Queen Sophie Hartley by Stephanie Greene

Author:Stephanie Greene
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Sophie tried not to watch Nora making bird faces at herself in their mirror after dinner, but it was impossible not to. She pretended she was doing her spelling homework, which her mother had threatened to start testing her on if she didn’t work harder, but she was really keeping a close eye on Nora.

First, Nora would crane her head one way and lift her chin in the air to see what she looked like out of the corner of her eye. Then she craned it around the other way and did the same thing. Sometimes she pushed her lips out as if she was about to kiss someone.

She was trying to see which was her better profile. Sophie knew, because she did the same thing. But while Sophie was always checking to see how she was going to look with a tiara, she knew that Nora was imagining how she was going to look with a wreath of beautiful white feathers on her head when she danced the role of the swan in her ballet performance. It was the lead role; Nora wanted it more than anything. She hadn’t said as much to Sophie, but Sophie knew. There was only one other girl in Nora’s class who might get it. Her name was Lauren.

Lauren used to help teach the beginners’ class. She was the oldest girl in the school, two years older than Nora. She was taller than Nora, too, which mattered in ballet. Her straight blond hair was always pulled back into a perfect chignon at the nape of her neck that never came unraveled. Her shoulder blades stood out under her leotard and her legs were as long and thin as a colt’s. Even her fingers were thin.

All the little girls in Sophie’s ballet class started out wanting to be just like Lauren. Sophie had, too. But then something about the way Lauren looked at her and talked to her had made Sophie stop wishing she could dance as well as Lauren and started making her realize she’d never be as good. No matter how hard she tried. Sophie didn’t know how Lauren did it, but she could still remember the feeling.

It wasn’t simply that Lauren wasn’t kind, Sophie realized, it was that Lauren was mean. She was suddenly very worried for her sister. It gave her a terrible feeling in her stomach to see the way Nora’s damp hair was curling around her face, even though she had it pulled back into a pony tail. Hair mattered, too, in ballet, Sophie thought. Tall snobs with straight hair would be very hard to compete with.

She felt the surge of fierce protectiveness she always felt when an outsider was mean to anyone in her family. It was one thing when her brothers and sisters were mean to one another, but another thing altogether when someone else was. Sophie felt she just had to say something to make Nora feel better.

“Who cares if Lauren is taller than you and has straighter hair?” she blurted out loyally.

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