Authors: Siobhan Vivian
The List
“The perception of beauty is a moral test.”
— HENRY DAVID THOREAU
or as long as anyone can remember, the students of Mount Washington High have arrived at school on the last Monday in September to find a list naming the prettiest and the ugliest girl in each grade.
This year will be no different.
Roughly four hundred copies of the list currently hang in locations of varying conspicuousness. One is taped above the urinal in the first-floor boys’ bathroom, one covers the just-announced cast for the fall drama production of
Pennies from Heaven
, one is tucked between pamphlets for dating violence and depression in the nurse’s office. The list is affixed to locker doors, slipped inside classroom desks, stapled to bulletin boards.
The bottom right corner of each copy has been dimpled by an embossing stamp, leaving behind the scar of Mount Washington High rendered as a line drawing — before the indoor pool, the new gymnasium, and a wing of high-tech science labs were added. This stamp had certified every graduation diploma before it was stolen from the principal’s desk drawer decades ago. It is now a piece of mythic contraband used to discourage copycats or competitors.
No one knows for sure who authors the list each year, or how the responsibility is passed along, but secrecy has not impeded tradition. If anything, the guaranteed anonymity makes the judgments of the list appear more absolute, impartial, unbiased.
And so, with every new list, the labels that normally slice and dice the girls of Mount Washington High into a billion different distinctions — poseurs, populars, users, losers, social climbers, athletes, airheads, good girls, bad girls, girlie girls, guy’s girls, sluts, closet sluts, born-again virgins, prudes, over-achievers, slackers, stoners, outcasts, originals, geeks, and freaks, to name just a few — will melt away. The list is refreshing in that sense. It can reduce an entire female population down to three clear-cut groups.
Prettiest.
Ugliest.
And everyone else.
This morning, before the first homeroom bell, every girl at Mount Washington High will learn if her name is on the list or not.
The ones who aren’t will wonder what the experience, good or bad, might have been like.
The eight girls who are won’t have a choice.
bby Warner strolls around the ginkgo tree, one hand drifting lazily over the thick calluses of bark. A breeze nips at her legs, bare between the hem of her corduroy skirt and her ballet flats. It is practically tights weather, but Abby will avoid wearing them for as long as she can stand the chill. Or until the last of her summer tan fades away. Whichever comes first.
The spot is known as Freshman Island. It is where the more popular ninth graders of Mount Washington assemble in the mornings and after school. During springtime, nearly everyone avoids Freshman Island because of the putrid smell of the pale orange ginkgo bulbs that thud swollen onto the ground, expelling a pungent gas. This is a fine arrangement, though, because by spring the freshmen will nearly be sophomores, and will avoid anything that might identify them as younger.
Abby’s parents dropped her and her older sister, Fern, off here what feels like hours ago, because Fern has some debate club thing. Or is it academic decathlon on Mondays? Abby yawns. She can’t remember which. Either way, these kinds of mornings suck, because Abby has to get up
extra
early to have time to shower, do her hair, and put together something cute to wear. She does it all without turning on the light, so as not to wake Fern, with whom she shares the largest bedroom in the Warner home. Meanwhile, Fern sleeps until the last possible minute because she has no morning routine to speak of, besides
brushing her teeth and cycling through a rotation of jeans and boxy T-shirts.
This morning, Fern had proudly put on a new T-shirt that she’d bought online. It had an ornate crest printed on the chest, proclaiming allegiance to a rogue sect of warriors from The Blix Effect, a series of fantasy novels all of Fern’s friends are obsessed with. And in the car, Fern had asked Abby to give her two French braids, one on each side of her head, like the ones the female main character in The Blix Effect wears into battle.
Fern only ever wants Abby to give her two French braids, even though Abby can do a knot or an up-twist — hairstyles Abby feels are better, more sophisticated choices for her sixteen-year-old sister. But Abby never says no to Fern’s requests, even though she finds it weird that Fern wants to dress in what is essentially a costume, because the braids do make Fern look better, or at least like she cares a little bit about how she looks.
School buses and cars begin to appear. One by one, Abby is warmed by her friends’ hugs. They all spent the weekend sending pictures of potential dresses back and forth to one another for the homecoming dance on Saturday night. The dress Abby is completely in love with — a black satin halter with a thick white bow cinching the waist — is on hold in her size at a store in the mall. Her only hesitation is that none of her freshmen girlfriends seem to know how dressed up you’re supposed to get for high school dances that aren’t prom.
“Ooh! Lisa!” Abby says when her best friend, Lisa Honeycutt, comes walking over from the parking lot. “Did you show Bridget my homecoming dress? Does she think it’s too formal?”
Lisa throws one arm around Abby and pulls her in for a hug. “My sister said it’s perfect! Pretty and fun, but not in a trying-too-hard kind of way.”
Abby sighs with relief at having received Bridget’s approval. Abby and Lisa are the only two girls in their group of friends who have older sisters who also go to Mount Washington. Not that Abby’s Fern is any match for Lisa’s Bridget.
Abby had been invited to spend a week this past summer at Lisa’s vacation home at Whipple Beach. Thank god, otherwise her summer vacation would have consisted entirely of tagging along on Fern’s college visits.
During that week, Abby and Lisa snuck into Bridget’s bedroom to look around. They stuck their heads in Bridget’s closet. They found a few boys’ phone numbers hidden in Bridget’s sock drawer, and held her charm bracelet against their wrists. They tried on all of her makeup, which was perfectly arranged atop Bridget’s white wicker vanity. Abby had always dreamed of having a vanity, but there was no place for one.
Bridget mainly stayed by herself that week, texting her friends back home and reading a stack of books that she’d brought with her, and she only went to the beach with Abby and Lisa once for a couple of hours. But on the one rainy night, Bridget let them hang out with her in her bedroom. She curled their hair with her thick barrel iron and let them watch a corny old movie from the foot of her big fluffy bed. Abby and Lisa asked Bridget questions about what Mount Washington High was really like, and Bridget gave them lots of helpful, frank advice, like to be cautious when hooking up with older guys, to gossip only with the friends you completely trust, and
how to hide the smell of liquor on your breath from your parents.
Fern, meanwhile, offered nothing beyond recommendations of which math teachers at Mount Washington really knew their stuff. And Abby wondered, more than once, if Bridget even knew who Fern was, despite the fact that both girls were in the same grade.
Lisa is about to go chat with their other friends when Abby leans in and whispers, “Did you finish the Earth Science worksheet?”
Lisa makes a frowny face. “Abby, you can’t keep copying my homework! You’re never going to learn anything.”
Abby combs her strawberry blond hair with her fingers. “Pretty please? I just got too caught up in looking at dresses last night. It’ll be the last time.” She puts her hand over her heart. “Promise.”
Lisa sighs, but she heads into the school to get it from her locker.
Abby calls out, “Love you like a sis!”
A few minutes later, Lisa sprints back outside, her black ponytail swishing wildly. “Abby!” she screams, loud enough so that everyone at Freshman Island turns to look. Lisa dives forward the last few feet and grabs Abby to keep herself from falling. “You’re the prettiest freshman girl at Mount Washington High!”
Abby blinks. “I’m what?”
“You’re on the list, dummy!
The
list! My sister is on it, too.” Lisa looks at the other girls, her braces twinkling in a proud smile. “Bridget got named the prettiest girl in the junior class!”
Abby’s jaw goes slack with surprise. Even though she isn’t sure what Lisa is talking about, it is clearly news to be excited about. Luckily, one of their other friends asks, “What list?” and then everyone turns to Lisa for an explanation.
As Lisa fills them in, Abby nods along, pretending that she isn’t as clueless as the rest of them. Of course Fern hadn’t bothered to mention this very important thing, just like Fern wouldn’t have a clue about which dresses were right for the homecoming dance. Sometimes Abby wished that Bridget was her sister.
Okay. Lots of times.
Abby’s friends take turns bouncing her around with congratulatory hugs, and each squeeze makes her heart flutter a little faster. Though the freshmen boys act uninterested in their celebration, Abby notices their game of hacky sack inch closer to where she is standing.
But it still hasn’t sunk in. There are a lot of pretty freshmen girls at Mount Washington, and Abby is friends with most of them. Did she really deserve to be at the top of the pack?
It is a strange, foreign place for her to be.
“I’m sorry you girls didn’t get picked,” Abby says suddenly to everyone, and she partly means it.
“Please,” Lisa says, pointing at her mouth. “Who’s going to vote me prettiest of
anything
with these railroad tracks running across my face?”
“Shut up!” Abby cries, knocking into Lisa. “You’re
so
pretty! Way prettier than me.” Abby honestly thinks so. In fact, she is lucky to have made the list this year, because when Lisa finally gets her braces removed, all bets will be off. Lisa is at least five inches taller than Abby, with long black hair that always looks
shiny and a tiny little mole at the top of her left cheek. She has a great body, with curves and boobs. Really, the only thing that isn’t perfect about Lisa is her braces. And maybe her feet, which are kind of big. But people usually overlook that sort of thing.
“You are the worst at taking compliments, Abby,” Lisa says with a laugh. “But this is seriously huge. Everyone in school will know who you are now.”
Abby smiles. She’s never been more excited about the next four years than she is right this minute. “I wish I knew who picked me so I could thank them.” The idea of one girl, or maybe even a delegation, bestowing this honor on her is extremely exciting. She has friends, older girls, she didn’t even know about. “So … where did you see the list?”
“I saw a copy on the bulletin board near the gym,” Lisa says. “But they are everywhere.”
“Do you think I could take one?” Abby wonders. She wants to keep the list someplace special. Maybe in a scrapbook, or a memory box.
“Definitely! Let’s go grab one.”
The girls hold hands as they run into school.
“So who else is on this list?” Abby asks. “Besides me and your sister?”
“Well, the ugliest freshman is Danielle DeMarco.”
Abby slows down. “Wait. The list names ugly girls, too?” In the excitement, she’d missed that part.
“Yup,” Lisa says, pulling her along. “Wait until you see it. Whoever wrote it this year put funny things underneath everyone’s names. Like Danielle’s called
Dan the Man
.”
Abby isn’t friends with Danielle DeMarco, but they are in the same gym class. Abby had watched Danielle kill it during
the mandatory mile run last week. It was admirable, and Abby could have probably run faster than the crappy seventeen minutes she ended up with, but she didn’t want to be sweaty for the rest of the day. Of course she feels bad that Danielle has been named the ugliest girl in their class, but Danielle seems tough enough to handle it. And, hopefully, Danielle will understand that there are other girls who could have been named the ugliest, too. Just like in Abby’s case. It’s truly the luck of the draw.
“What did it say about me?”
Lisa lowers her head and whispers, “It congratulated you for overcoming genetics,” before letting out an embarrassed giggle.
Fern.
Abby bites the inside of her cheek and then asks, “Is Fern the ugliest junior?”
“Oh, no,” Lisa says quickly. “It’s that freaky girl Sarah Singer, who scowls on the bench near Freshman Island.” Abby lowers her eyes and nods slowly. She guesses Lisa can see her guilt, because Lisa pats her on the back. “Look, Abby. Don’t worry about the genetics thing. It doesn’t mention Fern by name. I bet a lot of people don’t even know you two are sisters!”
“Maybe,” Abby says, hoping what Lisa says is true. But even if most of the kids at school don’t know they’re related, her teachers sure do. It has been one of the worst things about going to Mount Washington: watching her teachers realize, after the first week or so, that Abby is nowhere near as smart as Fern.
Lisa continues, “Anyway, Fern always gets the recognition. And every time she does, you’re so happy for her. Remember last year, when you made me sit through that three-hour Latin poetry reading contest Fern competed in at the university?”
“That was actually a big deal. Fern got picked out of the whole high school to recite it, and she won a bunch of scholarship money.”
Lisa rolls her eyes. “Right, right. I remember. Now it’s your turn to get some attention.”
Abby squeezes her friend’s hand. Yeah, the genetics comment is kind of mean. But Lisa is right. It’s not like Abby
herself
said it. And she
is
always cheering on Fern for her academic stuff. She never even complained once about those early-morning wakeups or all the college visits they’d gone on this summer instead of a vacation.
Not out loud, anyway.
When they get close to the gym, Lisa jogs a few steps ahead. “Here it is,” she announces, tapping the paper with her finger. “In black and white.”
Abby finds her name near the top of the list.
Her name!
Seeing it makes the whole thing way more real, feel more earned. Abby is, officially, the prettiest girl in her freshman class.
She’s not sure how long she stands there staring at it. But eventually Lisa pinches her arm. Hard.
Abby tears her attention off the bulletin board. Fern is marching down the hall with incredible purpose, her book-bag straps pulled tight over her shoulders, the tails of her French braids swinging side to side.
If Fern knows Abby is on the list, Abby certainly can’t tell. Fern walks by exactly the same way she usually does at school — as if Abby doesn’t exist.
Abby waits until Fern rounds the corner. Then she pulls the list off the bulletin board, using her pinky nail to ease out the staples, careful not to tear the corners.