Sophie Steps Up by Nancy N. Rue | eBook

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www.zonderkidz.com Sophie's Irish Showdown Copyright © 2005 by Nancy Rue This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are products of author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Requests for information should be addressed to: Zonderkidz, 5300 Patterson Ave. SE Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rue, Nancy N. Sophie's Irish showdown / by Nancy Rue.-1st ed. p. cm.-(Faithgirlz) Summary: As the Corn Flakes and a new student from Ireland prepare for a 'Performance Showcase,' tempers flare and Sophie retreats to her imagination again, but a Bible story recommended by Dr. Peter helps her pull the group together. ISBN 0-310-70759-5 (softcover) [1. Talent shows---Fiction. 2. Friendship---Fiction. 3. Irish Americans---Fiction. 4. Orphans--- Fiction. 5. Schools---Fiction. 6. Imagination---Fiction. 7. Christian life---Fiction. 8. Virginia--- Fiction.] I. Title. II. Series. PZ7.R88515Sl 2005 [Fic]-dc22 2004023726 All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible: New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means---electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other---except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Zonderkidz is a trademark of Zondervan. Published in association with the literary agency of Alive Communications, Inc., 7680 Goddard Street, Suite 200, Colorado Springs, CO 80920. Photography: Synergy Photographic/Brad Lampe Illustrations: Grace Chen Design& Illustration Art direction/design: Michelle Lenger Interior design: Susan Ambs Printed in the United States of America 05 06 07 08 09/.DCI/6 5 4 3 2 1 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. ---2 Corinthians 4:18 1 Soph ie LaCroix couldn't be li e ve what she had just heard. There was no way Miss Blythe had just announced that the sixth-grade class was going to get to do a Performance Showcase---on the stage---on a Saturday night---in front of a REAL AUDIENCE. And that the top three performing groups would each get a prize. In Sophie's world, dreams like THAT just didn't come true every day. Sophie's best friend, Fiona, grabbed her hand and squeezed it until Sophie's fingers looked like red lipsticks. 'Do you think she'll let us pick our own groups?' Kitty whispered on the other side of Sophie. Her blue-jay-blue eyes were nearly bulging, the way they always did when she was nervous. Which was a lot. 'She would be nonsensical not to,' Fiona whispered back. 'We're the Corn Flakes.' 'So?' That came from their other friend, Maggie, whose voice thudded across the table they shared. 'Teachers don't care about that.' Sophie looked at Miss Blythe, who had her back to them, writing dates and times and requirements on the board with flowing chalk. She was their arts teacher, and Sophie had often thought she couldn't be anything else. Miss Blythe was tall and wore long skirts and bracelets that flounced with bright-colored charms. She swayed like a new tree when she walked, the strands of her waist-length blonde hair streaming down her back as if they were rays of sunlight. With her long fingers constantly punctuating her sentences in the air, Sophie had a hard time imagining her as a lawyer or a greeter down at Wal-Mart. And Sophie could imagine just about anything. Is Miss Blythe the type to let friends---best friends who can't bear to be separated---work together? Sophie thought. Or would she subject her students to pure torture at the hands of girls like the Corn Pops? They'd only had arts class for about a month. It was hard to say. 'I can't work with Julia and them!' Kitty was whining. She did that a lot, too. 'She and B.J. and Anne-Stuart and Willoughby---they would be so mean to me!' 'Yeah, they would torture you,' Maggie said in her usual flat, factual voice. 'Any of us.' Sophie could tell by the way Kitty was whimpering that none of that was making her feel any better. It wasn't doing much for Sophie, either, for that matter. She shook her acorn-colored hair off her shoulders and adjusted her glasses as she leaned into the table. The rest of the Corn Flakes leaned in with her. 'We just have to pray really hard,' she said. 'We have to squeeze our eyes shut and whisper to God in our heads.' 'That'll look weird,' Maggie said. Sophie saw that she was on the point of rolling her very dark eyes. Maggie was Cuban, so everything on her was dark except her extra-white teeth. 'Corn Flakes are weird,' Fiona told her. 'That's what makes us unique. Close your eyes.' They all did, clutching each other's hands under the table. Just before she shut hers, Sophie saw the Corn Pops clinging to each other, too, but she was pretty sure they weren't praying. In fact, Sophie wondered if the Corn Pops EVER prayed. What they did do, as far as Sophie could tell, was think they were better than everybody else because they had more money than rock stars and could get their way no matter what. 'No matter what' included cheating, lying, gossiping, and teasing people about anything they thought was too weird. And since the Corn Pops considered everything the Corn Flakes did way too weird, Sophie and Maggie and Kitty and Fiona were their favorite targets. At least we used to be, Sophie thought now. Until they got in so much trouble for doing bad stuff and blaming it on us. It was a little bit of a comfort that the Corn Pops wouldn't dare do anything else to the Corn Flakes, at least not anything they could possibly get caught at. But Sophie knew the Pops had ways of getting away with things that could escape even the really smart teachers. She sure hoped Miss Blythe knew a Pop from a Flake and wouldn't try to mix them together. It's pretty easy to see the differences, Sophie thought. The Corn Pops only wanted to be popular---which was why they were Pops---and they would do anything to stay the boss of everybody else in the sixth grade at Great Marsh Elementary, which was where the corn part came from. Sometimes they were so corny in the stuff they did. Sophie squinted her eyes open a little so she could peek at her fellow Flakes. Fiona, with her rich-brown bob that fell over one of her gray eyes. Maggie, so serious and stocky and practical. And Kitty, with her curly ponytail and her little nose that looked like it was made of china. Corn Flakes are corny, too; that's what everyone says, Sophie thought, just because we like to make up stories and make films out of them, and we don't care what anybody else thinks about that. Once, back when Kitty was still a Pop, the CPs had said Sophie and Fiona were a couple of 'flakes.' It was so perfect it had to be their name. After that, the girls who were all into sports were the Wheaties and most of the boys were Fruit Loops. The best part was that all the group names were a secret among the Corn Flakes. 'If everyone is awake, I'll finish explaining the project,' Miss Blythe said. Sophie's brown eyes sprang open, even though she hadn't actually gotten to praying at all. She pulled her elf of a body up as tall as she could in her chair. It wouldn't be good to be caught daydreaming, or Daddy would take her video camera away from her, and Corn Flake Productions would be no more. That was the deal with her father--- stay out of trouble and make nothing less than a B in school and she could keep the camera. Mess up, and it was all history. 'I want at least f

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