Queen Sophie Hartley (6 page)

“I don't know,” Sophie said slowly. That was surprising, too. She couldn't quit; her mother would be angry at her. The rest of the family would laugh at her, too, when she told them about the worms. And then, of course, she would have to add “kind” to the list of things she wasn't good at just when the list of things she was good at seemed to be catching up.

But it was nice to think Dr. Holt would miss her if she did quit. Sophie could tell from Dr. Holt's voice that she would. Anyway, it was fun planting flowers. Sophie liked it. And sometimes—only sometimes—talking to Dr. Holt was interesting.

“You've never even given me anything to eat,” said Sophie.

That made Dr. Holt look at her. “You never asked.”

“Asking's not polite.”

“You're absolutely right,” said Dr. Holt. “All right, then...” She spun her chair around so that she faced the house. “Let's go get something to eat.” She started moving. “Strawberry shortcake all right with you?” she called.

“Oh, yes,” said Sophie.

“I made it myself,” said Dr. Holt. She stopped her chair and waited while Sophie dumped her armload of tools in a corner of the terrace and opened the door. “I bet that surprises you.”

“I can't imagine you making anything sweet,” admitted Sophie.

“First, you call me a mean old lady, and then you tell me I'm a sour old goat,” grumbled Dr. Holt.

“I never said any such thing,” said Sophie.

“Ha!” Dr. Holt shot her an amused glance as she rolled past her into the house. “You're a fresh kid. I don't know why I'm even cooking for you.”

But Sophie knew why: she had earned it.

The strawberry shortcake was sweet, very sweet. She ate two pieces.

 

Sophie tried not to watch Nora making bird faces at herself in their mirror after dinner, but it was impossible not to. She pretended she was doing her spelling homework, which her
mother had threatened to start testing her on if she didn't work harder, but she was really keeping a close eye on Nora.

First, Nora would crane her head one way and lift her chin in the air to see what she looked like out of the corner of her eye. Then she craned it around the other way and did the same thing. Sometimes she pushed her lips out as if she was about to kiss someone.

She was trying to see which was her better profile. Sophie knew, because she did the same thing. But while Sophie was always checking to see how she was going to look with a tiara, she knew that Nora was imagining how she was going to look with a wreath of beautiful white feathers on her head when she danced the role of the swan in her ballet performance. It was the lead role; Nora wanted it more than anything. She hadn't said as much to Sophie, but Sophie knew. There was only one other girl in Nora's class who might get it. Her name was Lauren.

Lauren used to help teach the beginners' class. She was the oldest girl in the school, two
years older than Nora. She was taller than Nora, too, which mattered in ballet. Her straight blond hair was always pulled back into a perfect chignon at the nape of her neck that never came unraveled. Her shoulder blades stood out under her leotard and her legs were as long and thin as a colt's. Even her fingers were thin.

All the little girls in Sophie's ballet class started out wanting to be just like Lauren. Sophie had, too. But then something about the way Lauren looked at her and talked to her had made Sophie stop wishing she could dance as well as Lauren and started making her realize she'd never be as good. No matter how hard she tried. Sophie didn't know how Lauren did it, but she could still remember the feeling.

It wasn't simply that Lauren wasn't kind, Sophie realized, it was that Lauren was mean. She was suddenly very worried for her sister. It gave her a terrible feeling in her stomach to see the way Nora's damp hair was curling around her face, even though she had it pulled back
into a pony tail. Hair mattered, too, in ballet, Sophie thought. Tall snobs with straight hair would be very hard to compete with.

She felt the surge of fierce protectiveness she always felt when an outsider was mean to anyone in her family. It was one thing when her brothers and sisters were mean to one another, but another thing altogether when someone else was. Sophie felt she just
had
to say something to make Nora feel better.

“Who cares if Lauren is taller than you and has straighter hair?” she blurted out loyally. “Your nose looks much more like a beak.”

It didn't seem to comfort Nora at all. She whirled around to Sophie with a furious face.

“Why are you looking at me?” she shouted. “I told you not to look at me! You're always spying on me! I can't stand it! I can't even get any privacy in my own room!”

“It's my room, too,” said Sophie. “And I wasn't spying. I was looking around.”

“Looking around?” cried Nora. “At what? It's our bedroom. What is there to look at?” Nora's hair was flying out around her head
now, but Sophie didn't think this was the right time to suggest she might need to use more spray. “Oh . . . oh...” Nora seemed stuck, like a windup toy against a rug. Then she came unstuck. “Oh, I hate you, Sophie!” she cried. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!” She yanked her bathrobe off the hook on the closet door, opened the door to the hall, and ran out of the room. When Sophie heard the bathroom door slam, she fell back against her pillow and sighed.

It was really very interesting. Whenever Nora yelled that she hated her, she always yelled it in threes. But when she just spoke it, she only said it once. As in, “I hate you, Sophie,” when Sophie took the last cookie. Or the last card from the deck. Nora had said it to her so often, it didn't really mean anything anymore. But there was no doubt Nora was mad at her.

Sophie sighed again. Their mother always told them it was better to get angry and clear the air than to walk around brooding. She said that people who let things get pent up inside only ended up making themselves sick.
If that was true, Nora must be feeling pretty cleaned out by now, Sophie thought. Judging from the sound of that door, Nora had definitely moved from brooding to mad.

She bet Nora would thank her someday.

Probably not tonight, but soon.

Sophie briefly considered taking out her list and finally adding “Being kind” to the top of the things she was good at. But then she thought it would be too much like bragging, so she decided to wait. Then she could add “Being modest” to the list, too. All in all, it was very satisfying to think how quickly her second list was catching up to her first.

“How about today?” Sophie asked hopefully. “You'd really like them if you actually talked to them.”

Sophie kept her eyes on Heather's face. She didn't have to look down at the other end of the table to know that Alice and Jenna were glaring at her. That's what they had been doing for days. Every time Sophie smiled at them, they mouthed “snob” and looked the other away.

Even though they were her best friends, she was getting tired of them. She was getting tired of Heather, too. It felt as if everybody was
allowed to go around acting however they wanted except for her.

“Not yet,” Heather said briskly. “They don't have enough points.”

“Points?” said Sophie.

“It's the system we used at my school in California,” said Heather. She took a small notebook and a pencil out of her lunch bag and opened it. “I need to teach you about it. It's really the best way to keep track of who you want to be friends with.”

“Oh,” said Sophie. This was going to be long and complicated, like food and smells, she could tell. As she watched Heather run her finger down her list of names, she thought that life in California didn't sound anything like life in Ohio. Heather's list looked alarmingly long from upside down. All the names had little boxes next to them. Some of the boxes had check marks. Many more didn't.

“You have four points so far,” Heather explained. “You got two points for eating onions, one point for not having bushy eyebrows....”
Heather looked up at her. “I hate bushy eyebrows. Don't you?” she said, and then, before Sophie could answer, looked at her list again as she ran her finger further down the page and said, “and one point for being in the same reading group I am. That's four. Four is the minimum number you need to be someone's friend.”

Minimum number? Sophie didn't even know what a minimum number was. She'd never heard about points before, either. And why did she get two points for eating onions and nothing for peanut butter when Heather loved it so much?

It was all too confusing.

“I'm afraid Jenna and Alice have only one point each,” Heather told her. She said it regretfully, like a doctor delivering bad news. “Jenna's only in the blue reading group, and Alice can't do cursive.”

“I can't do cursive, either,” said Sophie.

“True, but you knew the capital of Oklahoma yesterday. It evens out.” Heather looked down again and started checking off boxes with
sharp, choppy strokes while Sophie watched. The list of Heather's friends was getting shorter and shorter. Unfortunately, if Sophie went on eating lunch with Heather much longer, it was going to be
her
friend list, too. There wasn't another member of Mrs. Hackle's class sitting anywhere near them.

But there didn't seem to be anything Sophie could do about it.

She had four points.

“Some people,” Heather said to her disgustedly. “Chris Brooks has such huge ears. And Allie North wears clothes that don't match.”

“Clothes should always match,” said Sophie.

Heather looked up at her. “You'd never wear stripes with checks, would you?”

Sophie panicked. She wore anything with anything, as long as it fit.

“Of course, you wouldn't,” Heather answered for her. She looked back at her list. “No one does.”

“Oh.”

“And what about Tamara Wilson?” said Heather, looking up again.

It was a little bit like being interrogated: Sophie knew there was a right answer but she didn't know what it was. And she wasn't about to take a guess.

“What about her?” she said cautiously. She was rapidly realizing that it didn't matter if none of Heather's answers made any sense to her. She didn't have to understand Heather's rules. She only had to follow them.

“She wears socks with sandals, that's what,” said Heather. “No one wears socks with sandals in California.”

“But we live in Ohio,” said Sophie.

“It doesn't matter. Rules are rules.” Heather clapped her notebook shut and leaned across the table with a strange look in her eyes that made Sophie nervous. She couldn't tell whether Heather was going to kiss her or bite her. She leaned back ever so slightly.

“One more point,” Heather said to her breathlessly, “and we'll be best friends.”

 

Dr. Holt was in a bad mood again, Sophie could tell. If she was
always
in a bad mood,
that would be one thing, Sophie thought resentfully as she dragged a bag of soil across the grass. Sophie would know what to expect. But Dr. Holt was in a different mood every day, depending on what kind of night she'd had. It made it very hard for Sophie to know how to act.

She had just planted the red flowers next to the yellow flowers because she thought it would look pretty. But then Dr. Holt said she wanted them next to the white ones, so Sophie had to dig them up. Next, she had tried to make a fancy pattern with the pink ones along the wall. Dr. Holt told her they were crooked.

“Don't try taking advantage of me because of my eyes,” she said irritably, plucking at the sweater draped around her shoulders. “I'm not blind yet. I can still tell a straight line.”

“That's not what I was doing,” said Sophie. “I thought it would look nice.”

“You dig the holes,” said Dr. Holt. “I'll tell you what to put in them.”

“I'm not just here to take orders, you know,” muttered Sophie.

“What'd you say?”

“Nothing.” Sophie plunged her trowel into the soil and pulled it back out so fast that a shower of dirt flew up, sprinkling her knees, the terrace, and Dr. Holt's shoes.

“Hey! Watch what you're doing there, toots!” said Dr. Holt.

“Don't call me ‘toots,'” said Sophie.

“Then don't you go making a mess of my daughter's terrace.” Dr. Holt shook her feet in the air to knock the dirt off, but some of it stayed on, caught up in little clumps in her shoelaces. It served her right, Sophie thought meanly. She could feel Dr. Holt sitting there, angry and proud. Sophie wondered how proud she would be if she knew there was dirt all over her shoes.

“I can get someone else to do this, you know,” Dr. Holt said in a stiff voice. “You don't have to do me any favors.”

“And
you
don't have to be so grouchy all the time,” said Sophie. She started on another hole.

“You'd be grouchy, too, if you were losing
your sight and couldn't get around without a wheelchair.”

“It's not my fault,” said Sophie. “It's not anyone's fault.”

“I know it's not, but it makes me mad.”

“Well, you don't have to get mad at
me.
”

The air between them seemed to get a little lighter after they said this. Sophie worked in silence for a while. Then she couldn't stand it any longer.

“You've got a bit of dirt...,” she said, and reached out and brushed the dirt off Dr. Holt's shoe with her hand.

“Thank you,” said Dr. Holt.

“You're welcome.”

Sophie worked some more in silence. “Why don't you fix yourself if you're a doctor?” she said finally.

“I'm not a medical doctor, I'm a doctor of history,” said Dr. Holt.

“What's history?” said Sophie.

“The story of things that happened in the past.”