Sophie’s World (10 page)

Fiona nodded. “We’ll figure out a schedule.” She looked at Sophie. “Do you have a planner on your computer?”

“I don’t have my own computer,” Sophie said.

Daddy groaned. “Don’t put any ideas into her head, Fiona. The video camera about broke me.”

“You’re exaggerating,” Mama said to him.

“He is the veritable master of hyperbole,” Fiona said.

Mama and Daddy both stared at her.

“She has an excellent vocabulary,” Sophie said.

“No kidding,” Daddy said.

Even though the next morning was gray and misting, Sophie got up feeling lighter than she had since they had moved to Virginia. Fiona was waiting for her on the stage with two breakfast burritos, homemade by Marissa. Sophie smiled all through the morning. She even smiled at Anne-Stuart when she saw her in the hall outside Ms. Quelling’s room.

Anne-Stuart sniffed at her. “Did you read my note from yesterday?”

“No,” Sophie said.

Anne-Stuart whispered directly into her ear, “You should read it.” She smiled in a wispy way and disappeared into the classroom.

“What did she say?” Fiona said. “Was it evil?”

“No,” Sophie said. “She was being kind of nice.”

Fiona narrowed her eyes. “Sophie, you trust people too much.”

“I’ve just been thinking about it,” Sophie said. “Julia said they weren’t trying to get us in trouble. Maybe they thought they were doing the right thing.”

“And maybe I’m Marie Antoinette and nobody knows it.” Fiona leaned into Sophie. “Don’t let them fool you. They’re just manipulators. They turn things around any way they can to get what they want.”

Sophie was quiet as she followed Fiona into the classroom. Why would the Corn Pops just decide they hated her and Fiona and want to get them into trouble? It didn’t make any sense.

She reached inside her pack to get her textbook and remembered the note. She smoothed it out and she read Anne-Stuart’s round, perfect handwriting, done in purple gel ink that smelled like grape bubble gum.

Dear Sophie,

I just want you and Fiona to know since your both new that me and Julia and B.J. have always been the top in our class. Just so you know what your deeling with.

Your friend,
Anne-Stuart

Sophie blinked when she got to the end of the note.
How did she get to the top of the class?
she thought.
She can’t even spell, for one thing.
Still, Sophie felt stung. The Corn Pops had definitely
not
been trying to do the right thing.

She crumpled the note and stuffed it back into her pack, and she could almost feel the eyes boring into her from every direction. Sophie closed her eyes and imagined a quick glimpse of Jesus. He was smiling, kind as ever.

Okay, Sophie told herself.
As long as we’re more good than evil, we’ll always be all right.

“Ms. Quelling—please!”

Sophie looked at B.J., who was leaning over Ms. Quelling’s desk, raking her hand through her butter-blonde hair.

“If I do switch you with Maggie,” Ms. Quelling said, “will you and Julia and Anne-Stuart yak your heads off?”

“No, ma’am,” B.J. said. Sophie didn’t see how B.J. could even talk with her lower lip hanging out that way.

“Why are you so hot on this, B.J.?” Ms. Quelling said.

B.J. squatted down and spoke so low, Sophie could barely hear her.

“I want to be moved away from Kitty,” B.J. whispered.

Ms. Quelling nodded and gave Kitty a pointed look. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll switch you with Fiona.”

“But I want—”

“How does it feel to want, B.J.? Work with me here.”

Julia tossed her mane of auburn hair toward Anne-Stuart.

“It’s okay,” Anne-Stuart muttered to her. “At least she got away from Kitty.”

Julia nodded. “We’ll get us together again.” She dug her eyes into Sophie.

Don’t look at me
, Sophie thought.
I didn’t ask to sit here.

As soon as they could get out of the cafeteria at lunchtime, Fiona and Sophie bolted for the playground. Fiona had her Idea Book so they could plan how to redo their video. But no sooner had they settled themselves on the top bars than someone else climbed heavily up to join them.

“So what are we doing?” Maggie said.

Fiona pulled the Idea Book to her chest. “We?” she said.

“I get to play with you now, remember?”

“Oh, yeah,” Fiona said.

Sophie’s stomach churned. This was one kind of scene she didn’t like —

Antoinette sighed and took Magdalena by the hands. “If you are to be one with us, ” she said kindly, “there are certain rules you must learn and follow. Can you do that?” Magdalena bent her head. “I would do anything to be a part of what you have with Henriette.”

Sophie looked up sharply. Maggie was staring down at the hands that held hers. Sophie pulled her palms away. “You did practically save our lives. So—” She looked at Fiona. “Let’s tell her our rules.”

“You can’t have rules,” Maggie said. “There aren’t any adults to enforce them. Can’t we just get on with the movie? What about costumes?”

“We’ll put them together,” Fiona said. She was barely opening her mouth because her teeth were clenched together so tightly.

“You don’t have to,” Maggie said. “I have tons, and what I don’t have my mom can make us. She’s a professional tailor.”

“Great,” said Fiona. Her voice was as dull as Maggie’s.

“You need me for something else too,” Maggie said.

“What?” Fiona said between her teeth.

“Who’s going to run the camera when you two are in a scene together?”

Fiona scratched at her nose. “You?”

“And who’s going to play Lafayette?”

“You?” Sophie said.

Maggie shrugged. “So what are we waiting for? Let’s get to work.”

Ten

A
t free time on the playground and after school at Sophie’s, the girls, including Maggie, practiced the rest of the week for Saturday filming. But there were problems.

In the hall after language arts class one day, B.J. “accidentally” ran into Sophie as she passed, shoving her into Fiona and landing both of them against the wall.

“Are you all right?” Anne-Stuart said. Fiona told Sophie later that Anne-Stuart’s voice was laced with concern, but her eyes spelled pure contempt.

“What’s contempt?” Sophie said.

“It’s when somebody thinks they’re better than you are,” Fiona said. Fiona and Sophie weren’t the only ones being tormented by the Corn Pops. Kitty Munford was now excluded from the Pops’ lunch table.

But Kitty still trailed after them down the hall in spite of their curled-lip glares over their shoulders. She handed Julia and B.J. and Anne-Stuart notes, which they smelled and wrinkled their noses at and threw away. One day Sophie and Fiona even saw Kitty running after them on the playground wailing, “Why are you mad at me? Why don’t you like me anymore?”

Julia finally stopped the whole group and turned around slowly to face Kitty.

“We’re not mad,” she said with a plastic smile. “We’ve just moved on.”

Kitty covered her face with her hands and stood there sobbing as Julia led the Corn Pops away.

“That was just heinous,” Sophie said to Fiona.

“But you know what’s even worse?”

Sophie shook her head.

“Kitty still wants to be friends with them after the way they treat her. It’s absolutely pathetic.” Fiona pulled Sophie toward the monkey bars. “Come on. We have work to do.”

And then, of course, there was Maggie. She was always armed with ideas she said were the
right
way to do things. It made Fiona talk with her teeth gritted.

But Maggie
was
teaching Sophie something new about the camera every day. Now when Sophie held it, her eye UNsquinted at the little window, she could turn it on with ease and zoom in or out on Lafayette or Henriette. She could imagine herself as a Hollywood director, hollering, “Cut!” and waving her arms to express how she wanted things done.

“Lafayette shouldn’t just stand there,” Fiona told Maggie one day when the three girls were practicing. “He was the commander of an
immense
army. He stood tall—”

“I thought you said he was short,” Maggie said.

“But he could
look
tall,” Fiona said through her teeth. “He was—
commanding
.”

You should know how to do that, Maggie
, Sophie thought.
You command
us
all the time.

The train of Corn Pops passed by just then.

“Flakes,” Julia said to her followers.

Fiona watched them go by with contempt in her eyes.

“Flakes?” she said. “From a bunch of Corn Pops?”

Sophie felt a smile whispering across her face.

“What’s so funny?” Maggie said.

“Well,” Sophie said, “if they’re the Corn Pops, then I guess we must be the Corn
Flakes
!”

“No way!” Maggie said. “I don’t want to be a Corn Flake!”

But Fiona looked at Sophie and gave her husky laugh. “I love that!” she said. She reached out her hands to give Sophie the secret handshake.

“What are you doing?” Maggie said.

Fiona and Sophie looked at each other.

“It’s just a thing we do,” Fiona said.

“So—I’m a Corn Flake. I need to learn it.”

“I thought you said you didn’t want to be one.”

Maggie looked at them soberly. “Maybe I do,” she said.

With everything going on, Sophie now had to take more and more Jesus-breaks just to sit and feel his kind warmth.
If you love me
, she would think to him,
how come you don’t make people understand me and my fellow Flakes?
There was still no answer, not one she could hear anyway.

But by Friday after school, Sophie could think only about their movie. She had scored B’s on all her tests except math, which was a C+, and they were completely set for filming. They had chosen a wooded area near Poquoson City Hall as their setting. Mama said they were absolutely not going into some isolated area by themselves and arranged to go with them. Lacie pitched a fit, because that meant Mama wouldn’t be at her soccer game, and Sophie held her breath until Mama said, “Don’t start with me, Lacie.”

At last, the mistress was scolding the maid Lacette. Antoinette tried to feel smug, but as she looked at Lacette’s crestfallen countenance, she couldn’t help feeling sorry for her, in spite of everything.

On Saturday morning, Sophie was helping Mama unpack the Suburban at the edge of the woods when Fiona arrived.

“I have a surprise,” Fiona said. She held up a metal contraption with three legs.

“What is it?” Sophie said.

“It’s a tripod. Boppa made it for us. There’s a place to screw our camera to it so it won’t wobble around so much. You can still pan from side to side and up and down if you want to, but it won’t be all shaking from you or Maggie holding it.” Just then a horn blew, and a faded blue car the size of a small boat pulled up. Maggie emerged from the passenger seat and motioned Sophie and Fiona to help retrieve three bulging garbage bags from the backseat.

Mama went around to the driver’s side and stuck her hand in the window.

“I’m Lynda LaCroix,” she said. “You must be Maggie’s mom.”

“I’m Rosa,” said the older version of Maggie. For Sophie, there was just enough of a trill to her R to make her voice romantic.

“Sophie!” Fiona said. “Look at all this
cool
stuff!”

Sophie turned to where Maggie was pulling clothing out of a bag. She held up a pale pink satin dress with flounces on the sleeves and a lace-up front.

“This is yours,” Maggie said to her. “There’s a cloak in here for you too. Mom made it your size.”

Sophie took the dress and held it against her as Maggie pulled out a long, forest-green dress with matching cape for Fiona and a dashing white uniform with red trim, for her to wear as Lafayette.

“That’s exactly how I imagined him!” Sophie said.

“We looked it up in a book,” Maggie said. “If we’re gonna do this, we want it to be real, right?”

“Now all we need is a musket for him,” Fiona said. She was breathless.

“I brought one,” Maggie said. “It’s fake, of course.”

It wouldn’t have surprised Sophie if it had been the real thing. Everything else was so
exactly
the way the guides in Williamsburg dressed that Sophie had to keep blinking to make sure she wasn’t still dreaming.

Out of the last bag Maggie began to pull a black cape—velour, not velvet, but with a hood big enough for all of Sophie’s hair. Its plush fabric never seemed to stop unfolding.

“Oh, Maggie,” Sophie said. “It’s magnificent!”

“I knew you’d say that,” Maggie said. She didn’t smile, but her eyes, for a moment, looked soft.

Breathless, Sophie donned the luscious black cloak. The woods were ablaze with autumn leaves. There was just a hint of a chill in the air. From someplace close by, someone had a wood fire going, so its time-honored aroma drifted into their scene. It was magically 1779 in Williamsburg.

With serious faces, Fiona and Maggie set up the tripod and made ready for the first scene. From then on, Sophie
was
Antoinette—elegant and brave and held in honor by Henriette and the Marquis de Lafayette. And yet she was also Sophie Rae LaCroix, famous filmmaker, intent on making a fine film that would pack theaters everywhere.