Sophie grabbed Eve’s hands and they spun and she let the world outside the room drift away. Now that everyone knew about her, or maybe admitted what they’d always known, that she didn’t actually fit in at all, the world she’d be returning to in the hallways would be a very different one. A world she didn’t yet know how to conquer.

30

EVE

They must have known she could hear them.

They spoke lowly, but not in whispers.

Looking up and down the hallways, Eve swore that everyone’s eyes glowed red, like demons’. Even the hall monitors and teachers seemed to look at her differently. Did they all know about Brody’s accusation at the dance?

On Monday afternoon, as she walked by the science lab, she heard Curtis Milford say to a friend, “I told you she wrote it, dude. Just look at her. Yuck.”

Principal Yu approached her to find a time they could talk. She probably believed Eve wrote the list, too. Eve made up an excuse and escaped.

Tuesday morning, when she entered homeroom, Miranda Garland muttered to those who sat behind her, “Did you know she’s Jewish?”

“What? Really?” someone asked in shock, like Miranda had told them Eve was secretly half-human, half-crab.

Eve clenched her palm around her hamsa necklace and kept her head down.

During PE on Wednesday, as they did laps, she saw a group of boys making fun of her chest. She told Ms. Meijer she felt nauseous, and she headed to the nurse’s office to lie down.

As she lay on the office’s cot, she heard her phone buzz. She didn’t need to check it. She knew what it said. The texts when she’d been “the prettiest” hadn’t been great, but now that she was the school’s lying fraud, they were much worse.

How could a person be so stuck-up?

Pathetic

U didn’t fool me who could believe u would be no 1

You’re a _____

You’re a _____

You’re a _____

Fill in the blank. It went on and on.

They could all think and say whatever they wanted. They could hate her and call her names. Eve could take on all the venom that the school spat out. Maybe she deserved it. She’d stayed silent when the Sophies had called Sophie “pathetic,” and when Brody claimed Sophie was “crazy.” She hadn’t said a thing when Brody told her Nessa didn’t “fit the part.”

How ironic that her mom had always said, with a twinkle in her eye, that she’d named Eve after “not just the first woman, but the first rebel.”

Eve wouldn’t remain quiet again. She’d find a way to speak out. Somehow.

She pulled her notebook out of her backpack and tried to do a poetry exercise. Shut out the noise. Just shut out the world. It had worked during the October assembly.

What was a poem she knew well?

Maybe a line from one of her new favorites, one she’d found in her hours spent clicking on random poems online: “The Cloud” by Percy Shelley.