Lara Bergen: Sophie the Chatterbox

Kate’s mouth had been a straight line. Slowly it curved into a grin.

Yes! Sophie could feel it. They were going to be friends again!

“Cross your heart, Sophie the Honest?” Kate asked.

Sophie smiled and crossed her heart again and again.

Then she reached out her arms. So did Kate. They hugged.

Ouch!

Sophie jumped back. This time her broach really did stick her!

Sophie took it off, dropped it into her backpack, and let out a big sigh. A happy one this time. Then she bit her lip. “Honestly, Kate, I don’t know if Sophie the Honest is me ,” she said.

Kate put her finger to her chin. “Well, there’s always Sophie the Chatterbox,” she teased.

Sophie rolled her eyes. “Thanks, but no thanks!” she said.

“Then what?” Kate asked.

Sophie shrugged. She wanted a great name, but she didn’t know what yet. Oh, well. She would think of something. What mattered more right then was that she had her best friend back.

( And that she didn’t have to tell a grown-up every single thing she did at school ever again!)

But what about Kate? Sophie wondered. Were the other girls still mad at her?

Then Kate told Sophie something that made her feel even better. She had talked to Mrs. Belle. She was going to ask her daughter if Kate could bring more friends to the horse farm.

Hopefully, everyone could go. Including Sophie!

(And hopefully everyone would forget the not-so-great things she had said.)

Sophie was feeling so much better. She kicked

a rock and watched it bounce away. And that was when she saw …

There in the grass. Was it a dollar?

Sophie looked a little closer.

Yes! It was!

Or … no. It had a number five on it.

It was a five-dollar bill! Sophie had never found one of those before!

She bent down and picked it up. And then she saw the zero. A five and a zero!

“Look, Kate!” She held it up. “A fifty! I’m rich!”

Then Sophie looked at Kate. And Kate looked at her.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Sophie asked.

“I think so!” Kate said.

Sophie the Rich! Now that was a good name!

No, wait — Sophie the Zillionaire!

Yes! That was even better!

So maybe SOPHIE hasn’t found the perfect name … but she isn’t giving up yet!

Sophie stared at the thing in her hand. She turned it over carefully. It was paper and green, and it had the number fifty all over it.

That was because it was fifty whole dollars!

Sophie could not believe it.

“I can’t believe it!” she said to Kate Barry, who was standing beside her. Kate was Sophie’s very best friend. “It’s fifty whole dollars!”

Sophie looked down at the grass next to the sidewalk. That was where she had picked up the fifty-dollar bill. She hoped that there was even more money there! But there was not.

Still. She had fifty whole dollars. She was probably the richest girl in the whole world!

(Well … maybe she wasn’t richer than a princess. But she was richer than any ordinary girl in Ordinary, Virginia, she bet!)

Sophie wanted so badly to be special. Now she really was! And to think, all she had to do was look down as she walked home from the bus stop.

“Where do you think it came from?” Kate asked her, as they started to walk.

Sophie shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Then she got a feeling. It was not so good. For Sophie to find money, someone else must have lost it first. But there was no one else around.

Sophie started to feel better. There wasn’t anybody to ask. Plus didn’t her big sister, Hayley, always say, “Finders keepers, losers sweepers”?

Sophie wasn’t sure why losers had to sweep. But that was their problem. The fifty dollars was hers!

“So what are you going to do with it?” Kate asked. She grinned and licked her lips. “I think you should buy lots of gum!”

Sophie knew that Kate liked gum. A lot. This was mostly because her mom did not buy it — not since Kate chewed some, then put it behind her ear to keep it. It worked for a girl in a movie they saw. But it did not work for Kate. It got stuck in her hair, and her mom had to cut a bunch of it off. Kate looked funny for a while. But she still liked gum just as much, after all that.

Sophie thought about gum for a minute, then shook her head. “I’m going to keep the money. And tomorrow at school I’m going to tell everyone about it,” she said.

Sophie could picture the kids in her class. They would be amazed that she was so rich. They would never call her just plain Sophie … or Sophie M…. or even Sophie Miller again!

Finding the right name isn’t easy!

See what else Sophie tries out….

1: SOPHIE the AWESOME

2: SOPHIE the HERO

3: SOPHIE the CHATTERBOX

4: SOPHIE the ZILLIONAIRE

5: SOPHIE the SNOOP

6: SOPHIE the DAREDEVIL

Just like Sophie, LARA BERGENwould love to find a name that describes her perfectly … but for now she’ll settle with being the author of this great series and many other books for children — and, before that, the proud editor of many more. She lives in the Big Apple, New York City, with the best husband and two children in the world.