“What the f?”
Though it’s posed as a question, the three words aren’t delivered like one, with the last syllable ticking up to a higher, uncertain pitch. And yet Candace Kincaid is clearly confused by the copy of the list taped to her locker door.
She frees a strand of brown hair stuck in her thick coat of shimmery lip gloss, then leans forward for a closer inspection. She drags a raspberry fingernail down the list, linking the word ugliest and her name with an invisible, impossible line.
Her friends pop up behind her, wanting to see. They’d all come to school looking for the list today. Candace was so excited for its arrival, she’d barely slept last night.
“It’s the list!” one says.
“Candace is the prettiest sophomore!” another cries.
“Yay, Candace!”
Candace feels the hands pat her back, the hands squeeze her shoulders, the hugs. But she keeps her eyes on the list. This was supposed to be her year. Honestly, last year should have been her year, but Monique Jones had modeled in teen magazines, or at least that’s what she’d told people. Candace didn’t think Monique was pretty pretty. She was way too skinny, her head was too big for her body, and her cheekbones were … well, freakish. Also, Monique only made friends with guys. Classic slut behavior.
Candace had been very happy when the Joneses moved away.
She pinches the corner, flattening the blistered embossment between her fingertips, and then tears down the list, leaving an inch of tape and a rip of paper stuck to her locker door.
“I hate to break this to you, girls … but apparently I’m the ugliest sophomore girl at Mount Washington,” Candace announces. And then she laughs, because it is honestly that ridiculous.
Her friends share quick, uneasy glances.
“On the plus side,” Candace continues, mainly to fill the awkward silence, “I guess we know for sure that Lynette Wilcox wrote the list this year. Mystery solved!”
Lynette Wilcox uses a Seeing Eye dog to lead her through the hallways. She was born blind, her eyes milky white and too wet.
So it’s a joke. Obviously.
Only none of her friends laugh.
No one says anything.
Not until one of the girls whispers, “Whoa.”
Candace huffs. Whoa is the absolute understatement of the year. She turns the list around and goes over the other names, expecting other mistakes that might explain what the hell is going on. Sarah Singer is definitely the ugliest junior. Candace has a faint memory of who Bridget Honeycutt is, but the girl in her mind is kind of forgettable, so she isn’t sure she’s thinking of the right person. Everyone in school thinks Margo Gable is gorgeous, so seeing her name as prettiest senior makes sense. And, of course, Jennifer Briggis is the obvious choice for the ugliest senior. Honestly, any girl other than Jennifer would have been a total letdown. Candace doesn’t know either of the freshmen girls, which isn’t a surprise because she’s not the kind of girl who gives a crap about freshmen.
There’s one other name she doesn’t recognize. Weirdly enough, it is her sophomore counterpart. The prettiest to her ugliest.
Candace flicks the list with her finger and it makes a snapping sound. “Who’s Lauren Finn?”
“She’s that homeschooled girl,” one of her friends explains.
“What homeschooled girl?” Candace asks, wrinkling her nose.
Another girl nervously looks over both shoulders to make sure no one else in the hallway is listening, and then whispers, “Horse Hair.”
Candace’s eyes get big. “Lauren Finn is Horse Hair?”
She’d thought up the nickname last week, when everyone was forced to run a mile in gym 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