“I’ve worn them before” was Brie’s best defense. Why couldn’t Mrs. Dwek zero in on Jack’s gum chewing instead?
“Doesn’t mean they aren’t too big,” Mrs. Dwek replied, in that way she always did to undercut Brie’s best excuses.
Brie was about to defend her style choices, but then someone caught her eye.
Oh no. What is he doing in here?
At the front of the cafeteria, for everyone to see, two maintenance men were fixing the loudspeaker, which was, of course, above the cafeteria’s own crucifix. One of the maintenance men was removing the crucifix so it would be out of the way while they worked on the speaker. The other was scanning the cafeteria.
Brie knew exactly what he was looking for: her.
Because that maintenance man was her dad.
“You know what, Mrs. Dwek? You are absolutely correct. I’ll go to the bathroom and take them off immediately,” Brie said. “Come help me, Parker.”
Parker stared at her for a moment, eyes squinting behind her glasses. “Why do you need to go to the bathroom to—”
She stopped talking the moment Brie ducked under the cafeteria table to reemerge on the other side beside her. Brie grabbed Parker’s hand—still clutching Jack Thomas’s stick of gum—and offered Mrs. Dwek, who was as confused as Parker, a smile. “Be right back!” Brie said and quickly dragged Parker away.
Parker wasn’t the best cover. She was the tallest kid in school, and Brie’s dad had known Parker since they were seven. But at least if he saw them and said hello, well, Parker already knew he was working there.
The rest of her classmates did not, and Brie wanted to keep it that way.
They’d almost made it out of the cafeteria—because of course she would almost make it—when she heard her dad call out, “Brie!” He smiled, crow’s-feet crinkling in the corners of his eyes and his cheeks puffing out.
It was his first year working at her school. Brie’s mom had somehow struck a deal where her dad would work at the school and Brie’s tuition would be less expensive. They’d been having a difficult time paying recently since her dad had lost his real job.
His real job that had kept him out of OLPH and away from the cafeteria, where he was holding a crucifix and waving to Brie.
“Can’t talk! Bathroom emergency!” she called behind her as she raced through the cafeteria doors, pulling Parker behind her.
Brie really hoped that at the end of the day, when she met her dad in the maintenance office after school, he wouldn’t mention the fact that she had obviously dodged him. It wasn’t like she could tell him why she didn’t want to chat in front of all her classmates.
Brie always had to wait an extra twenty minutes after dismissal before her dad got there. But she didn’t mind so long as they made it home in time for Brie to watch General Hospital with her mom. Besides, the maintenance staff always had a box of Munchkins from Dunkin’ on the table.
She popped a powdered Munchkin into her mouth just as her dad appeared at the door. “Hey, kid. You ready to go?”
With her cheeks full of doughnut, she mumbled, “Yep!”
“You know I can always just get you from your classroom instead, right?” he asked, as he did almost every day. “You don’t need to wait in this dank office.”
Brie swallowed her Munchkin. It went down hard. “It’s okay. I don’t mind.”
The ride home was quiet, which had been the case lately when they left school. Once home, Brie dropped her backpack on the floor, untucked her shirt from her plaid skirt, kicked off her shoes, and rolled off her tights as she made her way into the living room. Ever since she’d started getting rides home with her dad instead of taking the bus, she’d been cutting it close to missing her favorite show. General Hospital was already on the TV, and Brie stepped into the room just in time to hear the smack! as Sonny Corinthos’s current wife, Carly, slapped him. Brie loved this show. “Oh my God, what did he do this time?”
“Carly found out about Mexico,” Brie’s mom said, not taking her eyes off the TV. It was her favorite show, too. She was already wearing her name tag for work. Some days she got home from her part-time shift at the mall right before General Hospital started; other times she had to leave for work right after. Luckily, she was almost always able to watch, which made Brie happy. It was pretty much the only thing they did together. Except when her mom dragged her to go shopping, but those outings usually ended in arguments. “She’s being a little dramatic about it, if you ask me,” her mom continued.
Brie loved soap operas because they were so dramatic. They were full of characters with giant personalities who made terrible mistakes and terrible decisions and still managed to fall in love and be awesome. Brie, if she was being honest, admired all of them. She wanted to be them. So much so that the thing she was most looking forward to now that she was in the eighth grade was the spring play. Well, that and being one step closer to graduating middle school, one step closer to an opportunity that could help her achieve her dream.
“I would have slapped him, too,” Brie said, taking a seat next to her mom on the sofa.
Brie’s mom laughed. “Yeah, well, you do have Carly’s temper. I went shopping, if you want a snack.”
“Pop-Tarts?” Brie asked.
“In the cabinet,” her mom answered as the camera pulled in on Carly’s tearstained face. “Have one, Brie.”
“They put two Pop-Tarts in one package so you eat them both,” Brie pointed out.
“You don’t need to eat both,” her mom said.
Brie did not share her mom and older brother’s body type. They also did not share eye or hair color (though Brie knew her mom dyed hers—she’d seen enough old photographs to tell).
But when Brie and her mom sat in the living room, watching their soaps, Brie forgot they had so little in common. Not many of her friends’ moms had time to sit and watch TV with their daughters, and although her mom would be watching whether or not Brie was in the room—and vice versa for Brie—it still was something. It was their thing. The thing they had done for as long as Brie could remember.
She remembered being too small to really understand what was going on. Too small to see over the coffee table from where she sat on the carpet in the living room, playing with her toys, peeking up over the edge to watch these characters her mom seemed so fond of, trying to figure out what, exactly, made her so fond of them. She remembered listening to the dialogue and repeating it back to herself in her bedroom mirror, remembered how much it made her mom laugh the first time she did it when her mom was around.
She remembered asking questions and her mom saying she was too young to understand. That was frustrating, so Brie paid closer attention and kept asking questions, until suddenly her mom stopped saying she was too young and started answering her. Until Brie didn’t have to ask anymore, and they had conversations about what was happening instead. All the while Brie never stopped repeating the dialogue into her mirror at night.
Brie’s cell phone buzzed, and she picked it up to read the incoming text from Parker. “Parker’s mom is picking me up at seven,” Brie said. “We’re going to the boys’ hockey game at the Armory.”