The List

  Bridget frowned as she pulled the bottoms up. They were surprisingly tight. The elastic cut into her legs. Maybe it was her underwear? She took them off and tried the bottom on again, but the fit wasn’t any better. Her belly rolled a soft, fleshy wave that crashed over the ties at her hip. The top was similarly ill-fitting. The shoulder straps dug into her skin, and when she managed to test the limits of elasticity on the chest strap, poof! Back fat!

  Bridget had never considered herself overweight before seeing the fabric stretched across her. But the reflection in the dressing room mirror startled her. She panicked, remembering her friend’s End of School pool party last week, how she’d walked around the whole day in her old bikini without even a T-shirt on, in front of boys and girls, completely clueless as to how awful she’d looked.

  She checked the size tag, expecting an error. But it was no mistake. The bikini was the same size as the other new clothes she’d bought. Her size.

  This is an outlet mall.

  That’s why the clothes are cheap.

  Because they’re irregular.

  Imperfect.

  Defective.

  Even though Bridget knew this, she couldn’t quite hold on to the idea. It was slippery, sliding right out of her as she rushed back into her clothes. She clipped the suit back onto its hanger. Sadly, it was still a cute bikini. So very cute. Or it would be, if she were maybe five or so pounds lighter.

  Bridget smoothed her hair as she stepped out of the dressing room. Mrs. Honeycutt stood by the register impatiently, her credit card already out, chatting with the salesgirl. The waist of Mrs. Honeycutt’s navy linen pants swelled underneath her sleeveless white shell, the skin on her bare arms taut and overstuffed and about to split, like hot dogs left too long on the grill. Her mother never wore shorts. Her mother never swam in the ocean. She stayed in the air-conditioning in those wide-legged pants.

  All of her aunts said that Bridget looked exactly like her mother had as a teenager. Staring at her, Bridget realized she had no memories of her mother being thin.

  Bridget placed the bikini on the counter, careful not to look at it or anyone else while her mother paid.

  As she walked back to the car, Bridget rationalized her decision. Everyone did it. Bought clothes that fit a little too tight, with the hope they would be inspiration to lose a few pounds. It would be a reward for good behavior. The bikini became a test. A test Bridget hoped to pass by the end of the summer.

  And just like that, a new part of her mind lit up as she became acutely aware of all her bad habits. It dinged like a warning alarm when Lisa tore open a bag of Old Bay potato chips for movie night, or when Bridget got too close to the dish of salt water taffy her mom kept filled on the kitchen counter. Bridget’s brain continued to evolve over the months, rewiring her cravings for boardwalk soft serve with the challenge to run another mile to the next pier, brainstorming excuses to skip out on Dad’s amazing tuna fish sandwiches, until it commented not only on everything she put inside herself, but every piece of food she even thought about eating. It wiped away any memory she ever had of being pretty, and made it a goal, something she might be lucky enough to accomplish one day if she worked hard enough.

  By the Fourth of July, she’d aced the test. With flying colors.

  But even after she’d fit into that beautiful bikini, Bridget hardly wore it. Instead, she practically lived in her jeans. At the end of summer, they were so loose that when Bridget pulled the waistband flush against her hip, there was enough room to fit her whole fist on the other side.

  The return trip to Crestmont Outlets at the end of summer provided her with a new wardrobe at a low, low size. But deep down Bridget knew this wasn’t a good thing. At least that part of herself was still working. She wasn’t totally gone.

  Bridget’s stomach rumbles.

  As she climbs out of her car, she tugs on the hem of her tan cable-knit sweater, attempting to bridge the gap of skin between it and the waist of her jeans. The skinny space in her waistband four weeks ago has shrunk. Or rather, Bridget has expanded. She can only fit a few fingers now. Not her whole fist, like before.

  You weren’t healthy before.

  You had a problem, but now you’ve got it under control.

  On her way inside the school, her dark hair whips in her face, the sweet scent of coconut shampoo blowing across her with the breeze. It is too sweet, too rich. Her stomach twists on itself. Change jingles in her pocket. Enough for a bagel with cream cheese. She’d counted it out after passing on the bowl of cereal Lisa had poured for her. She shouldn’t have said no to the cereal. Especially when she’d only picked at last night’s dinner.

  Prove that you’re fine, Bridget.

  Eat a bagel with cream cheese.

  Eat it all before homeroom!

  Every Monday, student council sets up a huge banquet table practically in front of Bridget’s locker. There are huge paper bags filled with bagels, economy-size tubs of cream cheese and butter. Bridget takes careful steps matched with careful breaths. The smell is overwhelming. The yeasty, spongy sourdough. Charred bits of garlic. The sweet stink of bloated raisins suspended in bread. Her stomach squeezes, only not in hunger.

  Don’t you dare, Bridget.

  Bridget is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Two sides of herself, always arguing. She is tired of the fight, the constant struggle between a muddied version of good and evil, where right feels wrong and wrong feels really good.

  “Bridget!”

  One of Bridget’s friends steps out from behind the bagel table, fingertips glistening with buttery residue. “Have you seen the list?” The girl smiles wide, a few poppy seeds black between her teeth. “You’re the prettiest girl in the junior class!”

  In spite of herself, Bridget gasps. All the bagel smells fill her up like helium inside a Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon. And in a flash, the guilt, the sadness, and the depression she’d felt the whole way to school vanish and are replaced by warmth.

  Bridget Honeycutt made the list?

  Impossible.

  Someone else hands her a copy. Bridget reads aloud, “What a difference a summer can make.” She looks up and blushes.

  You know why.

  You know what’s different.

  “Here!” her friend says. “Have a celebratory bagel on the house!” The girl takes a serrated knife and slices a bagel in half. Seeds and crumbs sputter off the blade and drop to the floor. When the table is packed up and put away, there will still be crumbs everywhere in the hallway. Bridget will feel them squish and pop underneath the soles of her shoes on the way to first period. Big, like gravel. Like boulders.

  “Do you want butter or cream cheese?”

  “Neither,” Bridget says. She pushes her hair back. It is damp around the edge of her scalp.

  “Oh. Well … congratulations again!”

  “Thanks,” Bridget says quietly, taking the bagel in her hand. She can’t believe the weight of it.

  Bridget walks into homeroom. She is shaky from the shock of it. Never, never in a million billion years would she have dreamed this would happen to her. Sure, when school started, she was taken aback by all the compliments she got. How fit she was looking. How thin! And now, to be on the list. To be the prettiest junior in the whole school. It is confirmation that there’d been something wrong with her before. That she had needed to lose weight.

  It is terribly confusing.

  Eat.

  After putting down her book bag, Bridget steps over to the trash can and presses her fingers into the still-warm flesh of the bagel. She pulls out clumps of soft dough, then drops them like pennies into a wishing well until the shell of the bagel is all that’s left. She wants to throw that into the trash, too.

  When she looks up, she sees Lisa running with Abby Warner down the hall. Lisa beams at Bridget, so unbelievably proud of her big sister. The lipstick Lisa had put on in the car has faded. It’s barely noticeable.

  Bridget is light-headed. As right as things felt mere seconds ag
o, she knows better. Inside, she knows how wrong this is. She hates herself for knowing better, for robbing herself of one good feeling. One moment of being happy with herself.

  Eat, Bridget.

  Just five bites.

  They can be little ones.

  Bridget manages two.

  It is not something she wants to celebrate.

  ennifer Briggis makes her way through the morning hallway traffic, head down, silently counting off the twelve green linoleum floor tiles she’ll cross before reaching her locker. The kids lining the walls keep their voices low, but Jennifer still hears every word. Most of her classmates don’t actually talk to Jennifer, just whisper about her, and all those hushed conversations over the years have done a strange thing to her ears. They’ve become tuned in to pick up what everyone’s saying, whether she wants to or not.

  “Have you seen the list yet?”

  “Is Jennifer on it? Oh my god, I bet she’s on it again. Oh my god!”

  “Do you think she knows what today is? She has to, right? I mean, how could she not after the last three years?”

  “Twenty bucks says if she’s the ugliest senior, she barfs again. For old times’ sake.”

  Every conversation orbits the same central question: If this year’s list decrees it, how will Mount Washington’s undisputed queen of ugly accept her crown?

  Jennifer has thought about little else since last year’s list named her the ugliest junior and effectively knocked down the second-to-last domino in this impossible chain of events. Despite the muddy feelings she had about her particular situation, a clear either/or presented itself.

  Senior year would arrive, and either Jennifer wouldn’t be on the list … or she would.

  But that’s not what captivates Mount Washington High this morning. Four lists or three or two or even one can’t change what is widely accepted as fact: Jennifer Briggis is clearly, certifiably, undeniably ugly. But Jennifer knows that what everyone in the hallway salivates for is her reaction. That’ll be the real show. And the expectations for something big, something messy, aren’t beyond her control, like being pretty or being ugly. They are, in fact, her fault.

  When Jennifer was put on the list her freshman year, she became an instant legend. No one, in the history of ugly girls, had reacted so unattractively.

  Jennifer had sunk to the floor in front of her locker and bawled unabashedly until her entire face was shellacked with a mixture of tears, snot, and sweat. The list, damp and twisted in her fists, was reduced to soggy pulp. Blood vessels burst in her cheeks and in the whites of her eyes.

  She’d barely survived the worst summer of her life, and now this?

  The freshmen collectively backed up and gawked in horror, the way one might upon seeing a dead body. Except Jennifer was very much alive. A gasp for breath turned into a choke, and then she vomited on herself. The metallic smell of it filled the hallway, and people ducked into classrooms or pulled their clothes up over their noses to avoid it. Someone ran for the nurse, who extended rubber-gloved hands to help Jennifer to her feet. She was led to a cot in a dark corner of the nurse’s office.

  Jennifer couldn’t stop crying. She wailed so loudly, the science classes heard her even with their doors closed and the teachers lecturing. Her misery vibrated against the steel lockers, turning the halls into one big tinny microphone that broadcast her suffering to the whole school. The nurse eventually sent Jennifer home, where she spent the rest of the day in bed, feeling bad for herself.

  When she returned to school the following morning, no one would look at her. She found some vindication in the school’s collective avoidance, but mostly Jennifer felt lonely. She knew for sure that her old life was officially over. Despite having played it cool for an entire summer, praying that things would return to normal, the list had ruined everything. She would never get back what she’d lost after the way she’d acted. The only thing she could do was move on.

  It proved a difficult task. Before Jennifer, the prettiest girls were the ones remembered and the ugliest girls faded into the shadows. But Jennifer bucked that trend. No one would forget her.

  Sophomore year, the second time, Jennifer was on her way to a fresh start and the previous year’s list was a distant memory, at least to her.

  In 365 days, Jennifer had gained some confidence, having successfully auditioned for chorus, and had grown friendly with a couple girls who also sang soprano. They were nothing special, not even well known in the chorus/band circle. Their clothes weren’t particularly cool, and they never wanted to do the things Jennifer suggested — preferring to rent old musicals and collectively sing along with them rather than, say, trying to get into a party. But Jennifer knew that beggars couldn’t be choosers. Nothing would be as good as it had been. She’d just have to live within her means.

  The morning of the sophomore-year list, Jennifer rode the bus completely aware of what day it was, but without a thought that she might make the list again. In fact, she couldn’t wait to see who had been picked for her grade. She had her hunches. Nearly every one of her chorus friends would have been a likely choice.

  This time, after she spotted her name, Jennifer remained in school the entire day. She cried a little, alone in the bathroom, but she didn’t throw up or make a scene, which were marginal improvements. Her friends did their best to console her.

  Junior year, when Jennifer saw her name on the list, she laughed. Not because it was particularly funny, but because it was so ridiculous. She didn’t delude herself — she knew she wasn’t going to be named prettiest. But wasn’t it only fair to pass the ugliest torch along to another girl?

  She didn’t cry, not once. Her chorus friends comforted her again, of course, but more intriguing were the random students who sought her out to personally apologize. They never said what they were sorry for, but Jennifer had a pretty good idea; no one should have to be the ugliest girl three years in a row. It was too cruel, too mean. There were other girls who deserved to be picked, not only her. She was being unjustly singled out.

  Though a big part of her was angry at this repeated indignity, Jennifer graciously accepted the supportive pats on the back. This, she noticed, made people relax around her. It eased their minds. The entire student body seemed to appreciate that Jennifer was taking this with grace. They were relieved that she wasn’t going to make this awkward for them, like she had back when she was a freshman. There was no hysterical scene, no finger-pointing, no barfing. She was a really good sport.

  It was clear to Jennifer what had happened. The list, for better or worse, did elevate her status at school. Practically everyone knew who Jennifer was, and that was more than the other ugly girls, her friends, could say.

  The rest of junior year transpired without incident. Jennifer made halfway decent grades. She stopped hanging out with the chorus girls. She never really liked them much anyway.

  After twelve green tiles, Jennifer pivots. She spins the lock left 10, right 22, left 11.

  Jennifer steels herself and clicks open her locker. The entire hall watches as a white paper falls softly to the floor and lands inches away from her feet. She sees the embossed stamp of Mount Washington High. Certified truth, special delivery.

  Jennifer unfolds it. She skips the other grades, the other girls, and goes straight for the seniors.

  Margo Gable, prettiest.

  Jennifer wishes Margo didn’t deserve it, but she does.

  And right above her name, ugliest, for an unprecedented fourth year in a row.

  Jennifer pretends to be surprised.

  Someone claps. Someone actually claps.

  Drumroll, please.

  Jennifer shrugs off her book bag. It hits the floor with a thud, amplified by the vacuum of noise. She paddles her hands against her locker door rapid-fire until they burn. The sound smacks off everyone watching her, shocking them like those heart-attack paddles.

  Jennifer spins around to face her crowd. She explodes into a jumping jack, legs spread, hands shooting
straight up, holding the list for everyone to see, as if she were one of the cheerleaders brandishing a FIGHT, MOUNTAINEERS, FIGHT! sign. She shouts the best “Wooooooo!” she can and pumps the list up and down in celebration.

  A few kids grin. More clap, and when Jennifer curtsies, enough hands join in to make it full-fledged applause.

  Jennifer skips down the length of the senior hallway, keeping her hands raised for anyone who might give her a high five. Many reach out for her.

  At the end of the day, there is this fact: Jennifer has accomplished a feat no other girl at Mount Washington has, endured something no one else can touch. She can’t help but feel special. It’s how that old saying goes. If life gives you lemons, make lemonade. She pulls her smile as wide as it can go, so no one will think for a second that she might not be enjoying this, fully embracing this gift.

  She wants everyone to know. She’s come a long, long way.

  argo Gable is walking with her best friends, Rachel Potchak and Dana Hassan, three wide in a crowded hallway that always leaves room for them. The girls’ heads are pitched forward in a secret-sharing way, their hair falling collectively to make a privacy curtain. They are not talking about the list, as an outsider might assume. They are giggling about Mrs. Worth’s toes.

  The toes, gnarled and stuffed into a pair of orthopedic sandals, had mesmerized Margo during fourth period, and she ignored the lecture on the algebraic equation of a Möbius strip in favor of mentally unlocking the twisted, overlapping joints.

  “Why would a person with such hideous feet ever think to buy a pair of sandals?” Rachel asks.

  “No clue,” Dana says. “Also, hello! It’s almost October. Why is she wearing sandals in the first place?”

  Margo pulls her brown hair up in a sloppy bun at the very top of her head, secures it with a pencil, and thinks hard for an answer. Perhaps it’s a medical condition?

  This is why she doesn’t notice Principal Colby lurking by the staircase until the principal’s hand is on her arm, pulling her to an abrupt stop.