Free Sophie the Hero by Lara Bergen

S ophie 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 bottomsback 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. Dixondriving 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