The List. Siobhan Vivian

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СКАЧАТЬ class and Horse Hair’s horsey blond ponytail kept swishing back and forth as she trotted along. Candace had made a point of neighing as she passed Lauren because it was gross to let your hair grow that long. Unless, of course, you had layers. Which Lauren didn’t. Her hair was cut straight across the bottom at her waist. Probably by her mother with a dull pair of scissors.

      “Well … I think Lauren’s pretty,” another girl says, shrugging her shoulders apologetically.

      Someone else nods. “She could use a haircut for sure, but yeah. Lauren’s definitely pretty.”

      Candace lets out a pained sigh. “I’m not saying Horse Hair isn’t pretty,” she moans, though she’d never actually considered Lauren’s looks. And why would she? This conversation isn’t supposed to be about Lauren. It’s supposed to be about her. “It doesn’t make any sense that I’d be picked as the ugliest sophomore.” Her eyes roll off her friends and on to other sophomores walking down the hallway. Candace sees, in the span of a few seconds, at least ten other girls who it should be. Ugly girls who deserve this.

      “I mean, come on, you guys. This is total crap!” Candace gives her friends another chance to defend her, though she feels a little pathetic at having to bait them. “Pretty girls are not supposed to end up on the ugly side of the list! It, like, undermines the whole tradition.”

      “Well, the list doesn’t actually say that you’re ugly,” someone gently offers.

      “That’s true,” adds another girl. “The ugliest girls are seriously ugly. The list just says you’re ugly on the inside.”

      It isn’t the rousing defense Candace is hoping for. But as the words sink in, Candace nods slowly and lets a new feeling bloom inside her. So what if people think she is ugly on the inside? Clearly her friends don’t believe that, or they wouldn’t be friends with her! And pretty on the outside is what really counts. Pretty on the outside is what everyone sees.

      One of the girls says timidly, “So … should we go discuss what we’re doing for Spirit Caravan?”

      Candace had announced this as the plan for the morning. Spirit Caravan happens on Saturday, before the homecoming football game. It’s an impromptu parade where the students at Mount Washington drive around town with their cars decorated, beeping their horns and getting people excited for the game. This is the first year Candace and her friends can drive themselves, since a few, herself included, had gotten their driving permits over the summer. Candace has everything planned in her notebook, like whose car they should ride in (her mother’s convertible, obviously), how it should be decorated (streamers, tin cans, soap on the windshield), and what the girls should wear (short shorts, kneesocks, and Mount Washington sweatshirts). Still, Candace stares at her friends slack jawed. “I can’t say I’m in a very school spirit-y mood at the moment.” The fact that they didn’t pick up on this annoys her. “Let’s table that until tomorrow, okay?”

      One girl shrugs her shoulders. “But we only have until Saturday to figure things out.”

      Another adds, “We can’t leave it until the last minute. We need to come up with a concept. We’re sophomores now. We can’t just, like, throw something together.”

      A concept? Seriously? Candace rolls her eyes. But it occurs to her, as her friends nod along with each other, that they are going to talk about the Spirit Caravan with or without her. It is the strangest feeling to have, even stranger than being called ugliest.

      She quickly changes her strategy and rips her page of ideas out of her notebook. “Fine,” she says, handing it off. “Here’s what I’m doing. Figure out who’s riding with me, because my mom’s convertible can only fit five of us.” She quickly does a head count. There are ten girls standing at her locker. “Maybe six, if you squeeze.”

      Candace opens her locker door and stares through the metal slats as her friends walk toward homeroom without her. Her eyes move to the magnetic mirror hanging inside the door. Something about her face seems off, imbalanced. It takes her a few seconds of close inspection to realize that she’s forgotten to put eyeliner on her left eye.

      Why didn’t any of her friends tell her?

      After digging in her makeup bag, Candace inches close until the tip of her nose nearly grazes the mirror. She gently pulls the corner of her left eye toward her ear and traces a creamy band of chocolate pencil, one of the samples her mother gave her, across the lid. Then she lets go, her skin snapping pertly back into place, and blinks a few times.

      Candace’s eyes are her best feature, as far as she is concerned. They are the lightest blue, like three drops of food coloring in a gallon of ice-cold water. People always commented on them, and even though Candace finds that predictability annoying, she of course still relishes the attention. How a salesgirl would suddenly look up from the register and say, “Wow, your eyes are amazing!” Or, better yet, a boy. Her eyes get more attention than her boobs, and that is seriously saying something. She is, after all, a true C cup without any of that ridiculous padding, which is false advertising, in her opinion.

      A small sense of relief washes over her. List or no list, Candace Kincaid is pretty. She knows it. Everyone knows it.

      And that is all that matters.

       CHAPTER FOUR

      Lauren Finn and her mother agree the sedan still smells like Lauren’s dead grandfather — a musty blend of pipe smoke, old newspapers, and drugstore aftershave — so they drive to Mount Washington High School with the windows open. Lauren splays her arms across the window frame, resting her chin where her hands overlap, and lets the fresh air rouse her.

      Mondays are always the most tired mornings, because Sundays are always the worst nights. The anxiety of the coming week speeds Lauren up when she wants to be slowed down. She feels every lump in the old mattress, hears every creak and sigh of her new old house.

      She is three weeks into this new life and nothing is comfortable. Which is exactly what she’d expected.

      The wind whips Lauren’s long pale hair like a stormy blond ocean, all but the section pinned with a tarnished silver barrette.

      She found it last night, after the first hour of tossing and turning in the same bedroom, the same bed, where her mother had slept when she was a fifteen-year-old girl. The slender bar stuck out like a loose nail where the wood floor met the wall, its cloudy rhinestones blinking in the moonlight.

      Lauren crept across the hall in her pajamas. Her mother’s reading light cast a warm white glow out the seam of the open door. Neither of them had been sleeping very well since moving to Mount Washington.

      Lauren cracked it wider with her foot. Pairs of caramel drugstore panty hose hung on the coils of the wrought-iron bed frame to dry after having been washed in the sink. They reminded Lauren of the snake skins shed in the warm dunes behind their old apartment out west. Their old life.

      Mrs. Finn looked up from the thick manual of tax laws. Lauren weaved through unpacked boxes and hopped onto the bed. She opened her hands like a clamshell.

      Mrs. Finn grinned and shook her head, looking a bit embarrassed. “I had begged your grandmother to buy me this when I started high school.” She pinched the barrette between her fingers, examining the fossil of her youth. “I don’t know if you’ve ever had this feeling, Lauren, but sometimes, СКАЧАТЬ