The world had flipped upside down. She couldn’t think straight. She couldn’t piece together who was guilty of what and why.
Eve heard an eruption inside the auditorium before she made it inside to warn Nessa.
Soon after, the doors of the theater burst open and she saw Principal Yu and Mr. Rhodes leading Brody toward the second floor, presumably to Principal Yu’s office.
“Wait!” Eve hollered. “Wait, Principal Yu!”
They continued to hurry off and within seconds were out of sight.
Moments after, the crowd trickled out of the side doors, and the cast came to meet them, all babbling and bustling, full of “Can you believe its?” and “I knew its!” and “Best show EVERs!”
As Nessa stepped into view, large swaths of the crowd cheered.
“Oh, stop, stop.” Nessa glowed.
Eve spotted Sophie’s little sister, Bella, asking for an autograph.
Sophie waved to Eve, motioning her over. When they reached each other, Eve grasped onto Sophie like she was a piece of land in the middle of the ocean.
“Winston and Caleb did it,” she whispered in Sophie’s ear.
Sophie pulled away, still holding Eve’s elbows, and her face held no surprise.
“You knew about Winston.” Eve stared in wonder.
“Let’s just say I had an idea.”
“I don’t know what to do,” Eve confessed.
“I think he was honestly on our side.” Sophie patted her arm. “He just messed up really, really bad.”
“But what about Brody?”
“I know,” Sophie whispered. “We have to tell, right?”
“Sophie, honey, it all looked great!” Sophie’s mom came to hug her, and Eve slipped out of sight.
Eve made her way to the front of the school. Before she could reach the entrance, an enormous swarm of girls surrounded her, all wearing masks.
“I believed you the whole time!” one of them said.
“We shouldn’t have to worry about how we look all the time!” a younger voice cried out to her.
“Look!” A girl held up a plastic bag filled with superhero masks. “I’ve been giving them to everybody!”
Eve looked around and saw them. Girls with masks in every color dotted the crowd.
“I’m tired of them looking at us.”
“Of them judging us!”
“And thinking we can be ranked! Like it’s a game!”
“Yeah! We are taking ourselves out of the running!”
The voices continued, and behind a couple of the kids Eve saw Miranda Garland come up to the girl passing out masks and grab one for herself. Miranda saw Eve watching her and waved the mask as if to say hello.
“You were right this whole time!” the girls kept repeating.
And Eve tried to say, “No, maybe not,” but they weren’t listening. She told them thanks and bye, and she rushed out of the school into the freezing air. She sat where she’d once sat with Brody, except now the bench felt ice cold. She pulled her down coat tight around herself.
Eve’s phone buzzed and she glanced at it. It was a text from Miranda Garland: hey just wanted to say im super sorry
Then Curtis:
sry i was mean to you
Unknown number:
hey sorry i didnt mean the stuff i said
Unknown number:
sorry for wht happnd to u
And then Nessa:
Hey. Sorry for not getting the mask thing. Or the Brody thing. We ok?
One night and so many sorrys.
Eve wished for snow. Snow would lighten the night sky. Snow would illuminate the concrete. She wanted something beautiful, right then and there.
Abe swerved up to the school a few minutes later.
“Hop in, Dickinson,” he said.
Eve readied herself for bed.
So who was she meant to be, a nobody or a somebody?
Were there only two choices?
Eve’s mother was surely down the hall praying for the sick. For her brother’s safety as he drove. For who knows what else. And then she’d whisper the Sh’ma. A poem itself. Like all prayers were.
The scenes of autumn replayed themselves in Eve’s head. And the words of poets who’d lived hundreds of years ago, with problems much bigger than her own, repeated themselves again and again in her mind like a soundtrack for her life.
How dreary to be somebody. How public, like a frog. To tell one’s name, the livelong June, to an admiring bog …
I am the daughter of Earth and Water, And the nursling of the Sky …
I am large, I contain multitudes …
She still didn’t know what she contained. She just knew the million things that other people assumed she was. Her parents. Brody. Sophie. Winston. Even Nessa. All she knew was that she wasn’t who any of them thought she should be. She was something else entirely. But what?
She contained multitudes. That was it. She contained a poet, the prettiest girl, a plain Jane, a girl who looked for the beauty in little things, who liked her quiet room, who could disappear within herself, maybe for too long sometimes, who wanted some attention, but not too much, a person who loved her one best friend but had started to like having more of them. She wasn’t one thing. None of them were.
They were more than numbers on a list, more than their cafeteria tables, or their hobbies, or their groups.
Within each of them were a million universes.
Multitudes.
And with that thought, Eve dropped her mask into the waste basket. She picked up her phone, ignoring the dozens of notifications from the Shieldmaidens group chat. She wrote, I’m okay. Busy. What an intense night. You were all amazing.
Eve wrote privately to Nessa: Of course we’re ok. There’s a lot I didn’t get, too.
She grabbed last year’s yearbook, sat at her desk, and opened a notebook. She went through every name, endowing each with a sliver of insight, painting a piece of every one with words, able only to merely graze over the tiniest star of the universes within each, but opening the door for more.
Then Eve typed it up, took a screenshot, posted it online, softly recited the Sh’ma, and went to sleep.