Eve came into rehearsal that Monday afternoon right as the musical director told the ensemble to leave and asked the two leads to stay to begin work on their songs. Eve, newly dolled up, sat quietly in the theater’s back row. She gave Nessa a little wave.
“It’s never too early to dive in!” Mr. Rhodes chirped, turning his sheet music to the show’s big ballad, and Nessa loved him so much in that moment.
As she and Brody began to sing, Nessa spotted Eve look up from the pages of her notebook and gaze at him. Gross.
Brody made the love in the song feel real, even if he sang like a toddler who had just jumped into ice-cold water.
But didn’t Eve know that he was a bad guy in real life? He wrote the list! How could she like him? Who was this girl who didn’t tell Nessa about boys asking her to dances? This girl getting crushes on monsters?
She felt the urge to mess with the harmony a little so Brody would make a mistake and maybe freak out at her and yell or something, so that Eve would remember he was mean.
Nessa believed Eve when she insisted that all the attention from the kids in school bothered her. But that day, coming to school with the “new look,” Eve hadn’t exactly seemed devastated. She even swished her straight hair behind her shoulder a couple of times in a move Nessa could only describe as Sophie-rific.
Nessa missed Eve’s curls.
Right as rehearsal ended, Nessa pulled out her phone and texted Sophie: brodys voice sounds like the sound cats make before they vomit, but guess who seems to like it, anyway?
To which Sophie responded ew. And more ew.
Sophie may have been incredibly stuck-up, but at least she saw Brody for what he was.
As Nessa headed out of the auditorium she mouthed to Eve, “Record it!” Eve was supposed to try to get him to confess. Somehow.
Eve’s befuddled face confirmed that she didn’t know how to lip-read. This was hopeless. Did Nessa always have to be the one in their friendship who knew how to get things done?
And if Sophie’s plan did work, and Eve did get Brody to admit to writing the list, if she didn’t record it for proof, who would believe Eve Hoffman over Brody Dixon?
No one.
Nessa was on it, though. She’d keep pretending to ignore him, but she’d watch his every move. She’d find a clue, a hint, a something.
As she waited for Eve to mess it all up, Nessa headed to the bathroom next to the auditorium.
Inside stood Lara Alexander, dabbing under her eyes with crumpled toilet paper.
“Oh, hey.” Lara tossed the toilet paper into the trash and faced the mirror to reapply some eyeliner.
“Hey.” Nessa stood by her and pretended to fix her hair in the mirror, even though it already looked good. “You were awesome at the read-through the other day.”
Lara gave her a closed-mouth smile. “Thanks.”
So what was Lara upset about? Still this stupid list thing? Nessa wasn’t on it, either, and it didn’t ruin her life. Couldn’t Lara talk to the counselors?
“You really are better than me.” Lara nodded vehemently as she sniffled.
“No, no, I’m not!” Nessa was better overall. But Lara was still great!
“You are. And that’s okay.” Lara pulled out some mascara. “It’s okay,” Lara repeated as if to convince herself. “Ya know, it’s just…” Lara took a breath and strengthened her voice. “I think I’m probably going to switch schools.”
“Oh. Wow.” So the rumors were true. This could really hurt the production. They needed her! “Before the show or…?” Nessa tried to sound casual.
“I can’t be here anymore!” Lara spat out. “People are laughing at me, like they think I think I’m pretty, they think I’m full of myself, and they’re just so happy to see that no one would choose me for the top fifty prettiest. Well, they’d be happy to know I’ve never thought I was pretty and I’ve never liked how I looked. So they don’t have to feel like it ‘brought me down a peg’ or whatever.”
“I don’t think people feel—” Nessa tried to say what she knew she should say, but Lara cut her off.
“Because guess what?” Lara turned to face Nessa. “I hate everything about my face. Except my eyes. I like those. I used to wonder if I could be an eye model, like in ads where only eyes are seen. Like for mascara. Models start really young, like sixteen. My sister might end up modeling. She’s almost sixteen, you know. And she’s perfect. I’ve always hoped one day I’ll look like her. But I look like me.” Lara’s voice cracked. She went into a stall to grab another chunk of toilet paper. “I’m so ugly.”
“You’re so, so beautiful,” Nessa told her. And it was true. It was why Nessa had worried that Lara might get the part of Marian. It was also why, Nessa realized, she’d always assumed that Lara thought she was better than her.
Lara ignored her. “I just don’t understand what happened to make everybody not like me. I used to think that when boys were looking at me it was because they liked me, but now I know it’s because I’m a joke.” Lara hid her face inside the tissue, and Nessa saw a droplet of an inky mascara tear hit the bathroom floor.
A flush came from one of the stalls. “Yeah, it’s not so great,” they heard someone say. A few moments later, Erin O’Brien came out. She handed Lara some more tissue paper and washed her hands. “But some of us never expected to be in the top fifty, fair or not. Some of us don’t have famous parents and models for sisters.”
“No! I didn’t mean to complain, I—”
Erin left the bathroom without responding.
Lara looked toward Nessa for backup, and she seemed to take in Nessa for the first time. Maybe she thought about how Nessa wasn’t on the list, either. “I’m not trying to say I have it worse than anyone or anything. But I can’t help who my parents are! God!” She let out a sob.
“Look.” Nessa held her shoulders. “Nothing is wrong with you or me or Erin. What’s wrong is that stupid list. Like my mom says—it’s cruel.”
She grabbed some paper towel and helped Lara fix her makeup.
“Yeah,” Lara said, though she didn’t seem like she believed it. “Do you really think Hayley Salem is prettier than me?” she asked.
Nessa decided to stay with Lara for a little bit. Maybe Nessa owed it to her, for always having assumed Lara was full of herself, just like Lara had said.
Apparently, she could have benefited from being a bit more full of herself. They all could have.