The Hot List Read Free

annoying people for as long as I could remember. Not only washe the shortest guy in the seventh grade, he was also the noisiest and weirdest. I mean, who but he would bring chocolate-covered grasshoppers in his lunch for dessert, juggle them in the air, and eat them?
    I needed to go someplace private. Where could I go? Then I thought of the perfect place. I pointed to the girls’ bathroom. “In there.”
    â€œThe bathroom?” Maddie did her forehead wrinkle. “What’s in here?” she asked, following me in. I could see her taking in the faucets with the usual drip, the salmon pink–tiled walls with some faint permanent Sharpie marks. She gave me another baffled look. “Soph, I don’t get it.”
    I didn’t get it myself, which made me upset. “Shhh!” I put my fingers to my lips. “Somebody could be inside.” I crouched down to see if there were feet in any of the stalls. I’m kind of shoe-obsessed and can recognize half our class by the shoes they wear. “Nobody. Good. We can talk.”
    â€œOka-ay. Will you
finally
tell me what’s going on?”
    Darting around, my eyes latched on that poem about Mr. Pan, the gym teacher, that someone wrote on the wall, then, suddenly—faster than you can flush a note down a toilet—I had it. The great, big, fun idea I was looking for catapulted inside my head.
    â€œThis!” I waved the sparkly pen and the hot lists. I felt a little bit like a fraud to be so dramatic and importantsounding,like I was being Nia or something, but it was working. Maddie gazed at me, as if I was the preview to the
Avatar
sequel. “Watch,” I announced. “And be amazed.”
    I pushed opened the end stall, which was more spacious and had an opaque window with a ledge we could lean against. “C’mon,” I said, motioning to Maddie. We crammed into the stall, closing the door and giggling. I then wrote on the back of the door, in all caps, the hot list.
    â€œYou are craaaa-zy!” sang out Maddie, putting her phone away in her back pocket.
    Excitement bubbles filled my chest, a few of them popping under the weight of a little fear. “Shhh. Not so loud!”
    â€œThis is so messed-up.” Maggie giggled.
    â€œYup.” Thank goodness my dad was at home, getting ready for his date. If he saw me in this bathroom, writing on the back of this door, he would not be happy. I smiled. “Watch! I’m going to combine your list with mine, and create one uberlist.” I held up both lists in one hand as I wrote.
    â€œWhoa,” said Maddie. “Your dad will kill you if he finds out.”
    Yeah, I’d second that. How I wish I’d had a differentidea, like making confetti out of those hot lists and flushing them down the toilet!
    But nooooooo, I had to have that one genius idea in order to get Maddie’s attention. I mean, in the pit of my stomach, I knew it was bad. Like wearing-pajamas-to class-to-start-a-new-fashion-trend bad. I mean, what was I thinking?—announcing to the world who was hot and who wasn’t. That might have been texty-bloggy material for someone like Nia and her crew, but I should’ve known better—those lists were meant to be secret. Instead, I ignored my flip-floppy, squeezy-icky feeling inside and kept on writing.
    â€œGuard the door,” I whispered to Maddie. At least I had the sense to be paranoid about someone catching me. What I should’ve been paying attention to was who was about to be leaving my life for good.

Chapter Two
    M addie pulled on my elbow. “Let me write.” I couldn’t help smiling. Maddie was getting excited about
our
Hot List. Still, I couldn’t risk Maddie using the pen. “Everyone knows your handwriting. Sorry. Who else in the school does calligraphy?”
    She shrugged. “Probably no one, except Madame Kearns. And not very well.”
    â€œExactly. That’s why I’m doing