Once she was at Ford, she owned the place. She got all As. That was a given. She was the best one on the track team, training all year to maximize her speed. One day she planned to get a track scholarship to the University of Michigan. And all the boys loved her. It was just a fact. Brody Dixon, who looked like a tenth grader and lived in the biggest house in all of Glisgold, had a thing for her. He’d been openly flirting all year, even having her over to study, and everyone knew they’d go to the Halloween dance together. In all the ways that counted, she was number one. In everything.

When the list came out that morning, Sophie Kane stood leaning against her locker, surrounded by her girls, many of them ready to take a tardy in homeroom just to wait by her side until the last minute. And they were her girls. They may have had their own names—Amina, Liv, Hayley, plus a few others who mattered less—but everyone called them “the Sophies.” They would never call themselves this, out in the open, but people referred to them this way behind their backs. And Sophie knew that if other people said it, then it became the truth. So they were hers.

As the Sophies babbled about something or other, Sophie played with a Spanish app on her phone. She had to work on her Spanish. The new verbs confused her. They were impossible to memorize, especially with how little she’d been sleeping lately. And falling behind was not an option, not for her.

As she moved to the future irregular tense, a few “Oh my Gods” whooshed around her, and texts of screenshots of the list poured onto her phone in a flood, drowning out tener and tendré, and as the reality of the image hit her, as the rankings sank in and she saw that she was not number one, but number two—number two!—Sophie smiled a perfectly practiced smile and let the world believe that she was totally, entirely, and completely fine.

But Sophie Kane was not fine.

Sophie had been wronged.

“Guys, this is so dumb,” she chirped to the girls as they nodded in agreement. “And Rose Reed is number four?” she asked. “Rose?” Rose, already in her homeroom, was one of the Sophies who mattered less. She wore pink belts every day.

“She’s not even that pretty!” insisted Amina, a generally easygoing girl who Sophie liked. Amina had been ranked as number three. Probably about right. She had incredible skin and lashes to die for.

But Rose? She was only around them at all because one of Brody Dixon’s best friends, Caleb Rhines, was into her. Rose sat on the edges of their lunch table, staring at Sophie with a lingering gaze that freaked her out. At least pretend you’re not obsessed with me, Sophie always thought.

“And Eve Hoffman is a weirdo,” said Hayley, number five, one of the most airheaded girls on the planet. Hayley was gorgeous and the best athlete in the grade, but every time she spoke Sophie had to stop herself from just getting up and walking away. “She never pays attention, and when she’s called on in class she just gives this dumb look like…” And Hayley did an impression of someone without a thought in her head. So basically, Sophie thought, just an impression of herself.