Little Miss Red Read online

Page 6


  “Merci beaucoup, Madame Anton,” Michelle said. “And merci to everyone at Castle Heights who took the time to e-mail their suggestions about which Castle Heights students they think best embody each month of the year. And now, it is avec plus de plaisir that I announce the winners. For Miss January, we have Juliet DeStefano!”

  What?! Juliet DeStefano wasn’t even in the French club!

  “For Miss February, Juliet DeStefano.”

  My mouth fell open so wide that my gum fell out and landed on my desk.

  “March—Juliet again!” she continued.

  What was going on?! Had Juliet bribed Mrs. Anton or Michelle? For someone with such a shady past, I wouldn’t put it past her. That being said, April had to be mine.

  “April—quelle surprise! Juliet DeStefano!” Michelle announced. I put my head down on the desk.

  Quelle surprise, it turned out that Juliet was also going to be Miss May through December as well. Instead of being the French Club of Castle Heights High Calendar, it had become the Juliet-DeStefano-in-Twelve-Different-Outfits Calendar. Kids who sit in the middle of the cafeteria aren’t really the type to protest like, say, Wally Twersky, who was always staging sit-ins or stand-ins or lie-ins or stuff like that. And I was never one to rock the boat. But before I knew it, all that passion that had spent the last sixteen years steeping inside me, like the herbal sun tea that my mom made in summer, spilled out. As soon as the bell rang, instead of turning right and going to history, I turned left and marched straight toward the office so I could catch Michelle.

  “Bonjour, Sophie, ça va?” she said as she walked out of Mrs. Anton’s office wearing a beret and her blue and white boatnecked shirt. Mademoiselle Fritsche, our French club advisor who had lived in Paris for four years, said that no one wore those shirts except for dumb American tourists.

  “Don’t ça va me, Michelle,” I growled. “You do realize that what just happened went completely against school rules?”

  “What are you talking about?” she asked.

  “This is a calendar to raise money for the French club!” I cried. “Juliet DeStefano isn’t even in the French club! She’s not in any clubs!” Probably because she didn’t want to risk her past catching up with her if anyone got hold of our yearbook.

  “I don’t remember us voting on a motion that said it was limited to French club members only,” she said.

  “That’s because that part was understood!” I cried. “And who voted for her? Other than Phan, she doesn’t have any friends!”

  “Probably the entire male student body,” she replied.

  I guess she was right. “Well, I have it on good authority that I happened to get a lot of votes for the month of April,” I said.

  “Okay, Sophie. As president of the French club, I certainly wouldn’t want there to be any sort of controversy during my administration, so I’ll talk to Miss Fritsche about this tout de suite and get back to you.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and turned on my heel.

  “Au revoir!” she cried after me as I stomped down the hall.

  I know I had wanted drama, but this was ridiculous. Between Michael and this calendar, I was feeling a little sick to my stomach.

  Which, by the end of lunch, had turned into a lot sick.

  I wished I was a stoner or a goth or a video-game geek and sat on the fringes at lunch, because even though I may have felt invisible, that day I sure wasn’t.

  I was eating my smoked turkey and Swiss sandwich when Michelle sauntered over. “Bonjour, Sophie. Ça va?” she asked.

  This was no time for small talk. I put down my sandwich. “Did you talk to Miss Fritsche?” I demanded.

  “I did. And she agreed with me that by limiting the calendar just to French club students we’d risk being seen as elite and discriminating. Quel dommage,” she said, which meant, “What a pity.”

  It figured. “Well, thanks anyway,” I sighed.

  As she walked away, Ali shook her head. “I can’t believe you voted for yourself fifty-four times with all those fake e-mail addresses and you still didn’t get Miss April!” she said.

  “Shhh,” I said. Her older brother was partially deaf because he was a metalhead, so Ali tended to talk really loud. Her whispers were more like regular people’s yells.

  Unfortunately, luck would have it that Kyra Mattson was sitting right behind us that day. Not only did Kyra have supersonic bionic hearing, but she was also a huge gossip. By the time I got to history later that afternoon, a group of kids were gathered around Matt Rabinov’s iPhone, laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  “You’re the latest entry in UrbanDictionary.com,” said Hannah Brodsky.

  “What are you talking about?” I said, pushing my way through the crowd so I could see.

  “Sophie Greene (n.) A person who tries to rig an election but fails miserably,” it said on the screen. “e.g., ‘Dude, whatever you do, don’t try and pull a Sophie Greene unless you want to commit social suicide.’”

  Oh. My. God. Why couldn’t this have happened last period when I was in chemistry and could’ve downed some hydrochloric acid right then and there? Needless to say, I kept my head down the rest of the day and tried to ignore the snickers.

  Thank god it was the last day before break.

  As I walked through the Dell after school toward Nordstrom to buy the SPF 85 sunblock that Mom insisted I wear, I wondered how I was ever going to show my face at school again. I had wanted to be noticed, but not like this. Thankfully, I had a whole week before I had to go back, but maybe I’d just stay in Florida forever. I could get a job as a checkout girl at the Publix supermarket or become a waitress at Red Robin and rake in the tips during the early bird dinner shift. Sure, it wasn’t New York or Paris or London, but at least I wouldn’t have to worry about people staring at me, if only because they couldn’t see me since they were old and almost legally blind.

  Until then, though, I needed something to help me go incognito. Yes, school was out, but I still had to suffer through twelve more hours in L.A., and the idea of running into someone I knew sounded as painful as watching Jeremy suffer through a birthday party with non-Asperger kids.

  Then I had a moment of brilliance just before I got to Nordstrom. I stopped and turned around. Luckily, I knew just the thing.

  “Sixty-seven, sixty-eight, sixty-nine, seventy!” I said to the cart guy as I counted out the bills. “You can even keep the five cents.” I placed the red cowboy hat on my head. It was just as dramatic looking as I remembered. Even though it was still too big, I could feel my entire DNA change as I strode back to the car. Not only that, but when I passed by Dylan Schoenfield and heard her talking about the Urban Dictionary thing with Amy Loubalu (I couldn’t believe the news had made it all the way to the seniors), they totally didn’t recognize me.

  I may not have been Miss April, and I may have been semi-dumped the night before, but with every step, I could feel myself getting closer to my destiny.

  “All set?” Mom asked the next morning when I came down to the kitchen with my carry-on. She, Dad, and Jeremy were waiting to take me to the airport three hours before takeoff. Just once I wish I could have gotten there really late like Devon always did and gotten a special escort to whisk me through security, but as long as my parents were involved, that was never going to happen. I mean, sure, I didn’t like being late, and so I understood getting there an hour early, or two hours early for an international flight, but three?

  “Yes, I’m all set,” I said.

  “You have your vitamins?”

  I nodded.

  “Copies of medical records in case of emergency?”

  I nodded again.

  “Maxi pads?”

  “Mom!”

  “What?”

  I gestured toward Dad and Jeremy. “Um, males in the room?”

  She shrugged. “Your grandmother went through menopause years ago. I want you to be prepared.”

  “Yes, I packed my maxi pads
,” I sighed.

  “Sunblock?”

  I hesitated. “Yes.” A lie, I know. At least it wasn’t a huge one, like when Devon “forgot” to tell the English prime minister that she was married to someone else before she agreed to marry him in Frazzled with Forgetting. I’d buy some sunblock at the Garden of Eden pharmacy.

  “What about the lox and whitefish?” Dad asked.

  “What lox and whitefish?” I asked, confused.

  “Oh my God! I can’t believe we almost forgot the lox and whitefish!” exclaimed Mom as she rushed toward the fridge.

  “Mom didn’t tell you?” said Dad. “Grandma Roz wants lox and whitefish from Nate ’n Al’s.” Nate ’n Al’s was one of the oldest delis in L.A.

  “You want me to bring fish on an airplane?” I said. “That’s going to reek!”

  He sighed. “What do you want me to tell you? Apparently, it’s one of her dying wishes.”

  “But she’s not dying!” I exclaimed. “And there’s like four delis within walking distance where she can get that stuff.”

  He shrugged. “She says none of them hold a menorah candle to Nate ’n Al’s.”

  Mom held out two stinky packages wrapped in white paper. “Here. You can put it in your carry-on—”

  “But—”

  “But what?”

  As I hadn’t told Mom and Dad I was a red cowboy hat kinda girl yet, I had put it in my carry-on for the moment.

  “Nothing,” I said, placing the packages carefully inside my bag. I just hoped the smell of fish wouldn’t take away from any of the glamour of my new look.

  As Grandma Roz also liked to say, “It’s always something.”

  five

  Two hours later, carry-on stowed safely in the overhead compartment, I was settled on American Airlines Flight 121 from Los Angeles International Airport to West Palm Beach. I knew that once I graduated from college and began living a jet-set life, I was going to have to get over my fear of flying, but for now, my hands were clutching the armrests, and my eyes were tightly closed even though we hadn’t taken off yet.

  “It looks like we’re seatmates,” I heard a voice say.

  I opened my eyes to see an old lady wearing a “San Fernando Valley Knitting Club” sweatshirt and holding a carry-on that didn’t look like it was going to fit beneath her seat. And an oversize, needlepoint tote bag with a picture of a cat playing with a ball of yarn on it. And a patent leather pocketbook.

  “My name is Harriet. I’m in 12A,” she said pleasantly, pointing at the window.

  I nodded. “Sophie. 12C. Nice to meet you.”

  “You’re not blind, dear, are you?”

  “Huh?”

  She pointed to my Chunnels.

  “Oh. No. I just…” I thought about telling her I was going incognito in case I ran into any of my classmates (Florida, at least for those of us who were Jewish, was a big Spring Break destination), but announcing you were incognito kind of ruined the point. While I did take the glasses off, I kept my hat on. It was a little crumpled after being folded up in my bag for the ride to the airport, but thankfully, it didn’t smell too fishy.

  “So, would you mind getting up so I can sneak in there?” she asked. “Back when I was your age, I was a real slimster and probably could’ve weaseled myself right by you, but that was a long time ago,” she chuckled. Judging from the size of her butt in her polyester elastic waistband pants, it had been a very long time ago.

  “Sure. Sorry,” I said, finally letting go and standing up.

  As Harriet wriggled her way through the narrow space in our row, I heard what sounded like a meow coming from the overly large carry-on.

  “Excuse me,” I said politely, pointing at the carry-on. “Is there a cat in there?”

  She looked down at it, where the one meow had now turned into a bunch of nonstop meows, and then looked up at me and smiled. “There sure is,” she said proudly. She lifted up a Velcro flap and shoved the case toward me. Through the mesh I could see the shadow of something very large and white, which began to hiss. “This is Lord Byron,” she said.

  I gasped. “You named your cat after the greatest love poet in history? How cool!” I hadn’t actually read any of his poems, but one of the prison guards in Battered by Betrayal, the one where Devon was thrown in jail after she broke up with a Venezuelan dictator, used to read his poetry to Devon.

  “I sure did,” Harriet said proudly. “After Nora Roberts, Lord Byron is my favorite writer.”

  She settled herself in her seat and set Lord Byron between us on 12B. “I’m just going to keep him here until our other seatmate arrives.”

  “Actually, my boyfriend was 12B, but he’s not coming because he has chicken pox,” I explained before sneezing. And because he pushed the pause button, I thought to myself. Maybe I’d tell Harriet about that later. Because she was old, I bet she had some wisdom she could share with me.

  “Oh heavens. I’m so sorry to hear that, but maybe that means Lord Byron is in luck,” she chuckled.

  I sneezed again.

  “You’re not allergic to cats, are you?” Harriet asked.

  “Uh huh,” I got out before sneezing again.

  She fished around in her handbag and pulled out a box of pills and handed it to me. “Here, take one of these,” she said.

  “What is it?” I asked suspiciously.

  “Benadryl. It’ll stop you from sneezing.”

  I made sure to read the entire box—especially the CAUTION! paragraph—to make sure it didn’t say anything like, “Do not take if you recently drank a Frappuccino,” or something along those lines. A person could never be too careful. As I pushed one of the pills out of the foil wrapper and washed it down with my bottle of water, Lord Byron’s meowing got louder and louder.

  Harriet sniffed. “Do you smell fish?”

  “Uh…no,” I said nervously. I was glad my carry-on was in the overhead compartment and not underneath my seat, or else Lord Byron really would’ve been yowling.

  A few minutes later I dozed off, thanks to the Benadryl—that is, until I was awoken by the arrival of the new tenant of 12B. Not only was he the hottest guy I had ever seen in person, but as I stood up to let him get to his seat, our arms touched and I immediately knew we were soul mates.

  After he was settled and I was wracking my brain for something flirty to say, he reached for my book. “Propelled by Passion,” he read. “Is this any good?”

  I shrugged, hoping my face wasn’t too red. “I don’t know. I just grabbed it off the shelf in the terminal bookstore so I’d have something to read.”

  “But it says here that it’s an ‘advance reading copy’ and it isn’t coming out until June,” he replied.

  I grabbed the book back and shoved it in my purse. “Really? How weird.”

  “Can I see it for one more sec?” he asked.

  I fished it back out and handed it to him.

  “He looks kind of familiar to me,” he said, squinting. Omigod—I had no idea a squint could be so sexy. “Wait a minute—we kind of look alike, don’t you think?”

  I pretended to examine the cover as if I hadn’t spent hours already doing so. I hoped there weren’t smudge marks from where I had kissed it. “I don’t know…maybe a little.”

  He turned to me all excited. “Hey, do you think it’s true when they say that everyone has a twin?”

  “You mean a doppelgänger?” piped up Harriet.

  The two of us turned to her. I was so busy falling in love that I had nearly forgotten all about Harriet and Lord Byron, even though he was now yowling at full volume. I guess that’s what Devon had meant when she said that the world fell away when she met Dante.

  The Hot Guy sat up straight. “What’s a doppelgänger, ma’am?” he asked, all polite.

  He was nice to old people! I loved that. “Yeah. What’s a doppelgänger?” I echoed. I loved that we didn’t know the same words.

  “Well, literally translated from the German, it means ‘double-goer,’” Har
riet explained. “Someone who acts the exact same way as you.” She paused and leaned in. “But they’re usually somewhat…evil.”

  “Huh,” said Hot Guy. “So am I his evil twin, or is he mine?” he joked, winking at me.

  “Oh, you can’t be evil,” I assured him.

  “I can’t?” he asked playfully, giving me a wolfish smile. “How do you know?”

  I blushed. Because you’re way too cute? Because you’re nice to little old ladies? I wanted to say. “I don’t know. It’s just…a feeling I have,” I said in what I hoped was a throaty voice like Devon’s. “I mean, this guy here”—I pointed to the cover—“he’s just a model, and from what I’ve read in magazines, they can be evil, especially the ones who throw phones at their assistants, but you…you’re a real person.” I started twirling a lock of hair around my finger like Devon did when she was trying to be seductive. The problem was, she had long, thick, raven-black, silky hair, whereas mine was chin-length and on the thin side, which meant that instead of looking sexy all I managed to do was snag it. “Ow,” I said as I yanked my finger out, taking a few strands of hair with it.

  He handed me the book back. “Be careful, Red—you don’t want to lose any of that pretty hair.” He gave me another sexy smile. “Is it all right if I call you Red—you know, on account of your hat?”

  My mouth fell open. He already had a nickname for me! I knew our soul-level connection wasn’t all in my head. “Sure,” I replied. I quickly shoved the book back into my bag. “So, uh, what’s your name?”

  “Jack.”

  “Jack,” I sighed. Jack and Sophie. Sophie and Jack. Mr. and Mrs. Jack… “And what’s your last name?”

  “Andrews.”

  I nodded. Sophie Andrews. Kind of bland, but it could work. Especially if I hyphenated. Sophie Greene-Andrews. Now that worked. It sounded so sophisticated!

  Jack reached into his knapsack and took out a copy of Motocross Action magazine and his iPod. “You want to hear something awesome?” he asked, holding out the earbuds.

  “But they already announced that we need to turn off all electronic devices until we’re at our cruising altitude.”