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

Nessa handed Eve her phone.

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

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

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

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

Impossible.

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

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

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

He flicked a hall pass against his palm.

Slap. Slap. Slap.

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

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

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

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

And what would happen?

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

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

2

SOPHIE

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