Early that week, Brody came back to school.
And by then, the school’s ecosystem had been rearranged.
Eve was still famous, after years of being a nobody, but she wasn’t famous for being the new prettiest anymore. She was known as a monster.
A monster with a mask. Eve had come to school wearing Winston’s Green Hornet mask from Halloween. Nessa had tried to tell Eve that if she didn’t want to be stared at, a green mask with a little wasp on it wasn’t the way to go.
What was even weirder was that Eve had left a few superhero masks out in the bathroom and on tables in the cafeteria and now a couple of other girls were wearing them, too. More than a couple. So strange.
And the Sophies were officially no longer the Sophies because Sophie had left them. Rose Reed now sat in the middle of the Sophies’ table. Even Amina, who’d been higher on the list, seemed to follow Rose’s lead. They all wore pink belts.
And Sophie had solidified a new look: happy. She seemed to laugh a lot more. Especially at things Nessa said, which Nessa had to admit she liked. Sometimes, Sophie even dressed for track practice before it began.
The new Sophie Kane sat with Nessa, Eve, Lara, Erin, and Winston.
Winston no longer spoke to Brody. And he’d stopped speaking to his “ex–best friend” Caleb, as far as Nessa could tell. But Nessa saw Winston glare at Caleb from across the room sometimes. And Caleb glared right back.
Nessa tried to imagine how that could happen to a pair of best friends. What if Eve changed so much one day that they couldn’t even stand each other anymore? It sounded impossible. But Eve had been very different lately. First the whole brunette bombshell thing, and recently those masks. Nessa felt her moving further and further away.
“Evie, you planning on taking that thing off one of these days?” Nessa asked her at lunch.
Eve gave her a tight smile. “Nope.”
“It makes you look kinda … twisted.”
Eve shrugged. “Oh well.”
“And haven’t you gotten into trouble for it at school?” Nessa marveled.
“So? What can they do about it?”
That definitely didn’t sound like the Evie she knew. “Moving on…” Nessa changed the subject. “Any updates on the tech side of things, Byrd?”
“Um, no.”
“I don’t think your science genius brain is doing enough for us here with LordTesla’s IP address. You need to help in another way, too. Do lights for the show. Get involved with the sixth grader working the switchboard. He’s a disaster. Mr. Rhodes is so frustrated.”
“Um, I—I—”
“No choice. It’s a rule of the Shieldmaidens.”
A group of Sophie’s old friends walked by them, headed toward the cafeteria door, and they whispered as they passed by. Amina Alvi stopped at their table and stood in front of Sophie.
“Hey, Sophie,” Amina said. “We miss you at our table.”
Sophie kept her eyes down on her lunch and raised a hand to signal hello without looking up at all.
“Okay, cool!” Amina’s tone was breezy, as if nothing was awkward at all. “See ya!” She followed the other girls out.
“Soph, we may need a Sophie—I mean a Rose—to make sure the other kids come to the show?” Nessa reminded her. “Maybe you could get Amina on board with us?”
“Brody is the lead,” Sophie snapped, in a way Nessa hadn’t heard since before the dance. “The little sheep will be there to see him, anyway.”
“Yeah, but…” Lara looked at Nessa and Winston for permission to go on. She still seemed a little scared of Sophie. “We need Rose and those girls there on the right night, when we expose him. If they all come the first night, it won’t work.”
Eve broke her silence. “None of this means anything because we don’t have evidence. And until we do? I’m the bad guy in school. Not him.” She picked up her backpack and left the cafeteria. “Take one,” she said as she tossed a few of her masks onto the table.
Eve had a point.
One night after dinner, as Nessa and the Shieldmaidens tried to guess Brody’s email password, Nessa’s dad knocked on her door.
“One sec!” she yelled out as she wrote some good ones: MONEYBAGS, TONEDEAF123?
As she giggled away, her dad opened the door and came in.
“Honey,” he began. Uh-oh. “Honey” meant a talk was coming.
“Dad, I’m really busy.”
“Weak attempt,” her dad said, making her laugh.
She put the phone down.
“I’ll cut to the chase,” he said. “The word on the street is that Evie wrote the list.”
Nessa rolled her eyes. Even her parents thought Eve was a liar? “First of all, don’t ever say ‘word on the street’ again, and second of all, how could you ever think that—”
“I don’t, I don’t,” he assured her. Her dad scooted next to her on the bed and ran a hand through her hair. It made her feel about eight years old, but she liked it. “I’m sure Principal Yu doesn’t, either.”
“You never know,” Nessa grumbled. “All the kids think she did it.”
“I’m sure. And I know this year hasn’t been great so far for her, or probably for you?” He gave her a questioning look, but she said nothing. “But just remember,” her dad recited his usual phrase, “This, too, shall—”
“Pass,” she finished for him.
But it didn’t quite comfort her this time.
“But, Dad,” she began, speaking slowly so as to say exactly what she meant, “before ‘it’ passes, what are we supposed to do about it? You have to do something when life is hard, when people get hurt.”
“That is the question,” he said. He thought for a minute. “Love yourself,” he said. “Love others. Be kind. And remember how strong you are.” He squeezed her knee. “I hope that for Evie, too.”
“Evie has no idea just how strong she is.” Nessa laid her head on her pillows.
“She will one day.” Her dad got up. He leaned over, kissed her forehead, and headed to the door. “Oh yeah.” He turned back around. “You know some other wisdom I like?”
“What?”
“‘Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.’”
With that, he shut the door.
Nessa wasn’t so sure about that one, either. Sometimes it seemed like they knew exactly what they did.
And look what they’d done to Eve.