The List
It happens every September– the list is posted all over school. Two girls are picked from each year. One is named the prettiest, one the ugliest.The girls who aren't picked are quickly forgotten. The girls who are become the centre of attention, and each reacts differently to the experience.With THE LIST, Siobhan Vivian deftly takes you into the lives of eight very different girls struggling with issues of identity, self-esteem, and the judgements of their peers. Prettiest or ugliest, once you're on the list, you'll never be the same.
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SIOBHAN VIVIAN is the author of the young adult novel The List, as well as The Last Boy and Girl in the World, Not That Kind of Girl, Same Difference, A Little Friendly Advice, and the Burn for Burn trilogy, cowritten with Jenny Han. Visit her at www.SiobhanVivian.com.
For Mommy
Thank you to David Levithan at Scholastic, Emily van Beek & Molly Jaffa at Folio Literary, and Anna Baggaley and the entire team at Harlequin UK.
“The perception of beauty is a moral test.”
— HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Contents
For as long as anyone can remember, the students of Mount Washington High have arrived at school on the last Monday in September to find a list naming the prettiest and the ugliest girl in each grade.
This year will be no different.
Roughly four hundred copies of the list currently hang in locations of varying conspicuousness. One is taped above the urinal in the first-floor boys’ bathroom, one covers the just-announced cast for the fall drama production of Pennies from Heaven, one is tucked between pamphlets for dating violence and depression in the nurse’s office. The list is affixed to locker doors, slipped inside classroom desks, stapled to bulletin boards.
The bottom right corner of each copy has been dimpled by an embossing stamp, leaving behind the scar of Mount Washington High rendered as a line drawing — before the indoor pool, the new gymnasium, and a wing of high-tech science labs were added. This stamp had certified every graduation diploma before it was stolen from the principal’s desk drawer decades ago. It is now a piece of mythic contraband used to discourage copycats or competitors.
No one knows for sure who authors the list each year, or how the responsibility is passed along, but secrecy has not impeded tradition. If anything, the guaranteed anonymity makes the judgments of the list appear more absolute, impartial, unbiased.
And so, with every new list, the labels that normally slice and dice the girls of Mount Washington High into a billion different distinctions — poseurs, populars, users, losers, social climbers, athletes, airheads, good girls, bad girls, girlie girls, guy’s girls, sluts, closet sluts, born-again virgins, prudes, over-achievers, slackers, stoners, outcasts, originals, geeks, and freaks, to name just a few — will melt away. The list is refreshing in that sense. It can reduce an entire female population down to three clear-cut groups.
Prettiest.
Ugliest.
And everyone else.
This morning, before the first homeroom bell, every girl at Mount Washington High will learn if her name is on the list or not.
The ones who aren’t will wonder what the experience, good or bad, might have been like.
The eight girls who are won’t have a choice.
Abby Warner strolls around the ginkgo tree, one hand drifting lazily over the thick calluses of bark. A breeze nips at her legs, bare between the hem of her corduroy skirt and her ballet flats. It is practically tights weather, but Abby will avoid wearing them for as long as she can stand the chill. Or until the last of her summer tan fades away. Whichever comes first.
The spot is known as Freshman Island. It is where the more popular ninth graders of Mount Washington assemble in the mornings and after school. During springtime, nearly everyone avoids Freshman Island because of the putrid smell of the pale orange ginkgo bulbs that thud swollen onto the ground, expelling a pungent gas. This is a fine arrangement, though, because by spring the freshmen will nearly be sophomores, and will avoid anything that might identify them as younger.
Abby’s parents dropped her and her older sister, Fern, off here what feels like hours ago, because Fern has some debate club thing. Or is it academic decathlon on Mondays? Abby yawns. She can’t remember which. Either way, these kinds of mornings suck, because Abby has to get up extra early to have time to shower, do her hair, and put together something cute to wear. She does it all without turning on the light, so as not to wake Fern, with whom she shares the largest bedroom in the Warner home. Meanwhile, Fern sleeps until the last possible minute because she has no morning routine to speak of, besides brushing her teeth and cycling through a rotation of jeans and boxy T-shirts.
