for Lisa’s Bridget.
Abby had been invited to spend a week this past summer at Lisa’s vacation home at Whipple Beach. Thank god, otherwise her summer vacation would have consisted entirely of tagging along on Fern’s college visits.
During that week, Abby and Lisa snuck into Bridget’s bedroom to look around. They stuck their heads in Bridget’s closet. They found a few boys’ phone numbers hidden in Bridget’s sock drawer, and held her charm bracelet against their wrists. They tried on all of her makeup, which was perfectly arranged atop Bridget’s white wicker vanity. Abby had always dreamed of having a vanity, but there was no place for one.
Bridget mainly stayed by herself that week, texting her friends back home and reading a stack of books that she’d brought with her, and she only went to the beach with Abby and Lisa once for a couple of hours. But on the one rainy night, Bridget let them hang out with her in her bedroom. She curled their hair with her thick barrel iron and let them watch a corny old movie from the foot of her big fluffy bed. Abby and Lisa asked Bridget questions about what Mount Washington High was really like, and Bridget gave them lots of helpful, frank advice, like to be cautious when hooking up with older guys, to gossip only with the friends you completely trust, and how to hide the smell of liquor on your breath from your parents.
Fern, meanwhile, offered nothing beyond recommendations of which math teachers at Mount Washington really knew their stuff. And Abby wondered, more than once, if Bridget even knew who Fern was, despite the fact that both girls were in the same grade.
Lisa is about to go chat with their other friends when Abby leans in and whispers, “Did you finish the Earth Science worksheet?”
Lisa makes a frowny face. “Abby, you can’t keep copying my homework! You’re never going to learn anything.”
Abby combs her strawberry blond hair with her fingers. “Pretty please? I just got too caught up in looking at dresses last night. It’ll be the last time.” She puts her hand over her heart. “Promise.”
Lisa sighs, but she heads into the school to get it from her locker.
Abby calls out, “Love you like a sis!”
A few minutes later, Lisa sprints back outside, her black ponytail swishing wildly. “Abby!” she screams, loud enough so that everyone at Freshman Island turns to look. Lisa dives forward the last few feet and grabs Abby to keep herself from falling. “You’re the prettiest freshman girl at Mount Washington High!”
Abby blinks. “I’m what?”
“You’re on the list, dummy! The list! My sister is on it, too.” Lisa looks at the other girls, her braces twinkling in a proud smile. “Bridget got named the prettiest girl in the junior class!”
Abby’s jaw goes slack with surprise. Even though she isn’t sure what Lisa is talking about, it is clearly news to be excited about. Luckily, one of their other friends asks, “What list?” and then everyone turns to Lisa for an explanation.
As Lisa fills them in, Abby nods along, pretending that she isn’t as clueless as the rest of them. Of course Fern hadn’t bothered to mention this very important thing, just like Fern wouldn’t have a clue about which dresses were right for the homecoming dance. Sometimes Abby wished that Bridget was her sister.
Okay. Lots of times.
Abby’s friends take turns bouncing her around with congratulatory hugs, and each squeeze makes her heart flutter a little faster. Though the freshmen boys act uninterested in their celebration, Abby notices their game of hacky sack inch closer to where she is standing.
But it still hasn’t sunk in. There are a lot of pretty freshmen girls at Mount Washington, and Abby is friends with most of them. Did she really deserve to be at the top of the pack?
It is a strange, foreign place for her to be.
“I’m sorry you girls didn’t get picked,” Abby says suddenly to everyone, and she partly means it.
“Please,” Lisa says, pointing at her mouth. “Who’s going to vote me prettiest of anything with these railroad tracks running across my face?”
“Shut up!” Abby cries, knocking into Lisa. “You’re so pretty! Way prettier than me.” Abby honestly thinks so. In fact, she is lucky to have made the list this year, because when Lisa finally gets her braces removed, all bets will be off. Lisa is at least five inches taller than Abby, with long black hair that always looks shiny and a tiny little mole at the top of her left cheek. She has a great body, with curves and boobs. Really, the only thing that isn’t perfect about Lisa is her braces. And maybe her feet, which are kind of big. But people usually overlook that sort of thing.
“You are the worst at taking compliments, Abby,” Lisa says with a laugh. “But this is seriously huge. Everyone in school will know who you are now.”
Abby smiles. She’s never been more excited about the next four years than she is right this minute. “I wish I knew who picked me so I could thank them.” The idea of one girl, or maybe even a delegation, bestowing this honor on her is extremely exciting. She has friends, older girls, she didn’t even know about. “So … where did you see the list?”
“I saw a copy on the bulletin board near the gym,” Lisa says. “But they are everywhere.”
“Do you think I could take one?” Abby wonders. She wants to keep the list someplace special. Maybe in a scrapbook, or a memory box.
“Definitely! Let’s go grab one.”
The girls hold hands as they run into school.
“So who else is on this list?” Abby asks. “Besides me and your sister?”
“Well, the ugliest freshman is Danielle DeMarco.”
Abby slows down. “Wait. The list names ugly girls, too?” In the excitement, she’d missed that part.
“Yup,” Lisa says, pulling her along. “Wait until you see it. Whoever wrote it this year put funny things underneath everyone’s names. Like Danielle’s called Dan the Man.”
Abby isn’t friends with Danielle DeMarco, but they are in the same gym class. Abby had watched Danielle kill it during the mandatory mile run last week. It was admirable, and Abby could have probably run faster than the crappy seventeen minutes she ended up with, but she didn’t want to be sweaty for the rest of the day. Of course she feels bad that Danielle has been named the ugliest girl in their class, but Danielle seems tough enough to handle it. And, hopefully, Danielle will understand that there are other girls who could have been named the ugliest, too. Just like in Abby’s case. It’s truly the luck of the draw.
“What did it say about me?”
Lisa lowers her head and whispers, “It congratulated you for overcoming genetics,” before letting out an embarrassed giggle.
Fern.
Abby bites the inside of her cheek and then asks, “Is Fern the ugliest junior?”
“Oh, no,” Lisa says quickly. “It’s that freaky girl Sarah Singer, who scowls on the bench near Freshman Island.” Abby lowers her eyes and nods slowly. She guesses Lisa can see her guilt, because Lisa pats her on the back. “Look,
