The List

“Yo! It’s Dan!” Chuck calls out in a deeper-than-usual voice. “Dan the Man!”

The boys stare at her and laugh.

They’ve seen the list.

Which means that Andrew has seen it, too.

“Come on, Andrew,” another boy says, giving him a big shove in her direction. “Go give Dan a kiss!”

“Yeah! We support gay rights!” shouts Chuck.

Andrew laughs good-naturedly. But as he walks toward Danielle and away from his friends, his smile slips into a look of concern. He leads her into a stairwell. “Are you okay?” he asks, careful to keep his voice quiet.

“Not bad, considering the sex change operation I apparently had last night,” Danielle says, a desperate joke to break the tension. Neither of them laugh. She holds up the copies of the list she’s torn down. “What is this thing, Andrew?”

“It’s a stupid tradition. It happens every year at the start of homecoming week.”

She stares at him. “Why didn’t you warn me?”

Andrew runs his hands through his hair. It is still light from the summer, but his roots are growing in darker. “Because I never thought you’d be on it, Danielle.”

This makes her feel better, but not much. “Do you know who wrote it?” Danielle doesn’t have a ton of friends, but as far as she knows, she doesn’t have any enemies, either. For the life of her, she can’t think of one person who would hate her enough to do something this mean.

Andrew glances at the copies of the list in her hands and quickly shakes his head. “No, I don’t. And look, Danielle — you can’t go running around tearing these things down. These lists are everywhere. The whole school knows about it. There’s nothing you can do.”

Danielle remembers the boy who slapped her back in the cafeteria, the heat from his hand on her spine. She doesn’t want to do the wrong thing. She doesn’t want to embarrass herself any more than what is already happening. “I’m sorry,” she says, because that’s how she feels. For many reasons. “Tell me what to do.”

Andrew rubs her arm. “People will want to see you looking upset. They’ll want to see you react. Everyone still talks about this girl Jennifer Briggis and how she freaked when she got put on the list her freshman year. Trust me — doing the wrong thing now could ruin the rest of high school for you.”

Danielle’s chest gets tight. “This is crazy, Andrew. I mean, this is crazy.”

“It’s a big mind game. It’s like we tell the kids at camp: If you pretend like the teasing doesn’t bother you, it will eventually stop. So don’t give anyone the satisfaction of seeing you upset. You need to be stone cold.” He anchors his eyes on hers. “Game Face. Okay?”

She bites her lip and nods, fighting back tears. She knows Andrew can see them, but thankfully he pretends not to. Apparently, he has his Game Face on, too.

Danielle takes a second to compose herself and follows Andrew out of the stairwell, though a few steps behind.

Hope stands in the middle of the hallway looking around in a panic. She spots Danielle and rushes over. “Hurry up, Danielle. I grabbed every copy in this hall and in the science wing. Let’s go check near the gym.” She gives Danielle a huge hug and whispers, “Don’t worry. I swear on my life that we’re going to find out who did this and make sure they get what they deserve.”

“Forget it, Hope,” Danielle says. She drops the copies she’s holding into a trash can.

“What? What do you mean?” Hope turns around to glance at Andrew, who has rejoined his friends. “What did Andrew say?”

“Don’t worry. He said all the right things.” Which is how Danielle feels, without question.

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_edaf2411-25c9-54c8-ab2a-2216ade99896)

“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.