Sophie’s Secret (3 page)

“I asked you to
stay
with the group and I
told
you why.” Daddy was poking his finger toward her, one jab for each word that came out louder than the rest. “But could you
do
that?
No.
The
first
chance you got, you were
hanging
back with the guide, acting like one of your
pretend
characters. We don’t
know
that man,
Sophie
. You don’t go
grabbing
onto STRANGERS!”

Sophie plastered herself against the wall. She hadn’t seen Daddy this mad since the day Zeke had “run away from home” to hide underneath the workbench in the garage. Sophie had found him and gotten him to pretend with her that they were like wounded soldiers coming home after a war so she could get him out. Only they got so wrapped up in the game, Sophie forgot to tell anybody where they were, and Mama was just calling the police when Lacie located them. Just like then, Daddy’s face was now scarlet, and his eyes were in sharp points of blue. Sophie swallowed hard.

“Do you understand why I’m so upset with you?” Daddy said.

Sophie didn’t, but she nodded anyway. He paused for a long time, and when she couldn’t stand it any more, she said, “What’s my punishment going to be?”

“You’re already having it,” he said. “I wouldn’t let Bailey take you to the movies with Lacie.”

It was all Sophie could do not to break into the biggest grin ever. She bit at her lip and gave him a solemn nod.

“I want you to sit in here tonight and think about what happens when you’re not aware of your surroundings.” Her father’s voice was still stern, but at least he’d stopped poking his finger at her. “The whole purpose of giving you that camera was so you would limit your daydreaming to filming.”

Sophie opened her mouth to say, “If you would’ve just let me TAKE the camera WITH me”—but she decided against it. Daddy’s face was returning to its natural color. It was better not to take any chances.

“Think about it,” he said to her. “And for the rest of the weekend, I’d better see some improvement in your being a team player, or I WILL take that camera away.”

When Daddy closed the door behind him on his way out, Sophie was sure that HER face was scarlet.

Dr. Demetria Diggerty wouldn’t put up with treatment like that,
she wanted to scream.
SHE knows more about palisades and trenching techniques and metal armor breastplates than ANYBODY, including HIM. Nobody makes her feel like SHE’s a moron—because she isn’t.

Dr. Peter—that was Sophie’s therapist, and the coolest one she was sure, even though she didn’t know any other psychologists—had taught her that when she got mad at her father or anybody else that she should imagine Jesus, not Antoinette, and she was pretty sure that applied to Dr. Demetria Diggerty too. The Jesus in her mind, with his kind eyes, could always make her calm down and not hurl books across the room, and eventually she would know what to do.

But right now, she really didn’t want Jesus to see her with her fists clenched and her head about to explode. It seemed safer to imagine what Dr. Diggerty looked like …

She would have to have short hair, swept back so it didn’t get in her way when she was digging up Jamestown treasure, but still romantic—maybe with some streaks in it or something. And her eyes—they would be brown and intelligent and able to see what she was going to find even before she found it. She was that in tune with the earth and all that it was hiding about the past.

The next morning Sophie wanted to call Fiona as soon as she got up so they could start planning their film—a documentary on excavating Jamestown. Then she remembered that Fiona and her family were at Club Med for the weekend, and Kitty and the rest of the Munfords were away visiting grandparents. Sophie would have settled for curling up by the fireplace in the family room all day and reading the book Mama had bought at the Jamestown gift shop to get more ideas—but at breakfast, Aunt Bailey announced that she was taking the “women” shopping. One glance at Daddy, and Sophie knew she’d better not protest.

While he and Uncle Preston and Zeke took off to shoot baskets at the gym, Sophie piled into their old Suburban with the other “women.” Mama looked about as excited about it as Sophie did, and she barely spoke a syllable the whole way there.

Who can get a word in anyway?
Sophie thought.
Aunt Bailey and Lacie never shut up!

And they didn’t the whole time they were shopping. It was the WORST when they went to the lingerie department at Dillard’s. Sophie remembered too late that Aunt Bailey had told Lacie they were going to buy her new bras, or Sophie would have faked diarrhea and begged Mom to take her to the ladies’ room. By the time she realized what was happening, Aunt Bailey had already borrowed a tape measure from the sales clerk and was wrapping it around Lacie’s chest.

“You have such a cute figure, Lacie,” Aunt Bailey said as she gave the tape a professional snap. “I don’t think the bras you’re wearing are showing it off at all.”

“I think the bras she’s wearing are just fine,” Mama said. Her elfin lips were tight. They reminded Sophie of the top of a drawstring bag.

“A good bra is definitely expensive,” Aunt Bailey said. “But don’t worry about the price, Lynda. I’m treating.”

Lacie held her arms out for Aunt Bailey to reposition the tape measure under her breasts. Sophie wanted to go through the floor, but it didn’t seem to be bothering Lacie at all.

“Aunt Bailey can afford it, Mama,” Lacie said. “She and Uncle Preston are DINKS.”

“What?” Mama said.

“Double Income, No Kids,” Lacie said.

“That’s right,” Aunt Bailey said. “So let me treat the girl to a nice foundation garment or two.” She suddenly swept her eyes, bright blue in her colored contacts, over Sophie. “I would buy Sophie some too, but I don’t see any signs of development there at all.”

Sophie crossed her arms over her chest and felt her face going BEYOND scarlet.

“She’s a late bloomer,” Mama said. She put her arm around Sophie’s shoulders.

“Still,” Aunt Bailey said. She tilted her head, its hair gelled into a dozen auburn flips, and gave Sophie a thorough going-over with her eyes. “She could use a little padded bra. That would be cute.”

“No!” Sophie said. “I’m not gonna pretend I have breasts when I don’t!”

“Why not?” Lacie said. “You pretend everything else.”

“Lacie, that’s enough,” Mama said. “You two do the bra thing. Sophie and I are going to look around.”

“Mama babies her so much,” Sophie heard Lacie say to Aunt Bailey as she and Mama moved away. Sophie didn’t look back at them, but she was sure Aunt Bailey was nodding and rolling her eyes.

“I’m not a baby,” Sophie said to Mama when they were safely in the pajama aisle. “I just don’t need a bra.”

“No, you don’t,” Mama said. The drawstring mouth was loosening up, but only a little.

“I don’t even see what good breasts do until you have babies and stuff anyway.”

Mama even smiled then, in that impish way she had that Sophie loved. “I’m happy to hear that. But I don’t want you to feel left out, since Lacie is getting something.”

“I’d rather have a trowel,” Sophie said.

Mama’s eyebrows went up as if she’d just made a discovery.

“Ah, so that’s what you’re dreaming up now. You and the girls going to make the next Indiana Jones movie?”

Sophie shook her head firmly. “Better than Indiana Jones. We’re going to be girl archaeologists and make amazing discoveries. That’s why I need a trowel.” But they didn’t have trowels in Dillard’s, and since they were only going into stores Aunt Bailey wanted to go into, Mama suggested a couple of pretty little camisoles for Sophie to wear under her clothes, now that the weather was getting colder and she needed layers. “Since you don’t have any body fat,” Mama said.

Sophie tried on the camisoles, and she did have to admit they felt silky and good next to her skin, sort of grown-up. She was pretty sure Dr. Demetria Diggerty would wear something like that.

Later, when they were waiting for Aunt Bailey to decide between four different pairs of black boots, with Lacie’s help, Mama put her arm around Sophie again and whispered to her that every girl developed at a different rate. That helped when, after purchasing three of the four pairs of boots, Aunt Bailey treated them to TCBY and went on about how gorgeous Lacie was becoming until Sophie was too nauseous to even eat her chocolate and vanilla swirl with gummy bears.

When Sunday came, Sophie stood on the front porch and made sure Daddy was REALLY going to take Aunt Bailey and Uncle Preston to the airport. Sophie had never been so happy to see somebody leave.

Monday morning on the bus, Sophie had no sooner pulled out her planning notebook to dream up some more details about Dr. Diggerty when the two girls in front of her turned around, up on their knees, to face her.

“Hey,” one of them said.

Sophie knew both their names because they were in her class, although they had never really talked to her much until she had started riding the bus a few weeks before. The one in the Redskins sweatshirt was Harley Hunter. Her friend was Gillian Cooper, only everybody called her “Gill” with a hard “G” like in “girl.”

Harley was sort of husky and she was always grinning, so that her cheeks came up and made her eyes almost disappear. Her sandy hair was cut short, and she gelled it so it would stand up.

It was hard to remember that Gill even HAD hair, because she wore a hat as often as she could get away with it. Today her reddish hair, which was as lanky as her long body, was tucked up into a green newsboy cap, the kind Daddy always said looked like an old-fashioned golfer’s hat. It matched her green fleece jacket and her eyes.

“Hey,” Sophie said back to them. And then she couldn’t think what else to say. Gill and Harley were two of the four jock girls in her class, all into sports, and Sophie was always afraid they’d be like Lacie and start bugging her because she didn’t play soccer or something.

“Me and her have been talking,” Gill said, jabbing a thumb in Harley’s direction, “and we decided you rock.”

For a few seconds, Sophie could only stare. She finally found enough of her high-pitched little voice to say, “I rock? How come?”

“You and Fiona took DOWN the popular girls,” Gill said. “You didn’t let them run over you like they do everybody else.”

Sophie knew they were talking about the Corn Pops, as she and Fiona and Kitty—the Corn
Flakes
— referred to them in private. They were the pretty, smart, everybody-likes-me girls led by queen bee Julia Cummings. She had three worker bees—B.J. Freeman, Anne-Stuart Riggins, and Willoughby Wiley. There had been a fourth one until Kitty had become a Corn Flake. She had almost had to, to protect herself against the Corn Pops. They weren’t the sweetest box of cereal on the shelf.

Gill gave Sophie a friendly punch on the arm. “You even made the teachers see that those girls aren’t all that, the way they always thought they were since, like, kindergarten.”

Harley punched Sophie’s other shoulder. “You rock,” she said.

I like rocking,
Sophie decided as she got off the bus.
I think Dr. Demetria Diggerty rocks too, and people know it.

Thinking of the good doctor, Sophie headed for the playground where Fiona and Kitty always waited for her before school, almost bursting open with what she knew Fiona would call “a scathingly brilliant idea.” Fiona had the best vocabulary of any kid in sixth grade—or maybe even all of Great Marsh Elementary.

They were on the swings when she got there, and Sophie barely let them say hello before she was launching into details.

Fiona watched her carefully out of her wonderful gray eyes, one stream of golden-brown hair erupting from her knitted striped beanie cap and over the side of her face. Sophie always thought that piece of hair made her best friend look exotic.

Kitty followed Sophie with her eyebrows knit together over her big blue eyes like she wasn’t quite getting it. When Sophie was finishing up the details, Kitty played nervously with her ponytail of ringlets.

“Are we going to have to act all weird when we make this movie?” she said. “It sounds like it.”

Fiona pulled her lips into their perfect heart shape. “It isn’t being weird,” she said. “It’s being an actor.”

“I don’t know if I can do that, though.” Kitty’s voice curled up into a whine. “I’ll get all nervous.”

“When you’re yourself,” Sophie said, “it’s never weird. Remember—that’s our Corn Flakes motto.”

Kitty pressed her lips together until her dimples punctured her cheeks. Kitty, Sophie knew, still wasn’t sure about being a full-fledged Corn Flake.

The bell rang and they hurried into the building, Sophie and Fiona already puzzling over exactly what was going to happen in their movie.

“I think we should do an actual dig,” Fiona said. “And we can make the movie about the stuff we find.”

“I LOVE that!” Sophie said.

“She LOVES that,” someone said behind her, in a high-pitched voice that mocked Sophie’s.

“If she loves it,” someone else said, “then it’s got to be something WAY lame.”