Brody must have used someone else’s name to sign into the library that morning. He was a smart-ish guy. He might have planned it all out with that much detail. He must have known that the administrators would look into it, right? So he signed in with a different name.
Unless …
No, it had to be Brody. That’s why he falsely accused Eve of writing the list! He was horrible! And he had tortured every girl in the school at one point or another. Maybe that’s why more and more of them wore the masks that Eve scattered around everywhere.
When Nessa texted the Shieldmaidens to tell them she had evidence that Brody had spray painted Eve’s locker, Sophie hadn’t mentioned what she’d seen in the library.
Something in her told her not to.
And with proof of vandalism, the Shieldmaidens finally had something for their closing night reveal.
A plan had been formulated. Sophie would sew a pocket into Nessa’s costume at final dress that night. For her last scene, they’d slip a cell phone inside it. Lara and Erin would block Brody’s exits so he couldn’t run offstage. Winston would prep Nessa’s phone so that as the bows came to a close, she could just press send, shooting the image of Brody’s coat with the orange stains, along with the image of Eve’s locker, to every phone number and email in the student body. Across the image it would read, “Why would an innocent person do this?”
But what if Brody got in trouble for the spray painting, and then the administration looked into him more closely and found the library sign-in? Sophie had deleted the Word doc, she reminded herself, so she was the only one with the photos. And Winston said Brody had bragged about it. Why would he brag about it if he hadn’t written it himself? It was him, she told herself, and he deserved whatever he got.
He’d called her “white trash.” He’d said she had fleas.
And all because of a pair of puckered lips and a turn of the head.
As Sophie headed to rehearsal that afternoon, Amina Alvi walked toward her. Sophie was the only other person in the hallway. She pretended to look up at something on the ceiling, as if the water-stained tiles were as fascinating as the constellations in the night sky. When that became ridiculous, she began to peek inside each classroom she passed, like she was looking for someone. Anything to avoid eye contact with the girl who had betrayed her in a stairwell—so tacky—and who was now following Rose without a thought as to how Sophie might be doing.
But as they crossed each other’s paths, Amina spoke.
“Hey,” she said.
Sophie gave a nod but kept her gaze averted and walked on.
“Hey, can I talk to you for a second?”
“Fine,” Sophie answered.
“We haven’t talked much lately, huh?” Amina let out a nervous, breathy giggle.
“Yup.” Sophie transformed her face to ice and stone. She gripped the straps of her backpack.
“You don’t sit with us anymore.” Amina took a step closer to Sophie.
“Um, yeah, ya think?” Sophie couldn’t make herself pretend it was nothing, or keep her mouth shut. It was too exhausting. “I heard you talking about me in the stairwell. The day after the list came out. Right before the parent meeting.” She locked her stern eyes with Amina’s. “And things just got worse from there.”
“What?” Amina looked flustered. “I never talked about you! I stand up for you all the time!”
Sophie scoffed. “Oh, so that means people are talking about me all the time?” Of course they were. “Anyway, that’s not the point. I heard you.”
“What do you think I said? I didn’t say anything!” Amina looked like she might cry.
Sophie tried to remember exactly what Amina had said, but she couldn’t recall who said what anymore. “You were all saying how I’m not really pretty. And Eve is. Rose is. It’s obvious you all truly felt that because look at who you’re following now.”
“Following?” Amina said. “What do you mean by that?”
“Oh, come on. Rose.” Sophie felt herself crossing her arms, not letting Amina in.
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘following’ Rose. You left our table. Rose was still there. What was I supposed to do? You obviously didn’t want to be friends anymore.”
“We were never friends,” Sophie spat back.
They heard a door shut in the hallway, and two teachers walked past them, chatting.
“Hi, girls,” one of them said. The other waved.
“Hi, Ms. Tilo!” Amina singsonged. She’d always been every teacher’s favorite. Probably because she knew how to act really nice.
When the teachers were a few yards away, Amina’s smile disappeared. Her face crumpled.
“We were friends.” Amina’s voice broke. She wiped a tear away, and Sophie could see her try to hold more back.
“Were we?” Sophie’s arms dropped. “Then why didn’t we … I don’t know, talk about stuff? Why didn’t you ever stand up for me when the list came out? Why didn’t you come after me at the Halloween dance? Seriously!”
“I know, it was really bad what Brody did to you!” Amina countered. “I’m really sorry, okay? I didn’t have any friends until you came to school halfway through sixth grade. I just studied, and felt weird all the time. And nobody here looked like me. Do you have any idea how that feels?”
“No,” Sophie acknowledged. She didn’t.
“I sat all alone at lunch. And then there was you. I couldn’t believe you wanted to be my friend.”
“Oh.” Sophie leaned against a locker and felt her shoulders droop.
Amina slouched, pressing her shoulder against the locker next to her. “But, sorry, you just … you never really talked about yourself. I didn’t want to ask the wrong questions. You got pretty mad when I did.”
“Oh!” Sophie repeated. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing, but at the same time she knew it was true. She hated when Amina or Liv or Hayley got nosy.
“Sorry for being a bad friend.” Amina began to cry again.
They stood there for a minute or so, and watched as a couple of boys walked by, staring at them, followed by a group of girls in superhero masks.
“Hey,” Sophie said. “Didn’t Brody like you before he liked me?”
Amina nodded, sniffling.
“What happened?”
Amina laughed. “Oh, you don’t even want to know.”
“No, I really do,” Sophie told her.
They walked toward the auditorium together as Amina told Sophie how Brody had come on really strong, and Amina’s parents didn’t let her go to boys’ houses, and how Brody had said that was really stupid, and after asking her a bunch of times and hearing her say no just as many times, he stopped talking to her entirely.
“Hey,” Sophie whispered to her as they neared rehearsal, “what do you think about helping me and some other girls teach Brody Dixon a lesson?”