The Hot List Chapter One
Maddie and I came up with the Hot List one morning after a sleepover at my house. Lounging on my bed, we flipped through magazines, sucking down wild cherry Slurpees and pigging out on M&M’s. All but the red ones. If you eat those, you have to tell the truth.

“If we’re going to write up a hot list,” I said. “We should use something special.”

“Definitely,” said Maddie.

I bounced over to the door and closed it so it clicked all the way shut. Then I opened my desk drawer and pulled a pen out of my keepsake bin. “Here,” I said, holding up the pen. Two summers ago, Maddie got it for my tenth birthday. It was purple with little sparkles of gold.

“Perfect!” said Maddie. She tucked her chin-length hair behind her ears.

“Okay, I need those red ones now,” I said, pointing to the pile of M&M’s.

Maddie divided them up. Eight for her and eight for me, and then she began counting. “One. Two. Three.” We both popped a couple into our mouths at the exact same moment. “It’s truth time!” she shouted—although her mouth was so full of little round candies, it sounded more like this: “mmmitsthtime!”

“I’ll go first,” I said, bravely uncapping the glitter pen and sitting down on the shag rug carpet. “Then you. But no peeking until we’re done.”

Hopping down off the bed, Maddie plopped down next to me.

“Move away,” I commanded.

Maddie didn’t budge.

“Hello! Back on the bed, or go to the other side of the carpet.”

Maddie scooted back a little.

“More.”

Finally, Maddie moved to the opposite edge of the carpet. “Sophie, you’re paranoid. Don’t you trust me?” She jumped up for a moment, pretended to peer at my paper, and then sat back down.

“Of course,” I said, smiling, as I quickly wrote down our top five names:
SOPHIE’S PERSONAL HOT LIST
1) Hayden Carus

2) Matt James

3) Bear Arvanites

4) Tyson Blandes

5) Kirk Davies

“There—done,” I said, folding up the paper. “Your turn.” I tossed the pen to Maddie, and she actually caught it. “Good catch.”

Maddie retucked her hair behind her ears and wrote down her hot list. Only she wrote in swirly, fancy letters. I was really proud of Maddie being so arty, but I got embarrassed for her when she did calligraphy at school. I didn’t want the kids to think she was nerdy.

“Hurry up!” I said, nudging her leg with my foot.

“I’m almost done. Chill.” Suddenly, pricks of heat spiked up my neck. “Chill” was one of Nia Tate’s favorite words. She wasn’t my favorite person.

I folded my paper in half and then in quarters, as Maddie continued to craft her perfect letters. I finished my Slurpee, and checked Maddie’s to see if there was any left in hers, which, as usual, there wasn’t.

“Okay,” said Maddie. “I’m done.”

She folded her paper and turned it into an origami bird.

“I bet you put Mr. Roma first.”

“How did you guess? He’s soooo hot. I love his bushy mustache.” Mr. Roma is the head custodian, and he loves to sing heavy metal–type songs when he mops. “All right,” she said. “Let’s read each other’s list, one at a time.”

“Okay,” I said.

She raised her eyebrows up and down. “I’m reading yours first.”

I shook my head. “No way!”

“Okay, fine. Be a wimp. Here.” She tossed me her list/ perfect-looking crane.

“It’s sooo cute. I feel bad about ruining it.”

Maddie shrugged. “It’s okay, Soph. I’ll make you another one just like it, with real origami paper.”

“Okay, in that case …” I tore open the bird so I could read Maddie’s list.
MADDIE’S HOT LIST
1) Auggie Martin

2) Tyler Finkel

3) Nick Hyde

4) Bear Arvanites

5) Matt James

“Aha!” I yelled. “Square pulled in the number one spot.” Square was our special code name for Auggie because he had kind of a big, square-shaped head. “I knew you still liked him!” She had been crushing on him for a solid year, although she claimed to be over her Auggie phase.

Maddie shrugged apologetically. “I just couldn’t put anyone else as number one. It’s his freckles.” She tapped her own freckles on her nose. “It means we’re connected.”

“But what’s up with Tyler?” I asked. “He loves to talk. I thought you didn’t like chatty guys.”

“I don’t. But he’s kind of funny.” Then Maddie motioned at me. “Okay, your turn,” said Maddie. “Hand it over.”

I reluctantly tossed over the hot list.

Maddie smiled so her brown eyes crinkled, then she gazed down at my list. Suddenly, she peeped her eyes over the edge of the paper. “Of course, Hayden’s first.”

“Blue,” I corrected. Blue was our special code name for Hayden.

As if my dad had an antenna for something private going on, I heard him clomping down the hall, back from his bike ride. I quickly grabbed the lists and sparkly pen and stuck them in my pocket. Before I could sit down, he peeked his head into my bedroom. “Hi, girls.”

“Hi, Mr. Fanuchi!” said Maddie.

Stretching his arm behind his head, I noticed how baggy Dad’s shirt looked. That was because he’d been working out a lot ever since he started dating a bunch. “So what’s going on, you two?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Nothing?” His gaze wandered down to the red truth M&M’s. “Nothing. I see.” Dad grinned. “Well, nothing looks like fun. And since you’re busy doing nothing, Soph, would you walk Rusty. Remember? I’m going out for lunch.”

Ugh. He was going out on a date with Mrs. Tate, who worked as a math teacher at our school and happened to be the mom of Nia, the CEO of the popular group.

I was about to say, Do I have to?, when I heard the hot lists in my pocket making a crinkling sound. I had to get those lists out of my house and destroyed. My dad is a very nosy person and has been known to inspect my garbage.

“Okay, we’ll walk Rusty! I’ll get his leash.” I grabbed Maddie’s hand and pulled her up, eager to get out of the room and far away from the house. “We really do need fresh air.”

Maddie’s eyebrows shot up in a questioning look, while Dad smiled. “I’m liking your attitude,” he said. Now that I was a seventh grader, Dad loved to talk about my attitude. Either he liked it or he felt the need to compliment me on it.

“Be back in forty-five minutes,” continued Dad. “Before I leave to go on my date.”

“Sure,” I said, continuing to hold Maddie’s hand as we tore down the hall and out of the house. We hadn’t gotten too far down the block when I realized that Maddie wasn’t keeping up the pace. After Rusty and I leaped over a stream of water from my neighbor’s sprinkler, I turned back to Maddie. “C’mon, jump!”

But Maddie stood completely still, staring at a text message on her phone.

It had to be Heather Lopez or Nicole Eisenberg. We ate lunch with them five out of five, but on weekends, they did their thing and we did ours. “Is it Heather or Nicole?” I asked.

Maddie shook her head. “Nia.”

Nia? Ugh. My stomach dipped. I knew Maddie and Nia were both taking a watercolor class at the community center, but I never pictured Nia as friendship material. She led the aren’t-I-cool girl group, while Maddie always hung with me. I could tell Maddie that my dad, who happened to be the principal of Travis Middle School—our school—was getting ready to go out on his second date with Nia’s mom. But I was sure it was going to be as unserious as the rest of the women he’d dated since Mom died when I was three.

“So, since when are you and Nia, like, texting?” I asked, keeping my voice light.

Maddie shrugged. “I dunno, just recently,” and continued to keep her eyes on the screen, as if she’d just received a free pass to go to Disney World. Then she smiled really big at something she was reading.

“What?” I asked as Rusty tugged the leash and barked at a squirrel scurrying across the street.

“Oh, Nia’s doing crazy stuff.”

“Like?

“Making random videos with Ava and McKenzie.” I didn’t see how making videos was that crazy, but, then again, Nia loved to make everything she did seem crazy and superexciting. Would Maddie describe what we did together as crazy? Like going through last year’s sixth-grade yearbook and color-coding everyone’s photos by how nice they were? Or guzzling Slurpees, reading magazines, or watching YouTube?

Probably not.

I could feel my face going into meltdown mode. I began rubbing Rusty around the ears so Maddie couldn’t tell I was upset.

“Nia wants me to come over,” Maddie said, as she texted something back.

Great. Nia lived only about six blocks away, over on Cullen Court, in a ranch house with landscaping that she described as the natural look, but really just had a ton of weeds that desperately needed to be pulled.

“Does she know you’re with me?” I asked as Rusty sniffed a bush.

“It’s fine, Sophie,” said Maddie. “We can both go over.”

“Nah.” I picked a red berry off a bush that was probably poisonous and started juicing it between my fingers. The inside was all waxy looking. “It’d be weird,” I said. Really, I hated the idea of being Maddie’s tagalong.

“Oh, c’mon. Sophie, it’ll be fun.” Maddie’s phone binged as a new message came in. “Nia wants me to be in the next video!” As she excitedly grabbed my arm, the berry I’d been holding dropped from my stained finger. Rusty lunged to eat it off the sidewalk, so I yanked him away. “Leave it!” I yelled. Then I turned to Maddie. “Nia only wants you in her video because they need your techie brain.”

Maddie’s lips clamped shut, and her freckled nose twinged. When she did that, she looked just like her mom, who’s from Ireland, although Maddie’s definitely a blend of both her Irish mom and her Japanese dad.

“Oh, I didn’t mean it like that.” Searching for a way out of that blunder, I blurted, “I just get upset when Rusty tries to eat stuff that could make him sick.” Worst case scenario—he’d throw up dog chow all over me.

“That was evil.” Maddie held up one finger.

“Sorry,” I said, inwardly shuddering at Maddie using a Nia expression.

Maddie pushed up her lavender glasses. “You don’t think it’s possible for Nia and all of them to actually like me?”

“Sure, but …” I sighed. Actually, I didn’t. Maddie tried too hard and was considered geeky by Nia’s hippie-chic standards of cool. Plus, you had to have long, flowy hair. Maddie’s dark brown hair was straight and chin-length.

“You’re so good at computer-type stuff,” I told Maddie. “And maybe, yeah, they need editing help.” Everything I said was coming out wrong, and, at that very moment, I could feel Maddie slipping away from me. Who would tell her when assignments were due? Who would be there for post-bedtime texting discussions about what wear to school the next day? It couldn’t be Nia.

I had to do something. “Look, the real reason, I don’t want to go over is”—I lowered my voice and prayed for a decent idea—“I’ve got something planned.”

“Like?”

“It’s really crazy.”

“What?”

My eyes flicked over at the middle school, which was a half-block away. “Something over there.” Nothing was coming to me yet, but I figured the school had possibilities.

Looking confused, Maddie stared blankly at the empty parking lot. “Travis?”

“Yep.” I spied one of those blind-your-eyes bright drama club posters flapping on the door to the gym and went with it. “It’s open. For rehearsals of those comedy one-acts. Dad told me he was going to check to see how things were going with the plays when he went out on his run.”

“What’s up?”

“Well …” My hands went into my pocket. Impulsively, I pulled out the folded-up hot lists. “It involves these. And …” I whipped out the sparkly pen that we had used to write up the hot lists. “This! And you’ll just have to find out!” I charged down the sidewalk, with Rusty at my heels, hoping that jogging would give me time to think of what I’d actually do. I wished a brilliant thought would pop into my brain like popcorn.

But no ideas popped. Rusty was pulling too hard on the leash, and Maddie was screaming after me, “Stop!”

Jogging backward, I waved the hot lists over my head. “You’ll have to catch up!”

It felt good to run, even though it was boiling outside, and there was hardly any shade. Most of the trees had been planted when our subdivision was built, about five years ago.

I’m a much faster runner than Maddie. First of all, even though Maddie’s superskinny, I’m in better shape because of being on the soccer team, and my legs are way longer, so it wasn’t hard to get a huge lead on her. The most exercise Maddie ever got was turning the page of a romance novel.

Maddie might have had a chance, but a lady in her minivan was pulling out of the driveway. I jogged in place as I waited for the van to finish backing out. Then I crossed the street, and raced over to the bike rack in front of the school to tie up Rusty. Dad, the principal, would kill me if I brought him inside the school.

When Maddie got to the bike rack, she bent over, catching her breath. “Hold up!” she said. “I just have to tell Nia what I’m doing.”

“You better not.”

“I mean, I’ll tell her I’m busy and can’t come over right now.” She smiled at me. “Doing something mysterious, inside of Travis.”

Yes, I thought, score one for me!

But then reality set in. What was I doing?

I still wasn’t exactly sure myself. But I sure felt good about Maddie texting Nia that she wasn’t coming over.

After I carefully opened and closed the door to the school, so it wouldn’t alert anyone that we were inside, I motioned for Maddie to follow me down the hall.

“What are we doing?” she asked.

“You’ll see,” I said in my most ultra wait-and-see voice. It felt good to play it up like that. Honestly, I’m the best person I know at keeping secrets. But I was keeping the answer a secret, even from myself.

As I surveyed the hallway, my heart thumped loudly. Everything looked normal. Long rolls of blue paper had been tacked up on the walls, announcing an exciting visit for next week of an author who would open the door to reading. Nobody seemed to be around. Still, I didn’t like the idea of being so exposed. Right now I wanted a closed door.

That’s when I heard someone or something banging down the hall. We both hid around the corner. I peeked out to see Squid Rodriquez, in his red ski hat and neon, glow-in-the-dark green soccer shoes, doing cartwheels and belting out an off-key tune to himself, at the far end of the hall. “He must be here to rehearse,” I whispered. “Wherever he is, we need to be somewhere else.”

“Uh-huh,” said Maddie, who quickly turned away from me—probably busy texting Nia. Squid had been annoying people for as long as I could remember. Not only was he 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.”

“The 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.”

“Oka-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.

“This!” 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.

“You 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!”

“This is so messed-up.” Maggie giggled.

“Yup.” 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.

“Whoa,” said Maddie. “Your dad will kill you if he finds out.”

Yeah, I’d second that. How I wish I’d had a different idea, 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.

“Guard 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.