s all earnest. It’s infuriating.

“Milo! You do not want to piss me off right now! I’d do it myself but I’d write it backward. Please.”

He groans, but he climbs onto his knees and pushes the hair up off her forehead.

The marker drags across her skin. As Milo writes the word, she glances up at the windows in the second-floor bathroom. There are girls staring down at her; they know where to find her, so they’re checking to see if she’s heard yet. Sarah salutes them with her middle finger. “Make it as big as you can,” she tells Milo.

The spicy scent of the ink makes her woozy. Or maybe it’s the anticipation. Milo caps the marker, and the click is like a movie clapboard. The show’s about to start.

“For the record, I am totally not cool with this,” Milo whispers as they enter the main door of Mount Washington.

“Then don’t walk with me,” she bites back. “Seriously. Don’t.” She gives him the chance to leave, to take the easy out.

Milo opens his mouth, then thinks better of it. “I’m walking with you,” he says. “I walk you to class every day.” His eyes go again to the word on her forehead, and the corners of his mouth sink.

It makes Sarah’s throat tight. She can’t fucking deal with Milo right now. So she starts walking, fast. The speed flutters her hair off of her forehead, so people can see the word. And they do. They see it.

But only for a second. Once the people in the halls see what she’s done to herself, they quickly find another place to set their eyes. Their shoes, their friends, their homework. They’d rather look at anything but her.

The list is so powerful, its judgment so absolute, and yet no one wants to deal with it in black Sharpie on her face.

Fucking cowards.

But knowing this doesn’t make Sarah feel better. In fact, it makes everything worse. Not only do they think she’s ugly, but they want her to be invisible, too.

CHAPTER SIX

Bridget Honeycutt is halfway to school when her sister, Lisa, starts begging to put on a little bit of her lipstick.

“No way, Lisa. I wasn’t allowed to wear makeup until sophomore year.”

“Come on, Bridge! Please! Please! Please! Please! Mom won’t know.”

Bridget puts a trembling hand on her temple. “Fine. Whatever. Just … be quiet, okay? I have a serious headache.”

“You’re probably just hungry,” Lisa says, and then reaches into the backseat for Bridget’s purse. She rummages until she pulls out a slender black tube.

Bridget watches from the side of her eyes as her sister flips down the visor. Lisa traces her lips with the stub of peachy pink, presses them together, and blows a kiss at Bridget.

The pink makes Lisa’s braces look extra silver, but Bridget doesn’t say that. Instead she says, “Pretty.”

Lisa touches up the corners of her mouth. “I’m going to wear red lipstick every single day when I’m your age.”

“Red won’t be good with your skin,” Bridget tells her. “You’re too pale.”

Lisa shakes her head. “Everyone can wear red. That’s what Vogue says. It just has to be the right red. And the right red for girls with dark hair and pale skin is deep cherry.”

“Since when do you read Vogue?” Bridget wonders aloud, thinking of the rainbow that the spines of Lisa’s horse books make on the shelf over her bed.

“Abby and I bought the September issue and read it cover to cover on the beach. We wanted to be prepared for high school.”

“You’re scaring me.”

“Don’t worry. Besides the red lipstick thing, we didn’t learn much. But we did get ideas for homecoming dresses. Abby will be happy you like the one she wants. It’s a red-carpet knockoff.” Lisa pouts. “I hope I find something nice, too.”

Bridget wipes away a smudge of lipstick left on Lisa’s chin. “I said I’d take you shopping this week. We’ll find you a dress.”

“Do you think Mom will let me wear makeup to the dance? I was thinking that if I ace my Earth Science quiz, I’d show her the grade and then ask her. Isn’t that a great plan?”

“Maybe … if Mom didn’t already expect you to get As.”

“I guess I could sneak it on once I get there. I’ll just have to make sure no one takes any pre-dance pictures of me.” As Bridget parks the car, Lisa sets the lipstick on the dashboard and grabs her things. “See you later!”

Bridget watches Lisa sprint across the yard toward Freshman Island, weaving in and out of human traffic, her overstuffed book bag slapping against her legs, her long black ponytail stretching down her back. Lisa is growing up so fast, but there are plenty of glimmers of the little girl that shine through.

It gives Bridget hope for herself. That there’s still a chance to be the girl she was before last summer.

She turns off the car and sits for a few minutes, collecting herself. It is quiet, except for her deep, measured breaths. And the voice in her brain, calling out instructions that reverberate inside her hollow body.

You have to eat breakfast today.

Eat breakfast, Bridget.

Eat.

This is her life every morning. No, every meal, every bite chewed to a monotone mantra, mental cheerleading needed to accomplish a task that would be no big deal to a normal girl.

She picks up her lipstick and drags a finger through the thin layer of dust on her dashboard. Bridget wants to feel proud that she’s been doing much better. Eating more. But the victories feel bad, if not worse, than her failures.

A girl Bridget knows taps hello on the glass. Bridget lifts her head and manages to smile. It’s a fake one, but her friend doesn’t notice. No one does.

It’s scary how fast things got messed up. Bridget thinks about this a lot. The timeline of her life had been linear and sharp and direct for most of her seventeen years. Until something went jagged.

She could trace it back to, of all things, a bikini.

Every summer of Bridget’s life began and ended the same way — with a trip to the Crestmont Outlet Mall.

It was the halfway point between Mount Washington and the beach cottage where the Honeycutt family spent the entire summer. The family stopped at the Crestmont outlets to eat lunch, fill the gas tank for the second leg of the drive, and shop for clothes. In June, Bridget and Lisa stocked up on summer things. And then, on their way back to Mount Washington in August, they’d search for back-to-school deals on cardigans and wool skirts.

With summer vacation beginning, Bridget’s shopping bags were full of new tank tops, shorts, a jean skirt, and two sets of flip-flops. The only thing missing was a new bathing suit.

The bikini she’d worn last year had sprung an underwire, and the tankini from the year before was too small for her chest, so she’d given it to Lisa. Snipping the tags off a brand-new bikini was akin to the ribbon cutting of a store or breaking ground on a building site. The Grand Opening of Summer.

Bridget was determined to find one. She flew in and out of stores.

“We should get going, Bridge, if we want to make it before dinner,” her mother said with a sigh from a few steps behind. She wiped some perspiration from her top lip with a napkin from the food court. “Your father and Lisa are already back at the car, probably dying of heat. You can get a suit on the boardwalk tomorrow.”

Bridget knew better. The boardwalk shops only stocked two kinds of bathing suits: fluorescent triangles that belonged in Playboy or frumpy flowered one-pieces for grandmas.

It was now or never.

The Crestmont Outlet Mall had opened a few new stores since she’d last been there, and Bridget came to a stop in front of one she recognized. It was a surf shop, complete with longboards that doubled as the cash stand, beaded curtains on the dressing room doors, and twangy songs vibrating through the glass window. The same store was in the mall back home, only the clothes there were full price.

As soon as she walked in, she spotted a sherbet-y orange gingham bikini with a white eyelet lace ruffle. It was the last one, it was her size, and it was marked an additional 50 percent off. She ran into the dressing room while Mrs. Honeycutt reminded her daughter to leave her underwear on, lest she catch an STD.

Bridget frowned as she pulled the bottoms up. They were surprisingly tight. The elastic cut into her legs. Maybe it was her underwear? She took them off and tried the bottom on again, but the fit wasn’t any better. Her belly rolled a soft, fleshy wave that crashed over the ties at her hip. The top was similarly ill-fitting. The shoulder straps dug into her skin, and when she managed to test the limits of elasticity on the chest strap, poof! Back fat!

Bridget had never considered herself overweight before seeing the fabric stretched across her. But the reflection in the dressing room mirror startled her. She panicked, remembering her friend’s End of School pool party last week, how she’d walked around the whole day in her old bikini without even a T-shirt on, in front of boys and girls, completely clueless as to how awful she’d looked.

She checked the size tag, expecting an error. But it was no mistake. The bikini was the same size as the other new clothes she’d bought. Her size.

This is an outlet mall.

That’s why the clothes are cheap.

Because they’re irregular.

Imperfect.

Defective.

Even though Bridget knew this, she couldn’t quite hold on to the idea. It was slippery, sliding right out of her as she rushed back into her clothes. She clipped the suit back onto its hanger. Sadly, it was still a cute bikini. So very cute. Or it would be, if she were maybe five or so pounds lighter.

Bridget smoothed her hair as she stepped out of the dressing room. Mrs. Honeycutt stood by the register impatiently, her credit card already out, chatting with the salesgirl. The waist of Mrs. Honeycutt’s navy linen pants swelled underneath her sleeveless white shell, the skin on her bare arms taut and overstuffed and about to split, like hot dogs left too long on the grill. Her mother never wore shorts. Her mother never swam in the ocean. She stayed in the air-conditioning in those wide-legged pants.

All of her aunts said that Bridget looked exactly like her mother had as a teenager. Staring at her, Bridget realized she had no memories of her mother being thin.

Bridget placed the bikini on the counter, careful not to look at it or anyone else while her mother paid.

As she walked back to the car, Bridget rationalized her decision. Everyone did it. Bought clothes that fit a little too tight, with the hope they would be inspiration to lose a few pounds. It would be a reward for good behavior. The bikini became a test. A test Bridget hoped to pass by the end of the summer.

And just like that, a new part of her mind lit up as she became acutely aware of all her bad habits. It dinged like a warning alarm when Lisa tore open a bag of Old Bay potato chips for movie night, or when Bridget got too close to the dish of salt water taffy her mom kept filled on the kitchen counter. Bridget’s brain continued to evolve over the months, rewiring her cravings for boardwalk soft serve with the challenge to run another mile to the next pier, brainstorming excuses to skip out on Dad’s amazing tuna fish sandwiches, until it commented not only on everything she put inside herself, but every piece of food she even thought about eating. It wiped away any memory she ever had of being pretty, and made it a goal, something she might be lucky enough to accomplish one day if she worked hard enough.

By the Fourth of July, she’d aced the test. With flying colors.

But even after she’d fit into that beautiful bikini, Bridget hardly wore it. Instead, she practically lived in her jeans. At the end of summer, they were so loose that when Bridget pulled the waistband flush against her hip, there was enough room to fit her whole fist on the other side.

The return trip to Crestmont Outlets at the end of summer provided her with a new wardrobe at a low, low size. But deep down Bridget knew this wasn’t a good thing. At least that part of herself was still working. She wasn’t totally gone.

Bridget’s stomach rumbles.

As she climbs out of her car, she tugs on the hem of her tan cable-knit sweater, attempting to bridge the gap of skin between it and the waist of her jeans. The skinny space in her waistband four weeks ago has shrunk. Or rather, Bridget has expanded. She can only fit a few fingers now. Not her whole fist, like before.

You weren’t healthy before.

You had a problem, but now you’ve got it under control.

On her way inside the school, her dark hair whips in her face, the sweet scent of coconut shampoo blowing across her with the breeze. It is too sweet, too rich. Her stomach twists on itself. Change jingles in her pocket. Enough for a bagel with cream cheese. She’d counted it out after passing on the bowl of cereal Lisa had poured for her. She shouldn’t have said no to the cereal. Especially when she’d only picked at last night’s dinner.

Prove that you’re fine, Bridget.

Eat a bagel with cream cheese.

Eat it all before homeroom!

Every Monday, student council sets up a huge banquet table practically in front of Bridget’s locker. There are huge paper bags filled with bagels, economy-size tubs of cream cheese and butter. Bridget takes careful steps matched with careful breaths. The smell is overwhelming. The yeasty, spongy sourdough. Charred bits of garlic. The sweet stink of bloated raisins suspended in bread. Her stomach squeezes, only not in hunger.

Don’t you dare, Bridget.

Bridget is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Two sides of herself, always arguing. She is tired of the fight, the constant struggle between a muddied version of good and evil, where right feels wrong and wrong feels really good.

“Bridget!”

One of Bridget’s friends steps out from behind the bagel table, fingertips glistening with buttery residue. “Have you seen the list?” The girl smiles wide, a few poppy seeds black between her teeth. “You’re the prettiest girl in the junior class!”

In spite of herself, Bridget gasps. All the bagel smells fill her up like helium inside a Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon. And in a flash, the guilt, the sadness, and the depression she’d felt the whole way to school vanish and are replaced by warmth.

Bridget Honeycutt made the list?

Impossible.

Someone else hands her a copy. Bridget reads aloud, “What a difference a summer can make.” She looks up and blushes.

You know why.

You know what’s different.

“Here!” her friend says. “Have a celebratory bagel on the house!” The girl takes a serrated knife and slices a bagel in half. Seeds and crumbs sputter off the blade and drop to the floor. When the table is packed up and put away, there will still be crumbs everywhere in the hallway. Bridget will feel them squish and pop underneath the soles of her shoes on the way to first period. Big, like gravel. Like boulders.

“Do you want butter or cream cheese?”

“Neither,” Bridget says. She pushes her hair back. It is damp around the edge of her scalp.

“Oh. Well … congratulations again!”

“Thanks,” Bridget says quietly, taking the bagel in her hand. She can’t believe the weight of it.

Bridget walks into homeroom. She is shaky from the shock of it. Never, never in a million billion years would she have dreamed this would happen to her. Sure, when school started, she was taken aback by all the compliments she got. How fit she was looking. How thin! And now, to be on the list. To be the prettiest junior in the whole school. It is confirmation that there’d been something wrong with her before. That she had needed to lose weight.

It is terribly confusing.

Eat.

After putting down her book bag, Bridget steps over to the trash can and presses her fingers into the still-warm flesh of the bagel. She pulls out clumps of soft dough, then drops them like pennies into a wishing well until the shell of the bagel is all that’s left. She wants to throw that into the trash, too.

When she looks up, she sees Lisa running with Abby Warner down the hall. Lisa beams at Bridget, so unbelievably proud of her big sister. The lipstick Lisa had put on in the car has faded. It’s barely noticeable.

Bridget is light-headed. As right as things felt mere seconds ago, she knows better. Inside, she knows how wrong this is. She hates herself for knowing better, for robbing herself of one good feeling. One moment of being happy with herself.

Eat, Bridget.

Just five bites.

They can be little ones.

Bridget manages two.

It is not something she wants to celebrate.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Jennifer Briggis makes her way through the morning hallway traffic, head down, silently counting off the twelve green linoleum floor tiles she’ll cross before reaching her locker. The kids lining the walls keep their voices low, but Jennifer still hears every word. Most of her classmates don’t actually talk to Jennifer, just whisper about her, and all those hushed conversations over the years have done a strange thing to her ears. They’ve become tuned in to pick up what everyone’s saying, whether she wants to or not.

“Have you seen the list yet?”

“Is Jennifer on it? Oh my god, I bet she’s on it again. Oh my god!”

“Do you think she knows what today is? She has to, right? I mean, how could she not after the last three years?”

“Twenty bucks says if she’s the ugliest senior, she barfs again. For old times’ sake.”

Every conversation orbits the same central question: If this year’s list decrees it, how will Mount Washington’s undisputed queen of ugly accept her crown?

Jennifer has thought about little else since last year’s list named her the ugliest junior and effectively knocked down the second-to-last domino in this impossible chain of events. Despite the muddy feelings she had about her particular situation, a clear either/or presented itself.

Senior year would arrive, and either Jennifer wouldn’t be on the list … or she would.

But that’s not what captivates Mount Washington High this morning. Four lists or three or two or even one can’t change what is widely accepted as fact: Jennifer Briggis is clearly, certifiably, undeniably ugly. But Jennifer knows that what everyone in the hallway salivates for is her reaction. That’ll be the real show. And the expectations for something big, something messy, aren’t beyond her control, like being pretty or being ugly. They are, in fact, her fault.

When Jennifer was put on the list her freshman year, she became an instant legend. No one, in the history of ugly girls, had reacted so unattractively.

Jennifer had sunk to the floor in front of her locker and bawled unabashedly until her entire face was shellacked with a mixture of tears, snot, and sweat. The list, damp and twisted in her fists, was reduced to soggy pulp. Blood vessels burst in her cheeks and in the whites of her eyes.

She’d barely survived the worst summer of her life, and now this?

The freshmen collectively backed up and gawked in horror, the way one might upon seeing a dead body. Except Jennifer was very much alive. A gasp for breath turned into a choke, and then she vomited on herself. The metallic smell of it filled the hallway, and people ducked into classrooms or pulled their clothes up over their noses to avoid it. Someone ran for the nurse, who extended rubber-gloved hands to help Jennifer to her feet. She was led to a cot in a dark corner of the nurse’s office.

Jennifer couldn’t stop crying. She wailed so loudly, the science classes heard her even with their doors closed and the teachers lecturing. Her misery vibrated against the steel lockers, turning the halls into one big tinny microphone that broadcast her suffering to the whole school. The nurse eventually sent Jennifer home, where she spent the rest of the day in bed, feeling bad for herself.

When she returned to school the following morning, no one would look at her. She found some vindication in the school’s collective avoidance, but mostly Jennifer felt lonely. She knew for sure that her old life was officially over. Despite having played it cool for an entire summer, praying that things would return to normal, the list had ruined everything. She would never get back what she’d lost after the way she’d acted. The only thing she could do was move on.

It proved a difficult task. Before Jennifer, the prettiest girls were the ones remembered and the ugliest girls faded into the shadows. But Jennifer bucked that trend. No one would forget her.

Sophomore year, the second time, Jennifer was on her way to a fresh start and the previous year’s list was a distant memory, at least to her.

In 365 days, Jennifer had gained some confidence, having successfully auditioned for chorus, and had grown friendly with a couple girls who also sang soprano. They were nothing special, not even well known in the chorus/band circle. Their clothes weren’t particularly cool, and they never wanted to do the things Jennifer suggested — preferring to rent old musicals and collectively sing along with them rather than, say, trying to get into a party. But Jennifer knew that beggars couldn’t be choosers. Nothing would be as good as it had been. She’d just have to live within her means.

The morning of the sophomore-year list, Jennifer rode the bus completely aware of what day it was, but without a thought that she might make the list again. In fact, she couldn’t wait to see who had been picked for her grade. She had her hunches. Nearly every one of her chorus friends would have been a likely choice.

This time, after she spotted her name, Jennifer remained in school the entire day. She cried a little, alone in the bathroom, but she didn’t throw up or make a scene, which were marginal improvements. Her friends did their best to console her.

Junior year, when Jennifer saw her name on the list, she laughed. Not because it was particularly funny, but because it was so ridiculous. She didn’t delude herself — she knew she wasn’t going to be named prettiest. But wasn’t it only fair to pass the ugliest torch along to another girl?

She didn’t cry, not once. Her chorus friends comforted her again, of course, but more intriguing were the random students who sought her out to personally apologize. They never said what they were sorry for, but Jennifer had a pretty good idea; no one should have to be the ugliest girl three years in a row. It was too cruel, too mean. There were other girls who deserved to be picked, not only her. She was being unjustly singled out.

Though a big part of her was angry at this repeated indignity, Jennifer graciously accepted the supportive pats on the back. This, she noticed, made people relax around her. It eased their minds. The entire student body seemed to appreciate that Jennifer was taking this with grace. They were relieved that she wasn’t going to make this awkward for them, like she had back when she was a freshman. There was no hysterical scene, no finger-pointing, no barfing. She was a really good sport.

It was clear to Jennifer what had happened. The list, for better or worse, did elevate her status at school. Practically everyone knew who Jennifer was, and that was more than the other ugly girls, her friends, could say.

The rest of junior year transpired without incident. Jennifer made halfway decent grades. She stopped hanging out with the chorus girls. She never really liked them much anyway.

After twelve green tiles, Jennifer pivots. She spins the lock left 10, right 22, left 11.

Jennifer steels herself and clicks open her locker. The entire hall watches as a white paper falls softly to the floor and lands inches away from her feet. She sees the embossed stamp of Mount Washington High. Certified truth, special delivery.

Jennifer unfolds it. She skips the other grades, the other girls, and goes straight for the seniors.

Margo Gable, prettiest.

Jennifer wishes Margo didn’t deserve it, but she does.

And right above her name, ugliest, for an unprecedented fourth year in a row.

Jennifer pretends to be surprised.

Someone claps. Someone actually claps.

Drumroll, please.

Jennifer shrugs off her book bag. It hits the floor with a thud, amplified by the vacuum of noise. She paddles her hands against her locker door rapid-fire until they burn. The sound smacks off everyone watching her, shocking them like those heart-attack paddles.

Jennifer spins around to face her crowd. She explodes into a jumping jack, legs spread, hands shooting straight up, holding the list for everyone to see, as if she were one of the cheerleaders brandishing a FIGHT, MOUNTAINEERS, FIGHT! sign. She shouts the best “Wooooooo!” she can and pumps the list up and down in celebration.

A few kids grin. More clap, and when Jennifer curtsies, enough hands join in to make it full-fledged applause.

Jennifer skips down the length of the senior hallway, keeping her hands raised for anyone who might give her a high five. Many reach out for her.

At the end of the day, there is this fact: Jennifer has accomplished a feat no other girl at Mount Washington has, endured something no one else can touch. She can’t help but feel special. It’s how that old saying goes. If life gives you lemons, make lemonade. She pulls her smile as wide as it can go, so no one will think for a second that she might not be enjoying this, fully embracing this gift.

She wants everyone to know. She’s come a long, long way.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Margo Gable is walking with her best friends, Rachel Potchak and Dana Hassan, three wide in a crowded hallway that always leaves room for them. The girls’ heads are pitched forward in a secret-sharing way, their hair falling collectively to make a privacy curtain. They are not talking about the list, as an outsider might assume. They are giggling about Mrs. Worth’s toes.

The toes, gnarled and stuffed into a pair of orthopedic sandals, had mesmerized Margo during fourth period, and she ignored the lecture on the algebraic equation of a Möbius strip in favor of mentally unlocking the twisted, overlapping joints.

“Why would a person with such hideous feet ever think to buy a pair of sandals?” Rachel asks.

“No clue,” Dana says. “Also, hello! It’s almost October. Why is she wearing sandals in the first place?”

Margo pulls her brown hair up in a sloppy bun at the very top of her head, secures it with a pencil, and thinks hard for an answer. Perhaps it’s a medical condition?

This is why she doesn’t notice Principal Colby lurking by the staircase until the principal’s hand is on her arm, pulling her to an abrupt stop.

Principal Colby is new and, so far as Margo can tell, the youngest faculty member at Mount Washington High School. She’s dressed in a red pencil skirt and a cream silk blouse with tiny yellow beads for buttons. Her dark hair is gathered in a low ponytail, except for her bangs, which Margo notices are kept long and shaggy in the way that is featured in lots of magazines right now.

Some in her group have said that Principal Colby could be Margo’s older sister. But now, up close, Margo thinks Maureen, her actual older sister, is prettier.

“Margo. I’d like to talk to you about this list. Do you have a minute?”

Margo expects this to be a quick conversation, if that is even the right word for it. She tongues her watermelon gum down in her cheek and tells Principal Colby that she doesn’t know anything about it.

Principal Colby narrows her eyes. “Well, Margo … you know that you’re on the list, right?”

The suspicion in Principal Colby’s voice catches Margo off guard, and it suddenly feels funny to be smiling. Like it gives the wrong impression of her. She threads some of her soft hair behind her ear. “Yes,” she admits. “Someone mentioned it in homeroom.”

Actually, Jonathan Polk, who had been cast as the lead in Pennies from Heaven, drowned out the morning announcements by performing the list as a monologue. Afterward, he tried unsuccessfully to coax Margo into taking a bow. It is nice, being on the list again. She’d been on it freshman year, Dana sophomore year, and Rachel last year, when they were juniors. That’s when her sister, Maureen, had also been on the list, and then, five days later, was picked as homecoming queen, which was the way things usually went.

Margo had thought about texting Maureen at college with the good news, but decided against it.

It has been weeks since they’ve spoken.

Principal Colby produces a copy of the list from a small pocket at her hip. It has been folded several times to fit, like a piece of origami. “Since I’m new here, I was hoping you could shed some light on what this is, exactly. Fill me in.”

Margo gives a light shrug. “I don’t know. It’s just a weird school tradition, I guess.” It feels strange to be talking openly about the list with school faculty. Margo is almost positive the teachers at Mount Washington know about it. How could they not? The ones who’ve grown up here, like Mrs. Worth, could have even been on it back in the day! But they tolerate it in the name of tradition, like Margo said. Or maybe, she realizes, they just don’t care.

“And you have no idea who is behind it?”

Dana and Rachel are lurking a few steps away, trying to eavesdrop. Margo says, “No,” as confidently as she can.

Principal Colby regards her skeptically. “Do you know any of the other girls on the list?” She offers her copy of the list to Margo, but Margo keeps her hands clasped behind her back.

“A couple, I guess.”

“Would you agree with the ones who were picked? Or would you have picked different girls?”

“Principal Colby, I haven’t even seen the actual paper before right now. I don’t know anything else. Really.”

Instead of believing her, Principal Colby waves off Rachel and Dana, who have inched a little too close. “Go on, ladies. You don’t want to be late.”

As her friends disappear down the stairs, Margo is guided over to the wall. She recognizes Principal Colby’s perfume as one of the bottles on her dresser, but decides not to comment on it. “Am I in trouble?” she asks.

“No,” Principal Colby says. Which, to Margo, should be the end of it, but she goes on. “I’m wondering how you plan to respond.”

“Respond?”

“You seem like the kind of girl who has influence around here, Margo, and how you choose to deal with the list will have an effect on your peers.” Principal Colby pushes up her sleeves and folds her arms. “This is a sick tradition, don’t you think? And I plan on getting to the bottom of who’s behind it. So if you know something, I would suggest you let me know right now.”

Margo stares blankly. What does Principal Colby expect her to do? Confess? Rat someone out? Um, please. “I didn’t make up the list, Principal Colby. And I don’t know who did.”

Principal Colby lets out a long sigh. “Think of the girls who are on the ugly side of things. Think of Jennifer, and how she must have felt this morning, seeing her name on the list for the fourth year in a row.”

I heard Jennifer was pretty psyched is what Margo wants to say. That’s what she’d been told, anyhow. But Margo doesn’t want to think of Jennifer. Not at all. If there was one sucky thing about this morning, it was finding out that Jennifer was on the list, too. It made Margo feel like she was living the drama of freshman year all over again.

Margo starts backing up. “I’ll think about it. I promise.”

She makes it halfway down the stairs before she has to stop and catch her breath. Principal Colby was so suspicious. It was as if she’d heard something.

Margo arrives at the cafeteria with cheeks brighter than the heat lamps burning red over the casserole special. Feeling slightly dizzy, she grabs a bottle of water and, aware that her hands are shaking, attempts to tide the miniature waves breaking against her lips with careful, measured sips. Margo pays for her lunch and then walks to where Rachel and Dana are sitting with Matthew, Ted, and Justin. On the way over, she passes a few tables of underclassmen. She senses them looking at her and quickly puts on a smile.

“What was that about?” Dana asks.

Margo falls into her seat. “I don’t know. Principal Colby’s all worked up over the list.” She fights the urge to look at Matthew to see if he’s heard.

Of course he has.

Rachel cups her hands and whispers, “Does she think you wrote it?” in a hissy voice that everyone can hear.

“God, no.” Margo quickly follows this statement with a breezy laugh. Underneath the table, she wipes her sweaty palms on her skirt, smoothing down the pleats. “Definitely not.”

“I’d put Principal Colby on the list,” Justin says, and licks his lips before taking a bite of hoagie.

Dana throws a napkin at him. “Ew.”

Ted leans back in his chair and puts his hands behind his head. He’s got on a plaid button-down, collar popped, sleeves rolled up to the elbows. He says, “Why’s it such a big deal? I mean, the list doesn’t say anything that everyone isn’t already thinking. We all have eyes. We know who’s hot and who’s not.”

Rachel taps a finger on her temple. “That’s funny. I seem to remember you were sweating that freshman Monique Jones pretty hard after she got on the list last year.”

“Busted,” Justin says and gives Rachel a high five.

The tips of Ted’s ears turn bright red. “The list had nothing to do with that,” he argues, louder than he needs to. “I always thought Monique was hot. She freaking modeled, dudes. The list just gave me a reason to go and introduce myself.”

Matthew pulls his sweatshirt hood up over his buzzed head. “Who wants to play me in Ping-Pong?”

He’d worn his blond hair long and floppy throughout high school, but decided to cut it short late this summer. None of the other girls liked it, but it reminded Margo of fourth grade, when Matthew first moved to Mount Washington. They’d been assigned desks next to each other, and Matthew appeared intrigued with her collection of tiny rubber erasers, which she kept in a pencil box. He’d always sit on his feet when she’d bring out the pencil box, trying to look inside as she picked which one she wanted to use. Around Christmas, she bought him a football eraser and slipped it secretly into his desk. Margo never saw him use it. She likes to imagine that maybe he still has it.

Dana shakes her head, confounded. “Principal Colby needs to relax. Next thing you know, she’s going to institute a ‘No Freak Dancing’ rule for homecoming dance.” She takes a sip of her iced tea and then adds, “Hey, speaking of freaks, did any of you guys see Sarah Singer parading down the hall with UGLY written on her forehead?”

“What a rebel,” Rachel says, rolling her eyes.

Matthew pushes away from the table. “Come on, Ted, play me. I want a rematch.”

“One ass beating, coming right up.” As Ted collects his garbage on his tray, he leans down over Margo’s shoulder and says, “I think you’re going to make a beautiful homecoming queen, Margo. And if I’m lucky enough to be your king, you should know right now that I’m not letting go of you the entire night.”

Matthew groans. “Come on! Lunch is almost over.”

Margo answers, “Um, thanks, Ted,” and tries not to appear disappointed at Matthew’s non-reaction. Maybe he hasn’t heard that she’s on the list?

Ted perches himself on the corner of the table. “I mean, don’t you think it’s funny that we’ve never hooked up? Homecoming might be fate bringing us together. I mean, I’ve always thought you and I would make a good —”

“Dude!” Matthew calls out, cupping his hands. “Let’s go!”

Ted shakes his head. “Whatever. I’ll talk to you later, Margo.”

Rachel stares at Ted as he walks away and whispers, “Ted is such a list fucker! I mean, could he be any more transparent?”

Margo watches Matthew reach for the Ping-Pong paddles, which are kept on top of the soda machine. The two of them have never been single at the same time before. She tended to date older guys, guys who could get her friends beer and who had cars. Matthew dated younger girls, the sweet girls who did well at school and were friendly to everyone. Girls from his church. Margo didn’t go to church.

“Anyway … as I was saying, the only one I feel bad for is Jennifer.” Dana spins in her seat and scans the tables behind her. “Look at her. Even the chorus girls have abandoned her.”

Though she doesn’t want to, Margo looks. Jennifer is across the room, sitting at a table full of other kids, but she isn’t with anyone.

“Do you buy her whole happiness act?” Dana asks.

“No way.” Rachel bites into a fry. “It has to be a cover. I mean, four years of being the ugliest in your class? How do you not kill yourself?”

“I give her credit. If I were Jennifer, there’s no way I could walk into school like she did and hold my head high,” Dana says. And then she whispers, “Remember at the junior picnic, when someone whipped that hot dog at Jennifer’s head? And Jennifer was laughing, like it was funny? Ted never copped to it, but I know he did it. I saw him. A-hole.”

Rachel shakes her head in disgust. “She probably deals with that kind of crap every day.”

The girls watch Jennifer pick at her sandwich. Two younger boys, obviously freshmen, pass behind her as they carry their trays to the wash line. As they do, they point Jennifer out to friends across the cafeteria and make gagging faces. Jennifer is oblivious to it.

Rachel throws down her fry. “That’s it. I’m going to ask Jennifer if she wants to sit with us today.”

Margo reaches out to stop Rachel from getting up. “Come on. No.”

Rachel stares down the two freshmen boys as they walk back to their table. “I don’t like those little turds thinking they can make fun of Jennifer because she’s on the list. Don’t they have any respect for the fact that she’s a senior? If she’s with us, they wouldn’t dare say anything.”

Margo sighs. “No one cares about hanging out with us that much.” But she knows that isn’t true. Especially when it comes to Jennifer.

“Huh. Easy for the prettiest senior girl to say.”

“Shut up, Rachel. You’ve been on the list, too. Both of you. It’s not a big deal.”

Dana cocks her head. “Yeah, but you’re the one who’ll get to be homecoming queen.”

“That’s not a guarantee,” Margo says, even though it basically is. “And anyway, I don’t care about being homecoming queen.” Sure, it will be nice. But if Margo hadn’t made the list this morning, if it had been Rachel or Dana instead, she’d have been fine with it.

Rachel pats Margo on the back. “Inviting Jennifer to hang out for half a lunch period isn’t going to kill you.”

Margo pretends to concentrate on picking the lettuce out from her chicken wrap. It doesn’t surprise her how quickly the legs of Jennifer’s chair squeak against the floor.

“Hey, Jennifer,” Dana says, sliding over so Jennifer can sit.

“Hi,” Jennifer says. “I like your shirt, Dana. It’s so cute.”

Dana grins down at her front. “Oh, thanks.”

It’s quiet for a second. Margo glances over and sees Jennifer staring at her. “Hi, Margo,” Jennifer says, all bright and cheerful. “Congratulations on … you know.”

“Thanks.”

Rachel drums her nails against the table. “So, Jennifer. We wanted to tell you that we’re sorry that you’re on the list again this year.”

Jennifer shakes her head, like it’s nothing. “Honestly, I’m used to it by now.”

“Yeah, but you shouldn’t have to get used to something like that,” Dana says, pursing her lips. “Whoever made the list this year is a total sadist.”

Margo thinks back to when senior year had just started. Dana got assigned a seat behind Jennifer in French II, and she complained every day for a week about the fat rolls on the back of Jennifer’s neck. Whenever Jennifer looked down at her textbook, the folds of skin would smooth out, and when she’d look up, they’d squeeze together, like a disgusting human accordion.

It annoys her how easily Dana can forget the past.

But it also makes Margo jealous. Because she can’t.

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