Free Sophie the Awesome by Lara Bergen

S ophie closed her book and sighed.
    Leo the Lionhearted: Bravest Kid Ever.
    It just wasn’t fair!
    Sophie was sick and tired of reading about other people who were so much more … more
everything
than her.
    Then it hit her. She knew exactly what she needed.
    A name.
    Of course! But not just any old name. She had one of those already: Sophie H. Miller. (The
H
stood for Hamm—yes, Hamm. Enough said.)
    Big deal. So what? Boring.
    What Sophie needed was a name that described her perfectly. She needed a name that said it all. A name that was
not
boring.
    She looked across the library table, took a deep breath, and sighed again.
    “What?” said her friend Kate Barry. Her face popped up from behind her book. “Are you okay?”
    But Sophie sighed a lot. So Kate wasn’t too concerned.
    “No. I am not okay,” said Sophie. Now she crossed her arms.
    “Why?” Kate looked around. “Is Toby bugging you again?” She scrunched her mouth into a small sour-lemon frown. Then she glared at the boy sitting at the next round table. Sophie’s eyes followed hers.
    Toby Myers was very freckled, very redheaded, and—if you asked Sophie—very hard to lo ok at for very long. So she didn’t.
    Instead, she shook her head. “No. That’s not it.”
    “Then why?” asked Kate. Beneath her long brown bangs, her forehead made a wavy wrinkle.
    “Because I’m nothing,” Sophie told her. This time, she gave an extra-long, I’ll-never-be-anything sigh.
    Kate looked at her funny.
    “I’m talking about this,” Sophie said. She picked up her book and jabbed her finger at the cover.
    “You’d rather be a book?” Kate said. She scratched the freckle on her neck. “Can’t help you there. Sorry.”
    “No,”
groaned Sophie. That wasn’t it at all. She ran her finger along the book’s title. “I want to be Sophie the … something, too! All the great characters have names like that. And I’m a character. Ms. Moffly says so all the time. Think about it!” Sophie grinned at her best friend. “Nate the Great. Ramona the Brave. Harriet the Spy …”
    “Winnie the Pooh,” added Kate. There was a twinkle in her eye.
    “Exactly!” Sophie nodded. Then she frowned. “Very funny.”
    Kate giggled and Miss Elaine, the librarian, swooped over.
    “Shhh!”
warned Miss Elaine. “It’s
quiet
reading time. Remember?”
    Kate nodded and buried her nose back in her book. Sophie could tell she was still laughing.
    “You’re no help at all,” Sophie whispered. But she had to giggle a little, too.
    They watched the librarian zip off to Toby’s table. “Please sit down,” she told him and his super-annoying, new best friend, Archie Dolan. Someone was
always
telling the two of them to sit down.
    Kate patted Sophie’s hand. “Sorry,” she whispered. “You know, I’m not anything, either. Though ‘Kate the Great’ is kind of catchy.”
    Sophie slumped down and opened her book again. But she didn’t try to read it. She filled her cheeks with air and thought very hard instead.
    Sophie the …
    Sophie the …
    Sophie the …
what?!

    She couldn’t really be Sophie the First, because she was not the first in her family. Her older sister, Hayley, never let her forget that.
    And she couldn’t be Sophie the Last, because of Max, her little brother. Which was fine. She didn’t really want to be last, anyway!
    She couldn’t even be the only Sophie in Ms. Moffly’s third-grade class, thanks to Sophie Aarons. Or Sophie A., as everyone called her.
    That was another reason Sophie needed a special name. Being called Sophie M. was just plain silly.
    So what else was there?
    Sophie couldn’t be anything that rhymed with her name, like lucky duck Kate the Great. Nothing rhymed with “Sophie.” At least, nothing that made sense.
    She couldn’t be the Tallest. That was Grace.
    She couldn’t be the Smartest. That was Sophie A., too. (So unfair!)
    She couldn’t even be the Meanest. (Not that she wanted to be.) That was Mindy.
    And she couldn’t