Lara Bergen: Sophie the Hero

Sophie was a hero. No joke. A real live hero! And it was all anyone could talk about on the bus to school.

Especially Sophie.

“Mrs. Blatt! Have you heard? I’m a hero!” she told the bus driver as soon as she got on. “Just call me Sophie the Hero from now on! Right, Ella?”

She turned to Ella Fitzgibbon, the little kindergartner behind her.

“Right!” said Ella. “Sophie the Hero — my hero!”

Sophie smiled. Then she patted Ella’s head. This was something the old, boring Sophie never would have done. But she was not the old, boring Sophie anymore.

The old, boring Sophie had thought that her next-door neighbor Ella was a pest. She never left Sophie alone, even when Sophie was playing important third-grade games with Kate Barry, her very best friend.

But things had changed. Now Sophie was Ella’s hero! And thanks to Ella, Sophie had a great new name. A name that made her special. A name that said it all — just what Sophie had been hoping for!

So what if it was not “Sophie the Awesome”? That was the name she had first thought of. But being awesome all the time was kind of hard, Sophie had learned. Being a hero was fine with her. Great, even!

“Hero?” Mrs. Blatt said. She reached over and closed the bus door. “You don’t say! Well, have a seat, girls, and tell me more. On your bottoms back there!” she hollered to the kids in the rear of the bus.

Quickly, Sophie, Kate, and Ella slid into the first seat behind Mrs. Blatt. Usually, Sophie liked to sit in the back of the bus with Kate. Not with Ella. But this was not a usual day. Ella had already told Sophie’s story at the bus stop, to all the kids who had missed it. And Sophie could not wait to hear it again!

“Go ahead, Ella,” Sophie said.

“What happened,” Ella said, “is that I tripped and all my Slinkys spilled. Right into the street!”

“And Sophie caught them all?” said the bus driver. She hit the gas and the bus rolled forward. “Why, that is heroic, isn’t it?”

But all three girls shook their heads.

“No. Sophie caught Ella!” Kate said. She patted Sophie’s shoulder proudly.

“I was going to try to catch my Slinkys. But Sophie stopped me from running into the street,” Ella said.

“And don’t forget the part about Mrs. Dixon driving by in her car right then,” Sophie reminded them.

“Right!” said Ella. “And Mrs. Dixon drove by in her car! Right then!” She turned to Sophie and hugged her hard. “You saved my life!”

Mrs. Blatt’s eyes grew wide in the rearview mirror. “Wow, Sophie. You really are a hero!”

Sophie beamed proudly as Ella reached down and pulled a piece of paper out of her backpack. She handed it to Sophie. It was a drawing of a girl with two straight lines of brown hair. She was standing on a line of green grass with heart-shaped flowers all around her. There was a line of blue sky above, a yellow sun in the corner, and big rainbow letters that spelled out “SOFEE THE HE.”

Sophie started to smile, but her mouth ended up crooked. And not just because the picture made her look like a scarecrow wearing too much makeup.

“This isn’t what I told you to write, Ella,” Sophie said, pointing to the letters on the paper.

“Oh, I ran out of room,” Ella said. She grinned. “The rest is on the back.”

Sophie turned the page over. There was a giant R, and an O. Plus an “I love you, Ella. XXXOOO.”

“See!” said Ella. She looked at Sophie with big brown eyes. Sophie noticed a spot of purple jelly on her chin. “Don’t you like it?” Ella asked her.

Sophie sighed.

“I think it’s great,” Kate said. She smiled at Sophie over Ella’s head. “And it looks just like you, Sophie … the He !”

Sophie rolled her eyes, but she had to grin.

“It’s … very nice, Ella,” she said.

Then she slipped the picture into her own backpack. Okay. So it was not exactly the hero portrait she had hoped for. But Sophie did not need a picture to prove she was a hero. The facts spoke for themselves. And so did the cheer that Kate and Ella started on the bus ride:

At school, Sophie dropped Ella off at her kindergarten classroom. (Ella clung to her arm the whole way there, which was kind of cute … and kind of not.) Then she and Kate hurried to their third-grade class in room 10.

Sophie was just about to walk through the door when she stopped short.

“Oof!” grunted Kate as she bumped into Sophie’s backpack. “Why did you stop here?”

Sophie pulled Kate away from the door. “You need to introduce me!” she told her.

Kate’s forehead made a wrinkle. “But everybody already knows you,” she said.

Sophie lowered her voice. “Not as Sophie the Hero,” she said.

“Oh, right!” Kate waggled her eyebrows and grinned. Then, slowly, her grin got smaller.

“What?” Sophie asked.

“Well …,” Kate began. She shrugged. “It’s just … it’s great that you’re a hero. But I feel a little left out.”

“Oh, don’t!” Sophie said. She put her hands on her friend’s shoulders. She had never thought that her being a hero would be hard for Kate.

“Don’t forget,” Sophie told her, “you’re the best friend of a hero. In fact —” A thought suddenly hit her. “You’re like my … What do they call them?”

“Sidekick?” said Kate.

Sophie beamed. “Exactly! You’re like my sidekick!” And how perfect was that? Every hero needed one of them!

Kate thought about it for a second and her grin came back even bigger.

“Feel better?” said Sophie.

“Much better!” Kate said. “Sidekicks get the coolest jobs, and they’re funny, like me. Now for that introduction!”

With that, Kate left Sophie in the hall and stepped into room 10.

“Ladies and gentlemen! And everyone else, too,” Kate declared. (Sophie bet she was talking to yucky Toby Myers and Archie Dolan.) “May I have your attention, please?”

Sophie heard the class get quiet, no kidding. Wow! How lucky was she to have Kate for a sidekick? Kate was very good at it already!

“What is it?” someone said.

That was when Kate grabbed Sophie and pulled her into the room.

“I’d like you to meet the one, the only … Sophie the Hero!” Kate cried.

“Sophie the who?”

“Sophie the what?”

Sophie took a bow and cleared her throat. “Sophie the Hero,” she said.

And just as Sophie had hoped, she and Kate got to tell the Slinky story all over again.

And again!

“Wow, you are a hero!” said Eve, Mia, Sydney, and Grace when it was over.

“Maybe we should call you Sophie H. instead of Sophie M.,” said Sophie A., the other Sophie in her class. “For ‘Sophie the Hero.’”

Sophie thought about it for a second, then shook her head. No. “Sophie the Hero” was better. She was pretty sure of that.

“I am happy to sign autographs,” Sophie said. “Does anyone have a pen?”